What do we, the growing global movement for a care-centered economy, need to realize our vision? Of course, we need a lot of things: time, space, fun, ingenuity, money, attention, determination, scope, authority, solidarity, inspiration, fun, skills, fantasy and more.
In this text I will focus on a need that is not so apparent, but underpins all our activist efforts: We need, are working on and waiting for an adequate socio-economic theory that will abandon the systematic externalization of care-work and other areas supposedly located outside the so-called “economy”. In other words: To heal what has been broken, we need a new coherent narrative that exposes the enormous amount of unseen labor performed which underpins and enables paid work, capitalist profit – and destructive growth.
Decades of research are waiting for systematization
For at least 40 years now feminist theorists have been thoroughly exploring the vast field of unpaid and underpaid mostly female work in private households, neighborhoods, the cleaning sector, health- and education-systems. Recently they have done this with a special intersectional focus on the links between different excluded realms, particularly natural economic inputs, the non-capitalist logic of unpaid care-work, racialized ex-colonies and democratic institutions. For about 25 years they have managed to collect more and more data which all arrive at the same result: unpaid and underpaid care-work which is itself embedded in nurturing nature, history and society, is by far the biggest economic sector, a fact to which economic thinking and account systems are resolutely oblivious. This unremittingly and detrimentally distorts the perception of social value-creation.
It is now time to evaluate all this work and arrange it as a coherent theoretical framework that will allow for consistent political arguments and measures to put an end to all the imbalance, degradation and destruction caused by false perceptions of our reality.
Resistance in mainstream theory
Mainstream economics and large parts of heterodox economics and many other academic disciplines as well, seem insistently unwilling to leave the path of erasing all non-market production from our view of what has value. This non-market production above all enables cash flows and market production exposing large parts of the global human population to poverty, and destroying natural habitats by careless overuse. What’s more, the lack of assigned value to non-market production robs us and our economies of additional, essential value flows.
So, it’s no surprise that, given the growing urgency to tackle the simultaneous crises of care and climate, impatience is ensuing: How can it be that so-called “top-economists” still innocently admit that they simply “do not find the topic thrilling”? That influential media stubbornly refuses to shed light on deliberately forgotten sectors? That supposedly progressive leftists in their meetings still routinely wait for feminists to finally bring up the universal facts of human natality, dependency, vulnerability, historicity, and mortality? That most economists have not yet understood the structural link between natural inputs and the basic contributions of females who, to the present day, are often falsely assumed to be somehow “naturally caring” and “closer to nature” than males? That many scholars don’t perceive the construction of an inclusive economic narrative as a commitment to intellectual rigor but as a gentlemanly favor to nagging bitches?
Bits and pieces for a transdisciplinary care-centered theory
Intellectual indolence and the reflexive protection of traditional privilege, however, form only part of our present situation. Sociologist Brigitte Aulenbacher, referring to the gradual unfolding of a care-centered paradigm, recently spoke of a “double movement” in Karl Polanyi’s sense.[1] By invoking this classic concept, she points out that there is not only resistance to the inclusion of externalized value-creation, but also some fragmented progress in creating a new useful framework, albeit not yet in the form of a coherent theoretical approach: In her book “Doughnut Economics”, for example, Kate Raworth not only criticizes the persistent use of certain pictorial representations in economics, but actually proposes alternatives to the stereotypical image of ever-rising curves in closed boxes: the icon of the doughnut and a depiction of the economy consisting of households, markets, states and commons, all embedded in material flows, history and society. Philosopher Nancy Fraser, in her book “Cannibal Capitalism” has presented a precise analysis of interconnected externalizations. Stephanie Kelton, in her book “The Deficit Myth” explicitly argues that our “overarching goal” must be “building a care economy” consisting of “millions of good-paying jobs that care for people, communities, and our planet.”[2] Mariana Mazzucato, in her book “The Value of Everything”, promotes an economic theory of collective value-creation. In a new video she talks of the existing business sphere as a “gambling machine” (Min 4) that must be governed, whereas the economy as a whole is seen as a “collective effort” (Min 1) of all members of a given society who rightfully should receive a “citizen’s share” (Min 6) each. In fact, there are many signs nourishing the hope that these new concepts are taking root, step by step, in practical politics. Pushed by climate change, the failure of neoliberalism, the big rival China and a strong socialist movement in the US, according to economist Max Krahé, Bidenomics shows a tendency to govern markets according to a coherent socio-ecological mission, as Mariana Mazzucato would call it.[3]
In my German-speaking region, too, “feminist economics” has gained a certain standing in movements called “rethinking economics” or “new economics”, now struggling to bring claims, which in fact have little to do with feminism in the narrow sense, into the mainstream: claims such as the necessity of universal basic services or income for all or the reduction of paid working hours. Since 2003, economics students have been able to learn “Micro” here using Adelheid Biesecker’s and Stefan Kestings textbook that systematically integrates natural inputs and unpaid care-work. Mascha Madörin who has spent big parts of her life shaping a post-extractivist economic theory recently proposed to speak of a fourth sector determined by a certain logic that is not compatible with the logic of scalable production, but necessary for human survival and wellbeing. Social ethicist Bernhard Emunds suggests to distinguish “Geldwirtschaft” (monetary economy) from “Leistungswirtschaft” (operative economy), thus creating a possibility to no longer equate earning money with value-creation. German economist Anna Saave has written an eye-opening analysis of the mechanisms of externalization. Austrian economist Elisabeth Klatzer in the alternative budget speech she delivered on Oct 17th, 2023, in front of the Austrian parliament, has introduced the idea of a Gross Care-Product. And at least two German top-economists, Achim Truger and Marcel Fratzscher, casually mentioned that we should think about new conceptions of wealth, wellbeing and performance. In 2023, not accidentally, the notion Care-Arbeit was incorporated into the DUDEN, the “preeminent language resource of the standard High German language”.
This collection of possible components for the needed new theory is certainly not complete. I am sure that all around the world thinker-practitioners are constantly creating new concepts that one day will be systematically combined to form the new coherent transdisciplinary theoretical framework we need.
There are signals of support coming from the United Nations:
On July 19th, 2020, general secretary Antonio Guterres said in a speech in South Africa:
And on July 23rd, 2023, the UN General Assembly called into being the International Day of Care and Support that will be globally observed every year from now on.
Next step: synthesis
So, looking at the world confidently, there are more and more bits and pieces that can be joined together to eventually form the new post-extractivist theory that will become the framework for a consistent socio-ecological transformation that will leave no body behind and enable a good life for all humans on Earth. To foster this paradigm shift in our crisis-shaken time, the next decisive step will be to boldly leave behind academic and political boxes, collecting all the useful components for the new transdisciplinary narrative we need to advance in the right direction.
Let’s do it, whenever and wherever we can find time, space, and resources to take the next steps towards a care-centered future of planet Earth, the only habitat for human and non-human life that is given to us.
[1] Brigitte Aulenbacher, Uta Meier-Gräwe (2023), Der Markt wird’s (nicht) regeln: Live-in-Betreuung, die Neuordnung des Sorgens und öffentliche Soziologie, in: Uta Meier-Gräwe, Ina Praetorius, Feline Tecklenburg ed., Wirtschaft neu ausrichten. Care-Initiativen in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz, Opladen u.a. (Barbara Budrich Verlag), 277-286.
[2] Stephanie Kelton (2020), The Deficit Myth. Modern Monetary Theory and How to Build a Better Economy, London (John Murray), 250.
[3] Max Krahé, Biden bricht mit den Grundlagen der US-Wirtschaftspolitik, NTV, 29.07.2023
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