Guy Standing: In a book that I wrote in 2011, on page one I said that unless the inse­cu­ri­ties, and the fears, and the aspi­ra­tions of the pre­cari­at were addressed as a mat­ter of urgency, we would see the emer­gence of a polit­i­cal monster. 

You will not be sur­prised that in November 2016 I received a lot of emails from around the world from peo­ple who said, ​“The mon­ster has arrived.” Today, iron­i­cal­ly, he is in Germany inspect­ing his troops. Maybe a lot of Americans would like him to stay in Germany. But I would not. 

What I’m going to talk about today is some­thing that has involved me in some­thing I nev­er expect­ed in my life—an adven­ture. Because since that book was pub­lished it’s been trans­lat­ed into twenty-four lan­guages and tak­en me around the world to speak in over 500 places in about forty coun­tries. And the rea­son for that is not the book but the fact is that the glob­al pre­cari­at is grow­ing in every part of the world. 

And I want to talk about some of the back­ground of this dis­rup­tive class that is tak­ing shape. Because I think it has a res­o­nance with this con­fer­ence and sim­i­lar events tak­ing place. Because as some­one like myself—I’m an econ­o­mist; as I was walk­ing around here this morn­ing I thought, ​“This is the future.” You are the future if, if, we are to have a future. It’s up to you to define that future. And I mean it very seriously. 

We are in the midst of a glob­al trans­for­ma­tion. Those of you who are polit­i­cal sci­en­tists or know polit­i­cal sci­ence will under­stand that Karl Polanyi wrote a great book in 1944 called The Great Transformation. And his book was fun­da­men­tal­ly about what took place in the 19^th cen­tu­ry and the ear­ly part of the 20^th cen­tu­ry. He describes the mid-19^th cen­tu­ry until the Second World War as the dis­em­bed­ded phase of the Great Transformation. It was dom­i­nat­ed ini­tial­ly by finan­cial cap­i­tal. By laissez-faire eco­nom­ics. And by a tech­no­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion that was tak­ing place at the time. It took place in which the dom­i­nant groups were around finance and monop­o­lies and imperialism. 

But what hap­pened in that dis­em­bed­ded phase was that inse­cu­ri­ties mul­ti­plied. Inequalities wors­ened. Wealth inequal­i­ty grew more than income inequal­i­ty. And in the process we had the emer­gence of a new class struc­ture in which the bour­geoisie was con­front­ed by a solid­i­fied pro­le­tari­at. The pro­le­tari­at were the losers in the process of two world wars and the Great Depression. And we had what Polanyi said with ​“the threat of the anni­hi­la­tion of civ­i­liza­tion.” We all know what happened. 

But after the Second World War, a new embed­ded phase of his Great Transformation took place, in which finance was tamed. In which social democ­ra­cy became the dom­i­nant force. Labor-based inse­cu­ri­ties were reduced. Inequalities were reduced. And we had a peri­od in which glob­al trade grew in com­pet­i­tive goods, but with sim­i­lar stan­dards in the indus­tri­al­ized cap­i­tal­ist countries. 

But there were inher­ent con­tra­dic­tions in that embed­ded phase of the Great Transformation. It became infla­tion­ary, it became slug­gish. It was no gold­en age. It was no gold­en age that prompt­ed 1968. The riots. The revolt against the sys­tem. It was a peri­od of drab­ness in many ways. When full-time, sta­ble jobs were meant to be the nir­vana. But it stul­ti­fied the human cre­ativ­i­ties. It stul­ti­fied sub­ver­sive think­ing. It was a peri­od in which there were many improve­ments, but it had its lim­i­ta­tions. As we all know, that Great Transformation col­lapsed in the 1970s and 1980s, ush­ered in the disembed­ded phase of the Global Transformation. 

The dis­em­bed­ded phase was dom­i­nat­ed by neolib­er­al­ism in eco­nom­ics. By the emer­gence of politi­cians like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, to put those neolib­er­al ideas into prac­tice. It was dom­i­nat­ed by the emer­gence of US-dominated finan­cial insti­tu­tions like Goldman Sachs that became great umbrel­las around the world. And it ush­ered in, too, a new tech­no­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion that you’re all deal­ing with today.

For my sto­ry, the most impor­tant aspect of the ear­ly phase of that tech­no­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion was that it made the relo­ca­tion of pro­duc­tion and employ­ment much eas­i­er. So that the relo­ca­tion depend­ed on rel­a­tive costs. And it strength­ened the pow­er of cap­i­tal over labor. So we see around the world, in every coun­try, a shift in which more and more of the income goes to cap­i­tal and less and less goes to labor. It’s a phe­nom­e­non that spread around the world. 

And the tech­no­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion also meant that cap­i­tal mobil­i­ty increased dra­mat­i­cal­ly. And, we have some oth­er inter­est­ing devel­op­ments which I’ll come to in a moment. But inequal­i­ties have increased. Insecurities have become vast­ly greater in every part of the world. We have a new Gilded Age, at the top, and at the bot­tom. And that Gilded Age has gone with a new Kondratiev long wave of tech­no­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion which has helped in the relo­ca­tion again of the geopo­lit­i­cal pow­er that is so impor­tant today. 

We have, now, moved away from the neolib­er­al era of the 1980s and 1990s. And a piv­otal event came in 1994 with the pas­sage of TRIPS by the World Trade Organization. Trips: Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property. What this did is glob­al­ize the American sys­tem of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights. With patents, with copy­right, with brands, with all of the adages that go with that sys­tem. So now, we have a sys­tem in which about a quar­ter of the world’s GDP—national income—is attrib­ut­able to intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights. 

Some of you ben­e­fit from patents and oth­er copy­rights and so on, but it’s a sys­tem that has entrenched pow­er­ful, big cor­po­ra­tions. So we have Big Pharma. We have Big Finance. And above all we have Big Tech. The Big Tech are ren­tiers, tak­ing more and more from the world’s income pile. And in effect we have ren­tier cap­i­tal­ism today, not a free mar­ket. This is the most un-free mar­ket sys­tem ever cre­at­ed in his­to­ry, where more and more of the income is going to the own­ers of prop­er­ty. Physical prop­er­ty, finan­cial prop­er­ty, and intel­lec­tu­al property. 

We’ve had a break down of the income dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem of the 20^th cen­tu­ry. It’s bro­ken. Wages have been stag­nat­ing in all indus­tri­al­ized coun­tries for three decades. Three decades. They are low­er in the United States in real-wage terms than they were in the 1980s. The impli­ca­tions are dra­mat­ic. And above all we’ve got a new glob­al class struc­ture that has tak­en shape. The class struc­ture has a plu­toc­ra­cy at the top. It is not the top 1%, it’s the top 0.1%, of multi-billionaires strid­ing the globe as glob­al cit­i­zens, tak­ing more and more rental income. Take some­one like Jeff Bezos. His income has grown by $400 mil­lion per week this year. This is obscen­i­ty multiplied. 

This plu­toc­ra­cy of course now have a rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the White House as their spokesper­son. We have oth­er plu­to­crats manip­u­lat­ing our pol­i­tics, manip­u­lat­ing our tech­nol­o­gy, manip­u­lat­ing our com­mons. These are the realities.

Beneath the plu­toc­ra­cy is an elite who are the ser­vants of the plu­to­crats. Who are mak­ing many mil­lions of dol­lars euros pounds or what­ev­er, and are ser­vants. We don’t have to feel sor­ry for them, either. 

Below them is the cele­ri­at. With sta­ble, salaried employ­ment. With pen­sion to look for­ward to. Paid hol­i­days, paid med­ical leave, paid this, paid that, paid the rest. 

The only prob­lem is that the cele­ri­at has been shrink­ing every­where in the world. It won’t dis­ap­pear, but today, many in the cele­ri­at wor­ry about their daugh­ters and their sons. Because they’re not going into the celeriat. 

Below the cele­ri­at, just, is a group I call in the books the pro­fi­cians, a com­bi­na­tion of ​“pro­fes­sion­als” and ​“tech­ni­cians” Many in this hall this morn­ing are part of the pro­fi­cians. But be care­ful. These peo­ple don’t want full-time sta­ble jobs. They don’t want to be say­ing yes/no to a boss. They’re mak­ing good mon­ey. They’re rush­ing around with their lap­tops or what­ev­er over their shoul­ders. They’re mak­ing a lot of mon­ey. They’re mak­ing a lot of mon­ey and they are tend­ing to be com­pla­cent. But they should wor­ry about burnout. They should wor­ry about men­tal ill­ness at age twenty-eight-and-a-half, or thereabouts. 

The pro­fi­cians are help­ing in iden­ti­fy­ing the tech­no­log­i­cal and polit­i­cal options for the future—they have a respon­si­bil­i­ty. But they must not lose that respon­si­bil­i­ty in an ego­tis­tic, nar­cis­sis­tic pur­suit of pri­vate gain. It’s a dif­fi­cult bal­anc­ing act. But they have a respon­si­bil­i­ty because they have the skills, they have the knowl­edge, and they know what’s going on. 

Beneath these groups are the old pro­le­tari­at. Disappearing every­where. They were the ones that estab­lished social democ­ra­cy, the trade unions, col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing, tri­par­tism. All the insti­tu­tions of the International Labour Organization. But today they are shrink­ing every­where. And along with them their polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives are effec­tive­ly dead men walk­ing. They are not the future. They did many good things in the 20^th cen­tu­ry. I do not mean to dis­par­age them in any way. But they’re not the future. 

Beneath the pro­le­tari­at in terms of income is the pre­cari­at. The pre­cari­at can be defined in three dimen­sions. The first dimen­sion is that if you’re in the pre­cari­at, you are being told, and you are being habit­u­at­ed, to accept a life of unsta­ble labor and inse­cure work. You don’t have an occu­pa­tion­al nar­ra­tive to give to your life. An occu­pa­tion­al iden­ti­ty. ​“I am some­thing.” You wor­ry that tomor­row morn­ing you’ll have to be some­thing else. You also have to do a lot of work for labor. Work that is not rec­og­nized, not remu­ner­at­ed, not in our sta­tis­tics, but you know you have to do it oth­er­wise you will pay a price. 

And in being in the pre­cari­at, you don’t know the opti­mum use of your time. ​“Should I spend a lit­tle more time net­work­ing? Doing this. Retraining. Going to a con­fer­ence. Doing this, doing that. Looking after my baby. Paying the rent.” And there­fore you suf­fer from what I’ve called the pre­cari­a­tized mind. The pre­cari­a­tized mind when you’re stressed. You’re anx­ious all the time. You put a good face on it, but every now and then you see your friends col­laps­ing in one way or the oth­er. That’s how it feels for many peo­ple. Every day, I receive emails from var­i­ous peo­ple from var­i­ous places who don’t know me who want to explain their expe­ri­ence. Sometimes I get very angry. Sometimes I…feel like cry­ing. But the pain out there is part of the process of lib­er­a­tion as well. It’s not just a vic­tim­hood, it’s about peo­ple try­ing to make sense of a life of insecurity. 

And anoth­er fea­ture is that peo­ple in the pre­cari­at tend to have a lev­el of edu­ca­tion that is above the lev­el of labor they can expect to obtain. 

The sec­ond dimen­sion of the pre­cari­at is that peo­ple in it have dis­tinc­tive rela­tions of dis­tri­b­u­tion. What that means is they have to rely very large­ly on mon­ey wages, mon­ey pay­ments. They don’t get access to the prospect of pen­sions, or paid hol­i­days, or paid med­ical leave. Or sub­si­dized this or sub­si­dized that. They have to live on wages. The only prob­lem is that the val­ue of those wages are tend­ing to go down and the volatil­i­ty of their income is growing. 

So basi­cal­ly the sec­ond aspect of this dis­tri­b­u­tion­al ques­tion is that most peo­ple in the pre­cari­at are liv­ing on the lev­el of unsus­tain­able debt. One mis­take, one ill­ness, one bad deci­sion, and you could be tipped out into the lumpen pre­cari­at. Outside soci­ety, with­out a voice. 

And of course at the same time the state has been chang­ing its social secu­ri­ty and social pro­tec­tion sys­tem towards more tar­get­ing on the poor. So it’s reduced the social sol­i­dar­i­ty of the social pro­tec­tion sys­tem, and this hits the pre­cari­at in a very big way. Because state ben­e­fits, wel­fare ben­e­fits, have been shrink­ing. And have been means-tested and behavior-tested, drift­ing to Hartz IV or the equiv­a­lent in oth­er coun­tries, where you’re expect­ed to behave as the state tells you to behave. 

Not enough peo­ple real­ize what is hap­pen­ing down at that end of the labor mar­ket. The indig­ni­ties that go with it. The shame. The stig­ma. The pover­ty traps, where­by if you do get a ben­e­fit and you then have the offer of a low-wage job, you’re los­ing as much in ben­e­fits as you get from the low-wage job. You’re fac­ing a mar­gin­al tax rate of 80% in Germany, 86% in Denmark, 80% in Britain. If the mid­dle class­es had to accept such mar­gin­al tax rates there would be riots in the street. But that is what soci­ety expects of the pre­cari­at. It’s not funny. 

And in addi­tion, and what I think is most impor­tant­ly about the pre­cari­at, it has dis­tinc­tive rela­tions to the state. The insti­tu­tions of soci­ety and gov­er­nance. The pre­cari­at is los­ing the rights of cit­i­zen­ship. Often with­out real­iz­ing it they’re los­ing cul­tur­al rights because they can­not belong to orga­ni­za­tions that rep­re­sent their cul­ture or iden­ti­ty or aspi­ra­tions. They’re los­ing civ­il rights because they can­not get access to due process and legal jus­tice. They’re los­ing social rights because they don’t have access to rights-based ben­e­fits and ser­vices. They’re los­ing eco­nom­ic rights because they can­not prac­tice what they are per­fect­ly qual­i­fied to do. And above all they’re los­ing polit­i­cal rights. Because they don’t see out there politi­cians or polit­i­cal par­ties that rep­re­sent what they are. And what they want to be. 

Now in that con­text, I described the pre­cari­at today in an old Marxian term. It’s a class in the mak­ing, not yet a class for itself. And what I mean by that is that while mil­lions of peo­ple share the objec­tive char­ac­ter­is­tics of being in the pre­cari­at, they have dif­fer­ent con­scious­ness of what it is. And you can divide the pre­car­i­ous into three groups. 

The first I call the atavists. These are those who do not have a lot of edu­ca­tion, but their par­ents and their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties used to be in the pro­le­tari­at, used to have working-class back­grounds of being dock­ers or steel work­ers or car work­ers or what­ev­er. This group is relat­ing their depri­va­tion of today to a lost yes­ter­day, real or imag­ined. That lost yes­ter­day they want back. It’s this group that sup­ports the Donald Trumps. It’s this group that sup­port­ed Brexit in Britain. It’s this group that sup­ports the Marine Le Pen, the Orbans, and the equiv­a­lent in Germany and else­where. This group sup­port­ed the Lega in Italy. You can name right-wing pop­ulist groups. 

There’s good news and bad news. The bad news here is that they are prov­ing to be pro­found­ly strong. We risk today that that group could lead us into a new dark polit­i­cal future char­ac­ter­ized by demo­niz­ing migrants and minori­ties, author­i­tar­i­an ten­den­cies, destruc­tive, vile out­comes. But there’s good news. In my view they have reached their peak in terms of size. Many are get­ting old­er of that type. And they will not lead the oth­er two groups in the same direction. 

The sec­ond group in the pre­cari­at are what I call the nos­tal­gics. These are made up with the migrants, the minori­ties, the dis­abled. People who feel they have no sense of home. They don’t have a home there, they don’t have a home here, but they dream of a home. This group knows it’s los­ing rights. It’s being demo­nized. It’s being vic­tim­ized. But they will not sup­port a neo­fas­cist pop­ulism. They keep their heads down because they have to sur­vive. Every now and then there are days of rage when every­thing gets too much. But this group is look­ing for a home. It’s look­ing for a future. Its rel­a­tive depri­va­tion is its got a lost now. The first group a lost past, the sec­ond group a lost now.

The third group in the pre­cari­at are what I call the pro­gres­sives. These are the mil­lions of peo­ple who went to col­lege, went to uni­ver­si­ty, and were told by their par­ents and by their teach­es, ​“Go to uni­ver­si­ty and you will get a future!” A future. A career, sta­tus. Influence. Dignity. And they come out of uni­ver­si­ty and col­lege know­ing they don’t have that future. All they have are debts, dis­il­lu­sions, and dif­fi­cul­ties. This group is enter­ing the pre­cari­at. It will not sup­port neo­fas­cist pop­ulism. It is look­ing for a future. It is look­ing for a new pol­i­tics of par­adise. There are many peo­ple at this con­fer­ence I believe are in this third part. 

The bad news is they’ve been dis­miss­ing pol­i­tics because they know, very wise­ly, that it’s been cyn­i­cal­ly manip­u­lat­ed by the plu­to­crats and by oth­ers, and there­fore they have detached them­selves from pol­i­tics. The trou­ble with that is that it sur­ren­ders the ground to the oth­ers with a regres­sive, anti-democratic, anti-Enlightenment perspective. 

But the good news is this: Since the cri­sis in 2008, and par­tic­u­lar­ly since the Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring in 2011, and the Indignado move­ment, more of this third part of the pre­cari­at are reen­gag­ing with pol­i­tics. They’re reen­gag­ing in dif­fer­ent ways, begin­ning to forge an agen­da for that future. And I believe that if you take a his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive then I only wish I were 21. I would love to be 21. Because if you are 21, you have a vac­u­um. You have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to forge a fun­da­men­tal­ly Enlightenment-led future. 

Let me give you by way of con­clu­sion a few thoughts on what that might be. The thoughts are these: Today, our income dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem is bro­ken. We can’t put yes­ter­day back. Therefore we have to build a new income dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem. We will not get any­where by try­ing to raise wages, but we will get some­where if we decide that what soci­ety has to do is recy­cle the rent from the tech­nocrats, the financiers, and the prop­er­ty own­ers to the com­mons. To the com­moners. We must build that dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem by return­ing to the val­ues of the Enlightenment. Of égal­ité, lib­erté, fra­ter­nité, or sol­i­dar­ité. And to do that I strong­ly believe that one part of this new income dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem should be a basic income that every­body has, as a right. [applause]

I have had the priv­i­lege of work­ing for this for thir­ty years, since we formed BIEN. Anybody can join BIEN, we have many Germans who are part of it. We have thou­sands and thou­sands of peo­ple who are members. 

For many years we were regard­ed as crazy. Mad, bad, and dan­ger­ous. But sud­den­ly in the last few years we’ve sud­den­ly become respectable. At least…tolerated. I’ve had the priv­i­lege of design­ing and con­duct­ing basic income pilots in four con­ti­nents, the biggest being in India. Anybody who’s inter­est­ed, I’ve writ­ten a book, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen.

But let me just tell you what hap­pened in India. A coun­try that’s poor. A coun­try that pover­ty is ter­ri­fy­ing. And when we decid­ed we would do it and we mobi­lized mon­ey, we pro­vid­ed 6,000 people—men, women, and children—with basic income, Sonia Gandhi told us her­self. She said, ​“You’re wast­ing the mon­ey! They’ll waste it on drink and drugs.” 

Two years lat­er after we had done the pilot and seen what had hap­pened, she called us back to her house and she said she wished she had known. What hap­pened was that when they start­ed receiv­ing the basic income they did what all of us in this room would do. They start­ed giv­ing their chil­dren bet­ter food. So nutri­tion improved. Health of the chil­dren improved. Schooling improved. Health and nutri­tion of oth­er adults improve. People with dis­abil­i­ties sud­den­ly had a basic income with which they could be cit­i­zens. Women’s sta­tus improved. Sanitation in the vil­lages improved. Work increased. Production increased. If you go to those vil­lages today, you would have seen a transformation. 

Now, that hap­pened in a poor place. We also did it in Africa, where very sim­i­lar results were shown. We’ve now got pilots in Canada and some hope­ful­ly launch­ing soon in Scotland. And the Opposition lead­er­ship in Britain has asked me to pre­pare a plan for doing it in Britain. If you had told me ten years ago that any of those things would’ve hap­pened, I would have said I must have had some­thing to smoke or drink because I must be hal­lu­ci­nat­ing. But change can come quick­er than we think. It is up to us. 

I want to tell you one sto­ry. I still have a few min­utes, I hope. Is that…? What fig­ure, I don’t know. But I’m going to tell the story. 

When we were launch­ing the pilot in India, we went to one vil­lage and all the young women had veils. And we had to have their pho­to tak­en for the card so that they could get their month­ly basic income. And we had to per­suade them to go into a hut with oth­er women to have their pho­tos taken. 

Nine or ten months lat­er I went back to that par­tic­u­lar vil­lage and I said to one of my Indian col­leagues, I said, ​“Have you noticed a dif­fer­ence here?”

And he said, ​“No. No.” I said what dif­fer­ence? He said, ​“Nothing. There’s better…sanitation.”

“No,” I said. ​“None of the women are wear­ing veils.”

He said, ​“Yeah.”

So we called some of the women across and we said, ​“Look excuse us, but…you wore veils, you’re not wear­ing veils now… Why?” 

They were shy, they did­n’t want to speak to a for­eign­er and so on. But after a while one of the young women spoke up and she said, ​“You know, before, we had to do what the elders told us to do. Now we have a basic income, we can do what we want to do.” [applause]

And there is an even more poignant sto­ry in our Namibian pilot. At the end of that one I went to one of the vil­lages and I asked some young women, I said, ​“What was the best thing about hav­ing a basic income? What was the best thing.” 

And they talked to each oth­er, and gig­gled, you. Again, talk­ing to a for­eign­er and so on. And then one of the young women said, ​“You know, before, when the men came down from the fields at the end of the month, with their wages in their pock­ets, we had to say yes. Now we have our basic income, we say no.” That’s emancipation. 

And if you can put an anal­o­gy in Germany or Britain, any­where else, you will find that this abil­i­ty to say no to exploita­tion and oppres­sion is a fun­da­men­tal part about a pro­gres­sive agen­da for the 21^st cen­tu­ry. We have to find a way of lib­er­at­ing peo­ple to say no, and also to say yes. To say yes to the abil­i­ty to help peo­ple, to do things, to care. To par­tic­i­pate in the eco­log­i­cal aspects of life. And I think it will help in both respects. 

In that con­text, let me con­clude by say­ing a basic income is not a panacea. It must be part of a new sys­tem. We need new forms of voice. We need new forms of work. We need to real­ize today that new tech­nolo­gies are poten­tial­ly lib­er­at­ing us to escape from labor so that we can do more work. Most lan­guages dis­tin­guish the dif­fer­ence, but only in the 20^th cen­tu­ry were we stu­pid enough to think only labor counts as work. I have nev­er worked hard­er than since I stopped doing labor. Since I stopped hav­ing a job. [applause] And what we have to do is con­vince the politi­cians and the social sci­en­tists that they should change their think­ing about what is work and what is not work. Every fem­i­nist, and we should all be fem­i­nists, every fem­i­nist should be demand­ing that they change their con­cepts. Because it means that most of the work women do does­n’t count as work. It’s ridicu­lous. It’s sex­ist, it’s arbitrary. 

For me, this is giv­en a new dimen­sion because of the growth of the pre­cari­at. Because if you’re in the pre­cari­at you know you have to do a lot of work. A lot of work. And you’re treat­ed as if you’re being lazy. 

But there’s anoth­er won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty here. We all know or should know that we are threat­ened by extinc­tion. Extinction that comes from the green­house gas emis­sions, the pol­lu­tion, the ero­sion of the com­mons, the pri­va­ti­za­tion of our spaces. Our loss of nature. Our loss of an eco­log­i­cal land­scape. We know that. It’s the num­ber one cri­sis charg­ing towards us. We did­n’t need the pan­el of cli­mate change to tell us that, but we know it. And what are we doing? We’ve just seen in Poland, hard­ly any­thing. We need big car­bon tax­es. Big car­bon tax­es. [applause]

But there are two prob­lems. There are two prob­lems. First, tax­es are unpop­u­lar. And sec­ond, if you just put a car­bon tax, it would wors­en inequal­i­ty. Because the poor per­son pays pro­por­tion­ate­ly more than the rich per­son. Therefore, we need to com­bine car­bon tax­es with car­bon div­i­dends. So that the pro­ceeds of car­bon tax­es are recycled…I think most of you can work it out where I’m end­ing this discussion…recycled as basic incomes. The car­bon tax can pay for a large part of a basic income future. And there­fore this per­spec­tive leads to you think­ing we can advance the cause of eco­log­i­cal sur­vival, advance the cause of secu­ri­ty, advance the cause of eman­ci­pa­tion, and do what every trans­for­ma­tive class should do. The pre­cari­at is a trans­for­ma­tive class because it wants intu­itive­ly to abol­ish the con­di­tions that define its exis­tence, and there­fore abol­ish itself. We can do it. Thank you very much.

Moderator: Thanks very much. They say on Congress every time every year we have a sys­tem that we don’t want to use any­more. I think it’s cap­i­tal­ism. [applause]

We’re going to a Q&A, includ­ing your ques­tions from the Internet. There are six micro­phones scat­tered around the room. So if any­body wants to ask a ques­tion in pub­lic we’ll start this now. And we’ll start with mic 6 over there. 

Audience 1: Brilliant. Hi. So I was won­der­ing, you men­tioned basic income and you con­nect­ed it car­bon tax­es. I was won­der­ing what oth­er strate­gies you’re think­ing towards tack­ling oth­er sys­temic issues we have, espe­cial­ly in regards to land, which to me…you men­tioned dif­fer­ent type of prop­er­ty. But I think that land today is the proxy to access to all the oth­er value. 

Guy Standing: Thank you very much. I’ve got a new book com­ing out, to make me even more bor­ing. It’s called Plunder of the Commons. And basi­cal­ly what you’ve touched on is the theme of this book. If you think of the commons—the nat­ur­al com­mons, the social com­mons, the civ­il com­mons, all our com­mons; includ­ing land, water, the air, our ameni­ties and so on; we’ve allowed the pri­va­ti­za­tion and col­o­niza­tion of the com­mons to take prof­it from our com­mons. And there­fore we need a sys­tem of levies to say, ​“Hey, we want the rental income back for the com­mon­ers. And that includes land. That’s why I strong­ly favor a land val­ue tax. A land val­ue tax is a very effi­cient tax, and it has to be part of build­ing this com­mons fund along the Alaska Permanent Fund prin­ci­ples, for those of you who are famil­iar with that. 

We also need it for water, for air, for dig­i­tal infor­ma­tion. I don’t believe tax­ing robots, as Bill Gates pro­posed, is the answers. What I do believe is we should put a levy on all the infor­ma­tion that Amazon and Facebook and the oth­ers are tak­ing from us, free, and mak­ing bil­lions. We should have a levy on that. [applause] And th levy should go to every­body equal­ly, because you can­not attribute the prof­its they’re mak­ing to any indi­vid­ual. We have to give it to every­body. And if we do that we are all the time build­ing the fund that can help pay out towards a decent basic income. So that’s my answer to your question. 

Audience 2: Hi. Thank you for being here. Great plea­sure. Just recent­ly Sahra Wagenknecht was invit­ed in a talk show about about basic income and the future of work. She’s the leader of a German par­ty, the left, Die Linke. She said that she does­n’t like the idea of basic income. Her two argu­ments are she you does­n’t like it regard­ing [?] neolib­er­al pow­ers, they also like the idea of basic income, for exam­ple the CEO of Volkswagen and oth­er big play­ers. And sec­ond she said if you move to a basic income we as a soci­ety will lose a lot of pro­tec­tion and social ben­e­fits. What would be your reac­tion on her opinion? 

Standing: I address this ques­tion in my basic income book in the fol­low­ing way: Every new idea in his­to­ry, in social pol­i­cy in par­tic­u­lar, has been greet­ed at the time by peo­ple say­ing it will threat­en some­thing else and that it will lead to unin­tend­ed neg­a­tive con­se­quences. They said this about unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits, they said it about fam­i­ly ben­e­fits. And then when it’s intro­duced, sud­den­ly the objec­tions go away. 

To me, I asked myself the fol­low­ing ques­tion: Do I want that per­son, or that per­son, or the per­son I meet in the street, do I want that per­son to have the basic secu­ri­ty of being able to pay for food, to pay for their rent, and to buy decent clothes? Do I want that? And I say very eas­i­ly to myself yes, I want that. Don’t tell me that it’s going to be a threat to some­thing else if that per­son has basic secu­ri­ty. Why is it that so many social democ­rats make this argu­ment. I’ve con­front­ed many. Including one major trade union leader. I said, ​“Why are you so hos­tile to hav­ing peo­ple have a basic income? Why?”

And the man who was chair­ing the ses­sion when I was talk­ing, he said, ​“I think we’ll have a cof­fee break now,” before any­body could answer. And when we came back, he said, ​“Well now we’ll move on to the next session.” 

And the trade union leader at the back stood up and he said, ​“No. I think we should answer the ques­tion.” And he said, ​“You know, I think the answer is that if peo­ple had basic secu­ri­ty they would­n’t be depen­dent on us. They would­n’t join trade unions.” 

And I looked at him and I said, ​“Just imag­ine the moral­i­ty of what you’ve just said. The moral­i­ty if you want peo­ple to be fear­ful and inse­cure, because you want to gain.” I said, ​“But you’re also wrong. Because you’re wrong in the fol­low­ing respect: People who are inse­cure and fright­ened don’t engage in pol­i­tics, they don’t engage in soci­ety. They’ve got too many things to wor­ry about. If they have basic secu­ri­ty they’re more like­ly to stand up and fight for rights. More like­ly to stand up and fight for the ecol­o­gy. More like­ly to be good cit­i­zens. Why don’t you trust peo­ple more? Why are you so bureau­crat­ic and dis­trust­ful? Believe it. We need a new dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem. And don’t tell me neolib­er­al­ism is going to destroy it. They’re destroy­ing what we’ve got any­how. We can do bet­ter than that and if you deny,” you, peo­ple who say this not you but peo­ple who say that, ​“you’re deny­ing the Enlightenment free­doms that we should be fight­ing for.” So I say stop being so neg­a­tive to those people. 

Sorry. I was bit angry but I apologize. 

Moderator: You’ve got all rea­son to. A ques­tion from the Internet. 

Audience 3 (via read­er): There was a pop­u­lar vote in Switzerland on basic income and it was mas­sive­ly reject­ed. How do you ana­lyze that? What should be the way for­ward? And how can we gain lever­age against the pop­u­lace that oppose basic income? 

Standing: I again address that par­tic­u­lar ref­er­en­dum. I par­tic­i­pat­ed in the ref­er­en­dum. We had no mon­ey. We mobi­lized 125,000 sig­na­tures, lit­er­al­ly going in the streets. All the banks were putting up mon­ey. The main polit­i­cal par­ties were opposed, etc. But we were doing fan­tas­ti­cal­ly well. We got up to about 40% opin­ion poll sup­port. [applause] And then one of our lead­ers with­out per­mis­sion from any of us went on tele­vi­sion and an inter­view­er asked him, he said, ​“Well how much do you think the basic income should be?”

And the man instead of say­ing it’s up to Parliament and every­thing, which is what the ref­er­en­dum said, he said it should be 2,500 Swiss francs per month. Which for your infor­ma­tion is con­sid­er­ably high­er than all the rur­al areas, the rur­al can­tons, in Switzerland. At that moment, we lost the ref­er­en­dum. We lost. 

I’m proud of the fact that in Geneva we got 38%, and that was where I was cam­paign­ing. It had noth­ing to do with me but the fact was that they had more meet­ings and more peo­ple could under­stand what the pol­i­tics were. But the great­est thing about that ref­er­en­dum is that today, peo­ple in Switzerland in the Auberge, in the cafés, they’re talk­ing about basic income—they know what it means.

I gave a talk recent­ly in a big the­ater in Geneva—there were hun­dreds and hun­dreds of peo­ple. Many of those had not par­tic­i­pat­ed. If there is anoth­er ref­er­en­dum, I think it will suc­ceed. Switzerland has a his­to­ry of even very mild ideas los­ing in the first ref­er­en­dum, and then a few years lat­er a sec­ond ref­er­en­dum they pass. So I’m actu­al­ly opti­mistic that it will come in Switzerland. 

But not 2,500.

Audience 4: I think a lot of the ideas you pre­sent­ed here are like, respect­ed in the com­mu­ni­ty and here on Congress, but how can we change the soci­ety? How can we change the mind of all the oth­er peo­ple to also con­sid­er these ideas to trans­form to a new society?

Standing: I think this is the biggest ques­tion you could ask. I strong­ly believe that it’s up to us. It real­ly is up to us. Politicians have spaghet­ti in back­bones. Our job is to strength­en the spaghet­ti. Our job is to dis­play why dream­ing of the impos­si­ble leads to becom­ing pos­si­ble, and then hap­pen­ing. I believe that we have to be tak­ing part in any small way we can. 

I will tell you a secret. Yesterday a very good friend of mine, an econ­o­mist, very well-known econ­o­mist, he con­tact­ed me and we were talk­ing and he said, ​“Guy. Why are you wast­ing your time going to Leipzig on December the 27^th when you should be hav­ing relax­ation with Christmas?”

And I said, ​“John, that’s not it. I hope the just one per­son, just one, will leave this room with more ener­gy and with more thought than when I start­ed. Just one.” That would be worth com­ing to Leipzig. I feel ener­gized, I hope some­body here feels ener­gized. We have to real­ize that it is up to us—we have no excuse for cyn­i­cism. We have to chal­lenge the Trumps. We can­not let them win. For our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren, we can’t let them win. 

Moderator: Thank you very much. I think you’ll be around for more ques­tions. We’re out of time—

Standing: I will of course be available.

Moderator: But, you can ask those ques­tions direct­ly and I think they will be answered in great length. 

Standing: Okay. Thank you.