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.
Articles by John Carl Baker
John Carl Baker holds a PhD in cultural studies from George Mason University. His works of commentary and analysis on nuclear weapons issues have appeared in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Jacobin, New Republic, and other publications. The views expressed here are his own and not those of his employer.