Customer Reviews

Real Freedom for All: What (if anything) can justify capitalism? (Oxford Political Theory)

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Philippe Van Parijs is a Belgian philosopher and political economist (correcting what reviewer "disidente" wrote). In this book Van Parijs makes a good start at constructing a solid philosophical and pragmatic argument for the desirability and possibility of establishing an unconditional guaranteed income. Upon this foundation others have been working to erect a Basic Income Guarantee, such as the Green Party of Canada, Green Party of England and Wales, Vivant (Belgium), De Groenen (The Netherlands), the Scottish Green Party, and the New Zealand Democratic Party. Worldwide, supporters of a basic income have united in the Basic Income Earth Network (http://www.basicincome.org/bien/). In the USA, the USBIG Network (http://www.usbig.net/) has carried the torch for this idea. Read this book if you want the clearest and most intellectually rigorous arguments to date for a guaranteed income for all. If you'd like to read critical counterarguments and Van Parijs's responses, I recommend that smaller (and much less expensive) "What's Wrong with a Free Lunch?" by Van Parijs et al which is available here on Amazon.com.

This book offers a rather odd defense of capitalism. The author is a liberal British academic philosopher. He argues that capitalism could only be defensible if there is an unconditional basic income provided to everyone. By "unconditional" he means that you are not required to work to obtain it. He calls this "real libertarianism". I think in fact he's not likely to convince either right wing or left wing libertarians. Left libertarians will argue that no society is free as long as workers are subordinated to bosses in work, for example...but this is an issue van Parijs doesn't discuss.

His argument is situated in the philosophical debate about "negative" and "positive" forms of liberty. The "negative" idea of liberty is that you are free if you are not coerced. This is the concept of freedom defended by right wing libertarians. Left wing libertarians argue that one also needs "positive" freedom, which may include things like equal access to resources (education, health care, etc) for charting your path in life, actual self-managment of decisions that affect you. The author's "unconditional basic income" is intended as his proposal for the "positive" form of freedom.

He doesn't address the basic problem that capitalist elites will have the resources and power to prevent any such entitlement to be enacted, or would always be working to reduce it or eliminate if it was enacted.