Basic Income for the Arts: Between Gabriele D’Annunzio and the Immanentisation of the Eschaton

Over the past three years, the Irish government has run a pilot scheme known as Basic Income for the Arts. Under the programme, a selected group of artists received periodical unconditional payments to complement their income and create a more propitious environment to foster their creative endeavours.

Given the purported success of this flight of fancy—by whatever metrics the government used—it was announced in Ireland’s annual budget that the programme will be extended from next year.

This particular privilege bestowed upon artists at the expense of the rest of society harks back to the ill-fated Italian Regency of Carnaro. In that whimsical political experiment—considered by many a precursor of fascism—poet Gabriele D’Annunzio attempted to create a utopian society modelled by his own version of æstheticism, syndicalism, republicanism, and neopagan inspiration. In his ideal view, society would be divided into multiple corporations representing different sectors of the economy (agricultural workers, civil servants, lawyers, labourers, etc.) with an additional, symbolic corporation above them of “superior individuals” (artists, poets, prophets, supermen, and heroes). Artists belong thus to a privileged caste, possessing a transcendental wisdom not available to the masses: they have to be served as they bear the very soul of society.

However, let us not be cynical, nor assume that the Irish government has chosen to privilege certain sectors of the population over others on point of principles. Let us assume that the ultimate goal would be to extend this programme to all sectors of the economy: what is known as Universal Basic Income.

The idea of Universal Basic Income has been entertained superficially at various times throughout history. It is understandable that the concept has a tendency to pop up frequently in all human minds as it appeals to our natural desire to reach for Paradise—in this case embodied in an idyllic state of post-scarcity. But the material world is characterised by its finitude, and so these post-Christian attempts to bring Elysium to Earth—in the words of philosopher Eric Voegelin—immanentise the eschaton, are destined to fail calamitously. A free society’s way of dealing with this scarcity of resources is through private property rights, division of labour, and voluntary trade. In this system of social solidarity, everyone is expected to pull their weight for society. Thus, when you do something that your neighbour requires, you obtain in exchange something that you require. Utilisation of a means of exchange like money greatly facilitates this process and allows for wider flexibility. The crux of this system is to produce what society requires, not what you like to do (now, if you can make both scenarios converge, all the better for you).

Needless to say, we can also opt to provide for certain individuals without expecting anything in return, out of charity. In modern societies this “charity” is articulated in the role of the welfare state; for instance, through unemployment benefit, Quotation marks are here used out of respect for the the theological virtue, since “charity” at gunpoint is anything but. These payments are considered conditional, since in theory they are contingent to the recipient fulfilling certain conditions—like passing a means test or making active efforts to contribute to society, but being unable through no fault of their own.

Universal Basic Income, on the other hand, is an unconditional payment. That is to say, automatically granted to every citizen irrespective of their personal situation. One quickly intuits the immediate economic consequences that can follow. The possibility of obtaining an unconditional payment sufficient to cover one’s needs posits a phenomenal incentive to cease productive activity, which in turn increases the financial burden on productive classes to sustain the scheme, thus increasing again the incentive to stop producing altogether. This ignominious whirlpool will inevitably lead to progressive stagnation, inflation and eventually bankruptcy.

Of course, there are multiple ways of implementing this scheme. Well known is the case that Milton Friedman made for a guaranteed minimum income as a substitute to all other welfare programmes in “Capitalism and Freedom” using a system of negative income tax. This, he claims, would shift welfare from the inefficiency of the state to the free market, increasing its productivity and ensuring fiscal viability. However, outside of the Chicago and Austrian schools of economics, no one is advocating for substituting Universal Basic Income for the whole welfare system—certainly not the Irish government, whose BIA is compatible with other payments.

In praxis, the prevailing model is the one posited and developed principally by Belgian sociologist Philippe Van Parijs in “Real Freedom for All: What (If Anything) Can Justify Capitalism?” In this model, every single citizen ought to be entitled to a basic income irrespective of personal circumstances to ensure real freedom to make choices. We have touched upon the potential catastrophic economic consequences of this policy, but it has many other nefarious connotations. One of them being its inherent immorality. This system entirely obliterates the principle of social solidarity, allowing for certain individuals to stop providing for society whilst coercing others to provide for them.

In a famous debate with John Rawls, Van Parijs claimed that those who chose to spend their time surfing in Malibu effectively had to be supported by the rest of society. Even though artists might argue that they are indeed providing for society with their art, the truth is that they only contribute if people are indeed willing to pay for said art. Otherwise, I am afraid to say, they are merely engaging in leisure activities like the Malibu surfers. And, needless to say, their work might be objectively beautiful, but society might demand different services, and this scheme simply uses state-sanctioned violence to force people to pay for their art against their will. I might consider my own writing skills exceptional, but as long as no one is willing to pay for them I have to earn a crust performing more mundane duties demanded by society and leave my literary ambitions as a pastime.

There is also an iniquitous underlying philosophical—even theological—connotation that we cannot omit: the general disdain towards labour exhibited by these theories. Once upon a time work was seen as something honourable, wherewith a man benefited society, provided for his family and fulfilled his destiny. Even left-wing movements once strived for the right to work, whereas now they vie for the opposite. Why, even though Marx fantasised about the idea of “hunting in the morning, fishing in the afternoon, rearing cattle in the evening, criticising after dinner” at least those were productive activities to be directed by the central organ; and the quasi-sacred status that labour and the figure of the working man achieved in Marxist regimes is undeniable.

However, it seems that the heresy espoused by Marx’s very own son-in-law Paul Lafargue in “The Right to Be Lazy” planted a seed which has finally germinated in contemporary cultural Marxism.

Before the progressive abandonment of God that is happening in modern societies, we understood that labour and toil had been imposed on mankind due to the Fall, and it could not be avoided without going against the will of God. This, however, is not to be seen merely as a punitive act, but as an inevitable consequence of man’s transition from the eternal gracious provision of Eden into the finite material world. In our current secular society it is difficult for people to understand these theological connotations, so we can explain work in a more materialistic and mechanistic manner: the energy transferred to or from an object via the application of force along a displacement, and articulated in the formula W = F × s (where W is form, F is the force applied, and s is the displacement). Work occurs every time there is a movement, and multiple combinations of movements result in activities required to sustain human life —from basic activities like walking or opening a door to complex ones like growing vegetables or building a car—. Put into materialistic terms, work is just the necessary means for achieving any result (be it simple or complex). So it might not be sacred or honourable per se: just inescapable; but pretending —or, indeed, even demanding— that others do it for you does make you a bit of a w****r. Not unlike the aforementioned Paul Lafargue, who admired the great Greeks of antiquity for dedicating their time
to cultivating mind and body —by delegating hard labour and menial work to slaves.

Another important fallacy that fuels this narrative is the idea that a Universal Basic Income will boost personal freedom. The premise being that one is not free to make choices unless one possesses sufficient material means to back them up (you are not free if you cannot afford a home or you have to settle for a job below your expectations out of economic need, for instance). This idea stems from Isaiah Berlin’s famous lecture “Two Concepts of Liberty”, where Mr. Berlin posits the concepts of positive and negative liberty. In a nutshell, negative liberty involves absence of coercion from third parties in our life, whereas positive liberty involves capacity to enact our choices (freedom from vs. freedom to). When we take this dichotomy down to the economic level, positive liberty inevitably requires coercion of third parties to provide the necessary means to enact one’s choices, so it impinges on the freedom of others to enact their choices as their means are being extracted, and they in turn will require coercion of others and so on and so forth ad infinitum. It is inherently incongruous and immoral. Negative liberty is the only congruent and morally sound form of freedom as it can be enjoyed by all members of a given social group. It relies on individual responsibility, it is not incompatible with charity and it acknowledges personal limitations through no one’s fault (we are not less free because we do not have the freedom to fly or breath underwater).

To sum up, Universal Basic Income is a reprehensible concept from an economic, philosophical and moral perspective, and it is foreboding that the very idea is being toyed with.