Last edited Sat Jun 30, 2012, 04:10 PM - Edit history (1)
All those things about merit, etc. never bear out, especially when the system is under strain or crisis. Even when capitalism is functioning "normally"-exploitation is the bedrock of wealth gathering. One group sells their time to another group. Inequality exists under capitalism, not because it advantages men, but because it advantages the wealthy. Socialism doesn't so much "erase" unfair power, as it seeks to undo the conditions that lead to unfair power. How this is done depends on what is already happening in the theoretical country that might be under discussion.
It is completely true that women can still suffer from inequality under socialism. But socialist systems tend to structure in better affirmative action programs, enlarge education possibilities for women, bring wages for women up to those of men in similar fields, etc.
We can also do these things in a capitalist society, and what Jones is writing is that it is important when you are living as a socialist in a capitalist country, that you struggle to keep women's issues in the forefront, to get as much as you can out of a limited system. But keeping in mind that under capitalism that anything you achieve will be at threat of constant erosion. We always exist doubly oppressed under capitalism, and triply oppressed when one is not white. There is a tendency when an organization in a capitalist society is just looking at one sector of oppression, on the working person, to forget that there are workers who are not male, who struggle with different issues, on top of the ones that already exist in basic exploitation.
Even if you take economic rewards completely out of the picture, so that every individual enjoyed the exact same material standard of living regardless of their role, it's still gratifying, or not, to get to do the work you want to do, or not; to have a role that doesn't involve cleaning toilets, or that seems more central or important in some way; and it's hard to eliminate that kind of inequality unless you're going to fill roles lottery, or make literally make every single decision by a "general assembly"-type process, both of which are pretty unworkable.
That isn't how socialist societies are constructed. There are economic rewards, there just isn't capitalism (sometimes there is small business). The conditions that lead to corporations and bloated wealth are eliminated though, by law. Along with the elimination of monopoly conditions come the gradual elimination of the conditions that lead to racial and sexist inequality, by law, and by making sure women and minorities are included in all decision making processes in government, by law.
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