Republicanism and Basic Income Etudes
Par Antoni Domènech et Daniel Raventós, Université de Barcelone
![mini logo colloque républicanisme](/images/colloque.jpg)
Texte associé aux travaux du colloque Républicanismes et droit naturel qui s'est tenu les 5 et 6 juin 2008.
David Casassas suggests that the proposal for a universal and unconditional Basic Income of citizenship and the republican political tradition are linked since, for historical republicanism, the connection between freedom and property is essential. And it is true that this connection is so fundamental that republican freedom actually derives from property, in other words, from the material independence of individuals. Upholding this republican idea that having to survive cum permissu superiorum was the clearest sign of non-freedom, Marx pointed out in a celebrated passage of “Critique of the Gotha Programme” that the man “who possesses no other property than his labour power must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the slave of other men who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labour. He can only work with their permission, hence live only with their permission.” However, we are not arguing that the relationship between what is now understood by “republicanism” and Basic Income is a simple one, as we shall discuss in the following four points.