The alt’s revaluation of care challenges neoliberalism

Processes of neoliberalisation have generated distinctive forms of gender and racial oppression, and anti-democratic governance, as well as political and economic cri- ses. Contemporary authoritarian regimes have emerged on this terrain to promote overtly anti-democratic and racialised and gendered forms of popular sovereignty to sustain ever more deeply crisis-ridden neoliberal social orders. Typically, these authoritarian regimes present themselves as welfarist in orientation, thereby osten- sibly challenging neoliberalism. A closer examination of these policies, however, reveals ongoing neoliberal trends—including a deepening focus on the reform of the household and the marginalisation of minorities—complemented by deepening authoritarianism to curb dissent. Since 2016 for instance, as a response to growing social discontent, China has initiated reforms to the hukou system and its stark rural/ urban divide by, for instance, encouraging permanent migrant settlement, and pro- viding healthcare and pensions for migrant workers. Responsibility for migrant set- tlement, however, rests with local governments, which lack resources and incentives to integrate migrant workers. Migrant children continue to be mostly excluded from high-quality state schools and educated in low-quality private schools or sent back to rural areas, leaving them ill-educated for anything other than low-paid service work (Goodburn 2020). The lack of support for childcare, eldercare and domestic work means that such work has become privatised and marketised. This has had par- ticularly negative effects on women due to the influence of a new discourse on moth- erhood, tied to notions of suzhi, and promoted by local communities and the party- state, which has reversed the one-child policy and adopted a pro-natalist policy in response to an ageing population. Alongside undertaking care work, mothers return- ing to rural communities are being incorporated into an informal, precarious econ- omy of sub-contracted light manufacturing work (Zhang 2021). Urban low-skilled female workers are also increasingly opting for flexible informal service sector work to cope with increasing care demands (Dong 2020). The social credit system seeks to consolidate the political economy and moral economy of Chinese neoliberalism as a ‘techno-moral fix’ through ensuring market-based legal and regulatory com- pliance and a moral discourse of trustworthiness which is connected to the notion of suzhi (Zhang 2020; Sum 2019, 396). The discourse of suzhi is also central to the treatment of minorities in the province of Xinjiang. Since 2016, the Uyghur and other minorities have been subjected to mass detention in ‘re-education’ camps that aim to raise their moral, mental and physical suzhi to, supposedly, that of the Han majority and, as Cooper (2021, 110) points out, to expropriate their labour in supply chains for global brands (Kam and Clarke 2021, 636–637). The absence of suzhi has been blamed for Xinjiang’s poverty and the inability of minority residents to adapt to the market economy (Zukosky 2012). In India, the government of Narendra Modi has gone further than any previous Indian regime in embedding neoliberal reforms in a moral framework, namely that of Hindutva, an upper-caste, conservative political Hinduism (Chacko 2019). Since 2017, seeking to consolidate a broad base of electoral support, Modi has presented himself as a welfarist Prime Minister launching numerous schemes tar- geting poor communities including the urban poor, women, youth, Muslim women and even the transgender community, which was officially recognised as a legally protected minority in 2014. A closer examination of these schemes, however, reveals marketised welfare delivery with minimal benefits and an elevation of Hindutva social norms and cultural mores which are Brahmanical and patriarchal, positioning left-liberals, Christians and Muslims (particularly men) as enemy oth- ers to be excluded, while lower castes are to be hierarchically incorporated into a Hindutva social order. For example, micro-credit schemes involving private, and public sector, banks and private sector companies associated with the gig econ- omy, have been targeted towards lower caste, urban poor communities and par- ticularly women, whose labour force participation has fallen precipitously low. The schemes have been promoted as rejecting an overregulated, patronage-driven state created by liberal elites and empowering female family members to contrib- ute to the family income and national growth through self-employment, utilising traditional caste- and gender-based occupational skills (Chacko 2020; Gudavar- thy and Vijay 2020). Surveys conducted on the impact of micro-credit schemes on women indicate, however, that they have produced few new businesses and low-quality jobs. Moreover, public health and education systems remain woefully underfunded. The Modi regime has also intensified pre-existing authoritarian ten- dencies. Farmer resistance to neoliberalising agricultural reforms was met with force and internet shutdowns and was framed as threats to the nation by separa- tist minorities. Violent campaigns and legislation against Hindu-Muslim romantic relationships have been framed as protecting Hindu women’s rights to education and work against oppressive Muslim men (Chacko 2020). The stripping of the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir of its semi-autonomous status was consistent with long-held Hindutva complaints about the special treatment given to Muslims in India by liberal elites, but it was also justified as opening the region to investment, women’s rights and economic growth. In the name of disciplin- ing and protecting Indian civilisation, moves to privatise public sector companies and marketise agriculture have occurred alongside the introduction of strategic protectionism which aims to encourage foreign investment in some sectors while reducing the role of foreign capital in others; supports selected domestic compa- nies; and rejects or renegotiates free trade agreements, which are now blamed for deindustrialisation (Chacko 2021). The case of India has some similarities with Hungary where the government of Viktor Orbán combines a moral framework of white Christian, patriarchal nation- alism with strategic protectionism to reduce foreign ownership and boost selected domestic capitalists in key sectors while encouraging foreign investment in oth- ers and decreasing reliance on international financial institutions. This has been combined with more traditional neoliberal policies such as the constitutionalised enforcement of balanced budgets; inflation targeting and debt reduction; tax cuts; weakening of labour rights; consumer price interventions; anti-poor policies such as the criminalisation of homelessness; and workfare-ist policies. In addition, pro- natalist policies aim to consolidate cross-class support by tying social rights to having children; targeting heterosexual working families engaged in formal paid employment with tax benefits; baby and marriage-incentive loans; child-related debt reduction; and mortgage assistance (Geva 2021; Fodor 2022). Such policies often exclude minorities such as Roma, who remain outside of formal employ- ment, and disadvantage lower class women who must continue low-paid work to obtain a modicum of state support. Leaders have justified discrimination in the labour market as well as the lack of state support for care work through an ‘anti- gender’ discourse opposing gender equality, and through the sentimentalising of feminised care work (Fodor 2022). A limited tax base has contributed to falling expenditure on health and education and the exacerbation of social inequalities (Stubbs and Lendvai‐Bainton 2020, 550–551). Recognising that authoritarian protectionism in India, China, and Hungary and other countries (E.g. see Stubbs and Lendvai‐Bainton 2020, Ramos 2021) has done little to resolve the crises of unemployment and social reproduction that have become major sources of discontent is important for finding a way forward for those opposed to this politics. It is these weaknesses that should be the focus for building the progressive hegemonic approach with alternative moral claims that Cooper (2021, 139) advocates. To this end, the ‘great resignation’ of workers in the low-paid services sector in the USA and the successful farmer protests in India, which forced the government to shelve marketising agricultural reforms, are perhaps hopeful signs for the possibility of building of new social democra- cies by foregrounding issues of labour expropriation and social reproduction.