Book Review: Lucí Cavallero and Verónica Gago A Feminist Reading of Debt

A Feminist Reading of Debt helps us understand the impact of financialized capitalism in Global South countries today. The authors are not only scholars but also activists, a powerful combination in times of neoliberal rule in general and specifically within academia. Lucí Cavallero and Verónica Gago are feminist scholars and both members of the Ni Una Menos Collective, which is a movement that emerged in Argentina denouncing gender-based violence. The large rate of femicides in Latin America and the urgent need for better reproduction rights in the region made the movement spread to other Latin American countries, gaining international relevance. The book is originally written in Spanish. Its English translation is part of the Mapping Social Reproduction Theory Series edited by Pluto Press and coordinated by Tithi Bhattacharya and Susan Ferguson.

Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) is a Marxist feminist tradition that is gaining traction in recent decades. Derived from the international movement Wages for Housework from the 1970s and the work of Italian Marxist feminists of that time (see Federici 1975), SRT focuses on understanding the connections between productive and reproductive work through a Marxist reading of value and labour power, arguing that these concepts are central to understanding women’s oppression in capitalist society (Bhattacharya 2017). The authors of A Feminist Reading of Debt link women’s everyday reproductive work with the formal economy of the labour market, as well as other economic provisions, such as but not limited to welfare assistance and bank loans. As such, the analysis sheds light on ‘how debt functions as the privileged apparatus of new forms of exploitation and how it is articulated with sexist violence’ (Cavallero & Gago 2021: 22). In the current neoliberal capitalist stage, formal employment is scarce especially in marginalized countries. Women, the most affected by the lack of job positions, are the main recipients of welfare provisions – particularly conditional cash transfers (CCTs) – and need to resort to microcredit to both fulfil basic needs and engage in entrepreneurial activities. Thus, the authors consider debt to be a form of exploitation specific to the current phase of capitalism.

In this book, Cavallero and Gago present an innovative analysis of the economy of violence present in the threads of private (personal) debt to public (national) debt. They trace how welfare provisions through cash transfers are used as a mechanism to induce financialization and commodification of public services, further marginalizing subaltern sectors – such as public health and public education – and consequently the people dependent on them. At the same time, this welfare strategy is imputed externally to the nation by international developmental monetary institutions – such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank – when the nation resorts to them for loans. Although focusing specifically on Argentinian’s context, their insights are valuable to all studying transnational flows of oppression and dispossession, including dynamics between central and peripheral countries in capitalist society, and the pervasiveness of social oppressions of race, gender, and sexuality within those dynamics.

Cavallero and Gago also demonstrate that the lack of opportunities for formal employment in the labour market leading women to engage in entrepreneurial activities is accompanied by conservative religious discourses claim for finance education in schools with the goal of increasing individual responsibility (see Levinas 2013). The authors trace a parallel between those discourses and the furious rejection of comprehensive sexual education, as sexual education is repelled by these same religious forces. In Latin America, the conservative ideological agenda is what strengthens capitalist liberal economy, creating ‘a new type of alliance between capital and fascist micropolitics’ (Cavallero & Gago 2021: 22). Through those ideological mechanisms, the authors reveal the relationships between debt and morality, and how debt is positioned as a moralizing organizer of life. In this framework, debt is a crisis manager capable of tying political speculation with financial speculation – for example, relating Latin America’s dictatorships with public international debt – as well as neoliberalism to conservatism.

Based on David Harvey’s idea of accumulation by dispossession, such a framework is not shared by all social reproduction theorists. Indeed, Cavallero and Gago do not identify as social reproduction theorists: their theoretical framework champions accumulation by dispossession over the relationship between dispossession and expanded reproduction, as Bhattacharya points out in her foreword. Although the authors indicate in their preface that they feel like intruders in this SRT book series, Cavallero, Gago and Bhattacharya agree that the most relevant point of this conversation is the recognition of a shared political commitment in Marxist ground where they all stand in the same side of the barricade.

In this light of identifying a shared political commitment, instead of presenting a critique, I propose a further development of the theoretical proposition developed in A Feminist Reading of Debt. The book presents the embeddedness of debt and dispossession in the everyday life of marginalized women. Focusing on integrating politics, the economy, and women’s lives, Cavallero and Gago develop an analysis of the reality of social arrangements. Their theoretical development though is mostly left aside, permeating the text when it is necessary to explain the living connections amid the context. A further theoretical development of debt’s foundational relation to dispossession and the most dispossessed under the current neoliberal phase of capitalism would help to explain the hidden mechanisms that surround financial capitalism in a broader picture – and how debt is conceived as a new form of exploitation. A Feminist Reading of Debt is a necessary book, one that Marxist feminists concerned with current aspects of neoliberal capitalist society need to pay attention to.