Care for the Working Class: The Political Economy of Care Work

🧠 A Talk on Care Work, Socialism & Feminist Political Economy

Flora Tristan — widely regarded as the first European writer to unite socialism and feminism — has historically been overlooked as a rigorous systematic thinker. This lecture revisits her landmark text The Workers' Union and related writings through the analytical lens of a political economy of care.

💡 What This Talk Explores

The presentation argues that Tristan takes seriously the necessity of care work within the family, while simultaneously advocating for institutionalized care serving children, the sick, and the elderly. Though her early 19th-century perspective reflects gendered assumptions — particularly that women would shoulder the bulk of familial care — the core of her analytical framework can be disentangled from those historical constraints.

Ultimately, Tristan offers a political economy vision in which economic and political rights are deeply intertwined, with unpaid care work — both inside and outside the family — remaining a constant, integral part of the equation.

🎙️ About the Speaker: Lisa Herzog

Professor of Political Philosophy & Dean, Faculty of Philosophy
University of Groningen
🔗 View her CV

Lisa Herzog works at the crossroads of political philosophy and economic thought. She joined the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Groningen in 2019, where she served as Director of the Center for Philosophy, Politics and Economics from 2021 to 2025, and has been Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy since January 2023.

Her academic background is exceptionally broad: she holds a Diplom (master's equivalent) in Economics from LMU Munich, as well as an M.St. in Philosophy and a D.Phil. in Political Theory from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar.

📚 Research & Publications

Herzog's scholarship spans the philosophical dimensions of markets (both historical and systematic), liberalism and social justice, ethics within organizations, and the future of work. Her current research focuses on workplace democracy, professional ethics, and the role of knowledge in democratic societies.

She is a co-editor of the interdisciplinary journal Review of Social Economy. Her forthcoming monograph (title forthcoming) is referenced at https://www.rug.nl.