Review of Symposium at FH Dortmund, January 24, 2025: Debating Basic Income and Social Infrastructure

My contribution was an inquiry into both approaches – UBI and UBS – from the perspective of Infrastructures of Care: Aspects of Unconditionality. I find that both approaches do not attribute the central importance to gender-equitable care work, corresponding framework conditions, and facilities that they have as a “arena” for the success of a socio-ecological transformation.

In the UBI approach, the separation of employment and income – in other words, overcoming the compulsion to work – is rightly seen as a central lever for transforming the capitalist social system. The highly system-relevant organization of unpaid work, its framework conditions, and institutions is wrongly given less importance – this is a justified criticism of the UBI approach.

In the UBS approach, a changed mode of production and provision of public goods, services, and facilities is – also for good reasons – the central lever for transforming the capitalist social system. The persistent gender-hierarchical dynamics of employment seem less important in comparison. It also remains unclear how, given hegemonic sexist and racist social patterns, disadvantaged groups could participate equally or even particularly in the envisioned processes of achieving “Public Luxury” (to quote this appealing image from Lukas Warning and colleagues).

In my contribution, I raised the question of whether groups engaged in socio-ecological transformation are thinking sufficiently about what good, gender-equitable, largely discrimination-free “Infrastructures of Care” could be. Whether we know well enough what a special activity caring is and what resources and framework conditions it needs. I showed examples of how crises in the recent past have always led to comprehensive access to the work and care capacity of discriminated groups, especially women.

In socio-ecological transformation, it’s about changing access to resources: healthy environment, income, time, political influence, public goods and services, … . From my perspective, both a Universal Basic Income and Universal Basic Services will be needed to overcome the existing capitalist social order, which is centrally based on marking certain person(groups) as being better suited than others to do the devalued care work.

While both UBI and UBS can have redistributive effects, UBS is inherently more redistributive. Both can be financed through progressive taxation, but UBS leads to additional redistribution on the expenditure side as lower-income groups spend a higher proportion of their income on basic services. While it could be argued that certain UBI models also have additional redistributive effects, this is only because they are combined with measures such as rent caps. However, this argument misses the key point: UBS is inherently more redistributive than UBI as UBS can also be supplemented with additional measures.

The UBI debate overlooks central questions of socio-ecological transformation – in particular, how goods and services are produced and provided. It is not enough to merely redistribute purchasing power within the existing economy when the economy itself – its goals and structures of provision – needs fundamental transformation. Who controls the provision? What are the ownership structures? Who produces what, under what conditions, and for whom? These questions are central to the UBS debate. Empirical evidence also shows that a higher degree of collective provision and public services correlates with better need satisfaction while requiring less energy consumption.

A basic income can be a significant component of a transformative and emancipatory package of measures – alongside UBS and a public employment guarantee. However, as a primary focus, this discourse falls short of achieving the urgently needed radical economic transformation.

Unlike the British UBS concept, the German concept of ‘Social Infrastructure’ includes the introduction of basic income – for good reasons. A starting point of this Social Infrastructure concept is the radical rejection of any work compulsion. Similarly, a large part of the basic income movement advocates for complementarity between basic income and universal, unconditional, largely fee-free access to public goods, infrastructure, and services. This particularly includes their democratic and user-oriented design. Many feminists, Christian organizations, the independent unemployment movement in Germany and other countries see it the same way – as do researchers in the care and ecology sectors.

The British proponents of the UBS concept also emphasized the complementarity of basic income and basic services six years ago. However, recently, voices from their ranks have increasingly opposed this complementarity – making claims about basic income that do not withstand scrutiny. For instance, they argue that basic income would not be as redistributive as UBS, would be more expensive, and would ignore questions of production and provision of public goods. These claims point to a significant need for discussion and clarification, including the necessary examination of basic income concepts, as well as critical reflection on one’s own concept.

The Basic Services (BS) concept is criticized for failing to provide universal access to public goods, despite the term ‘Universal Basic Services’, as it only offers access to certain groups in specific areas and involves means testing. Thus, it is not universal. This alone creates a significant risk of social exclusion, division, and corresponding social ineffectiveness. Moreover, many goods and services mentioned in the BS concept (e.g., food, housing) must still be paid for by the users themselves, albeit with state subsidies and, therefore, to a lesser extent than before. The claimed decommodification of public goods, infrastructure, and services thus does not occur, also because these public goods and services continue to be produced and purchased by the state in a market-oriented, commodity form. Another point of criticism is that the issues of work compulsion in general, and the unconditionality of care work in particular, are not problematized or politicized in BS approaches. Furthermore, some BS proposals with supplementary conditional cash transfers risk monetizing social relationships deep into the lifeworld and private sphere.

I was particularly struck by the vehemence of the discussion between UBI and UBS advocates. In my view, criticism functions as a medium of academic discourse and can be quite productive, but only if one truly listens to the other side. I hope the symposium contributed to this.