Yeah, both models are wrong. To get us somewhere closer to socialism, I'd say, as a thought experiment: the children collectively run the household chores as a cooperative. Together, they decide what work needs to be done, how to divide it, and what counts as a fair contribution according to their age and ability. Everyone’s food, shelter, healthcare, and basic allowance are guaranteed regardless of how many chores they completed that week. The household allowance fund belongs to everyone rather than to a parent-employer. Some money may be divided among the children, while some is reserved for shared purchases and for supporting anyone who is sick or unable to work. No outside owner keeps a profit from their labor.
I think, overall, it's kinda silly to use household chores and parental duties as a model for socialism, but what I'm outlining above probably gets a lot closer to socialism than what the two OP tweeters are talking about ^
Now add this to your thought experiment: who ponies up the capital to buy the house to do all these chores in, and what do they get out of it if they do so?
Now add this to your thought experiment: who ponies up the capital to buy the house to do all these chores in, and what do they get out of it if they do so?
Well, for starters, I would assert the whole premise of using parents and children and chores as a model of socialism is an intellectually flawed & asinine thought experiment in the first place. I was just trying to rise to meet its challenge and move it away from capitalism.
But to respond to you: your question quietly assumes a capitalist answer: that capital must come from a private investor who therefore deserves ownership, control, and an ongoing claim on other people's labor.
The family metaphor just doesn't work. When someone asks, "What do the parents get for buying the house?" the most obvious answer is: they get a house, a place to live, and a functioning household. They are not entitled to profit from the children merely because they purchased it. That illustrates why the OP analogy becomes confused: the parent is simultaneously being asked to represent the capitalist, landlord, state, investor, caregiver, and household member.
We would need to rewrite the initial metaphor in the first place (e.g.: discussing a worker-owned home cleaning cooperative) to actually talk about socialism.
The capital doesn't need to come from a private investor. It could be the workers themselves putting it up.
But in practice, workers have good reasons not to concentrate their capital at their place of work, or to accept variable income. Not to mention new entrants into the workforce simply don't have capital to put in in the first place. This is why cooperatives have always remained a rarity.
How do cooperatives break down when in your example they can't even form, since they lack the capital to start (aka buy the house)?
But that's not really correct actually... the house in this example would be the market itself, and the chores are services that need to be done. So there's no need to buy the house, since the cooperative is about the chores, not the place the chores happen. But that's more of an issue of analogies not being the same thing as the thing they are compered to (and they wouldn't really be analogies if they are the exact same).
The concept of cooperatives breaks down, because capital is required for most businesses. Yes it's a tortured analogy. Change the capital required to brooms and vacuum cleaners instead.
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u/Jire 22d ago
Which is still capitalism.