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Tag Archives: utopian socialism

Sociologist Dr. Erik Olin Wright On A Guaranteed Income For All

05 Tue Apr 2016

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Capitalism, collective bargaining, Global Labour Movement, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), Sociology

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Against the Grain, basic income guarantee, C.S. Soong, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Dr. Erik Olin Wright, Dr. John Henry, Dr. L. Randall Wray, Dr. Philippe Van Parijs, Dr. Stephanie Kelton, employer of last resort (ELR), federal job guarantee program, Goldfrapp, guaranteed income, heterodox economics, KPFA, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, Modern Money Theory, New Deal, New Economic Perspectives, Pacifica Radio Network, taxation, transcript, UMKC, UMKC heterodox economics, unconditional basic income (UBI), University of Missouri-Kansas City, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Utopia, utopian socialism, Works Progress Administration (WPA)

319px-ErikOlinWright.2013LUMPENPROLETARIAT—One of the more inspiring and important developments in modern economic theory is modern monetary theory, or modern money theory.  Understanding how modern money works today in a post-gold standard world, when sovereign currency issuers, such as the USA, can employ modern money for public purpose, we come to find that such a federal government can never go broke. [1]

Along similar lines, Dr. Erik Olin Wright has joined free speech radio’s Against the Grain to discuss the concept of a basic income guarantee. [2] Listen (or download) here. [3]

Messina

***

[Programme summary from KPFA.org archive page]

AGAINST THE GRAIN—[5 APR 2016]  A number of thinkers and activists on the left have embraced the notion of a basic income paid to all without means testing or a work requirement. Erik Olin Wright argues that a generous basic income would contribute to revitalizing a socialist challenge to capitalism. He also distinguishes the version of UBI that he supports from that pushed by some on the right.

Erik Olin Wright
https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/

Learn more at AGAINST THE GRAIN.

***

[Working draft transcript of actual radio broadcast by Messina for Lumpenproletariat and Against the Grain]

AGAINST THE GRAIN—[5 APR 2016]  “Today on Against the Grain, what if everyone was entitled to, was guaranteed, a basic income, so they didn’t have to work to live?

“I’m C.S. Soong.  Erik Olin Wright, a sociologist and leading radical thinker, makes a case for an unconditional basic income—after these news headlines with Mark Mericle.”  (c. 1:06)

[KPFA News Headlines omitted by scribe]  (c. 5:45)

“From the studios of KPFA in Berkeley, California this is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio.  My name is C.S. Soong.

“It may sound weird.  It may sound utopian.  But an unconditional basic income is what many people have been advocating for years.  You would not have to work to get this income.  Everyone would be entitled to it.  And, in some scenarios, it’s enough to live on.

“So, what explains the appeal to many on the Left of the basic income?  Why have some conservatives and libertarians embraced the idea?  Would the economy collapse because most people would stop working?  And to what extent would the adoption of an unconditional basic income facilitate or fuel a transition away from capitalism?

“Erik Olin Wright is a leading proponent of a basic income and a prominent radical scholar.  He’s a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  And his books include:  Understanding Class; Alternatives to Capitalism; and Envisioning Real Utopias.

“When Erik Olin Wright joined me in KPFA’s Berkeley studios, I asked him when the notion of a basic income first caught his attention.”  (c. 7:03)

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  ”  (c. 8:30)

C. S. SOONG:  “So, in titling their paper The Capitalist Road to Communism, were they suggesting, then, that something could be done within the framework of capitalism to move society in a communist direction?”  (c. 8:46)

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  ” (c. 10:00)

C. S. SOONG:  “So, what would an unconditional basic income, what would it, basically, entail?”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “Alright.  Well, the first thing to note is that the idea of unconditional basic income comes in a variety of flavours.  And, depending upon which flavour, it means different things.

“For some people, an unconditional basic income is really a bare minimum survival income.  You know?  To use a kind of metaphor, you don’t starve if you have a basic income.

“Most progressives, who embrace the idea, think of it as a more generous idea, that a true unconditional basic income enables you to live at a culturally-acceptable decent standard of living, which would include, therefore, enough income to have recreation, but a kind of no frills version.  So, you can perfectly, comfortably, get by with it.  But, if you really want to live a more extravagant lifestyle, then you have to earn additional income one way or another.

“So, that’s how I like to think of it.  Certainly, for the purposes that I defend an unconditional basic income, it’s above a survival level.” (c. 11:14)

C. S. SOONG:  “And who, in your idea of a basic income, who provides this income and how often?”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “Well, income means it’s a flow.  So, it’s more of a practical than a principled question of whether it’s providing it, so to speak, on a weekly or monthly basis.  Some versions give you an annual lump sum.  I think that’s probably not prudent, just because of people’s incapacity to budget well.

“So, [chuckles] you know, you think of it as a paycheck.  So, paychecks typically come on biweekly or monthly bases.  It would be a flow of income along those lines.  (c. 11:49)

“It’s provided by the state.  And it’s paid for through taxation. [2]  Everybody gets it, everybody.  Bill Gates gets an unconditional basic income.”

C. S. SOONG:  “It doesn’t depend on whether you work or any other criterion.”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “Right.  Crucially, it doesn’t depend on how much money, how rich you are.  The unconditionality has, both, a moral component—you don’t have to be a good person to get it—and it has an economic component—it’s not means tested.

“Now, of course, the taxes needed to pay for an unconditional basic income for Bill Gates are gonna go up by many orders of magnitude, more than the basic income he receives.  So, Bill Gates would be a net contributor.  And there’s lots of details about how that works.

“One should think of it in the same way we think of unconditional, or used to think, perhaps, of unconditional basic education.  Everybody gets it.  Some people are net contributors.  That is, their taxes go up in order to pay for public education by more than they receive in public education.  But that’s seen as okay because it’s a public good; and it makes for a better society, if everybody gets a basic education.

“Well, a basic income has a bit of that character.  Everybody benefits from it, even if you’re a net contributor because it creates a different kind of society, a society in which everybody has enough to live a morally decent, or culturally acceptable, standard of living.”  (c. 13:20)

C. S. SOONG:  “So, what impact would an unconditional basic income have on people’s ability and inclination, really, to take a job, to go into the labour market and work for money?”  (c. 13:37)

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “Well, let me first clarify one other detail about the design.  And that is who gets it.  So, we said it’s unconditional on means testing or on virtue.  There is still the question of whether, for example, it’s a citizen’s income or a resident’s income.  That is, anybody who lives in a country, anyone under the jurisdiction of a state should get it.  And, if it’s a resident’s income, does it include undocumented workers?

“Now, to some extent these are practical questions, rather than principled questions.  I mean practical in the political sense.  It’s pretty hard to imagine an unconditional basic income ever passing, you know, even in pretty progressive places, that would include illegal residents.  Everybody agrees that tourists shouldn’t get it.  [chuckles]  You know?  [SNIP]

“I think, on principle, it should go to everybody who’s in the economy, in the labour market, in the labour force.  That the question of how you deal with the illegal migrants is a separate question, which needs resolution.  We need ways of dealing with that.  But that the moral principle of an unconditional basic income is precisely that anybody who is on your territory participating in the economic life of your society should unconditionally have their basic needs met.

In the most fundamental sense, I think an unconditional basic income should be for everybody in the world.  I mean I think you should have a goal of a basic income.” (c. 15:18)

C. S. SOONG:  “Mm.  M-hm.  Yeah.”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “And it should be globally distributed.  Well, that’s certainly not on as a practical political move.”  (c. 15:25)

C. S. SOONG:  “Erik Olin Wright joins us in studio.  He is professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a leading radical thinker.  I’m C.S.  And this is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio.  And we are talking, today, about unconditional basic income, which Erik has written a lot about and thought a lot about.

“So, yeah, back to this question of jobs and the necessity of having a job.  So, if the basic income, the unconditional basic income gives you, provides you with, kind of, a culturally-acceptable no frills existence, then is the whole idea that people would no longer need to go out onto the labour market?”  (c. 16:11)

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “The idea is that you don’t need to go into the labour market to get your basic necessities.  So, in the United States, roughly speaking—and, you know, it varies from place to place because of cost-of-living—but think of an unconditional basic income as being in the $12- to $15-thousand-dollars-a-year range, roughly speaking, which would mean if, um, two adults live together, they have a household income of $30,000.  You’d have to think through the details of children.  You know?  Do you get a partial income?  How do you do it?  Again, those are important details. You can put those to the side.

“So, just take a couple.  $30,000 dollars in most places in the United States, you can live okay.

“But most people probably want more income than $30,000.  So, there’ll be at least some reason why many—I think most people—will want to gain additional earnings.

“With an unconditional basic income, as soon as you earn additional income, you start paying taxes on the additional.  There’s no, the unconditional basic income isn’t taxed.  It’d be, kind of, directly.  If all you live on is the basic income, you don’t pay taxes, income taxes, on that.  But you start paying taxes on any earnings above your basic income.

“The tax rates will be higher.  You have to figure out exactly where the cut point is, where you become a net contributor, rather than a net beneficiary.

“But there’s no disincentive to work.  That is you’re not—the first $10,000 you earn above your basic income is not gonna be taxed at 80%.  You know, it’ll probably have a 15% or 20% income tax rate on the first $10,000 you earn above a basic income.

“So, the first thing to note is there is not a disincentive to work.

“And it’s only people whose life plans are consistent with $15- or $30 thousand, in a couple, whose life plans are consistent with that level of earnings who will say:  That’s all I want.

“Now, there will be people, certainly, for whom that’s true.”  (c. 18:15)

C.S. SOONG:  “But, if they think that way, that is a disincentive to work.  I mean a lot of people are worried that so many people will take themselves out of the labour market that the economy might even collapse.”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “So, just to be kind of technically precise, a disincentive means you’re punished if you work.  This would—”

C.S. SOONG:  “Gotcha.”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “—mean a lack of an incentive to work for them.  Right?  So, they don’t feel any incentive to work ‘cos they feel no need to work.  But there’s no disincentive to work.

“With means tested anti-poverty programmes there’s an actual disincentive to work because you lose your benefits if you work.”

C.S. SOONG:  “Right.”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “Okay.  Well, there’s no disincentive, then, to work.

“Yeah, so a basic income is an unworkable plan if it’s the case that the large majority of people really have as their deepest longings to be couch potatoes.

“So, you know, if the human spirit, contrary to what many of us believe, is really profoundly lazy, in the sense that we don’t care about creativity—we don’t care about making a contribution to our world and leaving our stamp in some way or other, we really just wanna watch soap operas—so, if that is what we are at our essence—you give people $15,000 dollars and everybody stops working—the system collapses.

“Well, I’m being sarcastic.  You know?”

C.S. SOONG:  “Sure.”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “This is a caricature.  There will be some people, though, that will absolutely live a life of leisurely indulgence.

“Philippe Van Parijs, one of his earliest and terrific pieces on this is called ‘Should Surfers Be Fed?’  ‘Should Surfers Be Fed?’  And it’s basically raising the standard big objection to basic income that it will mean that people who work hard and generate the income that gets taxed for a basic income will be subsidising beach bums.”  (c. 20:13)

C.S. SOONG:  “But you could, certainly, maybe, with a basic income you could be a beach bum; but you could also be productive in a way, that’s not profitable to you—right?—that doesn’t involve working for money.

“So, for example, you talk about, you’ve written about care-giving labour.  And the fact is that many care-givers are not compensated at all.  Well, this will allow them to do work.  And, you know, this is not couch potato work.  So, they’ll do work.  That kind of work, they won’t have a job for money, for pay.  And, so, how does that work in the context of basic income and to what extent is that a positive thing in your eyes?”  (c. 20:53)

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “Of course, it’s an absolutely positive thing.  [SNIP]  And it would lead to an absolute expansion and enrichment of the arts.”  (c. 23:46)

C.S. SOONG:  “What about the situation of paid workers?  [SNIP]  ” (c. 23:47)

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  “(c. 26:01)

C.S. SOONG:  “I’m C.S.  This is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio.  Erik Olin Wright joins me.  He is Vilas Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  And he’s author of many books, including Understanding Class, Envisioning Real Utopias, and Alternatives to Capitalism: proposals for a democratic economy with Robin Hahnel.

“And I, and Erik, want you to know that many of Erik’s books are available for free online.  We’ve put a link on our web page at KPFA.org.  Just go to KPFA.org/programs and click on Against the Grain; and you’ll find a link to Erik’s website, where you’ll find PDF links to many of his publications.

“So, essentially, what you’re saying is that workers have more power, they have greater leverage in relation to employers under a system with unconditional basic income.  And is that part of the reason?  Well, how big a part of the reason that you support unconditional basic income is this?  That there are unequal power relations in society and that an important goal of movement for social justice ought to be to adjust and transform those power relations.”  (c. 27:22)

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “Yes, certainly.  [SNIP]  ” (c. 29:10)

C. S. SOONG:  ” [SNIP]

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  ” (c. 30:14)

C. S. SOONG:  ” [SNIP]

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  ” (c. 32:11)

C. S. SOONG:  ” [SNIP]

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  ” (c. 33:38)

C. S. SOONG:  ” [SNIP]

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  ” (c. 37:29)

C. S. SOONG:  ” [SNIP]

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  ” (c. 38:39)

C. S. SOONG:  ” [SNIP]

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  ” (c. 43:42)

C. S. SOONG:  ” [SNIP]

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  ” (c. 51:44)

C. S. SOONG:  ” [SNIP]

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  ” (c. 53:25)

C. S. SOONG:  ” [SNIP]

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  ” (c. 56:38)

C. S. SOONG:  ” [SNIP]

[SNIP] (c. 59:59)

Learn more at AGAINST THE GRAIN.

[This transcript will be expanded as time constraints, and/or demand or resources, allow.]

*

“Utopia” (2000) by Goldfrapp

***

NEW ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES—[7 JUN 2016]  NEP’s Pavlina Tcherneva speaks with Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal about Basic Income Guarantees.  You can view the segment here. [5]

Learn more at NEW ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES.

***

[1]  The topic of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), or Modern Money Theory, is something, which we’ve been lagging to present on Lumpenproletariat.org.  (Your author has published some articles on MMT at MediaRoots.org some years ago.)

MMT presents many emancipatory implications for the working class, such as the use of modern money for public purpose, or beneficial public spending at the federal level, which is conducive to full employment, such as a job guarantee programme, and more.  Technically speaking, if President Obama (or any administration) understood, or acknowledged, MMT, we could implement a job guarantee (or an income guarantee), which could end involuntary unemployment today.  As heterodox economist Dr. L. Randall Wray, a former UMKC professor of mine, teaches us, it’s not a lack of economic options, which prevents full employment, it’s a lack of political will.

As another of my UMKC professors, heterodox economist Dr. Stephanie Kelton, teaches us:  There are no fiscal constraints.  The only constraints are real resource constraints.  Dr. Kelton is a Chief Economist for Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign and priorly served as the Chief Economist for the Senate Minority Budget Committee under Bernie Sanders. [4]

In the following video, Dr. Stephanie Kelton discusses MMT, mainly as it applies to the national budget deficits, debunking the myth that budget deficits are necessarily bad for the USA’s economy.  But Dr. Kelton also discussed the job guarantee programme and the basic income guarantee, among other things, which could be addressed by MMT (as emphasised by the transcript excerpt below).

“The Angry Birds Approach to Understanding Deficits in the Modern Economy” by heterodox economist Dr. Stephanie Kelton (University of Missouri-Kansas City), November 2014

[Transcript excerpt by Messina for Lumpenproletariat, Dr. Stephanie Kelton, and Dr. John Henry, who taught Dr. Kelton as well as your author]

DR. STEPHANIE KELTON:  (c. 56:48)  “We could be doing useful things [with an understanding of modern money].  Right?  We’ve got infrastructure, that’s dilapidated, falling down.  The civil engineers tell us we need to spend $3.6 trillion dollars to repair ports, bridges, water treatment facilities, schools, hospitals, national parks.  The whole of our national infrastructure is given a grade of D+ by the American Society of Civil Engineers. And we’re told we ought to spend $3.6 trillion to get it up to snuff.  We could do that.  We have tons of people who are out of work, mechanical skills, construction, and so forth.  We could do that.

“We could enhance retirement schemes, instead of attacking them, undermining them, and trying to weaken them, to cut benefits, and so forth.  We could make it safer, more secure, more generous.  We could do that.

“We could deal with climate change.

“But the question, now, is always:  How are you gonna pay for it?  We’ve answered that question[—by understanding how money works in a modern economy].

“We could help students cope with student debt.  Many people believe there’s a crisis with student debt in this country.  Now, student debt is surpassing credit card debt.  There’s over a trillion dollars of student loan debt out there.  There are lots of politicians who—well, not lots.  There are some politicians who are working to promote legislation to help alleviate student debt burdens.  There’s even a movement to strike the debt.

“There are ways to help young people, who are struggling with student debt, who, as a result of all that student debt, are postponing household formation.  They’re living at home longer, so they don’t get their first apartment.  They don’t marry.  There’s so many starting everything later.  And it’s delaying a lot of spending in the economy.  It’s got a lot of hedge fund managers, quite frankly, and others quite worried about future consumption and how robust the economy’s going to be going forward because of the student debt.  (c. 58:52)

[Addressing Inequality]

“We’re hearing a lot about inequality.  Right?  Since 2009, when the U.S. officially left recession and went into recovery—okay, we’re in recovery mode; output is growing, income is growing—90% of all the income gains over that period of time since 2009, 90% has gone to the top 10%.  Within that category, to the top 1%.  Within that category, to the top point-one percent [i.e., 0.1%].  And within that category, to the top point-zero-one percent [i.e., 0.01%].

“If we continue to distribute income gains in this way, where the income gains are going to those least likely to—”

AUDIENCE:  “—spend it—”

DR. STEPHANIE KELTON:  “—and most likely to—”

AUDIENCE:  “—save—”

DR. STEPHANIE KELTON:  “—and, especially, save in the form of—”

AUDIENCE:  “—[inaudible].”

DR. STEPHANIE KELTON:  “Well, no.  They like real estate and stocks and stuff like that.  Right?  And, so, they buy assets.  And this tends to push asset prices higher, which has a lot of folks, including Janet Yellen, worried that we are, the Fed has been creating bubbles, asset price bubbles.  (c. 1:00:03)

“And the problem with bubbles is, it’s nice to ride a bubble up.  But when the bubble pops, there’s a lot of collateral damage.  Okay?  So you’re hearing a lot.

“We could address income inequality.

“We could institute a federally-funded job guarantee programme modelled on the WPA, the CCC, the National Youth Administration, the New Deal programmes, raise incomes from the bottom up, that address inequality.

“People talk about a basic income guarantee.  You hear a lot about that now.  Just give everybody money.  Right?  No matter how much money you have, we’ll give you money, too.  Everybody gets a check.  It’s Oprah.  You get a check.  And you get a check.  And you get a check.  But Bill Gates gets a check.  Everybody gets a check.”

AUDIENCE:  “[laughter]“

DR. STEPHANIE KELTON:  “The problem with that scheme is that, while it gives more income to those at the bottom, it gives the same amount to everyone else.  So, it’s a ratcheting up of everyone, which does nothing, of course, to deal with inequality.

“But, if you focus on those at the bottom, the unemployed, the least skilled and so forth, and you guarantee employment with benefits and so forth, you’re lifting incomes for those at the bottom and reducing inequality.  So, there are just lots and lots of things, that we could do.

“But if we don’t do them, if we don’t do them and we continue to have government pull back its contribution, the only way that we’re gonna keep this economy going, the only way the game is gonna continue and the pieces are gonna go around the board is if we have bubbles—because bubbles work for a while; the problem is that eventually they pop—debt—we can have the private sector leverage back up.  They did this in the late ’90s, the mid-to-late ’90s and into the 2000s.  We borrowed like crazy.  We took the equity out of our homes.  We borrowed against perceived increases in wealth because stocks were booming and so forth.

“We can drive this thing with private-sector debt for a while.  The trouble is that, too, tends to end badly.

“We can focus on trade with the rest of the world.  Well, we’re just gonna dig ourselves out of this by reversing our trade deficits.  We just need a weaker currency here at home.

“You can try all this sort of stuff.  These are not good solutions.  There’s a better way to do this.  But we’ve gotta get the thinking right.  We gotta get the thinking right.

“And, so, it’s okay to have differences.  It’s okay to have parties, who disagree about the proper role for government, priorities, spending versus taxes.  But we want the disagreements to move in the right direction.  We don’t want them to say:  We need higher taxes and less spending.  We want them to fight over whether to have lower taxes or more spending.  That would be, at least, a debate, that is moving in the right direction.

“So, it’s not that we all have to think exactly the same way.  But, if we get the thinking right, somewhere in the middle, we might end up okay.  (c. 1:03:06)  [SNIP] “

[SNIP] (c. 1:18:37)

Learn more at NEW ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES.

*

“L. Randall Wray: Time for a New Approach for Unemployment” (2013) (University of Missouri-Kansas City)

*

Also see, among others, economist Dr. L. Randall Wray on modern monetary theory:

  • Understanding Modern Money: The Key to Full Employment (26 JUN 2006) by Dr. L. Randall Wray (UMKC)
  • Modern Monetary Theory: A Primer On Macroeconomics for Sovereign Monetary Systems (2012) by Dr. L. Randall Wray (UMKC)
  • Employment Guarantee Schemes: Job Creation and Policy in Developing Countries and Emerging Markets (2013) edited by John J. Murray and Dr. Matthew Forstater (UMKC)
  • The Job Guarantee: Toward True Full Employment (2013) edited by John J. Murray and Dr. Matthew Forstater (UMKC)

Also see related Marxian concepts, relevant to understanding modern money, such as:

  • value-form
  • use value

Also see NewEconomicPerspectives.org.

On the costs of capitalist imperialism

“Part #1: Dr. John Henry is a UMKC professor of economics focusing on the history of economic thought. He is the author of two books and numerous articles. He had taught at California State University-Sacramento, and at Cambridge and Staffordshire, England. John shared the view of the inadequacy of economics to quantify the costs of war.

“On March 19, 2012, the ninth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war the American Friends Service Committee organized the community forum “Legacies of the Iraq War /Lessons for U.S.’s Iran Policy” at UMKC, Kansas City, MO. Panel members commented on the human, economic and political impacts of the Iraq war on Iraq and the U.S. They offered an analysis of U.S.- Iran relations, shared comment on how Iranians view the conflict and how identified lessons the U.S. should take from Iraq to guide U.S.- Iran policy.”

“Part #2”

[2]  Sociologist Dr. Erik Olin Wright, as a utopian visionary, offers welcome alternatives to the current capitalist modes of production hurting the working classes the world over.  Unfortunately, Dr. Wright’s analysis doesn’t reflect an interdisciplinary approach utilising literature in the field of economics, so he errs in his understanding of taxation and public spending.

Apparently, Dr. Wright lacks crucial knowledge of Modern Monetary Theory, or Modern Money Theory, which is relevant to his utopian work because it would correct some of his misguided economic assumptions, such as Dr. Wright’s assertion that a guaranteed income for all would have to be funded through taxation.  As heterodox economist Dr. Stephanie Kelton teaches her students and audiences around the world:

Taxes don’t pay for anything.  All modern money exists as an IOU.  When the government prints a US dollar, it essentially prints an IOU, which—since the USA has gone off the gold standard—entitles its holder to get another US dollar or pay one dollar’s worth of tax liability.  Dollars are no longer backed by gold, so one cannot hand in dollars and convert them to gold.  So, when taxes are paid, those IOUs used to pay those taxes are, effectively, extinguished.  Indeed, when US dollars return to the USA’s system of central banks, they’re shredded.  So, taxes don’t pay for government spending.  What actually pays for government spending is a sovereign currency issuer’s ability, such as that of the USA, to create its own currency out of thin air and use it for socially beneficial purposes.

Outside of Dr. Wright’s lack of knowledge of modern monetary theory, a survey of which would greatly benefit his analyses, he contributes welcome and radical concepts capable of shifting conventional wisdom.

Ultimately, Dr. Erik Olin Wright, essentially, advocates for society adopting the rules of the Monopoly board game, as an ideal for society.  Everyone who passes Go gets an income allowance to allow them to keep playing the game of life within a capitalist mode of production until the wealth concentrates in such few hands that all but one player is driven into destitution.  But Dr. Wright argues that a guaranteed income, within a capitalist mode of production, would only be a part of a longer-term process of building alternative structures to capitalist relations, which could be capable of gradually undermining capitalism.

Dr. Wright seems to follow the logic of a guaranteed income along moral and ethical lines.  Unfortunately, his lack of knowledge of modern monetary theory leads him to fall prey to the conventional understanding of public spending, i.e. the myth that the federal government needs to collect taxes in order to spend the money it creates out of thin air.  Citing MMT, Dr. Wright’s argument would be stronger.  But nobody told Dr. Wright that taxes don’t pay for anything.

[3]  Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving:  Against the Grain, this episode hosted by C.S. Soong, for Tuesday, 5 APR 2016, 12:00 PDT.

[4]  See media reports, such as:

  • “Bernie Sanders’ connections with two UMKC economists runs deep“, by Mark Davis, Kansas City Star, 29 MAR 2016
  • “MMT and Bernie Sanders” by L. Randall Wray, New Economic Perspectives, 20 NOV 2015
  • “Sanders adviser talks econ policy, politics” by Natalina Lopez, Yale Daily News, 17 NOV 2015  [N.B.:  This campus and its journalism completely obfuscated the most revolutionary aspects of MMT.  In fact, somehow, no mention is made of MMT at all.]
  • “Watch Out, MMT’s About, As Bernie Sanders Hires Stephanie Kelton” by Tim Worstall, Forbes, 12 JAN 2015  [N.B.:  This journalist seems, however, to have never read of any of the literature on modern monetary theory (MMT), for he confuses and distorts the concepts, creating strawmen to attack and make possible his empty critiques of MMT.]

[5]  Link to Bloomberg video clip, “The Argument Against Basic Income”, 7 JUN 2016, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2016-06-07/the-argument-against-basic-income

***

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[6 APR 2016]

[Last modified  20:32 PDT  7 JUN 2016]

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Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism (2016) by Chris Jennings

10 Thu Mar 2016

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Capitalism, History, History of Economic Theory, Political Economy

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Age of Enlightenment, Étienne Cabet (1788-1856), Bible communism, Charles Fourier (1772-1837), Chris Jennings, Communist Manifesto, Dr. Karl Marx, Fourierism, Friedrich Engels, Icarians, John Humphrey Noyes (1811-1886), Joseph Meacham (1742–1796), KPFA, Letters and Politics, Mitch Jeserich, Mother Ann Lee (1736-1784), New Harmony, Oneida Community, Owenism, Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village, utopian socialism

chris jennings paradise now utopianismLUMPENPROLETARIAT—Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism (2016) is the name of a new book by author Chris Jennings.  Letters and Politics host Mitch Jeserich joined Chris Jennings to discuss the history of north American utopianism.  Listen (or download) here. [1]

Messina

***

[Official Letters and Politics programme summary from the KPFA archive page] [1]

LETTERS AND POLITICS—[10 MAR 2016]  With Chris Jennings, author of the book Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism. 

About the book: 

In the wake of the Enlightenment and the onset of industrialism, a generation of dreamers took it upon themselves to confront the messiness and injustice of a rapidly changing world. To our eyes, the utopian communities that took root in America in the nineteenth century may seem ambitious to the point of delusion, but they attracted members willing to dedicate their lives to creating a new social order and to asking the bold question What should the future look like?

In Paradise Now, Chris Jennings tells the story of five interrelated utopian movements, revealing their relevance both to their time and to our own. Here is Mother Ann Lee, the prophet of the Shakers, who grew up in newly industrialized Manchester, England—and would come to build a quiet but fierce religious tradition on the opposite side of the Atlantic. Even as the society she founded spread across the United States, the Welsh industrialist Robert Owen came to the Indiana frontier to build an egalitarian, rationalist utopia he called the New Moral World. A decade later, followers of the French visionary Charles Fourier blanketed America with colonies devoted to inaugurating a new millennium of pleasure and fraternity. Meanwhile, the French radical Étienne Cabet sailed to Texas with hopes of establishing a communist paradise dedicated to ideals that would be echoed in the next century. And in New York’s Oneida Community, a brilliant Vermonter named John Humphrey Noyes set about creating a new society in which the human spirit could finally be perfected in the image of God.

Over time, these movements fell apart, and the national mood that had inspired them was drowned out by the dream of westward expansion and the waking nightmare of the Civil War. Their most galvanizing ideas, however, lived on, and their audacity has influenced countless political movements since. Their stories remain an inspiration for everyone who seeks to build a better world, for all who ask, What should the future look like?

Learn more at LETTERS AND POLITICS.

***

[Partial transcript of actual radio broadcast by Messina for Lumpenproletariat and Letters and Politics] [1]

LETTERS AND POLITICS—[10 MAR 2016]  “This is Pacifica Radio‘s Letters and Politics.  On today’s show:”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “They called their philosophy Bible communism.  So, they’re taking inspiration from certain sections of the Bible, which they read as commanding Christians to communism.  In fact, all these groups, even the secular ones, were reading the same bits of the Bible and saying:  Look, it’s evident here that our most sacred texts tell us that we must live in communities of total equality without private property.

“But the United community were also very intellectual and very interested in reading the socialist ideas of their secular contemporaries. [2]  They’re really wedding these two streams.  They’re very politically aware as well as being religiously inspired.”

MITCH JESERICH:  “In the 19th century, a number of communes sprung up around the United States, that attempted the old anarchist adage of creating a new world within the shell of the old.

“For most of us, these stories have been lost to history, but not today.  We’ll talk to author Chris Jennings about five of the them:  the Oneida, the Shakers, the Fourierists, the Icarians, and New Harmony.”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “One thing we can take from them is this idea of imagining idealised futures allowed them to see things that it took their fellow countrymen another century to see:  You know, the equality of women, the fact that education needs to be free for all children if we’re gonna have a democratic society.

“These were not mainstream ideas in the middle of the 19th century.  And they were within these communities.”

MITCH JESERICH:  “Chris Jennings is the author of the book, Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism.  That’s next on Letters and Politics.  But, first, the news.” (c. 1:45)

[KPFA News Headlines (read by Aileen Alfandary) omitted by scribe] (c. 09:57)

MITCH JESERICH:  “Good day, and welcome to Letters and Politics.  I’m Mitch Jeserich.  With this programme, I occasionally like to point out that we like to do history-related topics because I believe history is important in today’s world.  That how we tell history, frequently creates the boundaries of our contemporary political debates, and that the struggle against forgetting is also important in the dynamic.  One history, that I was unaware about before, but is also the topic of our conversation today, is the communes of the 19th century in this country, that were meant to create a society based on equality, including full equality for women, and an equal distribution of resources.

“Joining me to talk about that history is Chris Jennings.  Chris Jennings is the author of the book Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism.  Chris Jennings, it is my very good pleasure to welcome you to this programme.” (c. 10:44)

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “Thank you so much.  It’s great to be here.”

MITCH JESERICH:  “Usually, when we talk about communes in this country, we’re talkin’ about the communes of the late 1960s and ’70s.  The communes during the 1800s were very different than the communes of more recent history.”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “They were very different.  I think, probably, if you were to ride your horse up, or drive your bus up to one of them, they might look similar on the face.  You know?  Sort of farms with too many people living on them, big communal meals of beans and rice.

“In actual fact, the ideas and the rhetoric, that undergirded the 19th century communities were, in my estimation, far more utopian than anything that happened in the late ’60s or early ’70s around these parts.”

MITCH JESERICH:  “And it’s really fascinating.  When we talk about history, it’s hard to find a lot of examples of alternative styles of living, especially in a progressive kind of way.  But the five you look at are the Shakers, New Harmony, the Fourierists, [inaudible], the Icarians, and Oneidans.  I probably said like three of those wrong.”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “No.  You, you nailed ’em.  Yeah.  They were.  I mean, obviously, this sort of language we have now of progressive and conservative and left and right don’t map neatly onto 19th century political thinking.  But it’s true that this sort of chapter of American history, which is, I think, underdiscussed, represents a sort of counter-history to the rather monolithic narrative we have of American history.” (c. 12:16)

MITCH JESERICH:  “Are they all religious?”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “They’re not all religious.  And one of the things, that’s really interesting about them is some of them are avowedly atheistic, or at least avowedly secular.  And some of them are extremely religious.  But they saw enough, they had enough in common with one another that they saw each other as, sort of, fellow travellers.  Their rhetoric and their programmes were very similar.  And, to outsiders, to their fellow Americans, they were generally understood as being part of one, sort of, coherent movement, despite the fact that some of them based their philosophies on religious revelations.  And some of them were building on the Enlightenment ideas of progress.

MITCH JESERICH:  “And communism?”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “And communism.  Communism, probably small-‘c’ communism.”

MITCH JESERICH:  “Communism, as Karl Marx wrote about?”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “Well, it’s interesting.  There’s a lot of—Marx and Engels, actually more Engels, spent an awful lot of time reading and writing about these people.  And they lifted—and they mostly give credit a lot—from these folks.

“But, at the same time, the reason we now call these utopian communities, that language comes from Marx and Engels.  In the Communist Manifesto, they, sort of famously mock these, the people they, who invented socialism before them.  They’re sort of their predecessors.  And they use the term utopian socialism to distinguish these folks from themselves, who they  were calling the scientific socialists.  So, that language comes from Marx and Engels.  And—”

MITCH JESERICH:  “Are these the groups?”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “Yeah.  They name about four or five groups.  Four of the five, that I write about are mentioned in the Communist Manifesto.  So, sort of obliquely, because they’re sort of teasing them, they don’t say them by name.  But, elsewhere, they wrote at great length about them.

“And Engels, in particular, was very interested in the Shakers and sort of.  If nothing else, it looked to these folks as evidence, since the Shakers were really thriving at the time they were writing, as evidence of the practicality of communism.

“They would say the biggest critique of communism, then, as now, was:  This just isn’t gonna work.  And Engels would go: Oh, look at the Shakers!  Their barns are always full of hay.  Their pots are always full of soup.  And, clearly, a society without private property can thrive.”

MITCH JESERICH:  “Tell me more about the Shakers and Mother Ann Lee.  This was run, headed by women.”  (c. 14:44)

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “Yes, it was.  Well, it was, sort of, the prophet or the prophetess, as they called her, of the Shakers, whose actual name was the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing.  Shakers started as, sort of, a derogatory term, they eventually made peace with, that derives from their mode of worship, which was to bounce around a lot.”

MITCH JESERICH:  “And it comes from the Quakers.  Or are they—did it come out of the Quakers?”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “Loosely.  Ann Lee starts, gets her start in Manchester, England, which, again, an interesting connection to the later, so-called, scientific socialism.  Manchester is, sort of, the cradle of Marxian philosophy also, and for much of the same reason.  It was the Industrial Revolution and this supposed capitalist future was on full display.  And it was extremely ugly.

“So, it’s a place where people formulated counter-theories.  But Ann Lee gets her start there.  And she doesn’t really so much as come out of the Quakers.  But the group, that she starts in a prayer group, that had been started by two former Quakers.  So, their neighbours start calling them the shaking Quakers, from which their name derives. (c. 15:51)

“She comes to—she sort of ascends to the leadership of this small prayer group.  And, she, most notably, by having a revelation that says that we should all stop having sex, that that’s how the millennium god has promised us the thousand years of peace and abundance on Earth will come about once we stop having sex.

“She leads a small group of followers from Manchester to upstate New York, just in the middle of the American Revolution.  And she dies soon after the Revolution.  And the Society is led by a series of incredibly talented followers of her’s.  And the leadership is split 50/50 between men and women.  It really was.

“I mean, obviously, these were people of their time.  So, theory and practice did not always align.  But, yes, the Shakers were largely led by women at a time where anything other than a school room was not run by a woman anywhere in the United States.” (c. 16:45)

MITCH JESERICH:  “And no sex?”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “And no sex.”

MITCH JESERICH:  “No marriage?  No—”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “Mm.  No marriage.  One thing, that pretty much all these communities have in common, that distinguishes them from other types of communists, I suppose, is that they strongly  believed that the family, the nuclear family, was an obsolete institution, that was standing in the way of, of mankind’s ascent to a perfected society.

“So, they all hoped through various means to dissolve the nuclear family.  For the Shakers, that largely meant not having sex.  But, for some, like the United community, the took an opposite approach.  They all had sex with each other and considered everyone in the community married to everyone else in the community.”  (c. 17:23)

MITCH JESERICH:  “What time frame was the Oneida and the Shakers?  Were they around at the same time?”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “Yeah.”

MITCH JESERICH:  “Did they overlap?”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “Yeah, they overlapped because the Shakers lasted much longer than anyone else.  They go their start in Manchester and, I mean, theoretically, there’s still two people who count themselves Shakers, living in a community called Sabbathday Lake, Maine.

“But the Shakers reached their demographic peak in the 1840s, which is when the Oneida Community starts.  And the Oneida Community, kind of, unravels after the Civil War in the 1870s.  And the Shakers were also declining at around that time.”

MITCH JESERICH:  “Did they communicate amongst each other, these groups?”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “They did.  (c.17:56)

[SNIP] (c. 18:42)

“But they spoke of each other as noble contestants.  That was the language, that one Shaker said.  Noble contestants were bringing about the millennium.”  (c. 18:48)  [SNIP]  (c. 19:11)

“Yeah.  It is amazing.  It was amazing at the time.  And they did—”

MITCH JESERICH:  “How big was it?”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “You know, it fluctuated in size.  But it sort of peaked out at about 300 people, which doesn’t sound like that many until you see where they lived, and you see the scale.  They, basically, all lived in one mansion, that they built for themselves.  It’s very impressive.

“The United community, like the Shakers, and unlike some of their other utopian colleagues, really thrived economically.  They made a ton of money.  So, they built themselves a beautiful estate.

“And they did, eventually, excite enormous public rebuke from, sort of, more conservative fashions.  And their existence did, sort of, coincide with, sort of , the peak of the Victorian era, the sort of out-of-control American [inaudible].  (c. 20:00)  [SNIP]  (c. 20:26)

“So, they were at odds with the surrounding culture.”

MITCH JESERICH:  “Are they one of the secular groups, that you were talking about?”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “They’re not a secular group.  They’re kind of are interesting.  And I put them at the end because they, sort of, wed the secular and the mystical strain, that runs through American utopianism.  They were definitely building.  They called their philosophy Bible communism.  So, they’re taking inspiration from certain sections of the Bible, which they read as commanding Christians to communism.  In fact, all of these groups were reading.  Even the secular ones were reading the same bits of the Bible and saying:  Look!  It’s evident here that our most sacred texts tells us that we must live in communities of total equality without private property.  

“And, so, but the United Community were, also, very intellectual and very interested in reading the socialist ideas of their secular contemporaries.  So, they’re really wedding these two strains.  They are very politically aware as well as being religiously inspired.” (c. 21:29)  [SNIP]  (c. 23:27)

MITCH JESERICH:  “Looking back at the Shakers, after Mother Ann Lee, we have other leaders.  Joseph Meacham and Lucy Wright.  And they developed what’s known as religious communism.”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “Yeah.  They, again, there’s a key, similar to what we were just discussing, a key to bit of the Bible, they were all reading.  This is in the Book of Acts, where it’s describing:  Jesus has died.  His apostles are all living together with a, sort of, small community.  They didn’t even call them Christian.  But they’re sort of Jewish Christ-worshippers.

“And it says very explicitly that they had all things in common.  Everyone who came in with property into the community sold it and laid the wealth at the feet of the apostles.  And they shared everything.

“So, all of these people, the Shakers said:  Okay, these are the people, that knew best what Christ wanted, they’d lived with him.  They were his friends.

“He’s gone now.  But, clearly, how they’re arranging their society is how God wants a Christian society to be organised.

“So, they initiated this, sort of, religious communism, wherein anyone who came into the—Shakers donated their wealth into the collective.  And every Shaker, theoretically, owned, you know, one share in what they called Zion, which was this, sort of, federation of communities, that they built throughout the northern United States.” (c. 24:53)

[SNIP]

[music break:  Bach]  (c. 27:45)  [SNIP]  (c. 52:15)

“And utopianism is, along with being a very good way of organising one’s grievances with the here and now, because what more, you know, when you describe the perfect society, the things you add to it and the things you leave out are the things you don’t like or do like about the world in which you live.

“So, the fact that these people, utopianism simultaneously allows you to formulate a good critique of the present and stimulate the, sort of, energy to move forward towards something.  I think that’s very valuable; and it’s something, that’s missing from contemporary discourse.”

MITCH JESERICH:  “Are there paralells to how all these five groups came to an end?”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “There are parallels, but not neat ones.  They didn’t all die of the same cause.

“Some of them died of poverty.  Some of them died of—because they got too rich.  And they were afraid to let new people in.  The United Community and the Shakers, they ended up with so much property because, for a time, their economic structure was so successful that they got, sort of, nervous about letting new people in.

“Very often—and this does, sort of, echo closely with 20th century communalism, the children of the founding generation wanted to see something else of the world.  They knew that their parents had picked a very weird life.  And they wanted to go live a different kind of life.

“A lot of them died because of fire.  It’s a funny thing to read 19th century history.  You realise what a dominant part of day-to-day life fire was.  And, so, you know, Brooke Farm goes bankrupt when the massive phalanstère, which was what Fourier called the buildings in which he thought people should live.  Their phalanstère burns down.

“So, they died of various causes.  But, basically, my research indicates that the real reason that they, if there’s one cause of death it’s that some circumstance intervenes, which ceases to make it look like their rhetoric is gonna come true.

“Once the utopian dream is—begins to look like it’s not gonna be realised, all of the effort that people have been spending years pouring into these communities, kind of, unravels because, as long as the dream was there, you know, people were happily working along, you know, working very hard.  It’s hard work.”  (c. 54:36)

MITCH JESERICH:  “Yeah.  And you could say:  Nothing lasts forever.”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “Yeah.”

MITCH JESERICH:  “Businesses don’t last forever.”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “Yeah.”

MITCH JESERICH:  “Does that mean they were a failure?  Probably not.”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “Yeah.  Yeah.  I think so.  I mean I think you can say, in some ways, basically, people fail by their own terms because they thought they were, unlike, say—”

MITCH JESERICH:  “They were bringing the revolution.”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “Yeah.  They were bringing the revolution.”

MITCH JESERICH:  “A new day.”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “Yeah, exactly.  So, I would say, like, if your average hippie commune shutters after 20 years, you can say, well, that was great fun.

“But these folks did say that they were not—”

MITCH JESERICH:  “Did not reach their final goal.”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “—not reach.  The millennium was not commenced, as they said.  They promised it was going to be.”

MITCH JESERICH:  “Chris Jennings, thank you.”

CHRIS JENNINGS:  “Yeah.  It’s a real pleasure.  Thank you so much.”  (c. 55:11)

MITCH JESERICH:  “Again, the name of the book, Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism. (c. 55:18)  [SNIP]

[SNIP] (c. 59:59)

Learn more at LETTERS AND POLITICS.

[This transcript will be expanded as time constraints, and/or demand or resources, allow.]

***

[1]  Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving:  Letters and Politics, hosted by Mitch Jeserich, for Thursday, 10 MAR 2016, 10:00 PST.

[2]  The United community refers to the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, which came to be known as the Shakers.

***

[Last modified 00:58 PST  11 MAR 2016]

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