The public. We must delink care from the market. Establishing care as a public good recenters care ethics at the heart of the social by creating a right to care, establishing care-giving as a public social responsibility, and according caregivers recognition as public servants, that’s Holman. That’s necessary and sufficient to redirect institutional power and destabilize neoliberal hegemony.

When exploring what it means for care to be a public good, it is helpful to think of care as an action, a service, or an ethic. This perspective is represented in ethics and philosophy literature by looking at care as a form of response or relation. A responsive definition of care focuses on a person’s response to the needs of others, and meeting those needs with empathy, openness, and a sense of responsibility (Gilligan, 2011; Held, 2014; Noddings, 2010). Some go further by saying that the relation of one person to another is a core aspect of being human and that to understand care ethics, one must understand “the irreducibly relational nature of human existence” (Tronto, 2013, p. 181). This emphasizes that all care ethics are built on human relations, and when using care ethics as a lens for care as a public good, one must also understand the essentiality of human relations.

Philosopher Virginia Held (2014) writes about the ways that care ethics are a revolutionary call to action: “The ethics of care asks for the transformations of society, politics, law, economic activity, the family, and personal relations away from the assumptions of patriarchy and toward the world of caring and the kind of justice caring calls for” (p. 108). Held’s statement summarizes a branch of care ethics that recognizes the societal structures that support or restrain this type of relation (Tronto, 1993). As care ethics have evolved, they have made connections to distributive justice, with scholars arguing for “an ethic of resistance both to injustice and to self-silencing” (Gilligan, 2011, p. 175). One operating under an ethic of care must not only recognize the universality of human relations but also the need to publicly call out injustice. This ethical framework, which asserts both the essential relational nature of humanity and the need for justice, fits with and supports the argument for care as a public good.

Care already appears in our society as a public good, albeit in limited, gendered ways. As men and women have been categorized into public and private spheres, so has care. Public care often appears in these gendered ways; firefighters, a role often filled by men, are an excellent example of this. Firefighting is care provided by citizens and for citizens and it is a generally accepted and lauded type of public care service (Tronto, 2013). It is worth questioning, as a society, why public forms of care are masculine and celebrated, while private forms of care are feminine and invisible. A reorganization of life around care could be a step toward breaking down that dichotomy as care becomes more visible, accepted, and practiced by men and women alike.

Care as a public good would also shift some neoliberal beliefs that have contributed to the devaluation of care acts. The U.S. has accepted the market as the de facto arena to acquire care; this has created the perception that private is better than public. Publicly provided care, often through childcare vouchers, SNAP benefits, unemployment payments, and the like, are stigmatized compared to purchasing private care services. Individuals are expected to get a job, provide for themselves, and not rely on public support except in extreme circumstances. This implies that those receiving public care or public benefits must be incapable of caring for themselves (Tronto, 2013). In a society where independence and self-sufficiency are valorized, public care becomes not only devalued but even perceived as immoral. Policies that support public care services for all – not only based on income, ability, or other qualifiers – could break down the public/private divide as more people from various backgrounds contribute to and participate in public care.

Held (2002) says that “we can recognize the intrinsic and not merely instrumental value of an activity,” which will thereby increase its market value (p. 21). Held’s point is that an activity has inherent value and market prices are a reflection of how a society morally values an action. So, when care workers at a nursing home do not make enough money to live on, that is a reflection of how society values care of the elderly. When mothers receiving public benefits have to jump through hoops in order to keep food on the table, that is a reflection of how we value those mothers and families as a society.

Society has the power to change this pattern of valuation. The market is not what determines an act’s value – the act itself has value by contributing to personal, community, and environmental wellbeing. We can choose as a society, through a partnership of legislators and community, to pull care into the center of our value system. This is the type of society we should push for; this is the debate we should be engaging with. Arguing over how to best represent care work in the market is self-defeating; engaging in efforts to recognize the inherent worth of care is a path forward.

Note that I do not argue for altruism to have a central role in care as a public good. It is not the role of the over-privileged to determine what the less-privileged need, nor is it a laudable position to continue to accumulate outsize wealth while placating yourself that you will donate it one day. These moralized, disempowering money transfers are perpetuating a system of inequality. In a time of amplified individualism, I argue that we need community. Collective action and shared governance can provide for communities in a caring, responsive, culturally-sensitive way. Altruism is not the answer; collective action is.