Most advanced industrial societies are ‘work-centered,’ according high value and prestige to work. Indeed, belief in an interpersonal moral duty to work is encoded in both popular attitudes toward work and in policies such as ‘workfare’. Here I argue that despite the intuitive appeal of reciprocity or fair play as the moral basis for a duty to work, the vast majority of individuals in advanced industrialized societies have no such duty to work. For current economic conditions, labor markets, and government (...) policies entail that the conditions for a reciprocity-based argument to apply to most workers are not usually met. More specifically, many workers fail to provide valuable goods through working or their working does not result in net social benefit. Concurrently, many workers do not receive adequate benefits from working in that they neither have their basic needs met or do not even enjoy an improvement in welfare thanks to working. Hence, workers neither provide nor receive the benefits needed for a reciprocity-based duty to work to apply to them. Furthermore, these conditions are conditions over which workers themselves have very little control. Most workers therefore could not fulfill their ostensible duty to work even if they made conscientious efforts to do so. In most cases, a person who fails to work morally wrongs no one, and in the case of any particular individual or worker, the defeasible presumption ought to be that she has no duty to work. (shrink)

This paper is about difficulties in the normative justification of an unconditional basic income-difficulties which are related to the scope of egalitarian justice as well as the dimension(s) of the equalisandum. More specifically, it is contended that Philippe Van Parijs’s justification derived from the principle of Maximin real freedom runs into problems in environments in which scarcity does not offer a conceptual basis for a satisfactory account of social interdependencies. We discuss the following cases: (i) Scarcity is seen as a (...) general equilibrium phenomenon in a dynamic environment. (ii) Social forces of production (particularly non-rival and only partially excludable inputs) play a role in creating wealth. (iii) Informal exclusion mechanisms and patterns of ‘local justice’ matter. (iv) Certain forms of heterogeneity play a role. (shrink)

The article discusses the conditions under which can we say that people enter the economic system voluntarily. “The Need for an Exit Option” briefly explains the philosophical argument that voluntary interaction requires an exit option—a reasonable alternative to participation in the projects of others. “The Treatment of Effective Forced Labor in Economic and Political Theory” considers the treatment of effectively forced interaction in economic and political theory. “Human Need” discusses theories of human need to determine the capabilities a person requires (...) to have an acceptable exit option. “Capability in Cash, Kind, or Raw Resources” considers what form access to that level of capability should take—in cash, kind, or raw resources, concluding that a basic income guarantee is the most effective method to ensure an exit option in a modern, industrial economy. (shrink)

Abstract In this paper, I pursue the question whether extending democratic rights to work is good in the broadest possible sense of that term: good for workers, firms, market economies, and democratic states. The argument makes two assumptions in a broadly consequentialist framework. First, the configuration of any relationship among persons in which there is less rather than more coercion makes individuals better off. Second, extending democratic rights to work will entail costs and benefits to both the power and authority (...) of employers and meaningful work for employees. These costs and benefits cannot be determined in advance because they are largely empirical, but there are still good reasons for expanding worker participation all-things-considered. First, I examine the parallel case for extending democratic rights to the workplace based on several similarities between politics and work organization. In addition, I consider the objections from voluntariness and efficiency. Although both objections raise interesting problems I believe that a properly formulated conception of democratic workplaces can answer them. In the final section, I sketch a minimal conception of these rights at the level of the firm that does not require a large-scale transformation of the market economy. (shrink)

The core argument of the paper is that the modern philosophical notion of self-constitution is directed against the prospect of human beings dissolving into idleness. Arguments for self-constitution are marked by non-philosophical presuppositions about the value of usefulness. Those arguments also assume a particular conception of superior experience as conscious integration of a person’s actions within an identifiable set of chosen commitments. Exploring particular arguments by Hegel, Kant, Korsgaard and Frankfurt the paper claims that those arguments are problematic in the (...) various ways in which they suppose usefulness and explicitly or implicitly take extra-philosophical views of idleness. (shrink)

In this article, I defend a democratic form of the productivist welfare state. I argue that this form of the state can best cope, theoretically and practically, with the diversity of deeply morally pluralistic democratic societies for two reasons. First, the justification of this form of the state rests solely on general facts about human nature, basic human needs, and efficiency considerations in a world of moderately scarce resources. Second, this state does not aim to promote a specific view of (...) justice, but human flourishing more generally, expressed in terms of individual and collective productivity. The proposed democratic productivist welfare state supports its citizens up to the level that allows them to develop and exercise their talents and abilities without providing incentives for free riding. I argue that, under the specific empirical circumstances that I describe, in particular certain informational restrictions concerning the precise productive and destructive capacities of the members of society in practice and the soundness of the Aristotelian principle, this goal may best be achieved in practice by the introduction of an unconditional basic income at subsistence level, if society is sufficiently developed economically to provide such an income. On productivist grounds, such an unconditional subsistence income also addresses, pragmatically and partially, the problem of historical injustices against the weakest members of society and provides all group members with the means for democratic participation. (shrink)

Cet article révèle qu’au cœur du débat effervescent sur le revenu de base inconditionnel (RBI), où s’affirment pourtant parmi les plus fortes utopies et revendications en matière de liberté, s’observe, tant du côté des opposants que des partisans de l’idée, « le triomphe de l’ animal laborans » annoncé par Hannah Arendt (1983). Soulignant l’incohérence des plaidoyers pro-RBI qui résulte de leur recours à l’ animal laborans, de même que les dangers que fait encourir ce présupposé anthropologique à la viabilité (...) des sociétés démocratiques, nous concluons en montrant en quoi la défense du RBI peut, à certaines conditions, constituer une opportunité exceptionnelle pour détrôner l’ animal laborans de la doxa contemporaine et faire advenir des postulats alternatifs salvateurs. (shrink)

Introduction Conceptual Distinctions: Work, Labor, Employment, Leisure The Value of Work and the ‘Anti-Work’ Critique Work, Meaning, and Dignity Work and Distributive Justice Work and Contributive Justice Work and Productive Justice Work and its Future BIBLIOGRAPHY .