In the Balance: The Case for a Universal Basic Income in South Africa and Beyond by Hein Marais

CHAPTER 
1
 Behind the Idea of a Universal 
Basic Income

 A decade or so ago, UBI proposals were being met with a roll of the eyes  
and brisk dismissals for being utopian and unrealistic. Today, 
these demands and debates routinely make headlines. Political parties 
and national and city governments with diverse ideological leanings are 
exploring such a mechanism for distributing income support, many to 
the point of launching pilot projects.
 Switzerland staged a national referendum on the issue in 2016: 23% 
of voters (and up to 35% in some cantons) supported the proposal to 
pay every Swiss national a monthly guaranteed universal income of CHF 
2 500.1 The European Citizen's Initiative is campaigning for the introduc-
tion of unconditional basic incomes throughout the European Union. 
Basic income pilot schemes or studies have been launched in cities and 
countries in Africa,2 Asia,3 Europe4 and North America.5 Some trade 
unions support the concept, as do some Silicon Valley billionaires, many 
grassroots activists and utopian socialists, not to mention sworn enemies 

of the welfare state. In South Africa, a growing coalition of civil society 
groups is demanding the introduction of a guaranteed monthly income 
for all adults.
 How can the same basic idea attract support from such disparate 
quarters? Part of the answer is that UBI means different things to different 
sets of interests. It is a highly contested concept, with supporters spread 
enigmatically across the political spectrum – from the post-capitalist 
Left6 to the progressive reformist Left, from mainstream liberals to 
right-wing libertarians. Before considering the merits of a UBI, we need 
to be clear about the concept itself.
 ORIGINS
 The basic idea of a guaranteed income is centuries old. It made an 
appearance in English social philosopher Thomas More’s 1516 novel 
Utopia and in Juan Luis Vives’ On Assistance to the Poor a decade later, 
and it resembles the concept of ‘ground rent’, which the American phil-
osopher and activist Thomas Paine described in his 1796 pamphlet 
Agrarian Justice. Paine regarded agricultural land as ‘natural property’ 
to which every citizen had a claim. However, he also saw an ‘efficiency 
case’ for private ownership of the land. The compromise was to tax pri-
vate ownership of agricultural land (the ‘ground rent’) and to distribute 
that revenue equally to all adults in society – not as charity, but as a right, 
since all  citizens had an original claim to privately owned land.
 Drawing on the thinking of the French socialist Charles Fourier (set out 
in his 1836 text La Fausse Industrie), the philosopher John Stuart Mill 
also argued for a form of guaranteed income in the 1848 edition of his 
textbook, Principles of Political Economy. It would require, he wrote, that 
‘a certain minimum is first assigned for the subsistence of every member 
of the community, whether capable or not of labour’. The concept then 
languished, eclipsed by the rapid expansion of both industrial capitalism 
and the ranks of waged workers – and with that, the rise of radical poli-
tical programmes that centred on transforming relations and conditions 

In the Balance: The Case for a Universal Basic Income in South Africa and Beyond by Hein Marais