This debate or “Critical Exchange” section from Contemporary Political Theory includes the following four articles discussing the book, the Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow: “We make our own history, but in circumstances of other people’s choosing: intercultural materialism in The Dawn of Everything” by Enzo Rossi, “Questions about The Dawn of Everything” by Karl Widerquist and Grant McCall, “Freedom and the bureaucratic state” by Annelien de Dijn, and “On historical materialism and The Dawn of Everything” by (...) David Wengrow. (shrink)

This article argues the following points. The Hobbesian hypothesis, which we define as the claim that all people are better off under state authority than they would be outside of it, is an empirical claim about all stateless societies. It is an essential premise in most contractarian justifications of government sovereignty. Many small-scale societies are stateless. Anthropological evidence from them provides sufficient reason to doubt the truth of the hypothesis, if not to reject it entirely. Therefore, contractarian theory has not (...) done what it claims to do: it has not justified state sovereignty to each person subject to it by demonstrating that they benefit from that authority. To be justified in contractarian terms, states have to do something to improve the living standards of disadvantaged people under their rule. (shrink)

“Functional finance” is an economic theory within the Post Keynesian school of thought. Especially in the form of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), it has begun to have two big but opposite effects on the debate over Universal Basic Income (UBI). Some people state MMT in an exaggerated way that implies the government can spend all it wants on UBI or anything else without ever raising taxes or borrowing money as if government spending had no limits of any kind. Other people (...) refer to MMT while arguing that any effort to maintain a livable level of UBI is unsustainable. This article discusses the functional finance implications for the cost and sustainability of UBI, arguing that neither of those exaggerated implications are correct. MMT doesn’t free us for the concern for how to support UBI with taxes, but neither does it give reason to believe UBI is any less sustainable. (shrink)

Abstract: The State of Nature, Prehistory, and Mythmaking Karl Widerquist This chapter provide an overview of two books, in which Grant S. McCall and I name, define, and debunk the following false claims that still play important roles in contemporary political theories although they are not always defined and defended explicitly: 1. The Hobbesian hypothesis: sovereign states and/or the liberal private property rights system benefits everyone (or at least harms no one) relative to how well they could reasonably expect to (...) live in the state of nature—i.e. a society lacking one or both of these institutions. 2. The appropriation hypothesis: private property in the form of liberal ownership rights develops naturally while collective, communal, common, or government-held property rights systems do not. 3. The natural inequality hypothesis: inequality is natural and inevitable, i.e. economic, social, and/or political equality cannot exist and/or cannot be created without a significant loss in negative freedom. 4. The market-freedom hypothesis: a market economy (and/or capitalism) is more consistent with negative freedom than any other economic system. The third and fourth of these claims are not obviously claims about prehistoric or small-scale societies, but they are universal claims about all societies and so they include claims about even the most remote and distant societies from contemporary thinking. (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)