Re: AUT: Re: wages for housework

[billbartlett@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Bill Bartlett)]

Katha wrote:

>Another point about wages for housework. Usually the person who pays
>wages acquires quite a lot of power over the person to whom the wages
>are paid.

Quite so. Thus the problem with wages for housework is the same problem
found in any form of employment. It is inherently exploitative and
divisive.

>  So if the state pays the wages --whether in the form of underwriting
>parental care or in the form of fabulous "socialized " childcare
>arrangements, or both  --  then the state inevitably is going to feel
>entitled to more power to oversee family life.

It should also be acknowledged that "socialised" childcare is usually
simply subsidised childcare. And the beneficiaries of this subsidy are not
the parents and workers, but those who exploit the labour of the parents
"freed" from parental tasks to become wage slaves.

>It's not an accident that
>Sweden, where the state provides all sorts of wonderful benefits for
>parents and very much sees child raising as "social" to use monty's
>term,  has the highest rate in the world of child- welfare intervention
>into the home, and the highest rate of children being removed from their
>homes and taken into foster care. Now too, we know, Sweden had an active
>program of involuntary sterilization that lasted  I believe into the
>l980s. Sweden also tracks down nonmarital fathers with great zeal--
>whether or not the mom wants him to be involved.

You make them sound like unreconstructed nazis. Or maybe their statistics
are just more honest than others'.

>  That same logic of "wages" is at work when women on welfare are denied
>increased benefits for additional children, or find their checks docked
>if their kids miss school or are not taken for their checkups.

Well sort of, this is the inevitable welfare logic. Regulating, controlling
the lives of the poor, is and always has been the whole object of welfare.
But this is not quite the same as the "logic of wages". I would put
subsidised child-care in that "logic of wages" category. But I am not aware
of child-care subsidies being used to control the poor in the same way.
Educate me if I'm wrong though, I have never had any experience with child
care, subsidised or otherwise.

To me subsidised child-care simply facillitates lower wages. I assume that
this is its main regulatory function in the capitalist system, rather than
directly regulating those who avail themselves of the child-care.

>  It is hard to imagine an America where childraising is socialized but
>in which parents have the degree of free choice they now enjoy. To have
>as many kids as they want to, say; or to pass on to their kids their
>ancestral beliefs and customs; or to decide for themselves what
>childraising philosophy to follow.

Or what about to just work few enough hours so that you don't need
child-care. Isn't the real problem that both parents NEED to work long
hours to make ends meet? If wages were higher, that would be more likely to
pass for "free choice" than your version of the concept.

>  If children are treated as  a social resource, then childraising is
>going to be socially directed. I don't think you can have a society in
>which much is given to parents, but nothing is demanded. There's no free
>lunch. In this society  that means MORE Government, more bureaucracy,
>less personal choice and less privacy. That is also true of wages for
>housework -- which was a demand made on this society, not some future
>world without sexism, marriage, fulltime work or the state.
>  I'm not against this tradeoff necessarily -- I'd gladly give up my
>freedom to have ten kids and beat them all, in return for free decent
>after school programs etc.

But if the logic of the market determines that your labour does not fetch a
price sufficient to leave you any return after paying for child-care on the
open market, what exactly is the logic of subsidising you to work in a job
that does not pay sufficiently without subsidy?

Stuff it Katha! Just tell the boss the economic facts of life - pay me more
or stick your job.

>Maybe people ought to be strongly encouraged
>to abort damaged fetuses; maybe more children should be removed from
>their parents. Maybe a sailor should be tracked down on his ship and be
>forced to take some kind of responsibility for a baby born from a night
>of drunken sex with a stranger whose last name they never knew  (an
>actual story of Swedish life from Jan Myrdal). I don't know.  But these
>interventions are the flip side, the price, of the happy picture Monte
>paints -- and  they do seem odd things for ANARCHISTS and anti-statists
>to favor.

Agreed. None of the suggested reforms to capitalism can really improve
things, they all seem to finish up making things worse. So let's discuss
how we can get rid of it.

Bill Bartlett
Bracknell Tas.




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