In this article we provide the theoretical analysis that informed the five questions1 to the ten scholars with remarkable expertise on basic income (whose answers compose the first section of this monographic issue of “Etica & Politica”). The interpretative background upon which we project our reflections is the analysis of contemporary capitalism as characterized by the co-presence and mutual articulation of two fundamental logics, namely ‘subsumption’ and ‘imprinting’. Whereas the first is structured around the wage-form, the second focus on exploitative practices beyond wage labor. We subsequently analyze the new centrality of social reproduction and the notion of human capital to argue that basic income can be thought as a political strategy to fight the new logic of capitalist exploitation (‘imprinting’). To conclude, we advance a few considerations concerning the contributions to this monographic issue
