In her work, Nan­cy Fol­bre, a Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sor, explores the inter­sec­tion of fem­i­nist the­o­ry and polit­i­cal econ­o­my, with a spe­cial empha­sis on what she calls ​“care work” – the labor, often out­side the mon­ey econ­o­my, that goes into car­ing for chil­dren, the sick or the elderly.

Folbre talked with In These Times about the negative effects of ignoring care work in public policy, and what the future of our democracy might look like if we want it to strengthen our families and communities.

She is well known for her abil­i­ty to explain these ideas in sim­ple, acces­si­ble lan­guage, both in her work with the Cen­ter for Pop­u­lar Eco­nom­ics – the col­lec­tive of econ­o­mists who put out the Field Guide to the U.S. Econ­o­my (New Press) – and with her week­ly post to the Economix–a New York Times blog ded­i­cat­ed to ​“explain­ing the sci­ence of every­day life.”

Fol­bre talked with In These Times about the neg­a­tive effects of ignor­ing care work in pub­lic pol­i­cy, and what the future of our democ­ra­cy might look like if we want it to strength­en our fam­i­lies and communities.

What key per­spec­tives are miss­ing from our nation­al debates about bud­get deficits and the nation­al debt?

First, there is lit­tle or no report­ing on pro­gres­sive pro­pos­als to address the deficit, such as the People’s Bud­get, which has been men­tioned only in a few opin­ion pieces in the main­stream print media, despite sup­port from the Pro­gres­sive Con­gres­sion­al Cau­cus and excel­lent report­ing by In These Times. (Editor’s note: See ​“What Amer­i­cans Want,” by David Moberg, June 2011.)

Sec­ond, there is lit­tle or no chal­lenge (out­side of op-ed pieces) to what one can call ​“the aus­ter­i­ty sto­ry.” This sto­ry tells us that social spend­ing in gen­er­al is on an unsus­tain­able path and needs to be cut. The debate is framed sim­ply as one of lev­els and tim­ing: The Repub­li­cans want us to cut more now, and the Democ­rats want us to cut less, later.

Only one big com­po­nent of social spend­ing is actu­al­ly on an unsus­tain­able path – health­care spend­ing. That’s one of the prob­lems that Pres­i­dent Obama’s health­care reform was intend­ed to address – and would cer­tain­ly ame­lio­rate, if not solve. Yet Repub­li­cans want to repeal it.

My Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts col­league Jim Crot­ty describes the aus­ter­i­ty sto­ry as a ratio­nale for increased redis­tri­b­u­tion to the rich.

That redis­tri­b­u­tion to the rich plays out on a glob­al scale, doesn’t it?

The aus­ter­i­ty sto­ry reflects a new phase of glob­al­iza­tion, in which large cor­po­ra­tions no longer have much incen­tive to invest in the health or edu­ca­tion of a nation­al labor force.

Glob­al com­pe­ti­tion def­i­nite­ly plays a role: Social spend­ing rep­re­sents a ​“social wage” that is linked to cit­i­zen­ship. Down­ward pres­sure on wages in the advanced cap­i­tal­ist coun­tries is now accom­pa­nied by down­ward pres­sure on social wages. Both skilled and unskilled labor are plen­ti­ful on the glob­al lev­el, and can there­fore be treat­ed as a kind of nat­ur­al resource like oil or coal, to be sim­ply extract­ed and deplet­ed. Of course, the social con­se­quences, or as econ­o­mists put it, ​“neg­a­tive exter­nal­i­ties,” are huge. Glob­al warm­ing goes along with what one could call pub­lic-sec­tor ​“chill­ing,” that is, reduced pub­lic com­mit­ments to social wel­fare – both of which reduce sus­tain­abil­i­ty and health in the long run.

What role does the media play in aid­ing and abet­ting those we might call ​“pub­lic-sec­tor chill­ing deniers”?

The main­stream media tends to lim­it its atten­tion to main­stream opin­ions. But I don’t fault the media alone. Nei­ther main­stream nor het­ero­dox econ­o­mists have devel­oped a clear pic­ture of the polit­i­cal econ­o­my of pub­lic finance. Het­ero­dox econ­o­mists – includ­ing most pro­gres­sive econ­o­mists – seem reluc­tant to acknowl­edge the com­plex­i­ty of the dis­tri­b­u­tion­al strug­gle that takes place through the pub­lic sec­tor, and the ways that it is shaped by race, gen­der, cit­i­zen­ship and age, as well as class. You can’t boil that strug­gle down to cap­i­tal­ists ver­sus workers.

In my view, much of it also reflects bar­gain­ing over the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the cost of car­ing for depen­dents – not just between men and women, but also between those who have depen­dents (or are depen­dent) and those who don’t (or are not depen­dent). For instance, peo­ple who aren’t rais­ing chil­dren some­times feel aggriev­ed about pay­ing tax­es to sup­port schools.

Should indi­vid­u­als pay for their own edu­ca­tion, their own health­care, their own retire­ment, along with the needs of their own chil­dren and elder­ly par­ents? No, they shouldn’t. There are many rea­sons why social insur­ance is more effi­cient and more equitable.

But many peo­ple don’t under­stand the ben­e­fits they derive from edu­cat­ing ​“oth­er people’s chil­dren.” And pro­gres­sive social sci­en­tists and pol­i­cy mak­ers haven’t direct­ly addressed the under­ly­ing issues: To what extent should these costs be social­ized? How should they be dis­trib­uted? Those are key questions.

How can pro­gres­sives best address them?

First, we need to empha­size the intrin­sic mer­it of invest­ing in the devel­op­ment and main­te­nance of human capa­bil­i­ties. This is not just about kids! It’s also about capa­bil­i­ties to work pro­duc­tive­ly as adults and age past retirement.

Sec­ond, we need to show that such invest­ments pay off with greater over­all pro­duc­tiv­i­ty – even though the increased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty may not show up in con­ven­tion­al eco­nom­ic statistics.

Third, we need to empha­size fair­ness and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. We need to address issues of inter­gen­er­a­tional equi­ty – spend­ing on elder­ly ver­sus spend­ing on chil­dren – and make sure that peo­ple have a clear sense of what they are get­ting back from gov­ern­ment over their life-cycle com­pared to what they put in.

Where do the inter­na­tion­al issues fit in here?

The left has tra­di­tion­al­ly drawn the bound­aries around nation­al bound­aries – cit­i­zen­ship. But as nation­al bound­aries become more per­me­able, oth­er divi­sions also intensify.

So we shouldn’t be sur­prised by grow­ing con­flict over the major insti­tu­tions of the wel­fare state. Peo­ple ask them­selves: ​“We don’t pay social insur­ance for cit­i­zens of oth­er coun­tries, so why should we pay it for recent immi­grants? Why should we pay it for peo­ple who are not like us in oth­er ways?”

The bot­tom line is that even if the aus­ter­i­ty sto­ry is false, it res­onates with peo­ple who feel they don’t have con­trol over gov­ern­ment pro­grams. And it res­onates with their fears – both ratio­nal and irra­tional – that oth­ers are ben­e­fit­ing more than they are from it.

This is a con­flict between indi­vid­ual free­dom (or the illu­sion of it) and social coop­er­a­tion. In a soci­ety that wor­ships the ide­al of indi­vid­ual agency, does the ide­al of work­ing for the col­lec­tive good stand a chance?

There’s less actu­al than per­ceived con­flict here. Indi­vid­u­als ben­e­fit so great­ly from social coop­er­a­tion – espe­cial­ly from invest­ments in human capa­bil­i­ties and the pro­vi­sion of social insur­ance to help sup­port fam­i­ly care. And the ​“ide­al” of indi­vid­ual agency doesn’t apply to young chil­dren or the sick, dis­abled or the elder­ly. It also doesn’t apply to peo­ple who can’t find a job because the econ­o­my is not func­tion­ing at full employment.

The prob­lem is that many con­ser­v­a­tives don’t see these ben­e­fits, while many of the left believe these ben­e­fits are self-evi­dent. I argue for a more sus­tained effort to demon­strate the eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits of social democracy.

Should the left put demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism back on its agenda?

The left is reach­ing for new def­i­n­i­tions of democ­ra­cy and of socialism.

We’ve learned that insti­tu­tions that appear to be demo­c­ra­t­ic can be under­mined by eco­nom­ic pow­er – whether through over-cen­tral­iza­tion, as in the so-called social­ist economies of the for­mer Sovi­et Union, or through cam­paign finance cor­rup­tion, as exem­pli­fied by the Cit­i­zens Unit­ed rul­ing. We’ve also learned that insti­tu­tions that pro­fess to rest on major­i­ty rule can imple­ment rules (like the fil­i­buster) that lead to polit­i­cal stalemate.

Many local activists are drawn to coop­er­a­tives and work­er-owned busi­ness­es, but they haven’t fig­ured out how to scale their grass­roots ini­tia­tives up in a nation­al campaign.

The left doesn’t agree on any one def­i­n­i­tion of social­ism. We have advo­cates for increased demo­c­ra­t­ic par­tic­i­pa­tion at every lev­el of the econ­o­my, like Mike Albert and Robin Hah­nel. And we have advo­cates for mar­ket social­ism, like John Roe­mer. And glob­al cli­mate change reminds us that we can­not sim­ply focus on changes with­in the nation-state.

I am an advo­cate for a form of what I call ​“care social­ism,” based on stronger col­lec­tive com­mit­ments to the devel­op­ment of human capa­bil­i­ties and efforts to strength­en fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties. We need to encour­age more dia­logue between left social sci­en­tists and activists. I hope that In These Times read­ers will weigh in.