Roadmap to a Caring Economics: Beyond Capitalism & Socialism, by Riane Eisler

Be The Earth is proud to support the work of Dr Riane Eisler — social systems scientist, cultural historian, futurist and attorney — whose pioneering research and writing have shaped movements worldwide. As Founder & President of the Center for Partnership Systems, she is catalysing a global shift toward partnership-based societies through research, education, grassroots empowerment and policy change.

Today we increasingly hear about a new economics. However, economic policy is still framed primarily by capitalist or socialist theory. This paper starts from a different perspective. It proposes that when we think of a new economics, we think of children.

What kind of economic policies and practices are needed so that all children are healthy, get a sound education, and are prepared to live good lives? What kind of economic system helps – or prevents – children from expressing the capacities that make us fully human: consciousness, empathy, caring, and creativity?

Addressing these questions is the point of departure for designing an economic system that promotes not only human survival but full human development: a caring economics or partnerism.

BEYOND CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM

When children are the starting point for a new economic paradigm, we move beyond both capitalist and socialist theory. This does not mean discarding everything from capitalism and socialism, as we need both markets and central planning. But to effectively address our unprecedented economic, environmental, technological, and social challenges requires that we go deeper, to matters that conventional economic theories ignore.

Both capitalism and socialism came out of early industrial times, and we are now well into the post-industrial age. So on that count alone, those theories would be antiquated. But there is an even more fundamental problem:

Both capitalism and socialism fail to include in their definition of “productive work” the work of caring for people, starting in early childhood, and caring for our natural environment.

Both Adam Smith and Karl Marx ignored the vital importance of nature’s life-sustaining activities; for them, nature exists to be exploited. As for the life-sustaining activities of caring for people starting in childhood, they considered this ‘women’s' work’ – merely ‘reproductive’ labor, and not part of their ‘productive’ economic equation. Though strongly criticized by feminist economists, this distinction between ‘productive’ and ‘reproductive’ labor has been at the core of both capitalist and socialist thinking.

The focus of both capitalist and socialist theory is on the exchange of goods and services in the market. Consequently, in curricula taught to this day, the domain of economics consists of only three sectors: the market economy, the government economy, and, more recently, the illegal economy.

This old economic map (Figure 1) fails to include the three life-sustaining economic sectors: the household economy, the natural economy, and the volunteer economy.

The limitation of economics to goods and services that change hands in the market not only ignores that there would be no workforce if it were not for the three life-sustaining economic sectors of the household, natural, and volunteer economy. It also ignores that the work of caring for people and for nature has economic value.

To build a truly new economics requires a full-spectrum economic map that includes these sectors and gives visibility and value to the most essential human work: the work of caring for people, starting in early childhood, and caring for our natural environment (Figure 2).

This leads to another vital matter ignored in conventional economic courses and discussions. This is that economic systems do not arise in a vacuum: they are influenced by, and in turn influence, the larger social system in which they are embedded.

THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF ECONOMICS

Both capitalism and socialism were attempts to improve people’s economic situation. Adam Smith believed that his economic proposals would lead to the greater good of all. Karl Marx wanted to assuage the terrible poverty and exploitation of workers of early industrial capitalism. But while capitalism did help to enlarge the middle class, and socialism brought peasants and workers out of extreme poverty, neither system worked out as their progenitors had hoped.

To understand the inadequacies of both theories, as well as the failures of their real-life social applications, requires looking at their social contexts. It also requires that we go beyond conventional social categories such as socialist vs. capitalist, religious vs. secular, rightist vs. leftist, Eastern vs. Western, industrial vs. postindustrial.

All our conventional social categories only describe a particular feature of a social system, such as location, ideology, or level of technology. None tells us what kinds of relations – including economic relations – a particular social system supports.

The new social categories of partnership system and domination system describe the core configurations of societies that support two very different kinds of relations – from intimate to international.

The domination system supports relations of top-down rankings: man over man, man over woman, race over race, religion over religion, nation over nation, and man over nature.

The partnership system supports relations of mutual respect, accountability, and benefit. And the degree to which a time and place orients to either end of the partnership-domination social scale affects every social institution – from the family, education, and religion to politics and economics.

DOMINATION SYSTEMS

The core configuration of the domination system consists of top-down rankings in the family, state, and/or tribe, maintained by physical, psychological, and economic control; the ranking of the male half of humanity over the female half, and, with this, the devaluation by both men and women of anything stereotypically considered feminine; and a high degree of culturally accepted abuse and violence.

If from this new perspective we re-examine the critique of capitalism as unjust, violent, and exploitive, we see that it is in reality a critique of the structures and relationships inherent in domination systems – be they ancient or modern, Western or Eastern, feudal, monarchic, or totalitarian.

Long before capitalist billionaires amassed huge fortunes, Egyptian pharaohs and Chinese emperors lived in almost unimaginable luxury while their ‘subjects’ barely survived. Indian potentates demanded tributes of silver and gold while lower castes often starved. Middle Eastern warlords pillaged, plundered, and terrorized their people. European feudal lords killed their neighbors and oppressed their subjects.

In all these pre-capitalist times and places, the gap between haves and have-nots was astronomical, and the mass of people lived in abject poverty. In short, all these are examples of rigid domination systems.

From this new perspective, we can also see that Smith developed capitalist theory in a time when rankings of domination were still generally accepted.

While Marx’s theories came out of times when there were already organized challenges to these rankings, they too reflected and perpetuated assumptions inherent in domination systems, including the ranking of men and ‘masculinity’ over women and anything considered ‘feminine,’ such as caring, caregiving, and nonviolence.

PARTNERSHIP SYSTEMS

The partnership system has a very different configuration. Its core elements are a democratic and egalitarian structure in both the family and the state or tribe; equal partnership between women and men; and a low degree of violence because it’s not needed to maintain rigid rankings of domination.

Nordic nations such as Sweden, Norway, and Finland are the contemporary countries that have moved most closely to the partnership side of the partnership-domination continuum.

They have more equality in both the family and the state; a higher status of women (approximately 40 percent of their national legislators are female); and concerted efforts to leave behind traditions of violence: they pioneered the first peace studies and the first laws prohibiting physical discipline of children in families, and have a strong men’s movement to disentangle ‘masculinity’ from its equation with domination and violence.

In accordance with their more partnership-oriented social configuration, these nations have government-supported childcare, universal health care, stipends to help families care for children, elder care with dignity, and generous paid parental leave.

These more caring policies, in turn, made it possible for these nations to move from extreme poverty (famines in the early 20th century) to societies with a generally high standard of living for all.

MAKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE

The Nordic nations’ success has sometimes been attributed to their relatively small and homogeneous populations, and in Norway’s case to rich supplies of fossil fuels. But small, homogeneous societies such as some oil-rich Middle-Eastern nations, where absolute conformity to one religious sect and one tribal or royal head is demanded, have large gaps between haves and have-nots and other inequities characteristic of domination systems.

So we have to look at other factors to understand why Nordic nations moved out of poverty and developed a prosperous, more caring and equitable economic system in a relatively short time.

What made these nations successful was moving toward the partnership configuration made it possible for them to become what they call: “caring societies.” One of the core components of their more caring democracy and economy, in contrast to the domination system, is equality between male and female.

Women have occupied the highest political offices in the Nordic world. Along with this higher status of Nordic women came a higher valuing of the ‘soft’ or stereotypically feminine – in both men and women as well as in social and economic policy.

Accordingly, both men and women in these nations have voted for universal health care, generous paid parental leave for both mothers and fathers, and other policies that give value and visibility to the work of caring for people and nature. Moreover, their more caring economics has translated into their high investment in aid to poor nations all over the world.

This takes us back to where we started: the need to restructure economic systems in ways that go beyond the old capitalism vs. socialism debate. When societies move toward the partnership side of the partnership-domination social scale, women and the ‘feminine’ are not devalued, and this benefits not only women but also men and children of both genders.

ECONOMIC POLICY, POVERTY, AND GENDERED VALUES

Many politicians think that there should always be funding for prisons, weapons, and wars – all stereotypically associated with men and ‘real masculinity.’ But when it comes to funding caring for people – for child care, health care, early childhood education, and other such expenditures – they say there’s not enough money.

There has been movement toward the partnership system. But the gendered system of valuations we inherited is still extremely resistant to change – so much so that when men embrace traits considered soft’ or ‘feminine’ they are tarred with derisive terms such as “‘effeminate’ and ‘sissy.’”

While politicians often say their goal is ending poverty and hunger, they rarely mention that women and children are the majority of the world’s poor and hungry; that even in the rich United States, woman-headed families are on the lowest tier of the economic hierarchy; and that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the poverty rate of women over 65 is almost twice that of men over 65.

The fact that worldwide poverty and hunger disproportionately affect women is neither accidental nor inevitable. It is the direct result of political and economic systems that still have a strong dominator stamp.

That even in an affluent nation like the US older women are so much more likely to live in poverty than older men is due not only to wage discrimination in the market economy, so that occupations such as childcare and family care are very low paid. It is largely due to the fact that these women are, or were, full- or part-time family caregivers, and this work is neither paid nor rewarded through Social Security or pensions.

Policies that reward care work will go a long way toward cutting through otherwise intractable cycles of poverty. Educating and remunerating people for caregiving will also help close the ‘caring gap’” – the worldwide lack of care for children, the elderly, and the sick and infirm.

And it will eventually lead to a redefinition of ‘productivity’ that gives visibility and value to what really makes us healthy and happy – and that leads to economic prosperity.

ECONOMIC INDICATORS

The omission of caring and caregiving from mainstream economic theory and practice has caused enormous, and unnecessary, human suffering. It also led to flawed economic indicators: gross domestic product (GDP) and gross national product (GNP).

These conventional measures of economic health actually place activities that harm life (like selling cigarettes, and the health and funeral costs from smoking) on the plus side. Yet they give no value to the life-sustaining activities of the household economy and the natural economy.

So an old stand of trees is only included in GDP when it is cut down – ignoring the fact that we need the oxygen that trees produce in order to breathe. Nor does GDP include the value of the caring and caregiving work performed in households.

After analyzing a large number of GDP alternatives, the Center for Partnership Studies (CPS) and the Urban Institute hosted a group of prominent economists in Washington DC to lay the groundwork for the development of Social Wealth Economic Indicators (SWEIs). These indicators were then developed by CPS and launched in 2014.

SWEIs demonstrate the substantial financial return from caring for people and nature – and the enormous costs of not doing so.

Unlike other GDP alternatives, SWEIs include data from studies that quantify the value of the work of caring for people and keeping healthy home environments. For example, a 2016 Australian government publication reported that if the unpaid care work in households were included in Australia’s GDP, it would constitute no less than 50 percent.

STEPS TOWARD A CARING ECONOMY

There are many ways of funding investment in our world’s human infrastructure. One source is to shift funding from the often terribly wasteful investment in weapons, which could be done without risking national security. Taxes on financial speculation and other harmful activities, such as making and selling junk food, can also fund investment in caring for people and our natural habitat. The savings on the immense costs of not investing in caring and caregiving, such as the huge expenditures of taxpayer money on crime, courts, prisons, lost human potential, and environmental damage, are another source.

At the same time, we must accelerate the shift to partnership cultures and structures so that anything stereotypically considered ‘soft’ or ‘feminine’ – such as caring and caregiving – is no longer devalued. This is vital, because economic systems reflect, and perpetuate, underlying social values.

Another important step toward a caring economics entails changing economics curricula.

For example, current curricula still teach future economists to make the distinction between ‘productive’ and ‘reproductive’ work, perpetuating the devaluation of the work of caring for people and for nature.

CONCLUSION

Economic systems are human creations. They can be changed, and both academicians and practitioners can play important roles in creating these changes.

Incorporating new thinking into research, writing, and teaching can engage the next generation in bringing these ideas to fruition. Advocating for government investment in parenting education, paid parental leave, and innovative measures such as tax credits for caregivers and Social Security credit for the first years of caring for a child are also important steps in the transformation of economics and society in a partnership direction.

All of us can be leaders in building a social and economic system guided by caring rather than uncaring values.

Working together, we can help create a future of partnerism in which all children can realize their great potentials for consciousness, empathy, caring, and creativity: the capacities that make us fully human.

👉 Read the full article published by the Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies