The reason UBI can 'unite' Tories, the soft left and bits of the left, is that it's the dream of having some kind of socially just outcome without the hard slog of dismantling capitalist social relations, regimes of ownership and control etc.
That's bad for the radical left, imo. But the argument goes, it could plausibly threaten capitalist social relations if it was *high* enough because then you could eliminate the 'dull compulsion of economic relations' that forces workers to work and weakens bargaining power.
The paradox is to ever get UBI that good you would have to engage in the kind of sustained struggles that took on capital and force a compromise. Once you've done that, UBI seems like a pretty crappy victory.
But, we might say! The same can be said of the Welfare State and Keynesianism as class compromises, what about UBI as a 'structural reform' or 'transitional demand'?
True! But the thing is UBI seems like a pretty crappy structural reform. The collective provision of services via welfare and nationalisation, force the practical and material reorganisation of the state/capital in ways that 'prefigure' wider social change and can be pushed.
The most radical thing that UBI does is *maybe* force a reorganisation of more effective tax collection, and gets the state to give out money.
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