Basic Income: Real Freedom for All?

Abstract

Philippe van Parijs’s ambitious book Real Freedom For All? What (If Anything) Can Justify Capitalism? (1995) develops three arguments. First, he backs ‘real freedom for all’ as the appropriate goal for the left-of-centre in the modern age. Second, he argues that (with modifications) a universal basic income at the maximum sustainable rate is the morally most just and strategically most effective route to this goal. Third, he contends that capitalism provides a more favourable socio-economic framework than socialism for achieving a high basic income and thus maximising real freedom for all.

Published as ‘Justifying Basic Income?’ in the inaugural issue of Imprints, vol. 1, no. 1, 1996.