When we think about work in these terms, the problem of women’s work isn’t just a lack of access to certain (prestigious) careers but the problem of the stickiness of particular associations – women as subservient, caring, unskilled; men as strong, skilled and uncaring.

When I was ill, I saw quite how much people wanted to care for each other and how much those desires for care were frustrated by the way our society is set up.

The self-exploitation that characterises the experience of contemporary capitalist work is not just a source of individual misery but a means of guaranteeing profit.

Partly, this was because of something of a cover-up by employers: thanks to a loophole that allowed them not to report cases that were, on their judgement, transmitted within the community rather than at work, employers were in practice able to decide for themselves if cases of Covid-19 in their workplace were reported as such.3 This was a

For many, work is the place in which their lives are lived, in which some of their most important relationships are forged and in which they might find meaning, even joy. It is important that critics of work reckon with this.

Denaturalising makes visible that something is a historically contingent set of power-relations, rather than a ‘natural’, unchanging permanent state of affairs.

At first, large-scale garment production took place in the Global North. In cities like London, New York and Paris, migrant workers toiled long hours for low wages, in small shops, often in the homes of their employers. As New York’s garment workers began to organise, manufacturers moved their shops to states with less well-organised workforces and

Developing power is about winning power, with the goal not merely being heard, of making the case, but of winning power to transform the world, not to merely tinker round its edges.

The creation of new needs is part of capitalism’s hunger for growth, creating more and more commodities and felt-needs, expanding across more and more of the globe.