The Invisible Debt of Social Reproduction

Verónica Gago and Luci Cavallero’s book Rivendicare futuro: Il transfemminismo contro il capitale finanziario (Reclaiming the future: Transfeminism against financial capital) confronts one of the most important topics of contemporary capitalism: the financialization of everyday life and the incumbent role of debt as a tool for governing subjectivity.1 The book reads like a manifesto critiquing how the rhetoric of “individual freedom” has been mobilized by financialized capitalism to legitimate new forms of domination, precariatization, and impoverishment. In particular, the authors demonstrate how the notion of “financial freedom” [libertà finanziaria] has been used to ideologically weave authoritarian policy, the concentration of wealth, and virulent anti-feminism into the contemporary capitalist mode of production.

The first of the two original contributions in the book is an analysis of debt as a technology for governing everyday life. The authors demonstrate how indebtedness isn’t simply a mechanism tied to consumption or to the ability to access basic goods and services. Rather, indebtedness has become a structural condition of survival for huge swaths of the global population. In multiple contexts, especially Latin America, debt has served to bridge the gap between insufficient income and daily needs, becoming a method for organizing time, life choices, and social relations. In this sense, indebtedness appears to be a form of enclosure [catture] of reproductive labor, simultaneously mobilizing and disciplining domestic labor, family structures, and strategies of collective survival.

Working from Gago and Cavallero’s generative analysis, another line of inquiry becomes evident: Before asking why it is that individuals and families have today become so indebted, it’s necessary to interrogate who is the real debtor in contemporary regimes of accumulation. In other words, the fundamental problem is not only the debt relation between families and banks or individuals and financial institutions. There is a more fundamental debt relation that the state and the entire economic system have accumulated at the expense of women (and others performing unwaged reproductive labor) through centuries of appropriating unpaid domestic and care work.

Modern capitalism developed through the enormous expropriation of reproductive labor. Preparing food, cleaning the home, child- and eldercare, emotional support, and all the forms of work that render social life possible have been historically taken for granted as so-called “women’s work” and thus denied any economic, political, or social recognition. In this way, a large part of the labor necessary for the reproduction of society has been rendered invisible and unpaid. Without the quotidian work of reproducing labor power—one of the fundamental conditions of capitalist accumulation—no economy would be able to function. Nonetheless, despite this fundamental importance, reproductive labor continues to be treated as if it were a natural, spontaneous activity with no economic value. From this perspective, the question of debt crystallizes into a more complete picture.

Not only has this structural debt remained completely invisibilized, but today a paradox is becoming increasingly evident: Those who have provided essential labor to society for free are now being turned into debtors. Families—and most often the women who are saddled with domestic duties—are forced to resort to credit to meet basic needs such as food, healthcare, education, and caregiving. This is where Gago and Cavallero’s book is particularly relevant. In many contemporary societies, and particularly in contexts marked by austerity measures and cuts to public services, debt has become a normalized part of survival. Most often, people do not go into debt to purchase unnecessary goods [consumi superflui], but for life’s basic necessities. Today’s mass indebtedness is not simply the result of individual behaviors or “bad” economics decisions; rather, it is the direct consequence of a system that continues to refuse to recognize the economic value of social reproduction.

The result is a particularly perverse modality for the extraction of value: Women continue to perform a significant portion of reproductive and care work, while simultaneously becoming the primary bearers of household debt. In many cases, they are the ones who manage the family budget, who take out loans to cover unexpected expenses, and who organize daily survival strategies amid growing precariousness. The notion of “financial freedom,” which Gago and Cavallero criticize so effectively, aids in obscuring this process. Easy access to credit is presented as a path to autonomy and individual empowerment. However, this narrative masks a much more profound transformation: the shift of responsibility for the reproduction of life onto individuals (particularly women), against a backdrop of the gradual dismantling of welfare policies, that is, of the indirect wage for reproductive labor.2

From this perspective, financial freedom appears as a disguised form of authoritarianism. It forces individuals to rely on increasingly intrusive financial markets to meet basic needs that should instead be guaranteed through the economic recognition of reproductive labor. Women are becoming increasingly impoverished worldwide, and for this very reason they are also increasingly held hostage by the debts they are forced to incur, mortgaging their own lives and their children’s futures.

Indeed, the second important contribution of the book is its research into the relationship between financialization and authoritarian politics. Gago and Cavallero argue that the discourse of “financial freedom” fulfills an important ideological function for the insurgent global right. In the name of personal freedom [autonomia individuale] and entrepreneurship, this discourse legitimizes the dismantling of social services, the privatization of public services, and the reduction of collective modes of preservation. Paradoxically, the promise of individual liberty goes hand in hand with the further development of forms of social discipline and economic violence.

From this perspective, the book offers an important contribution for understanding the relationship between anti-feminism and capitalism. Through numerous examples, the authors demonstrate how attacks on international feminist movements are not a marginal phenomenon, but rather a structural element of capitalist restructuring. In fact, feminist movements have been able to shine a light on the vital role of social reproduction for economic development and have troubled the naturalization of care work. Thus, feminist critique poses a direct threat to a system that continues to depend on the invisible appropriation of reproductive labor.

The authors do not limit themselves to critically diagnosing problems. They also offer modalities of prospective political action. They situate themselves within the context of Latin American feminist movements—in particular, Ni Una Menos, which in recent years has developed practices of “financial disobedience” and a collective critical analysis of debt.3 Their book suggests that struggles against financialization cannot be separated from struggles on the terrain of domestic and social reproduction and for the redistribution of wealth. Theoretically, the book’s strength comes from its capacity to connect diverse levels of analysis: political economy, social movements, cultural transformations, and gender dynamics. As such, it allows readers to understand financialization not only as an economic phenomenon, but as a complex process that reshapes social relations, forms of subjectivity, and power structures.

Gago and Cavallero prompt us to reflect on the fact that if the state were to fully recognize the value of domestic and care work—through redistributive policies, adequate public services, and remuneration for reproductive labor—a significant portion of contemporary debt simply would not exist. Many of the expenses that are currently shifted onto families and financed through credit come directly from the lack of public recognition of social reproduction. The book’s most important contribution lies precisely in bringing this political dimension of debt to light, by demonstrating that financialization is not merely an economic phenomenon, but a process that profoundly reorganizes social relations and forms of power.

The issue of debt, however, cannot be fully understood without acknowledging the historical debt that the state and the economic system have accumulated toward women. So long as this debt remains invisible, public discourse will continue to distort reality, perversely portraying the women who have supported the reproduction of society without compensation as debtors [debitrici]. Recognizing this debt would mean radically transforming the way we think about the economy, work, and social justice. It would mean acknowledging that the wealth produced by contemporary societies has been made possible in part—and above all—by the invisible labor of millions of women. And it would mean opening a path towards new forms of wealth redistribution and for the recognition of reproduction labor.

In this sense, Gago and Cavallero offer a very important contribution to the critique of contemporary financialization, while revealing an even more radical point: Before we can talk about personal debt to the financial system, we must talk about the historic debt of society to women. Only by starting from this reversal does it become possible to really understand the transformations unleashed by contemporary capitalism and to imagine more just forms for organizing social life.

Originally published in Il manifesto as “Un’analisi critica e collettiva del debito,” March 13, 2026. Published here with minor revisions. Translated by Andreas Petrossiants.