What I mean is this. In that radio interview with Selma James, she talks about the 'wage relation' being the fundamental thing. The idea that workers are exploited by being paid say £100 pw whilst making their employer say £300 pw. But that fundamental power relation also influences the situation between you and the people in your family who don't have wages (usually the woman)- because the woman must work at home to support the man earning the wage.
So I get that. It makes sense. And from experience.
But the bit I want to understand is how changing that wage relation- from capitalist to something different- will change the unwaged power relation.
So I get that far, then I draw a blank. Because I don't know. I'm largely ignorant of what a different system that doesn't rely on exploitation works. Say for example we nationalise all industries, they become not for profit. Great. Does that remove the waged/unwaged power relation? I don't see how.
I'll make a little argument here:
In capitalism, there are two groups of people that benefit from women providing unwaged work: capital and men. Under socialism there wouldn't be capital, nor would there be a different group of people to replace them (like in the USSR there was the political class), because there wouldn't be economic inequality.
That leaves us with men, and I agree with you here, men would still benefit from the waged/unwaged power relation and we'd need to change that. It'd be easier to change because you wouldn't have the massive power/influence/effect of capital, and because there's already some men who would like to see the waged/unwaged power relation changed. Hopefully there would be a lot by the time we get to socialism, but I see it as a fight that would still need to be fought. What you asked earlier, about who decides regarding ability etc, I can see that there would be some misogynists who would take the line that women are naturally suited to caring roles, like they do now and this is distributing according to ability but leaves women in the same position they are now. Those people would need to experience revolutionary justice
So for me, socialism would make it easier to end patriarchy, but it wouldn't guarantee it.
I also dunno what the structure(s) would be that might replace the existing waged/unwaged relationship - to an extent, this relationship would simply vanish, because nobody would be waged anymore, people would get stuff according to their needs - there's obviously a massive ? here about how this distribution is decided given scarce resources, competing demands etc, but however this is done, it would no longer make sense to think of someone who brings up kids/housework/etc is unwaged whereas someone who does an admin job is waged. BUT there would still be some kind of cultural barrier, the perception that bringing up kids and all the other stuff that goes with that is somehow different (inferior?) to work in a productive organisation, and that it's women who do the first set of roles. The reality of the relationship may well continue even though the words we use change and the economic imbalance is removed.
I would advocate a couple of things that could happen - one would be more shared parenting in terms of parental leave following child birth, the other would be more communal bringing up of kids - not (necessarily) talking about hippy commune type things as much as stuff like babysitting circles and the idea that in a community, the children are everyone's children, so everyone shares responsibility for raising them. Both of these can happen in capitalism, to an extent at least, but are constrained by existing economic relationships and that capitalism as an economic system is more suited to individualistic thinking rather than communal thinking. They (and other similar things) may be easier to introduce/maintain in socialism. The nature of working communally/in common interest to produce our material needs would make it more natural for us to think communaly/in common interest in other areas, rather than the individualism that rises from capitalsim. Very vague and woolly I know but I've got to go and make dinner now.
