THE explosive growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and the concurrent loss of paid employment for millions of people has reenergised the debate about the future of work and given fresh impetus to the advocates of a universal basic income (UBI), a concept that is viewed with some suspicion and scepticism by many on the left.

UBI is a social welfare measure in which all citizens of a given population receive a guaranteed minimum income in the form of a regular unconditional transfer payment. The principal arguments of its critics are that it creates welfare dependency and is simply unaffordable, neither of which stands up to scrutiny.

Since the 1773 Inclosure Act started a process that saw hundreds of thousands of people displaced from the land and forced to work in the towns and cities, where the Industrial Revolution was born, society has placed a high value on a Puritan work ethic which values productivity and hard graft and frowns upon the slackers and the workshy who do not buy into it.

Needless to say, the bosses and the capitalist class who cream off the surplus value created by their employees do not necessarily share the misplaced enthusiasm for work and are only interested in their profitability and bottom line. If they can make money with fewer workers or, ideally, with no workers at all, then they will not hesitate to do so.

For their part, the trade unions that emerged during the Industrial Revolution did not and do not generally challenge capitalist modes of production and limit themselves to recruiting and organising members with a view to improving their terms and conditions of employment.

Their aims are strictly economistic and are in stark contrast to the views of the legendary Victorian-era activist, Thomas Mann, who was firmly of the opinion that the main purpose of organised labour should be to overthrow capitalism rather them merely improve the plight of workers within it.

The rapid evolution of what has been termed the “fourth industrial revolution” represents an existential threat to today’s trade unions and their members who risk seeing their jobs replaced by technological innovation. As long as the profit motive remains the principal driver of economic activity, no job is safe.

A practical example of the unions’ dilemma can be found in the GMB’s efforts to gain bargaining rights and higher wages for workers they have recruited at Amazon warehouses in different parts of the country.

Its organisers must be well aware that the company has invested in a state-of-the-art automated picking system that will eventually obviate the need for thousands of employees.

At present, humans (who are themselves treated like robots) are more cost-effective and efficient than machines. But, ironically, if GMB are successful in getting higher wages for their new members, they could hasten the introduction and deployment of the mechanised alternative.

There is nothing new about universal benefits. Only those on the outer reaches of right-wing, neoliberal politics question the continuation of existing universal child benefits and pension entitlements, though they may quibble about the levels of payments.

In other parts of the world, UBI trials have not created a culture of dependency and have in fact generated space for the recipient’s personal development and have been liberating for unpaid carers looking after aged and infirm family members or young children.

Depending on the level at which it is set, UBI is affordable within the parameters of Britain’s existing national income and would be even more so were there to be introduced a more equitable system of taxation that included, for example, a land value tax.

Ultimately, it is a matter of choice. Governments waste billions of taxpayers’ money on nuclear weapons, the armed forces and on corporate bribes to persuade companies to locate here, instead of investing in people.

Take, for instance, the furore over the planned closure of the Port Talbot steelworks. Apart from benefiting Ms Sunak’s bank balance, it is difficult to justify giving away £500 million to Tata in the vain hope that it will keep the furnaces open.

Based on 2021 census figures, that amount of money would be enough to give every inhabitant of Port Talbot an annual income of £30,000 for the next 50 years. That money would invigorate the local economy, allow time for a new publicly owned electric arc furnace to be built and free workers from having to toil in a plant spewing out toxic fumes and polluting the environment.

The same argument can be made for all those villages, towns and cities that owe their very existence to the presence of a steelworks, a chemical plant or a pit. Forty years ago, following one of the most protracted and bitter disputes in British labour history, Margaret Thatcher and her Tory government shut down the coalfields, leaving thousands of men without an income, other than what they were entitled to claim from the state.

Without the mines whole communities lost their reason to exist, leaving young people with a choice of either moving away or taking junk jobs, if they were available, in places such as the aforementioned Amazon warehouses.

A similar scenario has unfolded on Teesside where the closure of the steel and chemical industries has left a legacy of urban squalor and some of the poorest wards in England. How different life would be for all these workers and their communities were they to be in receipt of UBI.

One particular criticism aimed at UBI from the capitalist class is that nobody would want to work, and they have a point. Who in their right mind would want to go and work miles underground in dangerous conditions or do continental shifts in a broiling hot steel mill if they could live without it?

The answer lies in a far better work-life balance and better remuneration that the presence of UBI would force employers to concede, were miners and steelworkers still required. However, the real concern of the Establishment is that the introduction of UBI would strip away their ability to control the working class by forcing them to take paid employment.

The advent of UBI would not obstruct the struggle to replace an exploitative capitalist system, nor should it be seen as an alternative to it. What it would do is ameliorate its worst effects and provide some breathing space for a beleaguered working class.

The trade unions are faced with a choice of restricting their activities to a dwindling number of salaried employees and managing their own decline, or of embracing the benefits of UBI by mobilising and bringing into membership the vast army of unorganised carers and parents that stand to benefit from it.

Surely, in the age of AI, the obsession with making people work should go the same way as the jobs it replaces.