Medium, in some effort to get me to fit in with the obedient writers, recommended I write about UBI instead of telling people to read Marx and Lenin all day, so why not? Why not explain how UBI is a bill of goods?
First off I would say that I do understand it. Anyone who lives in poverty will be naturally drawn in by the idea of some kind of buffer that can offset the constant plummet into further debt, and if this is what UBI does, then of course it would make sense.
Sadly, it doesn’t. UBI is a scam made up by the rich, kind of like the British NHS. Anyone will obviously say that having good hospitals and social safety nets to protect the public is vital, and I agree.
So why on Earth did we put a bunch of politicians in charge of it?
This is the problem. People look at the law enacted, but they forget the fine print. NHS and UBI is only as good as its budgets, and those budgets are even at the best of times set up to fail.
Does this mean we can’t have public hospitals or shared public revenue? OF COURSE NOT! We absolutely should, but we shouldn’t set it up to be at odds with a constant conflict of interest. We shouldn’t set it up in a dichotomy in which the rich want to tear it down, and the poor want to hold it up.
Because guess what? You’re only 3 election cycles away from the entire thing being gutted like a Spanish Lutheran.
What we need is to understand that NHS and UBI is desperation politics. It is only politics that makes sense to very desperate people. What we need, if we want some kind of democracy, is to become less desperate. To undermine the many leverages that the political aristocracy have.
There are central contradictions to Keynes and social democracy. For one thing, there is a supply chain issue. We live in an economy of middle men, who skim off of every possible top, until you are left with a barebones surplus that’s optimistically referred to as disposable income.
From third world slavery, to minimum wage service sector jobs, the miserable cycle of production is set up as to permit some deedholder or shareholder take the lion’s share in every step of the process. This is what Keynes’ utopian liberalism is built on. It does not end poverty, it simply outsources it.
Sometimes this outsourcing happens through racial segregation, sometimes through war and neocolonialism, sometimes the burden falls on the homeless, or it is even done through eugenics. Keynesianism is not about ending poverty, it is about outsourcing it to people who cannot fight back. In this way, the working class is constantly divided under Keynesianism.
Between man and woman, white and black, and middle and poor. Each time some group pulls itself over the threshold, they are bribed to become a new layer of gatekeepers.
This is why Josef Stalin said that social democracy is the moderate wing of fascism, because just like fascism, it is set up to get the working class to kill itself at the behest of the rich.
And even if you do not like Josef Stalin, you cannot argue with history. With how social democrats have, when push comes to shove, sided with fascism at every possible opportunity.
To quote the study I linked earlier:
Some, such as Pearson and Havelock Ellis, a well-known Fabian, took a Social Darwinist approach and categorically rejected any form of support for the “residuum”, since such support would inevitably have a “dysgenic” effect. That view is nicely illustrated by Ellis:
The superficially sympathetic man flings a coin to the beggar; the more deeply sympathetic man builds an almshouse for him so that he need no longer beg; but perhaps the most radically sympathetic of all is the man who arranges that the beggar shall not be born. So it is the question of breed, the production of fine individuals, the elevation of the ideal of quality in human production over that of mere quantity, begins to be seen, not merely as a noble idea in itself, but as the only method by which Socialism can be enabled to continue on its present path.
In the age of Freikorps and Pinkertons, social democrats were considerably more honest. It is only in a modern age, when the Soviet Union taught them to fear the poor, that they begin with to explore the value of rhetoric and hopeful promises.
But, this is merely unspeakable evil, any liberal worth his reading glasses will of course point out that you must be pragmatic, that jackbooted devils who gun down cripples and throw them into rivers is just the reality of omelets, how, on occasion, you must break a few commandments.
Sometimes, in order to assure a fair and equitable society, you must drive around in a big armoured car with a giant skull painted on it and indiscriminately kill people. It’s a matter of electability, or feasibility, or the truth being somewhere in the middle, or sustainable approaches, or examining what’s practical, and let’s not forget the economy, yes, the economy, it is, as it always has been, a thing to vaguely gesture at I assure you.
Also we need to reach across the aisle on this one, and figure out a bipartisan approach, and let us not forget a little thing called common sense, and at the end of the day cool heads must prevail, oh- and let’s not forget how, when you look at the big picture, truth is a relative matter, and you shouldn’t believe everything you hear.
Sometimes there’s two sides to a story, and there’s bigger things at work here, and not to mention that there’s long term interests to consider, all in all, when you examine it from a purely objective point of view, perhaps a giant armoured car with a big skull painted on it will stimulate the economy, and offer good jobs, and provide people with new opportunities.
Oh and I remind you that equality is not equity, in fact, I remind you of equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome, nothing stopped those cripples from starting their own armoured car formation and gun down their own enemies, sometimes you have to take personal responsibility. The world doesn’t owe you a living after all, and the early bird gets the worm.
Sometimes it’s easier to play the victim than to accept how you only have yourself to blame when the armoured car comes around. This is a simple and fundamental principle of market forces after all, yes, let’s not forget market forces. And relative truth, and objectivity and not to mention a little thing we call convention, and good manners.
Yes, manners, perhaps, on some level, social democracy is built on unspeakable cruelties being carried out to this day but you know what?! It’s rude to point it out.
How would you feel if I spent all day judging you? Let’s not forget civility. You don’t see the armoured car hurling insults like “fascists!” and “murderers!”, no, it just quietly does its job, and that’s also a virtue. Perhaps we should give everyone credit for what they do instead of fixating on some series of leading inquiry of “murderer” and “murdered.” Let us not be unreasonable here, sometimes this is just how the real world works!
The most dangerous thing liberalism has done is to train people to think that stupidity with effort put into it is the same thing as being smart.
Another argument to justify the atrocities of the industrial revolution is that “it’s in the past.” And while that’s true about literally everything, I still remain a bit concerned. Because what these purges and atrocities did was to put social democrats as the dominant left wing force in western Europe and the United States, my question is, what happens if that changes? What happens if “the past” as it were, becomes the present? What happens when the circumstances which motivated social democrats to join with the fascists happen again?
Suddenly “It’s in the past” is more of a threat than a dismissal. It implies that should the social democrats become the status quo ante, should someone challenge their power, then the past will not be in the past anymore. To me this argument is an admission, this past is where they made an example of dissidents, and should such dissidents arise again, should the poor try to fight again, then they will also be part of the past.
So even without an appeal to morality, examining the practicality of the matter, then we see a political faction that is perfectly content to be peaceful moderates when they hold power, but who will gladly take up arms the moment that changes.
Everyone is a moderate when they’re in charge. When the present situation guarantees authority, then why would you examine radical change? Even the most bloodthirsty of tyrants is a pacifist in a world where all their enemies are either dead or broken. It’s hardly that impressive.
But even so, in some ways, fighting is a fact of life. Everyone fights. Liberals, conservatives, Marxists, fascists, everyone has a history of war, and of fighting. But what gets me is who they fight. Who the enemy is.
In the case of social democrats, they are very happy to sick rifles and columns on the workers and the poor, and then proclaim that it’s time for “collective bargaining” when they turn their attention to the rich.
I believe democracy is when this process occurs in reverse. When it is people with power who must fear the power of the people.
