Re: AUT: Re: Republican Wages for Housework?

[Harald Beyer-Arnesen <haraldba@xxxxxxxxx>]

Katha wrote:
>So: President Clinton proposes tax credits for parents who pay for child
>care. the Republicans respond by demanding tax breaks for stay at home
>moms too. You can see this as a form of wages for housework, no? A way
>of reinstating the family wage without actually raising wages.
>   Actually, this was Paul's idea,  but it's a good illustration of what
>I tried, without success, to persuade you all of: that wages for
>housework, like the family wage, at least at this stage of history,
>reinforces reactionary and unequal gender roles . If it liberated women
>to stay home and take care of children, the Christian Coalition would
>not be in favor of subsidizing it.

Some information realted to the above topic:

The new minority government in Norway* has introduced a non-taxable
finacial aid to families of 3 000 Norwegian kroner a month for each
child between 1 and 2 years staying at home, instead of attending
kindergarten. The sum equals the state subsidy of kindergarten
places for childen in that age group. From January 1999 the system
is planned extended to include children from 2-3 years. It will also
be possible to have a part time place in the kindergarden and
receive a proportionally reduced cash support. A similar system as
the one described already exists in Finland.
        From before one of the parents has the right to take a leave
in connected to birth with either full wage compensation (up to a
certain limit) for 42 weeks or for a full year with 80 % wage
compensation. 4 of the weeks of leave are reserved to the father, whil
the 6 first weeks after birth, as well as 3 weeks before, is reserved
to the mother. Who takes the remaining wage-compensated leave it is
in principle up to the the parents to decide.

*[composed of the Christian People's Party ? social liberal and
and "pro-life" ? the protectionist Centre Party ? the former Farmers
Party ? and then then the Left, Norway's oldest, and once upon a time,
largest party; now a small social liberal party.]

There is discussion going how this new cash support will effect
gender roles. But it may also have other effects, as in a recent poll
a large majority of nurses and nurse's assistents answered they would
choose to stay home if they received the 3 000 kroner a month benefit.
(They would also then save the non-subsidised part of what it costs
keeping a child in kindergarten. Of course talking about subsidising
here is doubtful, as it is wealth stolen from us in the first place.)


While I am at it, I might as well also add some observations
concerning the exchange of views between Bernhard and Monty,
somewhat related to the above.

Berhard wrote:

<< Housework was often treated as production process of a
 commodity: labor power. Therefore it should be mostly the same
 as the work in e.g. the factory. I have the impression, that
 a few points are neglected:
 Raising children is at first raising human beings and not
 producing labor power: We ARE NOT labor power, we HAVE labor
 power.  >>

And Monty responded:

 <<Good, yes, important. However, women (mostly: parents generally)
 then to raise children so that they will be able to sell their labor
 power. The work they put into it belongs not to the parent but to
 the child, who has then a commodity of some quality to sell on the
 labor market. Of course, the child/human is, as Bernhard correctly
 insists, not always so easy to turn into a productive worker for
 capital. What various feminists, certainly including wages for
 housework, brought to attention was a) how women's work was in part
 the production of the commodity labor power; and b) how women were
 resisting the work of producing labor power. (Teachers of course are
 another important example of producing labor power, but teachers are
 waged.)

Where they really resisting the work of producing labor power,
or to restate it, were they resisting producing the kind of
attitudes and skills which could make their children better
competitors in the labor market in the future? I think not. Mostly
they were and are resisting doing most of the work alone related to
the raising of children, as well as housework in general. This is
hardly the same as resisting the work of producing labor power.
Obviously they were neither struggling to make their children or
their husbands physically unfit for wage work. A collective or
individual hunger strike resulting in making us unfit to work, or
even to live, is hardly a viable strategy against capitalistic
social relations.
         The leagacy of the women's liberation movement in the
sixties and seventies, even if in a long term perspective
reinforcing our human power to overcome capitalists relations, have
had some immediate negative effects, at least in some parts of the
world where it has led to the reduction of the total non-waged
time within households, which also have increasingly shrinked due
to the the increase of divorces. This has also qualitatively changed
that time and increasingly imposed within the household the logic
of the quantative cost-efficency of waged work, and more children
have been institutionlised within a school-like frame-work from an
earlier age.
        It seems that the immediate effects the women liberations
movement have had in these regards (here disregarding all the real
positive ones) have been to directly and indirectly reinforce
capital's control over the human raw material of actual and potential
wage work. This, even if some of the negative effects of the increased
entrance of women into the sphere of waged work, has been tried
partially compensated through demands (often but not exclusicely)
coming from women for an decrease in the hours of waged work.
        I don't know if it is neccessary to say, that none of the
above should be understood as a support for traditional divisions
of labor between male and female. Just an obeseervation of how
capitalism has used this real emancipation to impose more work
and to extend its reach and logic.

There always will be a struggle going on over the degree to
which our skills, knowledge and activites should be developed
to serve the needs of capital, or to serve self-defined human
ones. But it is hard to see how such struggles could become
very effective without being extended to sphere of waged work.
On the other hand, the breaking down of hierarchies within the
so-called private spehere, will also sooner or latter tend to
result in less acceptance of hierarchies elsewhere.
        The relation between waged and unwaged work between a
money economy and a partially non-monetary agricultural one, is
of course also quite different from that between house-work
and waged work within the econimical zones completely dominated
by money-relations.

I had thought to elaborate on some of the above a little, and
through that maybe come somewhat closer to some answers to the
practical implications underlying the theoretical discussion on
waged and unwaged labor. But I feel the need to do some more
thinking first, also to answer Monty's, Massimo's and Bernhard's
comments on what I have previously written.

Harald

  in solidarity,
  Harald Beyer-Arnesen
  haraldba@xxxxxxxxx



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