Bodies on the Line

In the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought the crisis of work and of care—of production and social reproduction—to new extremes. This summer, unemployment reached record levels. Essential workers were called on not only to tend to the sick, but to deliver groceries, collect trash, and drive buses—to perform tasks that have always been hard and undervalued, but now entail a health risk every time you clock on. Capitalist society depends on this essential work—carried out by nursing assistants, transportation workers, and caretakers—and its dangers are distributed unevenly, across divisions of race, class, and gender. For decades, socialist feminists have brought these realities to our attention; the pandemic has made their insights undeniable. For many, whether they are nurses in hospitals or parents trying to work full time while also educating children or caring for dependents, the labor of maintaining and sustaining life—paid and unpaid, public and private—is becoming too much to bear.