Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism

Barnard College historian Nadasen (Household Workers Unite) takes an incisive look at the evolution of the U.S. “care economy” over the last 50 years, with a focus on how care work has become a source of massive profit for corporations and a major contributor to economic and social inequality. Responding to recent feminist and liberal activism extolling a “politics of care” as the best way to advocate for a strengthened social safety net, Nadasen argues that this valorized notion of care obscures the fact that care work has historically been highly exploited labor. She contends that a half-century of emphasis on individualism, private industry, and the dismantling of the welfare state has established a care economy that does not effectively care for people so much as it creates opportunities for businesses to profit by providing services such as health care, education, welfare, sanitation, infrastructure maintenance, and security—regardless of quality and effectiveness, which are often lacking. Instead of looking to the state and to traditional progressive and liberal legal reforms and social programs to solve these issues, Nadasen instead encourages activists to consider examples of nonhierarchal and collective mutual aid movements that have historically sustained African American and Indigenous communities. Crisply argued, rigorously contextualized, and approachably written, this is essential reading for those interested in social justice and working-class politics. (Oct.)