Is Basic Income a Legitimate Policy for the 21st Century Welfare State? Reassessing the Idea of Unconditionality Through the Concept of Social Property

Is there still room for a political theory work on the idea of Basic Income (BI) or should one consider that its theoretical grounds are well enough identified and focus on the several issues of its implementation? In this paper, I shall argue that political theory can still offer original thoughts on BI's political legitimacy and desirability – both regarding the existing literature on the matter and the current issues of the 'social question'. Despite its elusive aspect, the idea of BI is increasingly on the political agenda. But beyond this growing public interest, one should keep paying particular attention to the several objections that have been raised against it. Leaning on an understanding of these objections, one should then aim at embodying the idea of BI by contextualising it inside the particular frame of today's welfare stakes. If BI's current research agenda is to be concerned first and foremost with feasibility issues, then legitimacy is the main aspect of political feasibility that can be assessed by political theorists. One could indeed assume that BI will be as much likely to be implemented by political decision-makers as it can be shown to follow on from welfare's fundamental principles. This paper's primary objective will then be to seize BI by thinking about it in the light of social protection's history and to assess its legitimacy regarding the founding principles of the welfare programme. Only then could BI appear as a legitimate policy and one could try to determine why and how it could be more desirable than other policies regarding given issues. But from the particular problematical perspective hereby drawn, this historical investigation's expected usefulness is not to give evidence that some kind of BI had already been thought or experienced before today. It is to give evidence that one can end up in supporting BI on the same theoretical grounds that have been used to support and build welfare states' policies. The main argument will show how the 19th century perspective of 'social property' drawn by French philosopher Alfred Fouillée can enrich the well-known founding argument for unconditionality made by Thomas Paine and its prominent contemporary rebuilding by Philippe Van Parijs. Three hypothesis will be discussed: recasting unconditionality through social property (i) is accurate regarding strategical objectives, (ii) offers an unmatchable synthetic view to unify very different and diverging arguments in favour of BI, and (iii) opens an original way to answer crucial objections to BI's relevance. Eventually, this paper aims at outlining how one could reassess the idea of unconditionality that grounds BI's proposals, in order to give it the strength of an ideal-type of social justice, as legitimate as the existing ones of insurance and assistance.