Re: AUT: Re: wages for housework

["David Harvie" <dh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> 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.
>   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.

etc.

This post of Katha's reminds me of the excellent pamphlet *In and
against the state* (republished as a book, by Pluto Press in the
1980s), written by the  CSE group the so-called London-Edinburgh
Weekend Return Group. Basically the state provides services, such as
health services, money benefits, but does so in an intrusive,
alienating way, which attempts to deny us dignity. It's well-worth
ready.

Secondly, I think Katha's argument, that if the state pays "wages for
housework", then it will also " feel entitled to more power to
oversee family life", presupposes that class struggle is somehow
"fair". It isn't. Altho' we are (nearly always) forced into accepting
compromises, there is always a struggle over both sides of the
"bargain". Thus in the case of wages for housework, there is both the
struggle for money, *and* the struggle to minimise state interference
in family life.

In Britain at the moment the state feels very entitled to oversee
family life, yet the social wage, including that going to mothers, is
under massive attack.

David Harvie..


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