This chapter outlines possible conditions for legitimizing a universal basic income with the help of the Arendtian concept of labor and its temporalities. Using Arendt’s critique of Marx’s concept of work, the critique from which she established her own concepts of labor and work, I show that labor is organized upon a circular conception of time essentially linked to both futility and eternity. For Arendt, the eternal circularity of production and consumption organizes life, nature, and the Eart…
Read moreThis chapter outlines possible conditions for legitimizing a universal basic income with the help of the Arendtian concept of labor and its temporalities. Using Arendt’s critique of Marx’s concept of work, the critique from which she established her own concepts of labor and work, I show that labor is organized upon a circular conception of time essentially linked to both futility and eternity. For Arendt, the eternal circularity of production and consumption organizes life, nature, and the Earth itself, being thus structural to two different households (oikoi), i.e., the economy and ecology, wherein humans dwell. The capitalist economy is a threat to both, as it drives the “unnatural growth of the natural” that expels an increasing number of people from production and consumption, and disrupts Earth’s cycle itself (the Anthropocene). Capitalism emphasizes production and champions indefinite growth to provide universal inclusion in the labor system, but if we instead stress consumption as a basic activity for the condition of life, it may offer theoretical (and political) ways to include those excluded from the realm of production, i.e., those who have no outcome to offer. By breaking the link between income and outcome, a universal basic income may help us bestow the life cycle its due meaning.