Equality of opportunity and the precarization of labour markets
| Date | 01 April 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885117738116 |
| Author | Simon Birnbaum |
| Published date | 01 April 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
E J P T
European Journal of Political Theory
2021, Vol. 20(2) 187–207
Equality of opportunity and
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885117738116
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Simon Birnbaum
Institute for Futures Studies, Sweden
Abstract
How can we equalize opportunities while respecting people’s freedom? According to a
view that I call libertarian resourcism, people’s fair shares of resources should normally
take the form of unconditional, individual cash endowments, thereby supporting the
freedom to do whatever they might want to do. This view, of which Van Parijs’
philosophy of ‘real freedom for all’ is the clearest and most well-known example, has
become a powerful weapon to criticize work conditionality as unfair and perfectionistic
(or illiberal), and to motivate political struggles for the emancipation of the precariat.
However, similar views are also expressed in many other justifications of basic income
that stress the strategic importance of exit-based empowerment. This article argues
that the reliance of these theories on concepts and assumptions of libertarianism makes
them ill-equipped to justify core requirements of social empowerment, and to identify
the forms of agency needed to sustainably advance the radical objectives they favour.
The implication of this is not to reject the link between social justice and unconditional
resource endowments but to dissociate the justification and design of such measures
from libertarian ways of thinking.
Keywords
Basic income, equal opportunity, exit, libertarianism, resourcism, work
How should we specify the idea of equality of opportunity in a way that respects
people’s freedom? In recent years, the global spread of workfare has been exposed
to justice-based criticism. Workfare makes access to welfare benefits conditional on
the fulfilment of stringent work-related participation requirements (such as man-
datory training and intensive job search under supervision). While justice is often
invoked in defense of such requirements, critics have associated workfare practices
with discipline, domination and inequality. Such systems tend to rely heavily on
Corresponding author:
Simon Birnbaum, Institute for Futures Studies, Box 591, 101 31 Stockholm, Sweden.
Email: simon.birnbaum@iffs.se
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European Journal of Political Theory 20(2)
bureaucratic discretion in decisions with an immediate impact on vulnerable peo-
ple’s access to the basic necessities of life (Lovett, 2010), and impose strict behav-
ioural demands on the disadvantaged not experienced by the better off, thereby
creating or reproducing deep asymmetries of power and status (Attas and De-
Shalit, 2004).
An increasingly popular alternative strategy for supporting the values of free-
dom and equal opportunity through welfare state reform is offered by radically
universalist forms of (re)distribution, such as unconditional basic income (Van
Parijs, 1995) or basic capital (Ackerman et al., 2006; White, 2015). A common
objective in such pleas for providing each member of society with unconditional
payments, i.e. on an individual basis and without any form of work requirements
or means test, is to prevent the productivity gains of rapid automatization
and technological development from accumulating in the hands of a few
(cf. Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2014; Piketty, 2015).
Another important source of concern is the trend towards increasing inequality
of access to stable and adequately paid jobs and a general precarization of working
conditions. The latter refers to the process by which a growing number of people
tend to lack predictability and security in their working lives, and more broadly,
‘move in and out of jobs that give little meaning to their lives’ (Standing, 2011).
These developments have been widely accompanied by the exclusion of a greater
proportion of workers from access to social insurance, where employment is the
key to eligibility, and – in effect – an increasing role for the residual systems of
means-tested benefits (Atkinson, 2015; Colin and Palier, 2015).
A straightforward way of conceptualizing equality of opportunity in a way that
speaks to these concerns and experiences defines people’s level of (dis-)advantage
by focusing on the value of external resources or ‘gifts’ to which people are so very
unequally positioned to receive, such as natural resources, inherited assets or even
privileged jobs. Combining the argument that all are entitled to an equal or fair
share of external resources that people receive due to a wide range of contingencies,
such as family background and social connections, with the liberal view that they
should be free to use their shares for ‘whatever they might want to do’ generates a
strong case for unconditional cash endowments to all (Van Parijs, 1995, 2001a,
2001b, 2009; Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017). I shall here refer to this account
of equal opportunity as libertarian resourcism. It is this particular interpretation of
how to equalize opportunities while respecting freedom, and its principled attack
on behavioural conditionality, that I will address in this article.
In spite of its many attractions, I will argue that libertarian resourcism offers an
inadequate basis for empowering the disadvantaged and guiding egalitarian aims,
mainly due to its overly individualistic interpretation of disadvantage and its heavy
reliance on cash-centred measures. Hence, it fails to detect and address important
sources of injustice and (on its own) to offer a viable path for justifying or realizing
the egalitarian values that it claims to support.
Philippe Van Parijs’ theory of ‘real freedom for all’, the most comprehensive and
well-known philosophical justification of basic income, is clearly libertarian-
resourcist in this sense. However, the idea of libertarian resourcism is an important
Birnbaum
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point of reference also in discussions of basic income that are not directly anchored
in the principles of libertarian resourcism. Indeed, I will argue that other
(supposedly non-libertarian) justifications of basic income, based on freedom as
non-domination (Lovett, 2010) or status freedom (Widerquist, 2013), incorporate
important elements of the libertarian-resourcist position and therefore run into
similar difficulties.1 Considering the major impact of libertarian-resourcist ideas
on the political philosophy and activism associated with basic income and related
proposals, these problems are important to highlight in efforts to clarify the poten-
tial and limitations of such a reform strategy.
The argument is structured as follows. Firstly, I characterize the idea of equal
opportunity as libertarian resourcism and distinguish different versions of that
idea. I then state and defend the social empowerment objection to this view and
show how it applies to Van Parijs’ conception of ‘real freedom for all’. Finally, the
nature and implications of the objection are further explored and clarified by con-
sidering a series of possible replies.
What is libertarian resourcism?
I shall use the label libertarian resourcism to describe an account of equal oppor-
tunity that accepts the following three claims:
(a) Control self-ownership is a necessary requirement of freedom.
(b) The central measure of people’s level of advantage (for the purposes of egali-
tarian justice) is the value of the external resource endowment they have been
given, as reflected by the interplay of supply and demand in a well-functioning
market.
(c) There is a presumption for unconditional cash endowments as the best way to
equalize opportunities and empower the disadvantaged. Radical deviations
from such a strategy would be overly intrusive and/or fail to respect people’s
freedom to live by different conceptions of the good life.
The work of Philippe Van Parijs offers a clear, compelling and thoroughly
elaborated form of libertarian resourcism which has been widely employed to jus-
tify strong political conclusions about how to address inequalities in real-world
societies. His position will therefore be my main example throughout this article.
However, as already mentioned, libertarian resourcism is meant to capture a way
of thinking that plays a role also in other prominent justifications of such a reform
strategy (as I will discuss below).
Even though Van Parijs has referred to his conception of justice as ‘real liber-
tarianism’, it is important to understand that it is not libertarian in any traditional
or orthodox sense. Van Parijs favours far-reaching redistribution on grounds of
freedom, and his project has evolved in close dialogue with Marxian ideas. Thus,
the term libertarian is here used to describe a specific interpretation (rather than a
critique) of the egalitarian ideal and of how we may counteract socio-economic
inequalities in a freedom-respecting manner.
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European Journal of Political Theory 20(2)
Starting with (a), the forms of self-ownership endorsed in this tradition vary in
strength. Van Parijs’ theory incorporates an interpretation of self-ownership that is
weak rather than strong. Specifically, he ascribes moral priority to the control
rights of self-ownership that cover the right to decide how to use one’s mind and
body. This is – for example – violated by forced labour (including not only slavery
but also direct taxation of people’s ‘internal’ or ‘personal’ resources or talents, as
distinct from taxation of the external assets that people control)....
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