Unconditional Freedom: Universal Basic Income and Social Power (Paperback)
As the rich get richer, taking more of our wealth, our democratic freedoms are also in danger. The elite are gaining large profits without duly contributing to society, hollowing out our public services and institutions, and preventing the vast majority of us from living our lives fully and developing productive and reproductive projects of our own.
In Unconditional Freedom, David Casassas argues that for us to live freely, we need unconditional resources such as Universal Basic Income. In a sharp and lucid analysis of the power of 'pre-distributing' resources, he shows that UBI would not only liberate us from the nightmare of precarious employment but it would also increase our bargaining power as a class, opening doors to democratizing our lives.
While it would be naïve to say that UBI alone would put an end to capitalist social relations, Casassas convincingly argues that it would help pave the way for social emancipation.
Julie Wark is a translator and human rights activist. She is correspondent for Europe for CounterPunch and author of The Human Rights Manifesto and Against Charity (with Daniel Raventós).
Louise Haagh, author of 'The Case for Basic Income'
'A useful, militant book, useful because it clearly, rigorously, and skilfully sets out the basic principles of the universal basic income, and militant because it doesn't hide its position, which I'd describe as radical. In this, [Casassas] follows the advice of our mutual friend and teachermentor, Antoni Domènech, for whom, "If you don't know how to be sufficiently radical, you'll always end up in the folly of hyperrealism."'
Daniel Raventós, author of 'Basic Income: The Material Conditions of Freedom'
'An ethical defence of basic income constructed on the value of republican freedom, an important proposal in an era of rentier capitalism that allows plutocrats to pocket more and more wealth. We need a new system of distribution with basic income acting as an anchor.'
Guy Standing, author of 'The Corruption of Capitalism'
'Casassas firmly retraces the Republican case for basic income to its traditional Left-wing origins of combatting structural domination and unequal social power. A timely anti-dote to those propagating the myth of basic income as a trojan horse of the Right!'
Jurgen De Wispelaere, Visiting Professor, Götz Werner Chair of Economic Policy & Constitutional Theory, University of Freiburg