Benoît Hamon, Andrew Yang, Bernie Sanders, the Primary System, and UBI (the little post that grew)

“A paradox: the candidate designated by the socialist primary did not want to be the candidate of the socialists, but rather of an alternative alliance of the left wing of the Socialist Party and the Ecologists.”

This perhaps sounds like a thinly disguised parable about the Bernie Sanders approach to the Democratic Party. It is meant to be. But that was in fact the ultimate conclusion of Jean-Christophe Cambadélis (“the establishment”), chair of the Socialist Party, after their presidential primary in 2017 (Cambadélis, p. 110). The victor was Benoît Hamon, a member of the left wing, who spent the first month (out of only three) of his presidential campaign in trying to unify the various separatist left-wing parties into one victorious coalition. That effort was doomed to failure with Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the head of La France Insoumise (LFI), the gauche de la gauche. Mélenchon had genuine disagreements with Hamon, on the European Union for example, and ultimately ran a good campaign that outpolled Hamon. However, Hamon was able to form an alliance with Yannick Jadot, who had won the presidential primary of the EELV (environmental) party, and who supported Hamon instead of running against him.

In fact the Hamon candidacy was a disaster for the Socialist Party, especially down-ballot; they went from 279 seats in the National Assembly to only 30 seats (out of 577), and have been trying to pick up the pieces ever since–difficult, since many of their leading figures were defeated, even as early as the first round (The Local, June 12, 2017). Others declined to support Hamon–most notably former Prime Minister Manuel Valls.

Hamon’s strategy, of taking a sharp turn to the Left, also had the effect of leaving the center lane open for Emmanuel Macron, who picked up many centrist and conservative Socialists. (There are indeed conservative socialists; Macron himself was one of them). Hamon has now left politics for the time being, and perhaps forever, after unsuccessfully trying to start up his own political party.

This disastrous result led to many questions in France about the worth and validity of primaries. In the United States, of course, the chief problem is the system of rolling primaries that gives undue weight to early states, essentially discarding many candidates before some highly populated states–my state, New York, for example–have a chance to weigh in. The French system differs, in that all of France gets to vote on two national dates–the first round to determine the two top vote-getters, who are then pitted directly against each other in the second round. The French have multiple parties, so this system is used in all their elections (except for the European Parliament); in the United States, there are multiple candidates for primaries, and so this sort of two-round national vote would make more sense than the messy process we currently have.

The Socialist Party, however, has long had some serious qualms about primaries in general. First, the primary places undue emphasis on the program of the candidate instead of the program of the party as a whole. The result is that the president may well be fighting elements of his own party in his effort to get things done. Second, the primary weakens the party structure: the militants, or activists, are outweighed by more casual–and in many cases, less loyal–voters.

Another problem is that the primary system, because of relatively low turnout, is subject to influence by highly motivated groups who are energized by a single issue. In 2017, and on the other side of the aisle, Les Républicains (LR) saw the surprise victory of François Fillon, the most conservative of their candidates, who was propelled in part by an activist social conservative group set in motion by the same-sex marriage act of 2013. He, too, was at odds with many of the politicians in his party–many of whom, including Macron’s prime minister Édouard Philippe, left the LRs and joined Macron’s party in the center lane. The LRs did not fare so badly in the National Assembly, relatively speaking, going from 199 to 104.

Of course one could also point out the virtue of primaries: they allow the electorate to compare the various candidates, they give the victor an enormous boost, and they allow for new ideas to be brought forward–many of them rejected the first time they are tried out.

That’s where Andrew Yang comes in.

Benoît Hamon ran on a program of revenu universel, a form of the policy known as Universal Basic Income (UBI). His competitors in the primary also adopted some form of this–Manuel Valls, who was ultimately pitted against him in the second round, called his version a “base revenue,” not universal but rather a “fusion” of all aid programs L’Expresse, October 28, 2016).

Yang calls his version “the Freedom Dividend,” describing it on his website as “a universal basic income of $1,000/month, $12,000 a year, for every American adult over the age of 18.  This is independent of one’s work status or any other factor. This would enable all Americans to pay their bills, educate themselves, start businesses, be more creative, stay healthy, relocate for work, spend time with their children, take care of loved ones, and have a real stake in the future.”  And after some details, he reminds us of that obvious lesson that we keep forgetting: people have to have money to buy things, in order to keep the economy going: “Putting money into people’s hands and keeping it there would be a perpetual boost and support to job growth and the economy.”Yang2020 Campaign site; see also Yang, wayback machine)

Andrew Yang introduced his personal trial run of this policy at the September 12, 2019 debate:

Buttigieg displayed a good sense of comic timing. But while the introduction of this idea was a little ham-handed, the meaning of the program can be more easily understood by one of his campaign commercials:

In this ad, Yang’s campaign is highlighting an all too common experience. Life seems stable, until a sudden emergency–whether job loss, accident, or illness–sets off a cascade of bad alternatives. Sell the house? Ask the daughter to drop out of college? Despite the obviously temporary nature of this family’s need, however, Yang plans for everyone to get the dividend; it will not be means-tested. And since the poverty line is currently just below $12,000 a year, all Americans would be lifted out of “gross poverty,” if not into a comfortable life (Yang, War on Normal People, p. 166).

In addition, Yang argues that the $12,000/year dividend would “permanently grow the economy” and would increase the labor force by upwards of four million people (Yang, War on Normal People, p. 169). The key points here, to be taken up just below, are that Yang believes his policy will stimulate growth; and that he believes that growth is a good thing.

The obvious question is how one might pay for such a dividend, though in an earlier debate Kamala Harris, asked how Democrats would pay for their proposals, sharply responded: “I hear that question, but where was that question when the Republicans and Donald Trump passed a tax bill that benefits the top 1%?” (The Fiscal Times, June 28, 2019). Where indeed.

Yang has estimated the cost at about $1.3 trillion per year, “on top of existing welfare programs, most of which would be folded into the plan.” (Yang, p. 170). That last phrase leaves things rather unclear in terms of how much would be spent, but the spirit of the proposal, at least, in canceling some welfare provisions and folding them into the dividend, would theoretically give people in need a certain amount of choice in terms of how they spend their money, and less governmental supervision; and would tide over those going through momentary hardships without forcing them into the welfare bureaucracy. Yang proposes a VAT, or value-added tax, as the way to get there (Yang, p. 170).

Yang’s The War on Normal People, is a relentlessly grim story–we’re all losing our jobs to the inexorable march of robots, even those of us in white collar professions who thought we were safe–but written in an oddly breezy, cheerful style. The story itself has elements that are visible to all: the hollowing out of small towns, the mass exodus of young people, the constant stress of those left behind, surrounded by the dead hulks of abandoned storefronts and old Victorian homes that are slowly sinking into disrepair–I see it here, in central New York.

Yang also invokes a growing divide, even a physical one, between rich and poor. “I look at my friends’ children,” he says, “and many of them resemble unicorns: brilliant, beautiful, socially precocious creatures who have gotten the best of all possible resources since the day they were born. I imagine them in 10 or 15 years traveling to other parts of the country, and I know that they are going to feel like, and be received as, strangers in a strange land. . . . They may feel they have nothing in common with the people before them” (Yang, p. 99). This could well be a description of the responses of French court nobility to the peasants in the countryside, just before the revolution.

Yang is at his most effective in discussing the costs, both to body and soul, of a condition of precarity; he describes the “lived experience of normal Americans, who operate in a perpetual state of scarcity. The average American lurches from paycheck to paycheck with no financial cushion, spending significant bandwidth scrambling to stay one step ahead of their bills . . . Their paychecks are not only modest but highly variable due to unpredictable shifts and being paid cash fees for hourly work . . .” (Yang, p. 105). Poverty kills. Stress kills. The inequalities are reflected in declining life spans.

Universal Basic Income (UBI) has many meanings, ranging from the redistribution of wealth produced by industrialized societies, to (at its most conservative) a means of consolidating all assistance programs into one. Proponents differ on the question of who gets the dividend–all, or some, based on certain criteria? (See this critique of Yang’s version: The Week, September 23, 2019).

Hamon, who wanted his version of UBI to encompass everyone eventually, started more slowly with two selected groups: those on RSA; and young people.  The RSA (Revenu de Solidarité Active) was a program, passed in 2009, that insured that those who were unemployed would not see their income level drop when they began work, because of loss of benefits French-Property.com, February 17, 2009). It was to ensure a minimum “floor” below which income could not fall; and it also clearly subsidized employers who paid too little, very much like the Speenhamland system in early industrializing England (Encyclopedia Britannica), or Walmart today (Reuters, May 25, 2018), or the “mini-jobs” of Germany (The Guardian, August 21, 2012).  Hamon said he would round up the RSA to bring it to 600 euros per month, distributed automatically to all those who were eligible.  He also would provide the revenu universel to young people, 18-25, to allow them to find their footing in the labor market.  “Young people alternate wage-earning, precarity, training, short contracts”; this income for seven years would be an “act of confidence” in the youth of France (Le Monde, January 4, 2017).  He had estimated that this program would cost 45 billion euros, which he would finance by means of a new combined property and wealth tax (Le Monde, January 4, 2017).

The moderation of his proposal was deceptive; for in fact, Hamon embraced a far more radical vision of the world than that shared by either Yang or Bernie Sanders, both of whom assume the current framework of economic development and job growth.  Hamon, instead, argued that in the name of saving the planet we need a “new paradigm” for thinking about our place in the world. His own had been informed by “alternative economics” that took account of social justice and environmental issues.  (“Economic growth,” he said, “is a cult”; he was no longer a believer.) Governments had called upon endless sacrifices from their people, in the form of tax benefits to industry and cuts in social services; growth was extolled without consideration of its “negative impacts on biodiversity and the ecosystem in general, on our energy spending, etc.”

Except for developments in medicine, education, and similar non-destructive fields, he called for a slowing down and even a stop in growth–a no-growth philosophy, combined with redistribution of the products produced. (His campaign program, in fact, singled out such things as “planned obsolescence” of appliances.) He did not see the PIB (produit intérieur brut), or GDP,  as a meaningful measurement of society, because it did not measure happiness, human progress, or health. (See a similar critique of GDP from Andrew Yang, Markets Insider, January 16, 2020).  Hamon had, in short, an environmental program that proposed to change the way people lived, beginning with a much more rapid timeline for abolishing fossil fuels.  (See Hamon’s fullest exposition in a lengthy interview at Reporterre.net, January 3, 2017.) Thus he envisioned, for the future, a markedly different world; a visibly deindustrializing world; a world of fewer commodities, and thus fewer intrusions on the natural environment. (See the article “Steady State” by John Cassidy in The New Yorker, February 10, 2020; see also the astonishing NASA satellite images of Wuhan, BBC News, February 29, 2020).

Hamon’s UBI received far more attention than did his alter-vision, and not everyone agreed. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, flanking Hamon on the far left, stated during the campaign, and with considerable emphasis, that he would not implement a program of revenu universel.  He begins in the video below by noting that there are in fact many ideas about UBI, from the work of sociologist Bernard Friot to the neoliberal position, which groups all the social programs together into UBI; at about 1:55, he states that the proposal of his “comrade Benoît Hamon” would bring people in precarity only to the “threshold” of poverty, and would in fact allow employers to pay their workers less.  He is right in regard to the form of Hamon’s proposal; but of course he was disingenuous in regarding that as Hamon’s final plan.

Benoît Hamon responded to that criticism by pointing out that the plan he had “put on the table” was merely a first step. And he told people frankly that the cost would be “enormous.” But, he argued, the question was not “whether” there would be a UBI, but “what kind.”

Over the years, Bernie Sanders has been questioned about UBI, and has deflected into minimum wage, health care and the impact on robotics on employment, as here:

And here:

In this second clip, Sanders relates his own plan, which is not guaranteed income but a guaranteed job. At about 3m23s, he notes that people want to work, “they want to be a productive member of society.” (See a critique of his jobs program and the expanded government sector it would create, Washington Post, April 23, 2018; and Yang’s response, (The Hill, September 19, 2019)

Nevertheless, Sanders raises an important question that both Yang and Hamon have difficulty in answering: what do people do with their time? Are we doomed to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World or Robert Silverberg’s Sailing to Byzantium?

In France, as in the United States, the growing imbalance between the obscenely rich, the poor, and those in the middle, calls for some kind of solution. So too, as Hamon would remind us, do matters of climate change. As Amitav Ghosh has suggested, is our “Great Derangement” the idea that the decisions will not be taken out of our hands by unforeseen events?

============================================================

Works Cited:

Cambadélis, Jean-Christophe. Chronique d’une débâcle. Paris: L”Archipel, 2017.

Ghosh, Amitav. The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. The University of Chicago Press, 2016.

Yang, Andrew. The War on Normal People. New York: Hachette, 2018.

============================================================

Header Image: Photo of local Socialist Party Headquarters, 2016.