The Right to Work, Way of Social Exclusion? Basic Income as a Guarantee to the Right to Work

José Luis and Rey Pérez

Chapter 5 in Reading Karl Polanyi for the Twenty-First Century, 2007, pp 95-111 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Karl Polanyi, in his famous book The Great Transformation, wrote, “Labor is only another name for a human activity which goes with life itself, which in its turn is not produced for sale but for entirely different reasons, nor can that activity be detached from the rest of life, be stored or mobilized.”1 Many decades after, the proper meaning of the right to work is an important topic in discussions of social rights. This is not surprising if we take into account the central role played by the right to work in the development of the welfare state. When the crisis of the welfare state began and unemployment rates not only rose but also remained at high levels, the achievability of the right to work in Western economies began to be questioned. Unemployment today is a structural element of our economies, and this has led inevitably to a reassessment of the right to work.

Keywords: Labor Market; Welfare State; Social Cohesion; Social Exclusion; Social Inclusion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-60718-7_6

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DOI: 10.1057/9780230607187_6

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