Speech at the 1 May demo 2014 in Berlin

We are here today - on 1 May, the day of labour struggles - to take invisible work onto the streets! Because a large part of socially necessary labour takes place invisibly in the private sphere, directly affecting our lives, our everyday lives, i.e. who takes care of me? Who looks after me? How good are the conditions so that I can care for others? Who looks after grandad? Who keeps the circle of friends together, dries tears or does the laundry...? In the logic of capitalism, these are jobs that hardly generate any profit. But they still have to be done as cheaply as possible, because the economy needs committed, flexible and efficient workers and cheerful consumers. A good life is at odds with the competition and profit logic of capitalism. There is a lack of time, money and recognition for invisible private care work. But even where care work is performed as gainful employment, it is under cost pressure and is subject to the capitalist logic of profit. The only way to increase profits here is to cut costs. Wages are cut, the workload increases and the quality of work suffers massively as a result. The cost pressure on social work is part of the system. Care work is under constant pressure under capitalism. And the prevailing crisis policy is exacerbating this into a crisis of social reproduction. Who cares for whom, how well someone can care for themselves and others and who receives how much pay and recognition for the care work they do - all of this is organised along the lines of power relations. The racist migration regime of Fortress Europe denies refugees access to social infrastructure and a self-determined life. Migration policy disenfranchises immigrants. For many migrants, it provides the lowest-paid and most defenceless jobs in the informal care economy in private households as income opportunities. Racism and classism determine the unequal distribution of income, life opportunities and political participation. But the question also arises: who can still afford rising rents and whose communities are being torn apart by displacement? Gender domination also plays a major role in invisible labour. What is being cut in public has to be compensated for in the private sphere. The invisible workers are predominantly women who work a second shift at home after their job, who compensate for the bloody redundancies from cost-optimised hospitals and who care for their relatives and have to give up jobs, their own interests and pension entitlements to do so. The growing insecurity about being able to cope with everyday life is reinforcing traditional role models, while sexualised and domestic violence is on the rise. And it is many women who are most directly affected by the underfunding of care services, health care, childcare and social work in their jobs. We call all of this the crisis of social reproduction! With our Care Revolution block, we are taking the invisible work in capitalism onto the streets today. But also the invisible side of labour disputes! Refusing to work is hardly possible in the care sector, because who would go on strike for their own life or the lives of people who depend on care work? Nevertheless, many people are resisting the conditions under which this work takes place. They are fighting and organising themselves, and we see these activities as part of a care movement. This movement became visible in a large action conference in Berlin two months ago, it is visible in the Blockupy care mobs, it is visible in the anti-racist 8th March demonstrations against camp subjugation.It is visible in the alliance work of people with and without disabilities, in the strikes by nursery school teachers and the fight by nurses for minimum staffing levels, in the struggles of precariously or illegally employed migrant domestic workers who are fighting for labour rights, in protests against social displacement in cities, in actions by family carers who break out of isolation and make the pressure of poverty in domestic care visible, actions by sex workers against the criminalisation of their work and displacement from inner-city spaces, in struggles for the recognition of different lifestyles and lifestyles, struggles against discrimination and poverty! The struggles are manifested in a variety of issues and forms of protest that are taking place in many places and are growing stronger. All of these movements are scratching at different corners of the same problem. Because the crisis in many people's everyday lives is getting worse. And all these struggles are part of the resistance against the crisis of social reproduction. The structural crisis of capital valorisation is to be resolved at the expense of our living conditions. We will not let this happen to us! Against this, we demand a massive expansion of state investment in social services of general interest. We demand better working conditions in the paid care sectors. But we will not stop there. Because care revolution is also the struggle for fundamentally different relations of reproduction, in which a collectivity becomes possible that goes beyond the state framework of administration, individualisation and social division. We call for resistance to capitalism and the prevailing crisis policy that emanates from these invisible sides of the economy. The care movement stands for a fundamental change of perspective. It is about nothing less than the demand that the realisation of human life interests, rather than profit maximisation, must be at the centre of political action. This does not mean that we all have the same interests. Nor does it mean that we all have the same opportunities to fight our everyday care battles. It is a challenge to find a common language, to negotiate different interests, not to standardise everything and yet not to lose sight of the 'common third'. Our goal is to change social conditions in which a good life is possible for everyone. For the Care Revolution!