In the context of the 24th Congress of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), which is taking place in Brazil, the Humanist Network for Universal and Unconditional Basic Income organised a panel discussion on 28 August entitled ‘Universality of basic income, economic solidarity and cultural change’.

The panel was coordinated by Cris Weber and featured speakers Eduardo Alves, president of Viva Rio and Pressenza writer and editor; Juana Pérez Montero and Sérgio Mesquita, retired civil servant and worker at the Institute of Science, Technology and Innovation in Maricá (Brazil) and Pressenza contributor.

We share here the presentation of Juana Pérez Montero.

From our humanist perspective and based on our accumulated experience, the implementation of a basic income implies a change in values and beliefs, that is, a new culture. A culture that puts people’s lives and liberation at its center. This means advocating for relationships based on solidarity, which will translate, if we refer to the issue at hand today, into the defence of a guaranteed material existence for all humanity, given the globalised world in which we live.

But why do we say that it implies a change in culture?

Because, after years of defending and working with this proposal, we have confirmed that the arguments and resistance to its implementation are rooted in the foundations of our Western culture.

Let’s look at some, just a few, of the arguments and facts we have heard and seen.

  • That there isn’t enough money to implement it… (an argument used by the powerful and which has become generally adopted) … without questioning their own wealth.
  • That it is necessary to earn the right to have one’s material existence guaranteed… something that is explained in the holy books as ‘You shall earn your bread by the sweat of your brow…’ a commandment from which those who inherit, those who accumulate at the expense of the lives of others, etc., seem to have been freed in an extraordinary exercise of ‘meritocracy’.
  • Associating human dignity with employment, when human beings are dignified simply by virtue of being born as such…
  • The guilt and stigmatisation that many people feel when receiving aid, making them feel inferior, which they express when they start to listen to talk about basic income. We have seen this on numerous occasions, working with very disadvantaged sectors of the population, who initially experience it as just another form of charitable aid. We recommend the book “Against Charity. In favour of basic income” by Daniel Raventós and Julie Wark.
  • Another obstacle is the opposition of certain political sectors to the implementation of a basic income (Brazil, Catalonia, etc.). These politicians serve economic interests and prefer to exercise charity to keep us dependent… the opposite of defending the rights of their people and creating conditions to free us from violence, pain and suffering, in essence….

We could continue with arguments against… but we will conclude that they all respond to the culture in which we live and the system that sustains it—even though it is crumbling—and that it has worked because the entire population, or the vast majority, has accepted the same narrative based on a myth.

That myth—like so many myths—began as a religious myth and, as we well know, speaks of an external god who is above, far removed from ordinary mortals, who judges and punishes us if we do not respond to what is imposed upon us, and who expelled us from paradise for wanting to imitate him. But if we do what he says, not only will we earn eternity for being good people, but we will also be worthy… as previously stated.

Based on this myth, the entire social organisation we know has developed, in which a few ‘chosen ones’ at the top of the social pyramid decide on behalf of the majority, subjugating and objectifying them, denying them their intentionality and their humanity.

And what has become of all this today, when that god has fallen for many, society has been desacralised and what remains is a system in which the god of money is above all else? It translates into a ‘god’ represented by a group of billionaires, mainly linked to the fields of new technology, AI, armaments, the pharmaceutical industry, food… an unscrupulous group that decides and ends democracies, generates wars, impoverishes populations and leaves millions of people to starve… and is rapidly rolling back fundamental rights… a group that is leading all of humanity to disaster.

Friends, we are facing a problem because advances in technology have changed the external reality, destroying more and more jobs every day… The model that has allowed the social majority to accept the narrative of power as our own, in an example of collective Stockholm Syndrome, is by no means sustainable. It is now unsustainable. And what will happen if we don’t have jobs? Will we cease to be dignified? Must we assume that millions and millions of human beings will die or starve to death because of a lack of employment…?

NO, the good thing about all this is that this changing external reality also offers us enormous possibilities… Because there will not be jobs for everyone, but there are resources for all humanity to live in dignified conditions, which are, of course, the result of the contributions of all the generations that have preceded us and the contributions made today by humanity as a whole.

I do not know if you realise that today we have the opportunity to free ourselves from the slavery of employment and devote ourselves to what we feel helps us develop as human beings and which, moreover, may be more useful to the community (care work, artistic creation, charitable enterprise…). Be careful, we are not against employment or against anyone wanting to get rich through employment, no. What we are saying is that there will not be jobs for everyone.

So, the problem, as the humanist and universal thinker Silo pointed out, is not if there is or is not employment, ‘let the machines work’ as it is said… the problem is the distribution of wealth.

This implies a new culture, which will be based on a new myth, which will be progressively revealed and which we will gradually construct. A new paradigm which, from our particular look, is already beginning to manifest itself in different ways.

We will not dare to develop it… but some of the elements or characteristics of this new paradigm, of this new culture, are already here and we see them in various sectors. We will list a few:

  • Putting Life as the central value, therefore, putting people’s lives and their liberation at the centre… and, as it cannot be otherwise, caring for our common home, the planet.
  • A new culture that embraces the most important moral principle, which is common to different cultures and humanist moments throughout history and which we as humanists express as ‘Treat others as you would like to be treated’.
  • This also means placing relationships of solidarity at the centre in all areas, starting with the economy and everything related to ensuring the well-being of each person living on this planet.
  • To this end, it is essential to implement measures that make this possible, such as a basic income… measures that guarantee as a universal right, the first of all rights, the right to a guaranteed material existence, which we as humanists defend.

But we cannot limit ourselves to defending – as we pointed out at the beginning – basic income for a country, a region…

In a globalised world and, at the same time, at a moment of enormous disruption, in which individuals have been isolated and left to fend for themselves, discouraged by the lack of a future… advocating a universal basic income for all humanity means breaking with the nationalist look, which corresponds to the reality of another historical moment; it means defending human rights for all, it means committing to social justice and the redistribution of wealth for all people, while at the same time beginning to repair the economic, social and moral debt that the north of the planet has to the south, which it has plundered and continues to plunder.

This universalist perspective implies being willing to question borders, which only serve to separate and divide the poor.

Friends, comrades… we need images and projects that remove us from merely defending what is being taken away, that remove us from the greyness and paralysing fear that grips millions of human beings. We need powerful images that chart the future to which most people aspire…

A future without violence, starting with the elimination of economic violence, followed by all other forms of violence.

Let us imagine for a moment how easy it would be to finance a basic income solely with a portion of military budgets – which are currently growing rapidly – and which are being used to kill and intimidate the entire planet…

Let us imagine how much pain and suffering would be eliminated at a stroke by providing a basic income (poverty, slavery, child labour, child marriage, gender dependencies and a long list of other issues would be eliminated…).

Let us dare to imagine the conditions in which we want to live, the bright future we deserve… and let us work together to achieve it.

Thank you very much.