The Limits of Mutual Aid and the Promise of Liberation within Radical Politics of Care

Abstract

The present COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated conditions for continued survival, and community-based mutual aid networks have appeared seemingly organically to address such conditions. I argue these networks often fail to recognize capitalism’s mediation of caring labor, namely, the processes of survival and reproduction which are consistently undermined and demanded by capital’s accumulation. Instead, I propose a politics of care built on insights from the Black Panther Party’s and the Wages for Housework campaign’s respective responses to a lack of reproductive resources, which emphasize the position of survival struggles as a primary site of anti-capitalist political agitation and mobilization.

Keywords

• social reproduction theory
• politics of care
• feminist historical materialism
• black panther party
• wages for housework