Why we Ought to Listen to Zygmunt Bauman

1. Why we Ought to Listen to Zygmunt Bauman Dr Ian Orton

2. Structure of presentation • Introduction: Bauman’s relationship with BI debate • Why is his argument relevant? • What is his argument? • Bauman’s three critiques • How reasonable is Bauman’s argument? • Critiquing Bauman’s critique • Conclusion: The value of his argument

3. Why is Bauman’s argument relevant? • Highlights the existence of a variety of approaches and demonstrates that they are all problematic. • Exposes the shortcomings and arbitrary assumptions within BI discourses. • It questions the ‘soft’ consensus that had developed in the BI debate, i.e., the preoccupation of advancing a BI gradually principally on the grounds of affordability and feasibility. • Communicates an essential message: perhaps we need a range of approaches: both the Bauman radical-utopian approach and the number-crunching ‘feasibility’ approach.

4. What is Bauman’s critique? • His critique centres primarily on the type of BI championed by Claus Offe although it is relevant to other thinkers. • It explores the tension between a position of instantaneity and varying velocities of gradualism.

5. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The proposal’s potential is diminished because the soft consensus approach makes the mistake of: ‘selling it too cheaply’ (e.g. as merely a social policy); ‘offering it to the wrong buyer’ (e.g. the (Anglo-Saxon) welfare state). A Two-dimensional typology of positions on a BI Gradualist • ‘soft’ consensus • Gradualist-reformist Reformist Radical • MAYA/rapid gradualism Instantaneous • Bauman’s Radical BI

6. Critique 1: The BI proposal should not be advanced as merely a social policy measure When expressed as a social policy measure the BI is in danger of: • Having its potential impact diluted and it simply becomes expressed as a problem-solving device and a form of ‘crisis-management’. • Becoming politically typecast or as a ‘one-trick pony’merely intended to ‘resolve the problem of the poor – to lift the poor from their poverty’. • BI could be so much. It could be a vision guided strategy that radically reconfigures the contours of our social world.

7. Critique 2:The costs of the BI are calculated in order to show that it is affordable and therefore plausible • An ‘affordability’ approach inevitably involves an acceptance of the political-economic conditions of the present. • Arguing within the grounds of affordability may make the BI chances weaker rather than stronger. • We should be trying to challenge what is regarded as possible economically, in order to create a political climate more favourable to the realisation of a more radical BI.

8. Critique Three: where is the political will and who and what are the agents and sites of change? • Bauman thinks it is difficult to identify an agency potent enough to put the idea through. • At the supra-national level there is no agency sufficiently powerful to make the idea become reality. • This presupposes the construction of some new global democratic apparatus that is rooted locally and globally.

9. How reasonable is Bauman’s critique of the soft consensus? • Soft consensus approach deserves more intelligence. • A partial and watered-down BI could be used as a lever to promote a more substantial BI. • As a Trojan horse BI introduces important principle of universalism into society. • Not too disturbing to the politically squeamish. • It would not seem as a radical political shift. However • BI as a Trojan horse could mean it is easily co-opted and perverted. • No guarantee that a modified partial BI would automatically develop into a full one. • Thus BI must not be diluted. It must be articulated as a vision guided strategy. • We must not be limited by the economic and political ‘reality’ of the present.

10. Critique of Bauman’s critique i) The problem of financial feasibility still persists ii) The problem of political counter-modelling iii) Evidence of a new global political architecture is barely discernable v) Lack of recognition of contextual diversity

11. Conclusion:Value of his argument • That such a prestigious thinker believes the BI has real potential is a morale boost and compliment. • Shakes up the norms that exist within BI discourses. • Encourages us to think against ourselves. • It re-ignites the radical thrust of the debate by radicalising it. • His affordability argument gives us an important intellectual argument in dealing with objections of detractors. • Demonstrates there is more than one way of advancing a BI. • Gives succour to Van Parijs and Suplicy’s argument that we should proceed with a BI through a politics of rapid gradualism.