35C3 - The Precariat: A Disruptive Class for Disruptive Times.

35c3 preroll music

Herald Angel: Our next speaker speaks
British English. He writes books and he's

going to talk about those books. He's an
economist and member of the Basic Income

Earth Network which has its 18th
conference... had its 18th conference this

year. It's from 1986, 32 years going
strong. Allow me to introduce Guy

Standing, talking about "The Precariat: A
Disruptive Class for Disruptive Times".

applause

Guy Standing: In a book that I wrote in
2011 on page 1, I said that unless the

insecurities and the fears and the
aspirations of the precariat were

addressed as a matter of urgency, we would
see the emergence of a political monster.

You will not be surprised that in November
2016 I received a lot of emails from

around the world from people who said:
"the monster has arrived". Today,

ironically, he is in Germany, inspecting
his troops. Maybe a lot of Americans would

like him to stay in Germany, but I would
not. What I'm going to talk about today is

something that has involved me in
something I never expected in my life, an

adventure, because since that book was
published it's been translated into 24

languages and taken me around the world to
speak in over 500 places and about 40

countries. And the reason for that is not
the book, but the fact is that the global

precariat is growing in every part of the
world. And I want to talk about some of

the background of this disruptive class
that is taking shape, because I think it

has a resonance with this conference and
similar events taking place. Because as

someone like myself—I'm an economist—as I
was walking around here this morning, I

thought: this is the future. You are the
future—if, IF we are to have a future.

It's up to YOU to define that future. And
I mean it very seriously. We are in the

midst of a global transformation. Those of
you who are political scientists or know

political science will understand. Karl
Polanyi wrote a great book in 1944 called

"The Great Transformation" and his book
was fundamentally about what took place in

the 19th century and the early part of the
20th century. He described the mid-19th-

century until the Second World War as "the
disembedded phase of the Great

Transformation". It was dominated
initially by financial capital, by

laissez-faire economics and by a
technological revolution that was taking

place at the time. It took place in which
the dominant groups were around finance

and monopolies and imperialism. But what
happened in that disembodied phase was

that insecurities multiplied, inequalities
worsened, wealth inequality grew more than

income inequality. And in the process we
had the emergence of a new class

structure, in which the bourgeoisie was
confronted by a solidified proletariat.

The proletariat were the losers in the
process of two world wars and the Great

Depression and we had what Polanyi said
was the threat of the annihilation of

civilization. We all know what happened.
But after the Second World War a new

embedded phase of his Great Transformation
took place, in which finance was tamed, in

which social democracy became the dominant
force. Labor based insecurities were

reduced, inequalities were reduced, and we
had a period in which global trade grew in

competitive goods, but with similar
standards in the industrialized capitalist

countries. But there were inherent
contradictions in that embedded phase of

the Great Transformation. It became
inflationary, it became sluggish. It was

no golden age. It was no golden age that
prompted 1968, the riots, the revolt

against the system. It was a period of
drabness in many ways, when full time

stable jobs were meant to be the Nirvana
but it stultified the human creativities,

it stultified subversive thinking. It was
a period in which there were many

improvements, but it had its limitations.
As we all know that Great Transformation

collapsed in the 1970s and 1980s and
ushered in the disembedded phase of the

global transformation. The disembedded
phase was dominated by neoliberalism in

economics, by the emergence of politicians
like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan

to put those neoliberal ideas into
practice. It was dominated by the

emergence of US dominated financial
institutions like Goldman Sachs that

became great umbrellas around the world,
and it ushered in to a new technological

revolution that you're all dealing with
today. For my story, the most important

aspect of the early phase of that
technological revolution was that it made

the relocation of production and
employment much easier, so that the

relocation depended on relative costs. And
it strengthened the power of capital over

labor. So we see around the world in EVERY
country a shift in which more and more of

the income goes to capital and less and
less goes to labor. It's a phenomenon that

spread around the world. And the
technological revolution also meant that

capital mobility increased dramatically
and we have some other interesting

developments which I come to in a moment.
But inequalities have increased,

insecurities have become vastly greater in
every part of the world. We have a new

gilded age at the top and at the bottom,
and that gilded age has gone with a new

Kondratiev long wave of technological
revolution, which has helped in the

relocation again of the geopolitical POWER
that is so important today. We have, now,

moved away from the neoliberal era of the
1980s and 1990s and a pivotal event came

in 1994, when the passage of TRIPS by the
World Trade Organization—TRIPS: Trade-

Related Aspects of Intellectual Property.
What this did is globalize the American

system of intellectual property rights,
with patents, with copyright, with brands,

with all of the adages that go with that
system. So now we have a system in which

about a quarter of the world's
GDP—national income—is attributable to

intellectual property rights. Some of you
benefit from patents and other copyrights

rights and so on, but it's a system that
has entrenched powerful big corporations.

So we have big pharma, we have big finance
and above all, we have big tech. The big

tech are rentiers taking more and more
from the world's income pile. And in

effect we have rentier capitalism today,
not a free market. This is the most UNfree

market system ever created in history.
Where more and more of the income is going

to the owners of property. Physical
property, financial property, and

intellectual property. We've had a
breakdown of the income distribution

system of the 20th century, it's broken.
Wages have been stagnating in all

industrialized countries for three
decades. Three decades! They are lower in

the United States in real wage terms than
they were in the 1980s. The implications

are dramatic and above all we've got a new
global class structure that has taken

shape. The class structure has a
plutocracy at the top. It's not the top

1%, it's the top ZERO point one percent of
multibillionaires striding the globe as

global citizens, taking more and more
rental income. Take someone like Jeff

Bezos. His income has grown by four
hundred million dollars per WEEK this

year. This is obscenity, multiplied. This
plutocracy of course now have a

representative in the White House, as
their spokesperson. We have other

plutocrats manipulating our politics,
manipulating our technology, manipulating

our commons. These are the realities.
Beneath the plutocracy is an elite who are

the servants of the plutocrats, who are
making many millions of dollars, euros,

pounds or whatever and are servants. We
don't have to feel sorry for them either.

Below them is the salariat. When I was a
student, we were told and we were taught

and we believed that by the end of the
20th century the vast majority of us would

be part of the salariat with stable
salaried employment, with pensions to look

forward to, paid holidays, paid medical
leave, paid this, paid that, paid the

rest. The only problem is that the
salariat has been shrinking everywhere in

the world. It won't disappear, but today
many in the salariat worry about their

daughters and their sons because they're
not going into the salariat. Below the

salariat, just, is what a group I call in
the books the proficians, a combination of

professionals and technicians. Many in
this hall this morning are part of the

proficians. But be careful: these people
don't want full time stable jobs. They

don't want to be saying "yes", "no" to a
boss. They're making good money, they're

rushing around with their laptops or what
ever over their shoulders. They're making

a lot of money. They're making a lot of
money and they are tending to be

complacent. But they should worry about
burn out. They should worry about mental

illness at age 28 and a half, or
thereabouts. The proficians are helping in

identifying the technological and
political options for the future, they

have a responsibility. But they must not
lose that responsibility in an egotistic

narcissistic pursuit, a private gain. It's
a difficult balancing act. But they have a

responsibility because they have the
skills, they have the knowledge, and they

know what's going on. Beneath these
groups: the old proletariat, disappearing

everywhere. They were the ones that
established social democracy, the trade

unions, collective bargaining, tripartism,
all the institutions of the International

Labor Organization. But today they are
shrinking everywhere, and along with them

their political representatives are
effectively dead men walking. They are not

the future. They did many good things in
the 20th century. I do not wish to

disparage them in any way, but they are
not the future. Beneath the precariat in

terms of income is the precariat, beneath
the proletariat is the precariat. The

precariat can be defined in three
dimensions. The first dimension is that if

you're in a precariat you are being told
and you are being habituated to accept a

life of unstable labour and insecure work.
You don't have an occupational narrative

to give to your life, an occupational
identity. "I am something." You worry that

tomorrow morning you'll have to be
something else. You also have to do a lot

of work for labour, work that is not
recognised, not remunerated, not in our

statistics, but you know you have to do
it, otherwise you will pay a price. And in

being in the precariat you don't know the
optimum use of your time. Should I spend a

little more time networking, doing this,
retraining, going to a conference, doing

this, doing that. Looking after my baby,
paying the rent. And therefore you suffer

from what I've called the precariatised
mind. The precariatised mind, when you're

stressed, you're anxious all the time. You
put a good face on it, but every now and

then you see your friends collapsing in
one way or the other. That's how it feels

for many people. Every day I receive
emails from various people from various

places who don't know me who want to
explain their experience. Sometimes I get

very angry, sometimes I feel like crying.
But the pain out there is part of the

process of liberation as well. It's not
just a victimhood, it's about people

trying to make sense. Of a life of
insecurity. And another feature is that

people in the precariat tend to have a
level of agitation that is above the level

of labor they can expect to obtain. The
second dimension of the precariat is that

people in it have distinctive relations of
distribution. What that means is they have

to rely very largely on money wages, money
payments. They don't get access to the

prospect of pensions or paid holidays or
paid medical leave or subsidised this or

subsidised that, they have to live on
wages. The only problem is that the value

of those wages is tending to go down and
the volatility of their income is growing.

So basically the second aspect of this
distributional question is that most

people in the precariat are living on the
level of unsustainable debt. One mistake,

one illness, one bad decision and you
could be tipped out into the lumpen-

precariat, outside society, without a
voice. And of course at the same time the

state has been changing its social
security and social protection system

towards more targeting on the poor. So
it's reduced the social solidarity of the

social protection system, and this hits
the precariat in a very big way. Because

state benefits, welfare benefits, have
been shrinking and they've been means-

tested and behaviour-tested, drifting to
Hartz 4 or the equivalent in other

countries, where you're expected to
behave as the state tells you to behave.

Not enough people realise what is
happening down at that end of the labour

market, the indignities that go with it.
The shame, the stigma, the poverty traps.

Whereby if you do get a benefit and you
then have the offer of a low wage job,

you're losing as much in benefits as you
get from the low wage job. You're facing a

marginal tax rate of 80% in Germany, 86%
in Denmark, 80% in Britain. If the middle

classes had to accept such marginal tax
rates there would be riots in the street.

But that is what society expects of the
precariat. It's NOT funny. And in

addition, and what I think is most
importantly about the precariat: it has

distinctive relations to the state, the
institutions of society and governance.

The precariat is losing the rights of
citizenship often without realising it,

they're losing cultural rights because
they cannot belong to organizations that

represent their cultural identity or
aspirations. They're losing civil rights

because they cannot get access to due
process and legal justice. They're losing

social rights because they don't have
access to rights-based benefits and

services. They're losing economic rights
because they cannot practice what they are

perfectly qualified to do. And above all
they're losing political rights because

they don't see out there politicians or
political parties that represent what they

are and what they want to be. Now in that
context I've described the precariat today

in an old Marxian term: it's a class in
the making. Not yet a class for itself.

And what I mean by that is that while
millions of people share the objective

characteristics of being in the precariat,
they have different consciousness of what

it is. And you can divide the precariat
into three groups. The first I call the

atavists. These are those who do not have
a lot of education, but their parents and

their families and communities used to be
in the proletariat, used to have working

class backgrounds of being dockers or
steelworkers or car workers or whatever.

This group is relating their deprivation
of today to a lost Yesterday, real or

imagined. That lost Yesterday they want
back. It's this group that supports the

Donald Trumps. It's this group that
supported Brexit in Britain. It's this

group that supports the Marine Le Pen's,
the Orbans and the equivalent in Germany

and elsewhere. This group supported the
Liga in Italy. You can name right wing

populist groups. There's good news and bad
news. The bad news here is that they are

proving to be profoundly strong. We risk
today that that group could lead us into a

new dark political future, characterized
by demonizing migrants and minorities,

authoritarian tendencies, destructive,
vile outcomes. But there's good news. In

my view, they have reached their peak in
terms of size. Many are getting older of

that type, and they will not lead the
other two groups in the same direction.

The second group in the precariat are what
I call the Nostalgics. These are made up

with the migrants, the minorities, the
disabled, people who feel they have no

sense of home. They don't have a home
there, they don't have a home here, but

they dream of a home. This group knows
it's losing rights, it's being demonized,

it's being victimized. But they will not
support a neofascist populism. They keep

their heads down because they have to
survive. Every now and then, there are

days of rage when everything gets too
much, but this group is LOOKING for a

home. It's LOOKING for a future. Its
relative deprivation is: it's got a lost

now. The first group a lost past, the
second group a lost now. The third group

in the precariat are what I call the
progressives. These are the millions of

people who went to college, went to
university and were told by their parents

and by their teachers: go to university
and you will get a future! A future! A

career, status, influence, dignity. And
they come out of university and college

knowing they don't have that future. All
they have are debts, disillusions, and

difficulties. This group is entering the
precariat. It will not support neofascist

populism, it is looking for a future. It
is looking for a new politics of paradise.

There are many people at this conference I
believe are in this third part. The bad

news is they've been dismissing politics
because they know very wisely that it's

being cynically manipulated by the
plutocrats and by others, and therefore

they have detached themselves from
politics. The trouble with that is that it

surrenders the ground to the others with a
regressive, antidemocratic, anti-

enlightenment perspective. But the good
news is this: since the crisis of 2008 and

particularly since the Occupy movement and
the Arab Spring in 2011 and the Indignado

movement, more of this third part of the
precariat are reengaging with politics.

They're reengaging in different ways,
beginning to forge an agenda for that

future. And I believe that if you take a
historical perspective, then I only wish I

were 21. I would love to be 21 because if
you are 21, you have a vacuum, you have an

opportunity to forge a fundamentally
enlightenment-led future. Let me give you

by way of conclusion a few thoughts on
what that might be. The thoughts are

these: today are income distribution
system is broken. We can't put yesterday

back. Therefore we have to build a new
income distribution system. We will not

get anywhere by trying to raise wages. But
we WILL get somewhere if we decide that

what society has to do is recycle the rent
from the technocrats, the financiers and

the property owners to the commons, to the
commoners. We must build that distribution

system by returning to the values of the
enlightenment, of egalité, liberté,

fraternité or solidarité. And to do that,
I strongly believe that one part of this

new income distribution system should be a
basic income that everybody has as a

right.
applause

I have had the privilege of working for
this for thirty years since before BIEN.

Anybody can join BIEN, we have many
Germans who are part of it. We have

thousands and thousands of people who are
members. For many years we were regarded

as crazy, mad, bad and dangerous, but
suddenly in the last few years we've

suddenly become respectable, at least
tolerated. I've had the privilege of

designing and conducting basic income
pilots in four continents, the biggest

being in India. Anybody who's interested:
I've written a book, "Basic income: and

how we can make it happen". But let me
just tell you what happened in India, a

country that's poor, a country that
poverty is terrifying. And when we decided

we would do it, and we mobilized money, we
provided 6000 people, men, women and

children, with basic income. Sonia Gandhi
told us, herself, she said you're wasting

the money, they're wasted on drink and
drugs. Two years later, after we had done

the pilot and seen what had happened, she
called us back to our house and she said

she wished she had known. What happened
was that when they started receiving the

basic income they did what all of us in
this room would do. They started giving

their children better food, so nutrition
improved, health of the children improved,

schooling improved, health and nutrition
of others, adults, improved. People with

disabilities suddenly had a basic income
with which they could be citizens. Womens'

status improved, sanitation in the
villages improved. Work increased,

production increased. If you go to those
villages today, you would have seen a

transformation. Now that happened in a
poor place. We also did it in Africa,

where very similar results were showing.
We've now got pilots in Canada and some

hopefully launched soon in Scotland, and
the opposition leadership in Britain has

asked me to prepare a plan for doing it in
Britain. If you had told me 10 years ago

that any of those things would have
happened, I would have said I must have

had something to smoke or drink, because I
must be hallucinating. But change can come

quicker than we think. It is up to US. I
want to tell you one story. I still have a

few minutes, I hope, I thought... is
that... what's that figure? I don't know,

but I'm going to tell the story. When we
were launching the pilot in India, we went

to one village and all the young women had
veils. And we had to have their photo

taken for the cards, so that they could
get their monthly basic income, and we had

to persuade them to go into a hut with
other women to have their photos taken. 9

or 10 months later I went back to that
particular village and I said to one of my

Indian colleagues, I said, "Have you
noticed a difference here?" He said, "No,

no." I said, "What difference?" He said,
"Nothing, perhaps better sanitation."

"No," I said, "None of the women are
wearing veils." He said: "Yeah!". So we

called some of the women across and we
said, "Look, excuse us, but you wore

veils, you're not wearing veils now. Why?"
They were shy. They didn't want to speak

to a foreigner and so on. But after a
while one of the young women spoke up and

she said, "You know, before we had to do
what the elders told us to do. Now we have

a basic income, we can do
what we want to do.

applause
Standing: And there is an e– there is an

even more poignant story in our Namibian
pilot. At the end of that one I went to

one of the villages and I asked some young
women. I said, "What was the best thing

about having a basic income, what was the
best thing?" They talked to each other,

giggled, you know, again, talking to a
foreigner and so on. And then one of the

young women said, "You know, before, when
the men came down from the fields at the

end of the month, with their wages in
their pockets, we had to say: 'Yes'. Now

we have our basic income. We say 'No'."
That's emancipation. And if you can put an

analogy in Germany or Britain or anywhere
else, you will find that this ability to

say 'No' to exploitation and oppression is
a fundamental part about a progressive

agenda for the 21st century. We have to
find a way of liberating people to say

'No' and also to say 'Yes', to say 'Yes'
to the ability to help people to do

things, to care, to participate in the
ecological aspects of life. And I think it

will help in both respects. In that
context, let me conclude by saying: a

basic income is not a panacea. It must be
part of a new system. We need new forms of

voice. We need new forms of work. We need
to realize today the new technologies are

potentially liberating us to escape from
labour, so that we can do more work. Most

languages distinguishes the difference but
only in the 20th century were we stupid

enough to think only labour counts as
work. I have never worked harder than

since I stopped doing labour, since I
stopped having a job.

applause
Standing: And what we have to do, what we

have to do, is convince the politicians
and the social scientists that they should

change their thinking about what is work
and what is not work. Every feminist—and

we should all be feminists—every feminist
should be demanding that they change their

concepts, because it means that most of
the work women do doesn't count as work.

It's ridiculous, it's sexist,
it's arbitrary.

applause
For me, this has given a new dimension

because of the growth of the precariat,
because if you're in the precariat you

know you have to do a lot of work. A lot
of work. And you're treated as if you're

being lazy. But there's another wonderful
opportunity here. We all know or should

know that we are threatened by extinction.
Extinction that comes from the greenhouse

gas emissions, the pollution, the erosion
of the commons, the privatization of our

spaces, our loss of nature, our loss of an
ecological landscape. We know that. It's

the number one crisis charging towards us.
We didn't need the panel of climate change

to tell us that, but we know it. And what
are we doing? We've just seen in Poland,

hardly anything. We need big carbon taxes.
Big carbon taxes.

applause
But there are two problems. There are two

problems. First, taxes are unpopular. And
second, if you just put a carbon tax, it

would worsen inequality. Because the poor
person pays proportionately more than the

rich person. Therefore we need to combine
carbon taxes with carbon dividends. So

that the proceeds of carbon taxes are
recycled. I think most of you can work it

out where I'm ending this discussion.
Recycled as basic incomes. The carbon tax

can pay for a large part of a basic income
future, and therefore this perspective

leads to you thinking: we can advance the
cause of ecological survival, advance the

cause of security, advance the cause of
emancipation and do what every

transformative class should do. The
precariat is a transformative class

because it wants, intuitively, to abolish
the conditions that define its existence.

And therefore—abolish itself. We can do
it. Thank you very much.

applause
Herald: Thanks very much. They say on

Congress every time, every year we have a
system that we don't want to use anymore,

I think it's capitalism.
laughter

applause
Herald: We're going to hold a Q&A

including your questions from the
Internet. There are six microphones

scattered around the room, so if anybody
wants to ask a question in public, we'll

start this now. And we'll start with mic
six over there.

Question: Brilliant. So...
Standing: Where is mike six?

Q: Here.
Herald: Mike six is over there.

Standing: OK. Hello. So
Q: Hi, I was wondering... you mentioned

basic income and you connected it with
carbon taxes. I was wondering what other

strategies you're thinking towards
tackling other systemic issues we have,

especially in regards to land, which to
me– you mentioned different types of

property. But the thing that land today is
the proxy to access to all the other

values. So...
Standing: Shall I answer that one?

Herald: Yes.
Standing: Okay, thank you very much. I've

got a new book coming out to make me more
boring. It's called "Plunder of the

Commons". And basically, what you've
touched on is the theme of this book. If

you think of the commons, the natural
commons, the social commons, the civil

commons, all our commons including land,
water, the air, our amenities and so on.

We've allowed the privatization and
colonization of the commons to take profit

from our commons, and therefore we need a
system of levies to say: Hey, we want the

rental income back for the commoners, and
that includes land. That's why I strongly

favor a Land Value Tax. A Land Value Tax
is a very efficient tax and it has to be

part of building this commons fund along
the Alaska Permanent Fund. Principles of

those... you're all familiar with that. We
also need it for water, for air, for

digital information. I don't believe
taxing robots, as Bill Gates proposes, is

the answer. What I do believe is we should
put a levy on all the information that

Amazon and Facebook and the others are
taking from us free and making billions.

We should have a levy on that,
applause

Standing: ... and the levy the levy should
go to everybody equally. Because you

cannot attribute the profits they're
making to any individual. We have to give

it to everybody. And if we do that we are
all the time building the fund that can

help pay out towards a decent basic
income. So that's my answer to your

question.
Herald: Thanks very much. Mic four.

Q: Hi, thank you for being here. Great
pleasure. Just recently, Sahra Wagenknecht

was invited in a talkshow about basic
income and future of work. She's the

leader of the German party The Left, "Die
Linke". She said that she don't like the

idea of basic income. Her two arguments
are she don't like it. Regarding merchant

neoliberal powers, they also like the idea
of basic income. For example the CEO of

Volkswagen and other big players and
second, she said if you move to a basic

income, we will lose a lot of—we, as
society—will lose a lot of protection and

social benefits. What would be your
reaction on her opinion?

Standing: I address this question in my
basic income book in the following way:

every new idea in history, in social
policy in particular, has been greeted, at

the time, by people saying it will
threaten something else and that it will

lead to unintended negative consequences.
They said this about unemployment

benefits. They said it about family
benefits. And then, when it's introduced,

suddenly the objections go away. To me, I
asked myself the following question: Do I

want that person, or that person, or the
person I meet in the street... do I want

that person to have the basic security of
being able to pay for food, to pay for

their rent, and to buy decent clothes? Do
I want that? And I say very easily to

myself: yes! I want that! Don't tell me
that it's going to be a threat to

something else if that person has basic
security! Why is it, that so many social

democrats make this argument? I've
confronted many, including one major trade

union leader. I said, "why are you so
hostile to having people base– have basic

income? Why?" And the man who was chairing
the session when I was talking, he said,

"I think we'll have a coffee break now"
before anybody could answer and when we

came back he said "Well now we'll move on
to the next session" and the trade union

leader at the back stood up and he said
"No, I think we should answer the

question". And he said "you know I think
the answer is, that if people had basic

security, they wouldn't be dependent on
us. They wouldn't join trade unions" and I

looked at him.
applause

I looked at him and I said "just imagine
the morality of what you've just said. The

morality is, you want people to be fearful
and insecure, because you want to gain." I

said "But you're also wrong. Because
you're wrong in the following respect:

people who are insecure and frightened
don't engage in politics they don't engage

in society. They've got too many things to
worry about. If they have basic security,

they're more likely to stand up and fight
for rights, more likely to stand up and

fight for the ecology, more likely to be
good citizens. Why don't you trust people

more? Why are you so bureaucratic and
distrustful? Believe it. We need a new

distribution system. And don't tell me
neo-liberalism is going to destroy it.

They're destroying what we've got anyhow.
We can do better than that and if you

deny, you—people who say this not you, but
people who say that—you are denying the

enlightenment freedoms that we should be
fighting for! So I say, stop being so

negative, to those people. Sorry. I was a
bit angry but apologized.

applause
Herald: laughs you've got all reason to.

A question from the Internet.
Internet: There was a popular vote in

Switzerland on basic income and it was
massively rejected. How do you analyse

that, what should be the way forward, and
how can we inaudible against the

globalists who oppose basic income?
Standing: I ... again address that

particular referendum. I participated in
the referendum. We had no money. We

mobilized a hundred twenty five thousand
signatures, literally going in the

streets. All the banks were putting up
money. The main political parties were

opposed, etc. But we were doing
fantastically well. We got up to about 40

percent opinion poll support applause
and then one of our leaders, one of our

leaders without permission from any of us,
went on television and an interviewer

asked him, he said "Well how much do you
think the basic income should be?" and the

man, instead of saying it's up to
parliament and everything, which is what

the referendum said, he said it should be
two thousand five hundred Swiss francs per

month. Which, for your information, is
considerably higher than all the rural

areas, the rural cantons, in Switzerland.
At that moment we lost the referendum. We

lost. I'm proud of the fact that in Geneva
we got 38 percent. And that was where I

was campaigning—it had nothing to do with
me, but the fact was that they had more

meetings and more people could understand
what the politics were. But the greatest

thing about that referendum is that today
people in Switzerland in the auberges, the

cafes, they're talking about basic income,
they know what it means. I gave a talk

recently in a big theater in Geneva. There
were hundreds and hundreds of people. Many

of those had not participated. If there is
another referendum I think it will

succeed. Switzerland has a history of even
very mild ideas losing in the first

referendum and then a few years later a
second referendum, they pass. So I'm

actually optimistic that it will come in
Switzerland—but not 2500.

Herald: Thank you. Mic six again.
Mic 6: I think a lot of the ideas you

presented here are, like, respected in the
community and the Congress. But how can we

change the society? How can we change the
mind of all the other people to also

considers these ideas to transform to a
new society?

Standing: I think this is the biggest
question you could ask. I strongly believe

that it's up to us. It really is up to us.
Politicians have spaghetti in backbones.

Our job is to strengthen the spaghetti.
Our job is to desplain why dreaming of the

impossible leads to it becoming possible,
and then happening. I believe that we have

to be taking part in any small way we can.
I will tell you a secret. Yesterday a very

good friend of mine, an economist, very
well-known economist. He contacted me and

we were talking and he said : "Guy, why
are you wasting your time going to

Leipzig? On December the 27th, when you
should be having relaxation with

Christmas?" and I said "John, that's not
it. I hope that just one person, just one,

will leave this room, with more energy and
with more thought than when I started.

Just one." That would be worth coming to
Leipzig. I feel energized. I hope somebody

here feels energized. We have to realise
that it is up to us. We have no excuse for

cynicism. We have to challenge the Trumps.
We can't let them win. For our children

and grandchildren, we can't let them win.
applause

Herald: Thank you very much. I think
you'll be around for more questions. We're

out of time, sorry, but you can ask those
questions directly and I think they will

be answered in great length.
Standing: Thank you.

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