This comment was posted here last night by a commentator called Howard, in response to my post on how we create change:

Each of the political parties you have listed has a foe they oppose – the establishment, the foreigner, the hand-wringer

I am wondering if the politics of care has a foe or if it is a system without any. To support something, it is helpful to know what it is not. Or maybe this philosophy is just ‘for' things

Posting in the spirit of exploration.

I thought that was a good question and had to give the response some thought, and so bought myself some time by saying I would post this response this morning

Having reflected, I do not think the politics of care needs a human enemy in the way many political movements do. There is a good reason for that. As I have often pointed out, much modern politics depends upon identifying a group to blame. The politics of care does, instead, begin from the assumption that most people are trying to make sense of the world as best they can.

That said, it will have opponents, the most important of which is neoliberal-inspired indifference to others.

More specifically, the politics of care inevitably opposes systems, structures and ideologies that deny our interdependence whilst pretending that human beings are isolated, self-sufficient individuals who owe little or nothing to each other. That means that the politics of care is opposed to:

• neglect,
• exclusion,
• exploitation,
• domination,
• and the idea that some people do not matter.

In economic terms, it challenges the belief that markets alone should determine value.

In political terms, it challenges the idea that power is an end in itself.

In social terms, it challenges the notion that success is solely an individual achievement.

But I would not want to turn any of those into a caricatured enemy. The purpose of the politics of care is not to defeat an opponent. It is to create the conditions in which people can flourish.

So if it has a foe, it is not a person, a class, or a nationality. It is, instead, the neoliberal mindset that says, “I am all that matters”, and the institutions built upon that belief. That is the opposite of care. That is the enemy of the politics of care, if there has to be one.

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