Social form, social reproduction and social policy: Basic income, basic services, basic infrastructure

Abstract

Proponents recommend Universal Basic Income as a solution to a trifold crisis of work, wage and social democracy. Synthesising Marxian form analysis with Marxist-feminist social reproduction theory, this article suggests that these crises relate to historically specific capitalist social forms: labour, money and the state. These separate but interlocking crises of social form are temporary and contingent expressions of an underlying, permanent crisis of social reproduction. Mistaking the pervasive crisis of social reproduction in its totality for a temporary or contingent trifold crisis of work, wage or social democracy, Universal Basic Income proposals seek to solve it by moving through the same social forms through which they take effect, rather than confronting the social relations that constitute their antagonistic undertow and generate the crisis of social reproduction. The article considers two other solutions proposed to handle the deeper-rooted crisis with which Universal Basic Income grapples: Universal Basic Services and Universal Basic Infrastructure. Both propose non-monetary ways past the impasses of the Universal Basic Income, addressing much more directly the constrained basis of individual and collective reproduction that characterises capitalist social relations. But they retain a link with capitalist social forms of money and state that may serve to close rather than open the path to real alternatives. The article concludes that the contradictions these ‘abstract universals’ touch upon are best mediated through more bottom-up and struggle-based ‘concrete universals’ that address the manifold crises of work, wage and social democracy that undergird them. Such alternatives would leave open dynamic tensions around work and welfare in contemporary capitalism without promise of their incomplete resolution in the name of a false universality unattainable in a world characterised by antagonism, domination and crisis.

The Reinforcement of the ‘Dowry for Groom’ Tradition in Customary Marriages of West Sumatra’s Pariaman Society

“…12 In essence, this concept encompasses social production and reproduction, which historically emphasizes the functionalist facets of capitalist society. 13 Hence, social reproduction serves as a concept that highlights the creation of human workers as an economic commodity whose labor is traded. Its purpose is to perpetuate these patterns of labor production.…”

“…52 Through this practice, Pariaman society calculates the services and costs associated with raising children, as Lombardozzi and Pitts suggest, thus indirectly fulfilling the functional aspects of capitalist society. 53 Regarding men who lack higher education or decent employment, they are still able to be picked-up as husbands, but with a reduced dowry amount. Typically, the dowry amount ranges from 1 million to 10 million rupiahs, 54 which is presented to honor the groom and his family.…”

Creative Labour, Metabolic Rift and the Crisis of Social Reproduction

“…The intractability of these contradictions render it difficult to envisage policy responses capable of overcoming or even temporarily suspending them in time or space, partly owing to the state's own status as their necessary form of mediation. Just as with the so-called crisis of social reproduction (Lombardozzi and Pitts 2019), the metabolic rift describes a not a temporary disruption resolvable in and through the social relations and social forms specific to capitalist society, or perhaps any society. It represents instead a much more permanent but still dynamic state of affairs logically and historically hardwired into capitalism's contradictory and conflict-ridden functioning.…”

“…From a wider perspective the constraints on the human capacity to reproduce life as labour power centre less on a sudden crisis or rift with the metabolism with nature than they do on a more permanent contradiction that cuts to the core of capitalist society itself (Lombardozzi and Pitts 2019). This relates, as we shall see, to the tension between production and consumption in a society based in the separation of human subjects from nature and the independent collective or individual means to secure the means of living.…”

Gender Inequality, Social Reproduction and the Universal Basic Income

“…13 This depends, as mentioned above, on the changing relations between women and labour and on the shift in state support in society. By focusing on the sphere of reproductive work and the gendered division of labour that circumscribes it, a social reproduction approach problematises the prescription of the UBI, highlighting how the latter situates work exclusively within the dynamic of buying and selling labour power, rather than the specific social conditions that make it both possible and necessary to begin with 14 .…”