A political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
Maybe it’s just me, but if you remove the word political from the above definition then it sounds an awful lot like marriage. All for one, and one for all musketeerial matrimony, where the distribution and exchange of everything is regulated by the community as a whole. The community in this instance being the family unit.
I’ve gotten lucky a couple of times in my work life and obtained employment that paid me more than my wife was earning. But those earning went into a community account, and a group decision was made regarding the apportioning of those earnings. At that particular moment in time, I had more contributions to offer, but my wife retained her equal voting right on how the income would be distributed.
This arrangement between us was an equitable one. There were no arguments. Just reasonable decisions on how the family or community would best be served. But not everyone is reasonable, and so at some point the state had to make laws to enforce marital socialism on the unreasonable.
I think an argument can be made that in some instances the pendulum has swung too far in a corrective action, but there’s no denying that some ugly shit went on for quite some time before we had to make laws. Laws to stop some men from walking away from a wife and five kids because he wanted to bang his secretary. That guy can still bang his coworker if he wants to, but the odds are that the banging is going to have to happen at her place.
Because his ex partner and the kids have the house.
Even the good old capitalist U.S. of A enforces an equitable split of assets when a social contract dissolves. Child support and alimony are examples where the larger earner is mandated to fulfill obligations that the state deems reasonable. In essence, the state or community is mandating responsibility to the irresponsible.
In fact, every law on the books is an attempt by the state or community to regulate irresponsibility. And so regardless of how they label themselves, every nation on the planet has some form of institution to force their brand of social civility and equity.
There’s plenty of variations of this theme from one country to the next, but the basic premise remains intact. That premise being equitable distribution. If that premise is ignored then it’s revolution time.
Marriage also has all kinds of variety of distribution of wealth and labor. The makeup of the distribution depends on the people that comprise the social contract, and their particular talents and preferences.
My wife and I have evolved our contract over the years with some basic guidelines. Those guidelines might not work for everyone, but they work for us and they go something like this.
If there’s something that needs to be done that absolutely sucks, then the person who can remedy the suckage the most efficiently is obligated to do so. No debate is necessary. Everyone knows their roles when it comes to dealing with suckage.
If there’s something that you like to do, then you get to do that thing. This rule works quite well for me because my wife likes doing many more things than me. Like mowing the lawn. She likes it so much that we finally found her the perfect lawn mower. It’s battery powered and resolves all the starting problems she was having with gas powered devices. She hates gas powered machinery. Too heavy and too unreliable apparently.
If there’s something that neither of us like to do, but that chore doesn’t necessarily suck, then rule one still applies most of the time.
Each of us have things, that for a variety of reasons we don’t do. My wife is smaller than me and she has height and weight restrictions. These restrictions are reasonable in my estimation. So she doesn’t run the snow blower and she’s not going to be tasked with moving a freezer up the stairs. She could hurt herself and then I’d have to mow the lawn or shovel the deck.
My wife doesn’t do much of anything that involves tools. She also doesn’t do anything that involves power tools. But if another set of hands are required then she honors an obligation to assist, and that assistance is largely effective. There are moments where she makes me a bit mental, but I’ve adapted. For example, we don’t have Philips or Robertson screwdrivers. We have star and square screwdrivers because I’ve become more effective at describing which tool I need as opposed to naming the specific gadget. But that’s where I get a bit animated, because it’s difficult to describe the difference between a crescent wrench and a pair of vice grips to someone who doesn’t give a fuck. And she laughs at me every time I get pissed off about it, so there’s that.
I don’t do laundry. For a while I did my own laundry when I was away from home. I found that it wasn’t really necessary to separate by color. My wife disagrees and so she does the laundry.
We share the cooking duties, but I have to admit that I fare better than her in terms of quantity of cooking. But in my defense I should point out that she was the one who set the forty five minute rule. The rule means that anything under forty five minutes of cooking time is hers. Anything over that is mine. So, I make our soup and roasts of whatever, and pretty much anything that has to simmer. I’m also responsible for any recipe that involves a series of procedures before the simmering part, and its my job to determine spice quantity. But I’m never alone in the kitchen. She cuts up and grinds and peels all the stuff I need, and I get to do the glamorous shit. Like spice and flambé. Plus she makes all the cheese and alfredo sauces. And gravy, she’s very good at gravy.
I also dominate the cooking music, and I don’t clean up much. I have however, after years of bitching learned to minimize the use of utensils and pots and pans. Which in retrospect shouldn’t have taken years for me to learn.
We also have an understanding about the language of refusal. If she looks at me and says, I don’t care, I’m not fucking doing it, then I’m doing it. Whatever it may be. Other than tools she cannot name, those things typically involve, electricity, sewage, blood or fire. Basically anything that freaks her out. Like spiders. Or birds that the goddamn cats let loose in the house.
At its core our guidelines are designed for efficiency as much as they are for equity, but every reasonable effort still has to be made in pursuit of that equity. Otherwise one party will begin to feel unfairly burdened and then we have one of those revolutions I was talking about.
A revolution that’s much more likely if a useless tit is party to a social contract. That’s what children are for, so it’s not ideal if one of the adults is also a dependent.
Anyway, it doesn’t make sense to me that the political right abhors the idea of socialism, and yet claims to venerate family. Assuming of course that there’s any merit to my suggestion that saying I do means we do from that point forward.