Abstract
Perhaps the most common concern about basic income programs is the notion that some able beneficiaries thereof might retire from labor entirely whilst nevertheless enjoying the sustenance it guarantees. The intuition is that there is something morally dubious about getting something for nothing.
Advocates of basic income programs often address the issue in more or less technical ways: Van Parijs and Vanderborght (2017) purportedly overcome the concern as it is treated in the liberal-egalitarian tradition by situating leisure in the index of social and economic advantages one actually has on average across a lifetime, i.e., as a calculation of opportunity. Standing (2017) contextualizes the argument against existing schemes which appear to formally endorse programs of nonreciprocal exchanges.
It is also often observed or hypothesized that the implementation of a basic income program would have a negligible effect on labor supply (Russell, 1918; Van Parijs & Vanderborght, 2017; Standing, 2017). The validity of these responses arguably remains an open question, but more importantly, from a philosophical perspective, they fail to take into account the nature of labor itself and why it should be considered a necessary condition for the receipt of social benefits.
It seems that it has been taken for granted that labor is somehow a virtue. But how and why has it come to be so considered, and should labor occupy such a privileged position in our understanding of social relations and the judgements we have about what each of us owe to and expect of each other? Divergent moral attitudes towards labor and leisure can be tracked as far back as Ancient Greece.
Both Plato and Aristotle advanced an aristocratic view: σχολή (typically translated as 'leisure'), was something reserved only for, and could only be properly engaged in by, those in the highest social order. Meanwhile, labor was generally seen as something destined for those in the lowest social order and disqualified them from engaging in leisure (Samaras, 2017).
Under the influence of organized religion, these attitudes were entirely flipped. In Weber's (1930/2015) study of the 'Protestant work ethic' in relation to the development of modern capitalism, the idea is that labor became predominantly taken to be something of a virtue, while leisure came to be considered a vice.
Against the backdrop of 'historical materialism', Marx (1844) sketches out the concept of alienation: the idea that labor is objectified, capitalized, and privatized, leaving the laborer in a state of profound estrangement. Here, the essence of labor is historically, materially, and psychically determined.
The moral status of labor and leisure thus seems highly dependent on the contexts in which they are observed. If we can elucidate the moral status of labor, we can better understand whether it is a necessary condition for human welfare provided by social benefits.
A cautious hypothesis is that there is nothing contained in the concept of labor itself that constitutes a moral imperative. I am proposing an examination of this idea through an historical and philosophical excursion of the traditions canvassed in this proposal.