## // What Is Community Capitalism?

When the state withdraws from social tasks and instead appeals to "the community", it sounds like solidarity. But it is often the opposite. Sociologists Silke van Dyk and Tine Haubner call this strategy *Community Capitalism*. Social problems are privatised. By turning them into matters for voluntary communities.

## // How the Mechanism Works

Three movements interlock.

**Responsibility is privatised.** Social problems appear as problems of "the community". Not as questions that affect everyone.

**Exploitation is hidden.** Unpaid care work is glorified as "community engagement". What is work suddenly looks like a hobby.

**Welfare state dismantling seems plausible.** Because: why still need state structures when "the community" takes care of things?

Concretely, this is visible in many areas. At first glance they seem positive: neighbourhood support. Food banks. Care sponsorships. Voluntary refugee aid. Structurally, however, this means: professional tasks are transferred to amateurs. Unemployment is reinterpreted as "social engagement". Structural problems become matters of morality. Everyone should start with themselves. Instead of changing the system.

The consequences are far-reaching. Social security becomes precarious. Democratic negotiation disappears. And unpaid care work remains mostly "women's business".

The core thesis of van Dyk and Haubner is: community capitalism is based on a **double exploitation – of vulnerability and connectedness**. Vulnerability becomes a resource. Social bonds are economically instrumentalised.

## // The Double Appropriation of Care

Those who think about care in capitalist societies encounter a fundamental problem: we can hardly dispose over the resources we need for care. They are concentrated in two institutions: the **family** in the private sphere and the **state** with its infrastructures.

Both are not only sites of devalued care work. But at the same time relations of domination. A point sometimes overlooked in feminist debates.

The **family** distributes resources unequally. Those who are cast out of their family because they are queer or trans have no access. Those who cannot live with their relatives due to repressive migration laws also have no access. Family is not a safe space for everyone.

The **state** also decides who gets what. Who receives care allowance. Who gets a residence permit. Who counts as a family. All of this is shot through with racist, classist and heteronormative exclusions.

The question therefore is not: "More family or more state?" But: how can we fight for spaces? Spaces in which we care for each other differently. More self-determinedly. More solidarily.

## // But Isn't "Community" Still Something Good?

At this point, many rightly pause: aren't there also *Caring Communities*? Communities that consciously organise around care? And aren't they exactly what we need?

Yes. But there is an important distinction:

**Community Capitalism** invokes "community" to get rid of state responsibility. It assumes that people already somehow belong to each other. And turns this into a silent obligation for unpaid care work.

**Caring Communities** in the emancipatory sense are the opposite. Practical solidarity without a compulsion to belong. Here care is consciously organised. Without the participants having to be similar. Or familiar. Or related.

The question is therefore not *whether* community. But *which* one: one that presupposes solidarity? Or one that actively produces it?

## // Caring Communities in Motion

Against this background, we must hold on to the idea of Caring Communities. But as part of an emancipatory movement. Not as an end in itself. The history of social movements shows this. The feminist movement. LGBT contexts. AIDS activism. Abolitionist struggles. Everywhere, spaces of solidary self-organisation were fought for. This requires simultaneous action on many levels. Everyday care practices. Cultural interventions. Direct actions. Socio-political demands.

Central to this is a question. A question often missing in the care debate: **To whom does what actually belong?** As long as housing, care facilities, energy and food supply remain in private hands, we are "vulnerable to blackmail". Only when these areas are collectively and democratically managed does real scope for solidary living emerge. It is about a rebellious engagement. An engagement that reflects its own limits. And that gradually finds institutional forms. And builds stable structures. Without losing its transformative power.

*Key references: Silke van Dyk & Tine Haubner, Community-Kapitalismus (2021); Mike Laufenberg, Sarah Schilliger & Tine Haubner, Panel discussion "Sorgearbeit zwischen Community-Kapitalismus und Caring-Communities", Bremen 2023*

# /1 Classism & Financial Redistribution

One doesn't talk about money. And that is precisely the problem. Most of us are alone and overwhelmed with our finances. Some barely get by. They have to work a lot just to have the bare minimum. Others don't know what to do with bonuses or an inheritance. And are ashamed of it. All of this is usually only discussed in romantic relationships or families. Precisely the constellations that are themselves full of unequal dependencies.

## // Why Money Belongs to Care

Anyone who wants to care for each other in genuine solidarity cannot avoid the topic of money. Those without a financial buffer cannot afford political engagement. Those who always have to work have no time for care work. For themselves or for others.

That is why an emancipatory care practice also includes a shared financial practice. People redistribute resources. They address financial inequalities among themselves. To create scope. For political work. For care. For a good life together. This is not a romantic gesture. But a tangible prerequisite. It helps today. To make political engagement possible at all. And it points beyond the present. Towards a world in which the economy is democratically organised. And money no longer plays the role it plays today.

## // But: Charity Is Not the Solution

When financial support depends only on the generosity of individuals, the financially weaker remain permanently in the role of supplicants. This should be avoided.

A fair practice therefore begins with three questions:

- Who needs what to be secure?
- What fears and insecurities – including about money – exist in the group? And what structural conditions (job, class, wealth) shape these?
- How do we connect the answers to what we want to achieve politically?

This negotiation is not pleasant. But necessary.

## // The Connection to Community Capitalism

As long as money worries remain private, the logic of the market also eats into emancipatory contexts. Those who have more have more influence. Those who have less constantly feel indebted.

Redistributing private money does not solve the structural problem. Wealth and poverty continue to exist. As long as housing, food, health, care, mobility and energy are subject to profit logic. But it is a first step. It breaks up isolation. And creates concrete experiences that things can be done differently.

## // Class Cannot Be Separated from Racism

Those who are poor in Germany are disproportionately often people with a migration background. Those who inherit wealth are disproportionately often white. The redistribution practice must also be oriented towards this.