User:Ssstephen/Reading/Wages Against Housework

But if we take wages for housework as a political perspective, we can see that struggling for it is going to produce a revolution in our lives and in our social power as women. It is also clear that if we think we do not ‘need’ that money, it is because we have accepted the particular forms of prostitution of body and mind by which we get the money to hide that need.

Money is exchanged and the people who have money have power to get what they want, does this mean that giving someone money is giving them power? In exchange for goods / services they can currently give you. So (presumably, maybe) what SiSi is about to get at is that it is important what is exchanged for money, as this determines why the receiver of the money has their power. If I am paid a wage for housework that is very different to being given pocket money by my husband.

The wage gives the impression of a fair deal: you work and you get paid, hence you and your boss are equal; while in reality the wage, rather than paying for the work you do, hides all the unpaid work that goes into profit. But the wage at least recognizes that you are a worker, and you can bargain and struggle around and against the terms and the quantity of that wage, the terms and the quantity of that work.

This argument seems stronger pre-Thatcher, and I wonder if wages for housework is a more useful idea in general in a society where labour unions have more power, the idea of a women's union. In a world where we have covid payments and trial runs of UBI schemes, maybe this doesn't feel as powerful as it might have at the time.

We are seen as nagging bitches, not workers in struggle.

When Queen played "I Want to Break Free" at Rock in Rio, why were people upset? In contrast to what I was getting at a second ago, is the struggle for women's rights seen on the same plane as other power struggles today? Sometimes yes sometimes no I think, certainly it is regularly linked to broader sexual/gender rights and the rights of minorities, but to more economic-based struggles maybe still not enough.

We must admit that capital has been very successful in hiding our work.

Hidden work is an interesting idea.

In the same way as god created Eve to give pleasure to Adam, so did capital create the housewife to service the male worker physically, emotionally and sexually.

This sums it up pretty well. There is a very fine line though, and I wonder (from a privileged position of not being forced into this life) if I would like to be paid to raise my children, feed my family, have sex with my partner. I don't think bringing more of the human sphere of existence under the regulation of money lifts the woman's experience high enough, although it certainly lifts her higher. But mostly it seems to put her in the same struggle as her husband, the solidarity would have benefits and lead to future freedom but this doesn't seem like freedom in itself to me. If I pay a slave, yes they are technically no longer a slave but do they need more autonomy and freedom than that to be an equal?

In a discussion with David Wengrow Silvia mentions how societies in Labrador and Canada had to be taught to beat their children by European invaders, the ideals of tyranny and property that exist within the traditional European family structure are taught and is wages for housework a good way to break these ideals down? Maybe, this article at least shows that they should be broken down somehow. Is making a woman a waged worker giving her more or less autonomy? Feels like a trade of freedoms that is probably a positive over all but the negatives should still be taken into account. Do we all want to be workers?

To ask for wages for housework will by itself undermine the expectations society has of us, since these expectations – the essence of our socialization – are all functional to our wageless condition in the home.

Yes definitely undermines, but is it the best (or a healthy) way to undermine. I'm also not sure about the asking part. You could also undermine societies expectations by demanding diplomatic immunity, acting like you're the president, or registering yourself as a corporation. These all sound like fun things to do actually.

It should be clear, however, that when we struggle for a wage we do not struggle to enter capitalist relations, because we have never been out of them. We struggle to break capital’s plan for women, which is an essential moment of the divisions within the working class, through which capital has been able to maintain its power. Wages for housework, then, is a revolutionary demand not because by itself it destroys capital, but because it forces capital to restructure social relations in terms more favourable to us and consequently more favourable to the unity of the class. In fact, to demand wages for housework does not mean to say that if we are paid we will continue to do it. It means precisely the opposite. To say that we want money for housework is the first step towards refusing to do it, because the demand for a wage makes our work visible, which is the most indispensable condition to begin to struggle against it, both in its immediate aspect as housework and its more insidious character as femininity.

This paragraph answers a lot of the questions I had about this piece so I've copied the whole thing. I am still not sure if "it forces capital to restructure social relations in terms more favourable to us" is completely true, or if this is the best way to achieve that. "Nothing can be more effective than to show that our female virtues have a calculable money value" she says but she hasnt even mentioned any alternatives. What about the Women's Day Off in Iceland and other women's strikes. Making measurable sounds like an effective tactic, but can and should everything be made measurable?

It is one thing to organize communally the way we want to eat (by ourselves, in groups, etc.) and then ask the State to pay for it, and it is the opposite thing to ask the State to organize our meals.

Being paid for something does not equate to giving the thing to the provider of the money? Surely if the state pays for the day care, the food, the sexual reproduction, the state is still in some way controlling these things, maybe Federici is talking about taking an active or vocal role in these decisions as women and as individuals, rather than letting other individuals ("the State") decide? This is presented as if it is a choice, is it? Of course it should be, and maybe she is saying to keep this in mind when proposing struggles like this.

The things we have to prove are our capacity to expose what we are already doing, what capital is doing to us and our power in the struggle against it.