The Economics of Care
May is for commies and mommies
Today is May 1st, a day my classmates warned me about when I moved to Berlin. Specifically, that I might need to find an alternate route to the little sprachschule where we were learning German, and if I owned a car, best to park it in a garage. May 1st is “International Workers Day;” in Berlin this means demonstrations that inspire black-clad anarchists to festively light BMWs on fire. As a non-car-owner with some communist sympathies, I watched, fascinated, from a safe distance.
It feels hypocritical for me to criticize capitalism; Jeff Bezos, the patron saint of our second gilded age, pays my mortgage. While writing doesn’t earn me much, I’m not starving. (Welcome to the artist’s life and its many low bars!) My “nine-to-five” consists of caring for my own children and house, things I generally don’t mind doing. I have everything I need plus some money left over at the end of the month. I’m no 1%er, but capitalism has served me well.
I also recognize that capitalism is a nimbler system for innovation than any sort of government planned economy. One example is the work of software engineer Huge Ma, who, when stymied by government websites while attempting to find a COVID vaccine appointment, built his own site (TurboVax!) in under two weeks for about $50.
Given these caveats, I still have questions about how capitalism skews our understanding of labor:
How does compensation (or lack thereof) influence how we value work?
How does this valuation effect/infect our relationships? Our families? Our communities?
What role(s) does gender play? How about race? How do religious beliefs reinforce or contradict these roles?
Where and when are we meant to live communally rather than tallying costs?
How has technology inserted capitalism into previously communal tasks? Who is profiting from community disintegration?
What about gift economies?
May is, of course, also the month we celebrate Mother’s Day. (Sunday, May 12th. Don’t forget!) In our society, motherhood is the ultimate unpaid vocation. Most mothers I know are unhappy with their workload. Working mothers are stretched to the breaking point, penalized at work for needing flexibility then coming home to a thankless second shift of ever-more intensive parenting demands. Meanwhile, full-time parents are socially isolated, constantly condescended to (I’m looking at you, school staff who call us ‘Mom’ instead of learning our names!) and hung out to dry when it comes to support. In the seven years I was caring for kids too young for school, I got ONE sick day and even had to take my kids with me to the gynecologist due to lack of babysitters.
Motherhood, we’re told, is “the most important job in the world.” I guess this is a way of saying that the emotional rewards are meant to be enough for society dumping all of its problems1 on you!
But it’s not just parents who perform unpaid care work. Many of us will eventually be called upon to care for an ill or injured partner or for elderly relatives. We can also add domestic workers such as nannies, home health aides, and housekeepers to our umbrella of “care workers.”
I like the term “care work” because it emphasizes that this is work. You can both love someone and recognize that taking care of them is, at times, exhausting and difficult, and that it might preclude you from undertaking other (paid) work. Even if this is a choice you consciously made, rather than being forced by economic circumstances, it is still work. And everyone is allowed to complain about their work and to push for better conditions.
What would that look like? A “carers union”? Monetary compensation for caring? Maybe the Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights is a jumping off point. Maybe it’s changing the conversations we have about care work and its value. It’s partners and family members who recognize rather than diminish care work. It’s carers having an equal say in family finances and equal rest. And no, “rest” does not mean going to the grocery store alone.
At some point, all of us will need care and many of us will perform care work. It’s in our own best interest to see that care workers are afforded the dignity and rest other professions command.
How do you feel about capitalism? Which, if any, of the bulleted questions resonate with you? How do you think capitalism skews our understanding of work, if it does?
BONUS MATERIALS
Take this quiz to see an estimate of how much your caregiving is worth
It’s not online anymore, but Buzzfeed used to have a quiz called “What Will Your Job Be Once the Revolution Happens?” The punchline being that this was the answer every time:
underfunded school system, lack of access to nutrient-dense foods, disintegration of communities, public safety issues; I could go on.
What we have in most cases now is a toxic form of capitalism. For some, there cannot be a non-toxic capitalism, just as for some, they cannot conceive of non-toxic masculinity, but I’m not sure about either.
In Simon Sinek’s Infinite Game, he suggests that the problem with capitalism is when it mistakes profit for purpose. He says that profit is always the fuel to achieve a purpose, never the purpose itself.
When profit becomes the purpose, it also becomes an idol, and begins a positive feedback loop which leads to the very unhealthy version of capitalism we are currently experiencing.
Idols always require a sacrifice, and the idol of profit may just require the sacrifice of the entire human race.
I think since profit is the goal of Capitalism it will always seek to cut costs and increase profits, this means there will always be an exploited group. Capitalism is also in bed with Colonialism and the result is a climate crisis and multiple genocides happening around the world increasing the profits of the western powers. I think the time for Capitalism and Colonialism to run their course has come and we need to seek a decolonized equitable system.
Love what you said about mother's and carers. I also think when profit is the goal a capitalist society maybe can't even function without exploited/underpaid/unpaid carers. Granting carers any sort of compensation or support then moves us more towards socialism.🤔