Naturally Radical?: A Response to Kimberly Klinger's 'Species-Being in Crisis: UBI and the Nature of Work'

Abstract

In this response to Kimberly Klinger’s “Species-Being in Crisis: UBI and the Nature of Work,” John Carl Baker ties Klinger’s analysis to past Marxist debates about human nature and contemporary appeals to human nature by a resurgent US left. While sympathetic to the idea that UBI speaks to a human desire for free productive activity, he critiques the notion that UBI necessarily illuminates the exploitative wage relations of capitalism. Baker proposes that regardless of the validity of Marxist conceptions of human nature, it is the materialist analysis of social relations that must take primacy in any examination of UBI or similar left policy prescriptions.

Keywords

• marxism
• human nature
• universal basic income
• democratic socialism
• historical materialism