Coercion as Fragility

When we think about the systems shaping our lives—whether in work, governance, healthcare, or resource distribution—one uncomfortable truth stands out: they don’t trust us. These systems are built on coercion, not collaboration. Punitive laws, surveillance, and exclusionary policies are presented as necessary safeguards for stability, masking harm as efficiency.

Could it be, though, that coercion fractures more than it fortifies? Systems built on domination erode trust, alienate individuals, and perpetuate harm. Consider the coercive practices of the past: lobotomies presented as “therapeutic” solutions for mental illness or sterilization programs justified as public health measures. These actions disproportionately targeted marginalized populations and embedded harm into institutional norms.

Coercion is not as inevitable as they'd like you to think it is. Across history, care-based systems have offered transformative alternatives rooted in equity, trust, and repair. From worker cooperatives in Spain to agroecological movements in India and mutual aid networks during COVID-19, these models demonstrate that mutuality, abundance, and shared accountability are possible — and they are necessary.

This essay critiques coercion’s failures and explores care’s potential to transform our systems. By embedding care into labor, governance, healthcare, and resource management, we can build frameworks where dignity, equity, and flourishing are collective rights—not exceptions.

Care is not just an alternative—due to its unique effect on coercion, it is a revolutionary praxis for liberation.

Part I: The Fragility of Coercion

Coercive systems may appear strong, but their reliance on domination makes them brittle. By prioritizing control over trust, they undermine adaptability and resilience. This fragility is evident across four key domains: labor, governance, mental healthcare, and resource management.

Labor: Extraction as Ontological Violence

Modern labor systems commodify time, autonomy, and relationships, embedding extraction into daily life. Workers are treated as disposable tools of productivity, stripped of creativity and dignity.

• Historical Context: The Enclosure Movement — In 16th-century England, the enclosure movement privatized communal lands, displacing farmers and severing communities from mutual aid systems. Forced into exploitative labor markets, this marked the beginning of extraction as a systemic norm. Colonial powers replicated this model globally, expropriating Indigenous lands to fuel imperial economies.
• The Highland Clearances — In Scotland, forced evictions of tenant farmers to make way for sheep grazing mirrored the enclosures’ effects. These clearances devastated community cohesion and entrenched economic inequality.
• Contemporary Example: Amazon Warehouses — Amazon epitomizes modern coercive labor practices. AI-driven surveillance penalizes inefficiencies as minor as bathroom breaks. Injury rates are double the industry average, and turnover exceeds 150% annually. Globally, garment workers endure similar exploitation, laboring in hazardous conditions for subsistence wages.
• Radical Alternatives: Worker Cooperatives and Agroecology — Worker cooperatives like Spain’s Mondragon Corporation redistribute profits and decision-making power among employees, demonstrating that businesses can thrive without exploitation. Agroecological movements in India and Brazil integrate labor with ecological restoration, prioritizing sustainability and dignity over profit.

How might workplaces transform if they centered autonomy, creativity, and mutual flourishing?

Governance: Punishment as Sovereignty

Governance systems rooted in coercion conflate accountability with punishment, isolating harm as individual failure while ignoring systemic roots. This punitive logic destabilizes communities and perpetuates cycles of violence.

• Historical Insight: The Bengal Famine — During the 1943 Bengal Famine, British authorities prioritized grain exports over feeding local populations. Millions starved—not from scarcity, but because governance prioritized control over care. The famine revealed the violence inherent in imperial policies of extraction and punishment.
• Mass Incarceration and Offshore Detention — The United States incarcerates over 2.3 million people, disproportionately targeting Black and Indigenous communities. Similarly, Australia’s offshore detention centers isolate and dehumanize migrants, perpetuating harm instead of repair.
• Algorithmic Governance and Coercion — In modern governance, algorithms increasingly enforce punitive logics. Predictive policing and automated decision-making systems disproportionately target marginalized communities, embedding coercion invisibly.
• Radical Alternatives: Transformative Justice and Participatory Models — Transformative justice frameworks prioritize repair over punishment. Oakland’s Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY) focuses on dialogue and systemic repair. Rojava’s participatory governance models emphasize care-based accountability.

What might justice achieve if it prioritized healing relationships rather than severing them?

Mental Healthcare: Coercion Disguised as Care

Mental healthcare systems institutionalize coercion through forced hospitalization, compulsory medication, and compliance-driven therapies, prioritizing control over trust and healing.

• Historical Context: Psychiatric Institutions — The 19th-century asylum model framed patients as societal threats, justifying coercive interventions like forced lobotomies and sterilizations. These disproportionately targeted marginalized populations, embedding social control into mental healthcare.
• Contemporary Example: Forced Treatment — Coercive practices remain entrenched in mental healthcare globally. Neurodivergent and economically disadvantaged individuals face disproportionate rates of involuntary hospitalization, eroding trust and worsening outcomes.
• Radical Alternatives: Rights-Based Mental Healthcare — Norway’s prohibition of forced treatment and Finland’s Open Dialogue therapy emphasize trust and collaboration. Italy’s Trieste Model integrates mental healthcare with housing and employment, rejecting institutionalization in favor of holistic care.

How might mental healthcare evolve if trust and collaboration replaced coercion?

Resources: Scarcity as Manufactured Control

Scarcity is often deliberately engineered to justify exclusion, commodification, and inequality.

• Historical Context: The Irish Potato Famine — During the 19th-century famine, British authorities exported grain while millions starved. Scarcity was not natural but engineered to sustain imperial profits.
• Contemporary Example: Global Food Systems — While 40% of global food is wasted annually, nearly 800 million people face hunger. Corporate monopolies perpetuate scarcity narratives to prioritize profits over human needs.
• Radical Alternatives: Agroecology and Water Sovereignty — Agroecological movements like La Via Campesina reclaim land for regenerative agriculture. Kerala’s community-led water governance ensures equitable access, dismantling privatized scarcity.

What systems might emerge if abundance, not scarcity, anchored the organizing principle?

Part II: Care as a Radical Praxis

Care dismantles coercion by embedding equity, adaptability, and mutuality into systems. It reframes power as relational. Trust and resilience follow when defection is survivable because repair, not punishment, is the default.

Accountability as Collective Repair

Coercive accountability isolates harm and assigns blame. Care reframes accountability as relational, focusing on repair and systemic transformation.

• Oakland’s Transformative Justice Network centers survivors and fosters trust through restorative dialogue.
• Indigenous land-back movements integrate ecological restoration with reparative justice.

Abundance Through Reciprocity

Care-based systems treat abundance as regenerative—reciprocity and shared stewardship are the operating principles.

• Agroecology in Cuba transformed scarcity into sustainable abundance during its Special Period.
• Mutual aid networks during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic mobilized resources faster and more equitably than many governments.

Joy as Resistance

Care extends beyond survival to joy. Systems of domination thrive on alienation, making joy a radical act of defiance.

At Standing Rock, art, music, and ceremony sustained resistance, strengthening solidarity and resilience.

Scaling care without neoliberal co-optation requires balancing expansion with relational integrity. Federated, decentralized models offer blueprints for preserving care’s transformative essence.

Porto Alegre’s Participatory Budgeting empowers communities to allocate resources equitably. Italy’s Trieste Model integrates mental healthcare with housing, education, and employment.

Liberation Through Care

Coercion thrives on the myth of inevitability. Care dismantles this myth, offering connection over alienation, abundance over scarcity, and repair over punishment. By embedding care into our institutions, we can create systems that heal rather than harm.

Care is not a slogan — it is the foundation for a just and abundant future.

From Systemic to Personal

1. Support Mutual Aid Networks and Worker Cooperatives — Contribute to organizations like Mutual Aid Disaster Relief.
2. Advocate for Rights-Based Mental Healthcare and Transformative Justice Policies — Push for consent-driven, dignity-focused mental healthcare systems and restorative justice frameworks.
3. Invest in Agroecological and Regenerative Systems — Back movements like La Via Campesina.
4. Center Joy and Creativity in Activism and Governance — Celebrate art, music, and community-building to build resilience and solidarity.

What systems will you create when you choose care over coercion?