The Care Manifesto (2020) by the Care Collective

A short manifest that presents an alternative vision for society centred on “universal care,” which is “the ideal of a society in which care is front and centre at every scale of life” (p. 26) and in which we are all responsible for care. The definition of care, in this context, is not only hands-on physical and emotional care, but also “a social capacity and activity involving the nurturing of all that is necessary for the welfare and flourishing of life” (p. 5). By putting care at the centre, the Care Collective puts themselves diametrically opposite of our current neo-liberal political-economic system, which focuses on the care-less pursuit of maximizing economic growth. The manifesto demonstrates how care could be at the centre of multiple levels of our society.
 
On the level of the family, the dominant model of the family is the patriarchal nuclear family form, where care providers are gendered and care recipients are confined to family members. Drawing on alternative models of kinship—African American communities, LGBT movements—and the ethics of care of groups like military medics, the Care Collective advances the concept of “promiscuous care” (p. 33). In their words, promiscuous care “is an ethics that proliferates outwards to redefine caring relations from the most intimate to the most distant” that is “extensive and experimental” and “indiscriminate” (p. 41). It recognizes that care can be provided by and for people of varying kinship relations, and, speaking to the climate crisis, recognizes that non-human entities are also deserving subjects of care.
 
On the wider level of the community, the Care Collective suggests that there are four core characteristics of caring communities. The first characteristic is mutual support, which refers to the localized and neighbourly forms of mutual care. The second characteristic calls for reclaiming public spaces and combatting neo-liberal privatization. The third characteristic is resource-sharing and offers the idea of a “library of things.” The last characteristic states that caring communities are democratic communities; specifically, the Care Community calls for support for local co-operatives, municipalism, and in-sourcing (as opposed to out-sourcing) of critical functions.
 
Care needs to be supported by the state. The Care Collective defines the caring state as “one in which notions of belonging are based on a recognition of our mutual interdependencies, rather than on ethno-cultural identity and racialized borders,” where “their first and ultimate responsibility should be to build and maintain their own sustainable infrastructures of care” (p. 59), which directly critiques current state formations based on identity-based forms of belonging and liberal capitalist ideology. Importantly, the caring state is also a reimaging (and not a mere return to) the Keynesian welfare state. Instead of a paternalistic state that deepens dependencies, the caring state “enables everyone to cultivate… ‘strategic autonomy and independence’” (p. 64) and create conditions for democratic participation. The caring state will also help to advance some of the other aspects of caring communities; for example, it could create the conditions of a shorter work week to further the capacity of individuals to care.
 
In terms of the economy, the Care Collective makes a clear distinction between the market logics and care logics. They argue that the two are incommensurable; commoditized care through the market distribute care unequally and the values of individual self-interest do not align with the mutuality and patience associated with the values of care. To restore care logics, the Collective calls for demarketising care infrastructures and re-regulating markets and defetishization of commodities through more localized, democratic forms of production.
 
Finally, the Care Manifesto ends with a call to care on a global scale for the non-human world through an ethics of everyday cosmopolitanism, which is “promiscuous care on a global scale” that “moves our caring imaginaries… to the furthest reaches of the ‘strangest’ parts of the planet” (p. 95) and recognizes our condition of interdependence with other human and non-human beings.  

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