 Okay, and obviously the question of automation and technology has become one of the key issues of our age Which is often characterized as a digital age in the sense of obviously one which society now dominated by smartphones By social networks artificial intelligence, and there's obviously a plethora of Revolutionary potential out there in terms of this technology The idea of driverless cars virtual reality 3d printing, you know All of this makes possible the idea of a world of super abundance and of a world of abundance of leisure time as well But as the title of this of this session suggests There's actually a lot of hope and fear at the same time in equal measure on this sort of question on the one hand You have these futurologists whose imaginations kind of run wild when they when they see the potential technology That's out there the possibility of thought full automation as it's called or basically an end to work But then alongside this there's also a lot of apprehension and anxiety on this question You see phrases like technological unemployment the idea that basically Robots are gonna take all of our jobs a race against the machine as it's sometimes been called And in fact this comes from the idea that obviously yeah We can see that jobs are being lost to machinery to technology to robots and so forth and Increasingly this technological change is happening It's such a fast pace that people are being left behind and unable to kind of keep up with this ever accelerating treadmill In fact there was one study done in Oxford I think Quite recently where two academics I think they they came up with an estimate that in America by 2030 Something like 50% of jobs currently existing could be automated away And that's a lot of that is not just the kind of traditional manufacturing jobs that have already been lost largely Not lost to China and to globalization but actually lost to to machinery and automation Not just those but also now a kind of sweeping Job losses through the you know offices through white collar jobs as artificial intelligence You know and these sorts of technologies make it much easier to replace People in accounting and even law firms and things like this These are the kind of jobs that are predicted to be under threat over the next decade And I think it's within this kind of context that you see the emergence of the idea of a universal basic income The idea of that just in brief is that it's an unconditional payment Made to every citizen regardless of their age their wealth or their employment status That's that's basically in a in a sentence what universal basic income means But what you see with UBI is that actually the opinions about it are equally as split as the kind of hopes and fears around technology and automation in general on the one hand you see a Section of the left in particular and progressives who kind of think of the idea of UBI as a step towards Some sort of fully automated luxury communism as the phrase has sometimes been used In other words a kind of a society where because of this technology we can fulfill Marx's maxes Maxim that everyone can work according to their ability and take according to their needs Some people see UBI is almost like a stepping stone onto that path And also it's been argued on the left that UBI in the very short term at least would would guarantee a kind of bigger Safety net of a better welfare state that workers could fall back on And this in turn would kind of Liberate them to go on strike more to or to be able to pursue other Creative paths and so what they would give work as some sort of better bargaining Position in the workplace against the bosses However on the other side you do also see a lot of people noting that this UBI Policy has been also proposed by some of the most ardent kind of libertarian right-wingers people who see it as basically An attempt to kind of get away with the bureaucracy of the welfare status They see it better to just scrap all the kind of public services and the and the means tested benefits and so forth and instead Just give a poultry amount to everyone Behind and use that basically as some sort of fig leaf behind which the kind of the general dynamics of capitalism the general Exploitation in the workplace can continue at full speed And in fact you have seen throughout history the idea of UBI being proposed by the right wing In fact Milton Friedman was was in Feynman favor of something similar and a negative income tax He called it but the idea was generally the same So I think the fact that you see on both these questions and automation in UBI Which are linked together through as I've discussed that I think it's The fact that you see the public opinion kind of split and the mood towards these things split I think it reflects the fact that in general there is not a a Marxist position really a Marxist approach taken in Analyzing these questions. I think what you often see is that the things like technology in UBI When the when they're talked about in in any of the kind of the mainstream press and so will mainstream commentators It's always from a point of looking at it in isolation looking at technological progress as some sort of Kind of process that the progress that takes on the place kind of independently of the rest of society is though There's just you know, obviously there is its own laws It's like there's there is there there is a kind of self-contained logic if you like within technological progress But I think divorcing this and the question of UBI as well from the general political Context within which we see them within the economic quite context within which we see them You arrive at this kind of confused and contradictory Position I think we have to really focus when we're looking at technological progress and economic demands like UBI economic reforms We we can't divorce them from these wider political questions We have to raise those political questions say you know at the end of the day as with all reforms Who's going to pay for UBI? Who owns and controls the technology in society in the first place and most importantly in whose interest are any of these things? Being brought about and I think to understand and answer that we have to go back and take a Marxist approach and look at actually What Marx himself wrote on this kind of questions? You know Marx was there very prophetic in many respects if you read his economic writings a lot of the Kind of discussions that are taking place today We're already answered in embryo by Marx in things like capital where he discusses as a whole chapter Actually dedicated to the question of machinery and already looking at this question You know you already had movements like the Luddites where with these these mass movements of kind of rebellions of workers against the machines Against the the automated looms and so forth the mechanized looms and and they saw that as a threat to their jobs And they smashed the machinery up that showing the kind of fear They had that these machines were going to take their jobs and it's very similar obviously to what we see today and Marx commented on those movements at the time and And what Marx said about machinery is is obviously we got to see it within its economic context Which is capitalism the system that we live in capitalism a system where? What we have is is a generalized production in exchange of commodities a system of production for profit and these commodities These products that are produced for exchange. They have a value They have a relative value compared to other commodities and that is dependent Marx says on the socially necessary labor time in other words the amount of labor time within a Historical epoch given the current levels of technology and education and so forth There is a value associated amount of a socially necessary labor time gone into creating these commodities Are the average time taken based on the kind of current levels of technology and technique? And the key to understanding this is obviously the fact that labor itself is the source of all value You know things don't have value if they don't require any labor time put into them and Marx didn't just talk about the labor of the actual process itself Also the labor contained within the raw materials and the technology that comes before Any any given production process in other words, you know There's all the all the commodities that go into producing new commodities the raw materials the machines all of these Transfer their value over into the new commodity Marx called it dead labor can congealed or crystallized dead labor from the past And in this respect machinery does not create any value itself But rather transfers its value onto the new product and so you know, it's it's human labor itself It's it's mankind's force on on its world around us that creates value and and the machines cannot produce any value and that's very key because as Capitalism is a system of production for profit and profit Marx explains is derived ultimately from the unpaid labor of the working class and And if machines therefore cannot create profit for the capitalists, you know it's only the the the The application of labor and the production of surplus value value above and beyond what's paid back to the workers in the form of wages That can create profits and that's a key idea that will come back to in a minute Now it's its competition obviously in the drive to make more profits that chases the capitalists Not only across the world to create a world market But also forces them to reinvest their surplus reinvest their profits into new machinery into new technology You know into new science and research and development and so forth And the aim of that is obviously to try and reduce the costs overall to replace labor with machines to increase the kind Of efficiency and productivity of production and if they can do that as an individual capitalist They can reduce the labor time of their products below that socially necessary average In other words, they can sell at a lower price than what's offered on the market out compete their competitors and And push their fellow capitalists out of business and so therefore that's the that's the drive if you like to to invest in In all of this machinery and so forth It's it's it's ultimately to try and to increase the productivity to increase the amount of wealth the amount of products that can be produced in a given amount of time and And that and as I say that's that's caused this this this in its heyday What was actually a very progressive process under capitalism marks actually if you see the communist manifesto He's full of you know full of praise for capitalism in saying it's it's achieved wonders faster passing Egyptian pyramids and Roman aqueducts You know he had a great reverence for for capitalism as a progressive system in its heyday that was this drive this Competition forcing the capitalist to invest and create the you know incredible wonders in terms of technology and a super abundance of wealth That obviously we see around us today The problem is and the capitalism because capitalism is fundamentally a system of private ownership Over this technology over the means of production by which wealth is produced The problem arises that this whole process of technological development of Investment in new machinery and new technology all of this process occurs in a very unplanned in a very anarchic way in a very contradictory way as a result Where you have technology being introduced not in the interests of society as a whole not in order to free up workers in terms of Their leisure time reduce the hours of the working week and reduce the burden on the working class But rather this technology is being introduced fundamentally as I said to improve Productivity from the point of view of the capitalist to improve their profits and and make them super profits to capture new markets That's really the basis behind all Drive for new technology in societies that the fact that it might along the way Provide some so sort of social benefit is is accidental as far as the capitalist concerned and And this obviously leads to the reason why you get these kind of hopes and fears about technology expresses the contradictory process of technological development of how it's introduced through this invisible hand through the market rather than in a planned and rational way and in fact the the capitalists themselves even have a term for this Schumpeter an Austrian Economist a kind of forefather of kind of neoliberal economics, you know a pair of kind of Hayek and these types He came up with the term creative destruction to describe how capitalism Progresses in this way. In other words, he saw What what capitalism would do is yes, it would create new jobs. Yes, it would create new industries But it would first have to destroy the old ones to free up labor to free up capital and so forth And therefore you thought the market was the best way of doing this it would allocate resources in the most efficient way and obviously just a look back at history shows how Utopia in this idea was and how divorce and reality it was, you know Look at look at what's happened in terms of obsolete industries like mining in Britain You know this was not closed down in a kind of you know in a calm Gradual way in which the workers were retrained and then moved into new jobs But rather you had the full force of the state destroying the miners industry closing down the mines And and trying to break the whole back of the labor movement and this it's and it's left obviously a scar of unemployment In these regions and the same is true in a lot of places today you see You know this in Wales right now for example the steel industries at Port Talbot closed down as a result of the glut of Steel that's produced on a world scale, you know this huge overproduction of steel actually That's found its way onto the world market and the jobs there cannot be kept in order to provide for other things other socially necessary things but rather just closed down and and those industries are left And that the cut those whole communities in fact are left behind So you see yes, there is new jobs and technology created But it's always for the benefit of the 1% if you like or even the 0.01% They're the ones who benefit from these productivity gains and from this wealth that's created and Simultaneously obviously millions are left behind a left on the scrap heap and a forced actually into very precarious jobs into very low pay And very low productive jobs. In fact, I think the fact that you see today These two things conditioning one another, you know on the one hand We've got these incredibly productive industries in terms of like the tech monopolies that kind of dominate a lot of the global economy today the Googles and the apples and the Facebook's of this world that are worth billions and And have been sitting on cashpiles of billions on the one hand They are incredibly productive in terms of the value Producing with a relatively small workforce, but it's a very educated workforce You know, it's a very elite workforce that's kind of plucked from the best universities and so forth and And they are earning a bomb, you know, it's not only the executives, but some of these very high-end workers there But at the same time the jobs that they've displaced the people Displaced by the the kind of technologies They're creating are going into this gig economy that is in fact run by the same Technology firms, you know, the the ubers and the deliverers of this world, which are actually very low productive jobs when you look at it Like why are we paying people to cycle around? London often like risking their lives given how fast they're going and ignoring all the traffic, you know That that that that is very low productive work, you know Literally back breaking work and on a very low pay as well So it shows you how the two things have conditioned each other the the productivity gains in the hands of the 1% Have meant to this general lowering of living standards and the degradation of work for the rest It's it's in fact the two as the two is I say condition each other because the the the what marks called the reserve army of labor That is created by by this kind of technological unemployment the fact that there are Machines that can work instead of Workers to do these jobs It obviously puts a downward pressure on wages in general alongside the political attacks on the unions the Globalization and the kind of competition of workers worldwide all of this is put a downward pressure on wages to the extent That actually it's now in fact cheaper in many cases to use an army of low-paid workers Then it is to invest in a machine in the first place Why re-kit your whole factory with a new productive process if you can just get in a load of people on zero-hour Contracts in an Amazon warehouse or something like that to just literally be picking up the the boxes and taking them from A to B That's that's that shows you how how these two processes condition each other and actually it's a process that marks himself commented on in Capital I think I think it's in chapter 15 the one on machinery if you want to learn more you can buy an excellent book over there called understanding capital by yours truly and Rob so And it's got obviously highlights all the sections in that chapter where marks talks about this process where he actually Predicts and says you know you can get this situation where capitalism itself Becomes the barrier to the deployment of technology where it becomes more Efficient if you like it becomes more More cost-effective rather from the point of view of the capitalist It's rational from their point of view to not invest in machinery to not invest in technology and to just use this army of cheap Labour that they've helped to create in the first place and this is all taking place obviously at the same time in the context of a general crisis of overproduction where you've got this This this vast glut of commodities produced on a world scale that cannot be absorbed by the market It cannot be absorbed by the workers themselves on the the measly wages and in fact automation and the replacement of wage labor with Machines exacerbates this process even further. There's actually quite a good I think unfortunately an apocryphal story, but nevertheless quite an interesting story anyway that Demonstrates this point where apparently Henry Ford he of kind of fame for creating kind of automation on a mass scale apparently He was being taken round one of his newly automated factories by a trade union rep and He point Henry Ford pointed at the machines and the robots and he said to the trade union rep kind of very proudly Ha, you know like I'm going to break the back of your union because how are you going to get these? Machines to play pay your union dues to pay your your union membership fees and The union rep just turns around quick as a flash and says yeah But how are you going to get the robots to buy your cars? And that's the point right under capitalism, you know the the the machines Producing this glut of commodities at the end of the day obviously with a human labor involved in it But very minimal, you know increasingly minimal amount of human labor But then how the machines don't need any goods to they're not buying anything They don't get an income and it's the working class which is seeing their conditions eroded over time attacked over time Finding itself increasingly difficult to actually buy back all these goods and in fact under capitalism The working class can never buy back all these goods because of the nature of capitalism and how profit is created in the first place as the unpaid labor of the working class and Expresses if you like the real crisis ridden the inherently crisis-ridden nature of capitalism But understanding that process I think also helps explain Some of these kind of seemingly paradoxical questions that have arisen today. There's a there's a very popular kind of kind of zeitgeist theme within a lot of the the kind of Financial and economic kind of papers and journals now and and it's increasingly kind of being raised elsewhere Which is this idea of the productivity puzzle? There's a lot of a lot of people in the press these days talking about Very clearly actually you can see it in the statistics. This is worrying the capitalists themselves worrying the kind of the ruling class Which is there is a general? stagnation actually taking place in productivity whereas in the past period in you know the 19th century the earlier 20th You had big innovations big technologies making huge leaps forward in terms of technology You know the electricity the railways things like this that massively boosted productivity figures And the last few decades not just since the crisis 2008 But even before that in Britain and America and other advanced capitalist countries You've seen a stagnation of productivity in other words reflecting the fact that You've got exactly this process. I'm talking about going on where it and it seems very paradoxical because on the one hand There's this fear that there's too much automation taking place that we're all about to lose our jobs to robots Already losing our jobs to robots and on the other hand we're being told well Actually, there's not enough technology because productivity stagnated and that the contradiction seems Precisely as it is it seems like a paradox and then that's why they call it the productivity puzzle and all the bourgeois Economists scratch their heads and come up with all sorts of mysterious Explanations for why this might be the case. Maybe it's a statistical error. They say or just some sort of measurement error But it actually comes back to this contradictory way in which technology is being introduced where there are massive Productivity gains and huge amounts of people are being you know made obsolete if you like from the point of view of capitalism But the point is they're not unemployed. They're not just left completely in the scrap They're forced into these very low productivity jobs like the gig economy as I said and that lowers the average productivity across the the whole the whole of Society across the whole economy And that's really the the the long and the short of this puzzle that has the the kind of bourgeois economists You know so confused, but it's very simple if you understand it from from a point of view of of capitalism and how capitalism works in other words it's what Marx describes very clearly as accumulation of wealth at one pole and accumulation of misery and toil at the other that's Fundamentally what this process amounts to and it reflects as I say the contradictory nature of technological progress under capitalism which Engels also talked about in His pamphlet socialism utopian and scientific which I think is also available at the back to buy And it's an excellent pamphlet where in the third chapter he talks about again the development of capitalism historically And he points out something very interesting. He says look There's actually within capitalism despite what the free marketeers always tell you about the free market being the most efficient system He put Engels points out within any capitalist firm There's an enormous level of planning that actually goes on just in the last session We were talking about this in terms of you know in any supermarket that the planning that goes on from the shops and the Supermarkets down to the farms and the factories in terms of you know knowing this kind of supply chain It's incredibly complex knowing how much to vote to order in and so forth of any product and all of that done by Customers themselves obviously you've got self-checkout machines another good example of automation replacing the the tillers who used to be there and And all of that going on It's an incredible level of planning actually when you think about it But obviously within the firm it takes place not to lower the hours of the workers That workers have to work or anything but to increase the profits of the capitalism and between different firms Engels points out Anarchy reigns you have the anarchy of the market where there's no planning at all and it's that kind of That dualism if you like that that contradiction that means that these new technologies and techniques Are not distributed that the gains of them the productivity gains are not distributed across the whole economy And it's within all of this that we see as I say this this so-called solution being proposed particularly on the left of UBI of the universal basic income Which is meant to somehow kind of recompense Obsolete workers and the 99% in society by providing them with some sort of basic unconditional income And it actually stems from an idea proposed long ago by Thomas Paine Who who said who proposed it as a as a basically a tax on the landlords. He said look the generating all this rent from the land and They should they should give some of it back and there should be a tax on the landlords tax on their rents and an income given to all Citizens and actually interestingly Thomas Paine raised it not as a as a revolutionary demand particularly But actually as a way of trying to co-opt the whole of society into the current status quo He said, you know, I'm not trying to get rid of the landlords and their and their kind of parasitic nature Rather, I'm gonna in order to justify having them there in the first place and stop people rebelling against them We're going to attack some of their rents and kind of co-op people in say look You can be a part of our society be a part of you know spear citizen in this in this land, but You know fundamentally the status quo will stay the same the exploiters and the exploited will still exist and I think that's very key to understanding the question of UBI today because UBI is not an automatically progressive policy, you know And in fact, there's no such thing as an automatically progressive policy or an automatically Progressive technology in society. We have to look at these things in terms of who's raising them and in whose interests I think if it was raised as part of a radical left-wing program as part of a general program To improve the lives of ordinary people to improve the conditions of the working class Obviously, UBI would be something that you would support if it was funded by making the rich pay for it by by providing a stronger safety net and Welfare state obviously like any reform we as Marxist would support that Marxist Do not you know reject reforms because they somehow maintain capitalism as there is unfortunately some ultra left types Who call themselves very revolutionary who think that you know You shouldn't even support reforms because it it wet, you know dampens the appetite for revolution or somehow accelerates Conditions to being so bad that you'll have people trying to overthrow capitalism even quicker No, we don't believe that as genuine Marxist fight for any reform Obviously point out that they can only be Guaranteed on the basis of a mass movement that actually goes to abolish capitalism and an over an overthrow capitalism and transform Society along socialist lines So as part of a general left program obviously we would support this as a stepping stone towards that as a Transitional demand if you like in that in that in that process to give confidence the workers to fight to change society But we've also got to see as I say that there's people on the libertarian right-wing who are raising this as I say to provide some sort of Fassad behind which the exploitation the status quo of oppression and an exploitation can continue And in fact continue at an ever greater pace because obviously it gives a veneer Improvement for the workers Meanwhile the bosses can continue to cut wages to you continue to have a austerity on public services and so forth And it doesn't do anything as I say to really challenge fundamentally that question of who owns and controls the power and the economy in society Now as I say some as I said earlier some people who've advocated UBI from the left They put forward it as a as a solution because they say well, you know, it will help people in the gig economy It'll strengthen their position if they're not having to worry about being made unemployed and losing their job and being made You know completely impoverished overnight if they know there's that safety net to fall back on that means they can fight to improve their Conditions it means they can not have to take on the most exploitative jobs and it will improve therefore the general push for better wages across the working class and We've got to say yes, obviously it would do that if it was introduced But you got to ask yourself, you know, this kind of chicken and egg problem here Who would introduce such a UBI in the first place? Who would who what how would you get to have this this nice position this strength and position for the working class in The first place obviously the only way you could introduce such a policy is as a is a as if the state itself introduces it And and what kind of state would do that would have to be a radical left government Putting it in place under pressure from below on the back of a mass movement and the point is that such a government Would already necessarily be In trying to improve workers conditions across the board It would be trying to strengthen the trade union laws strengthen workers rights and so forth and and standing up for workers against the big tech monopolies against the the big businesses and So forth and in other words that kind of economic gain of UBI Can not be divorced from the general question of class struggle of political struggle and political power And the other the other key point is obviously who pays, you know That has to be our question with any demand any reform if we're going to ask whether it's really Being introduced in a progressive way or not is who pays for it a UBI actually Would be enormously expensive and this is obviously raised as one of the criticisms from the right wing I think in Switzerland, they actually had a referendum on the question of UBI Which failed because the there was this hysteria raised about how much Taxes would have to increase and there's other studies that show that in America for example a 10% So at $10,000 a year basic income, which is hardly an enormous amount actually would result in a 10% Increase or 10 percentage point increase in terms of the taxes raised And you'd have to say well Who's gonna pay those taxes because it's very clear already under capitalism that the big tech companies the big Monopolies the banks of they're not willing to pay these taxes already as we've discussed throughout this weekend They're threats to withdraw their money And in fact the people who are most guilty of this tax dodging are actually often the tech companies themselves Like Google and Facebook which are kind of facing court cases over these things and the people who are trying to circumvent the existing Kind of workers rights are people like Uber, you know Look at the the battle that's going on in London right now about the banning of Uber It shows these companies do not respect workers rights They do not respect paying their taxes and they will do anything they can to try and dodge it And it's true. Obviously of the capitalist class in general. So you've got it within that context This crisis of capitalism and the and the big monopolies already Doing everything they can to avoid paying for that crisis. You're having the people on the left saying well Let's have an even bigger shake-up of the welfare state. It's almost kind of a double or nothing sort of approach and And it's and it's it's it's kind of quite utopian in a socialist and utopian socialist sort of sense They've come up with a nice blueprint and imagine it can just fall from the sky because it kind of you know This manner from heaven will just come in because it it makes so much sense in it. It'll benefit everyone and And it comes down to this idea really that somehow the austerity we're seeing the attacks We're seeing are just ideological that the Just the result of nasty capitalists and that somehow you persuade the capitalist to be less nasty to get rid of austerity to get rid of the attacks to Put these sort of things in place because they themselves might benefit a bit from it in other words. There's a reliance here with these kind of demands on On basically kind of a philanthropic philanthropic sort of capitalist, you know reliance on a benevolence of the capitalist class and And on the benevolence of the capitalist state to kind of carry these things out And it really raises again all the questions We've discussed this weekend already about the nature of the state and the capitalism and the fact that obviously It exists not as a neutral entity that exists to kind of protect the majority of people in society But rather in the words of Lenin is ultimately our bodies of men in defense of private property and defense of the the interests of the ruling class and And therefore, you know, you're not going to get The capitalist state, you know the Tory government or any kind of philanthropic Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Introducing these kind of ideas as much as you might have the odd person here and there advocating it In fact, one person who has been quite prominent in this debate is Bill Gates Obviously one of the richest men in the world who's all in favor of giving some of his money away when it's on his terms But I imagine if anyone said right, let's nationalize Microsoft then he'd probably have a problem with that So it shows you how limited the philanthropy really is But what he has suggested interestingly is the idea that you should tax the robots to pay for this Oh, it's very nice. No, don't tax the rich. No, they can keep their money tax the robots Now that's that sounds great, but who are we taxing here? Is there is that are we gonna tax Wally? Are we gonna tax terminator? Like I mean, it's a farcical idea really like these Robots aren't walking around people who have an income that you can tax. There's machinery. There's technology Software in society including software made by Microsoft that is making people redundant because you know Why have why have a secretary anymore when you can have a word process or you know? Google translate and these kind of things You know, there's obviously All of that technology out there that is creating these productivity gains and making workers obsolete But how do you tax that you're gonna tax the software you're gonna tax the individual? You know Computers and so it's a farcical idea and really the only thing it could possibly mean if it means any many It makes any sense at all is if you were to tax the profits derived from the machines and the people who employ them In other words to tax the profits of the rich But obviously that from a capitalist point of view would lead to the opposite of what's intended Because if you tax the rich you tax them for investing and making the process more productive then instead They're gonna rely not on investing in machinery But in on employing that army of labor that low paid labor that low productivity labor that I talked about earlier So rather than actually improving The situation for the majority people you'd end up with a situation where we had even more reliance on low pay and low Productivity in other words what it shows you really is these kind of reformist solutions to try and introduce these sort of reformist measures Always end up actually producing the opposite of what's intended you try and regulate capitalism You don't get a kinder form of capitalism. What you get is the worst of both worlds. You neither get the the kind of The creative destruction if you like of the free market Which the the the libertarians advocate nor would you have a proper planned economy in the way that we would advocate You get the worst of both worlds and it shows you always the limits of trying to solve these sort of problems and highlights the the the kind of dead end of reformism in these in these Processes the point we've got to make is you know, we're not against productivity and automation efficiency The problem obviously arises that the gains of automation only accrue in the in private hands and the losses of any lack of automation also That burden falls on the shoulders of the working class in the form of things like the gig economy And you see this similarly with things like the uber ban actually like the reformist approach in this situation where you've got uber kind of misbehaving trying to bully Local governments and so forth into accepting and bully workers into accepting poor conditions You know the the solution in London has just been to ban this company outright But what have you ended up with? 40,000 jobs potentially at risk and and what a service that's become quite vital to a lot of people has actually also Potentially under threat the the real solution is not just to ban these sort of companies, but say look they should be brought in house They should be brought into public ownership, you know We already have a transport network that actually is but although in Nominally in public hands the put the buses are still privately owned There's private contracts and a lot of the tubes and so forth But nevertheless, there's the potential to bring all of that into public ownership into public hands Why not have an integrated app that allows you to travel around London? On the tubes the bikes the buses and the ride hailing in the the cabs and so whilst also giving workers the right to unionize to form a unionized workforce that can fight for better conditions That would be the real approach to these sort of solutions But it's not raised by the reformist because it raises precisely the kind of questions They're afraid of tackling the question of ownership and so forth and that's really the central problem to UBI It doesn't concentrate on this class question on the question of who owns and controls the technology in society And actually interestingly Marx had this same kind of polemical debate with the reformists of his time Actually, he had it with a group called the lasallians who had produced this Gotha program that he felt necessary to critique And you can buy the critique of the Gotha program somewhere at the back as well I'm sure but in it is very it's very interesting He criticizes the kind of reformist socialists but for saying look you're putting all the emphasis on the question of distribution Constantly talking about distributing the wealth that's already there But why not talk about production? Well instead of talking about the inequality that exists within distribution of wealth Why not talk about the inequality in terms of the means of production by which wealth is produced in the first place? And he says if you tackle that question the inequality of distribution disappears If you have a more equitable distribution of the means of production If you have common ownership over the means of production The means by which new wealth is produced rather than just trying to tax and spend and distribute the wealth that's already out there He says then inequality will automatically kind of wither away And therefore the solution really is not these kind of newfangled new elaborate tax and spend systems like UBI Which fundamentally leave the whole capitalist dynamic The whole capitalist system which is an inherently unequal system In terms of the fact that the profits are derived from the unpaid labor of the working class Capitalism necessarily the wealth of the few depends on the impoverishment and the exploitation of the many Capitalism is an inherently unequal system but instead of challenging that things like UBI These kind of tax and spend it always hits the wrong people actually Even the taxes themselves hit the wrong people because the rich will evade the taxes They will move their money offshore and actually it will end up being the middle classes Who could be one over to the idea of a planned economy Who end up being hit by these kind of systems And so therefore we should say look we're in favor of the rich paying But rather than the only way we're going to get them to pay properly Is actually if we take we expropriate We actually take these technologies these mega monopolies and so forth These multinationals into public ownership and democratic control Now in that respect we've got to be very clear that actually the problem with capitalism Is not so much it's inequality The actual inequality flows it's a symptom really of the whole system as I said And Trotsky pointed this out himself I just want to read a little quote from the Revolution Betrayed He says the fundamental evil of the capitalist system is not the extravagance of the possessing classes However disgusting that may be in itself But the fact that in order to guarantee its right to extravagance The bourgeoisie maintains its private ownership of the means of production Thus condemning the economic system to anarchy and decay I think that very well sums up the problem The problem is not the inequality that is a symptom of the real problem The real thing holding society about our real criticism of capitalism If you like is not simply the horrific which and it is horrific The barbaric inequality that exists in society where 8 billionaires or whatever it is Own as much as the bottom 50% Rather it's the fact that the fact that they in order to get that wealth They have private ownership over the technology They become a barrier to the development of technology of science of industry of society itself And UBI does nothing to fundamentally solve these problems In fact what UBI really shows is it highlights the kind of paradox that exists It highlights the absurdity that exists Where on the one hand you have this technological unemployment This millions of people made obsolete Alongside this kind of millions of other people who are forced into overwork Into precarious jobs The fact that that kind of contradiction exists and that UBI highlights it Really shows you the real problem that's at play here And therefore as I said at best UBI should really be considered a transitional demand If you like something that highlights the absurdity of these contradictions And is linked to the question of the class struggle Of the need for the working class to take power And they take the levers the key levers of the economy into their hands And it really demonstrates as I say the potential for a genuine socialist society A society based on superabundance Based on a plethora of leisure time And that in turn obviously that plethora of leisure time Being the basis for genuine democracy For the genuine involvement of the masses in the running and planning of society And interestingly in the last week actually I think it was last weekend Corbin actually made a speech Jeremy Corbin made a speech on this question of this kind of modern question About technology, about robots and things like Uber and these sort of things And he actually said Labour's programme is going to be, should be To put the robots under workers control and ownership I think that sounds quite nice It sounds a lot better than Bill Gates' tax of robots But we've got to be very clear Corbin's really, he's putting it quite vaguely And actually what I think he means a lot of the time is the idea of co-operatives He's even said Uber should be run as a co-operative by the workers We'd say no let's go further Uber should exist as a, and these sort of services should exist As publicly owned, democratically controlled services Companies and industries and so forth And if we did that, if we put these robots and machinery and technology As part of the plan of production Then we could really put into place Marx's maxim This motto of from each according to their ability Each according to their needs We are not Luddites, we should make that very clear We are not against technological progress We are not against scientific development We're in favour of automation, of innovation And all of these sorts of things But you cannot divorce these from the question of ownership In terms of who runs and controls society I think a democratic plan of production Could share the gains across the whole of society Could share these benefits of technology across society Share the work out, reduce the hours of the working week Down to a minimum Actually Trotsky himself described the idea that You could imagine very clearly a world where all it was taken Was to pull a lever or press a button The whole economy was into action And we sit there kind of reaping the rewards of that But it has to be on the basis of a democratic rational plan Of production, the basis of a socialist plan of production That allows all of us to fulfil our full potential That allows us to live in harmony with the planet around us Between ourselves and the planet Harmony between man and machine And obviously between each other And I think this has to be the kind of revolutionary change That we're fighting for, that we do fight for And this is the programme of the IMT And I hope you'll join us in that fight Leave it there