Forget free trade—we need free care

Multilateralism needs a new goal

“Imagination is never in power”, wrote Francoise d'Eaubonne in her explosive 1974 book, Feminism or Death. Hailed as one of the seminal texts of eco-feminism, Feminism or Death argues stridently that only a feminist movement is capable of saving women and Earth herself from the exploitative and extractive maw of capitalist patriarchy. She compellingly contrasts reproductive work and productive work, calling for the abandonment of the “infernal cycle” of production-consumption which alienates workers and relies on women to continue their invisibilised contribution. This, of course, would alleviate the stress put on the planet’s body in order to perpetuate a society of mass inequality, abuse, slavery and domination. (If you like all this, you’re going to love my book.)

Towards the end of the text, she refers to a science-fiction collection If This Goes On, highlighting a story which offers a breathtaking new mode of organisation after an environmental catastrophe:

“[A]ll the discoveries of the past had been carefully preserved and transferred to a restricted number of depositories but were only used on rare occasions; for example, a very rare remedy was fabricated and a supersonic jet sent to get it in emergency cases, to heal a sick child; the rest of the time, transportation was by horse or bicycle. Importance thus was shifted from the speed of the transport to its motivation. The civilization of gadgets had disappeared and had given way to a humanism that was not retrograde after dispensing with technical devices devoid of common sense.”

We already live in a world where some use jets and others use horses, but this was the first time I had come across a literary depiction of the possibility of that divide not being artificially constructed by wealth inequality, but being deliberately maintained by collective responsibility. I began imagining a future which departs from the long march of progress towards defeat, in which technology is applied to the cultivation of our reproductivity¹ instead of the enclosure of our productivity, in which we are not forced to adopt privatised services to survive but in which we choose and enforce the boundaries which protect our bodies and Earth’s. A future in which it is not the “invisible hand of the market” corralling us towards loss, but our collective, steady gaze which decides what we should do with what we have, and what we don’t need to be well.

This would demand a profound maturity, and the development of organic social systems which empower us to actively participate in the creation of our own lives. We are a long way off that, where the choice available to us is “assimilate or die”, after which we can choose our preferred numbing agent to take the edge off our profound lack of freedom, each of which contributes to a culture of binge-consumption. It would demand not just rejecting available technology, but rejecting available energy sources, a far more difficult ask when our biological impulse is to seek energy surpluses. And even if human beings could finally put our profound capacity for morality and reasoning to good use, could our institutions, which necessarily centralise power (a by-product of which is needing steady access to that surplus) achieve the same? We cannot answer such a question in the here and now. But it is the only sustainable future of a global human system.

In the wake of Trump politics and the return to isolationist policies which even Bush Jr rejected in his reign, there are renewed calls by leaders all around the world not to abandon globalisation, calling for a “true multilateralism”. Writing in The Guardian, President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, insisted: “No wall is high enough to preserve islands of peace and prosperity surrounded by violence and misery.” He called for countries to find common ground and tackle the “multilateralism crisis” by rebuilding it “on fairer and more inclusive foundations”. In a similar column, former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown echoed the call, suggesting updating a global charter for our common future. He wrote that this “coalition of the willing” should pledge to deliver “global solutions” and “practical cooperation on urgent concerns for which no nation state-only answers are possible – global security, climate, health and humanitarian needs as well as the flow of trade.”

I respect both Lula and Brown, particularly Brown who is one of only two UK Prime Ministers in decades who continued to represent his local constituents after losing an election. Forsaking the easy path of making a fortune on the conference and consulting circuit, Brown has never ceased to direct his concern and intelligence towards the material problems experienced by an exploited British and global working class. Yet, while Lula and Brown’s diagnosis is accurate, their solutions do not engage with our unnecessary binge-consumption triggered by the unquestioning assumption in technological “advancement”, nor the requisite energy sources centralised institutions demand. I would argue that we cannot have a sustainable future while slicing up Earth’s body to provide both. To truly provide for our humanitarian needs—education, water, food, shelter, education, culture, thriving communities and a healthy biosphere—we’re going to have to sacrifice the belief that free trade facilitates human well-being.

Rather than free trade, we need free care. We need the free flow of knowledge and know-how so that medical and technological benefits are available to all. We need the free flow of necessary resources to impoverished communities so they can live with dignity, accessing clean water, nourishing food and shelter. We need the free flow of education and books and art so that satisfaction can be derived in the quiet, not in consumption. We need the free flow of wildlife and ocean currents, unimpeded by industrialised society or war, which will protect our biosphere. This is a profoundly caring world, one in which the reproductive capacity of human beings and Earth herself is unleashed, cultivating societies in which we put our heads together for what is good and necessary. A world in which capacity for reciprocity is not defined monetarily.

The premise of free trade was to construct a global system of interdependence between nation states which could stymie war-mongering. Yet, the protection it afforded nation states did not trickle down to every citizen. Perverse incentives like the profit motive have driven mass exploitation of labour and land, the expulsion of indigenous communities from their homes, and the financialisation of human needs. The premise, too, only worked as long as the markets had a steady supply of resources. As we enter an era of scarcity, war is back on the table as a strategy for securing resources. As long as our global system is built on the assumption of uninhibited access to Earth’s body, it will default to violence to protect against its own fragility.

There is so much good work that could be done. We could build phones and laptops that last a lifetime. We could build homes that last generations. We could dismantle all the private cars and repurpose them for a truly global system of public transport. We could mine our gadgets and skyscrapers and mansions for the materials we need for renewable energy, rather than mine Earth. We could legislate against private markets and launch deliberative democracies and ban weapons of mass destruction. We could repatriate the trillions of dollars stolen by the world’s wealthiest through our own exploitation. We could rewild our devastated planet, re-engineer our food systems to agro-ecology, clean up our pollution. We could learn how to live slowly and work with purpose.

Imagine a world of bicycles and electric trains and sail boats, of fresh food and clean air. Imagine choosing where you want to live by virtue of how you think you can help. Imagine working for everyone rather than private executives. Imagine helping the forests regrow. Imagine witnessing Earth’s body breathe a sigh of relief with our own.

Multilateralism should go far beyond war-prevention and solutionism, a primarily productive lens. Reproductive multilateralism is a system built on care. We are so desperately far from it, perhaps further than ever thanks to globalisation. But it doesn’t mean we can never get there. Imagine if imagination was in power.

1. Reproductivity here does not refer to procreation, rather the feminist critique of reproductive work as that which allows a culture to reproduce itself.

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