I was visiting my cousin in Toronto recently and anybody familiar with the Toronto subway knows the plethora of advertising which nearly wallpapers all surfaces. Most of the advertising was fairly standardly attempting, little by little, to instill various consumerist memes into my mind. However one ad stood out in my mind. It was a plain text poster for a credit and investment firm and it simply said:
“Rejoin the haves”
This is precisely the reason why capitalism as we practice it cannot succeed forever. So, according to this ad, the goal you and I strive for should not be to stop or reduce or ameliorate the gut-wrenching, nausiating inequality which characterises our society but rather is merely to change our position within it. Instead of being the oppressed and wishing to end all oppression, we ought to wish and hope and work for a time when we can be the oppressors.
This is a little bit like saying that the only real problem with spousal abuse is that I’m not the one who’s doing the beating.
Paulitics 
And that is what you get in a “paternalistic” society. I don’t mean to be sexist here but males are provably heirarchical and are just now struggling to leave their “might makes right” mentality behind. These traits served them / us well when they were needed to hunt wooley mammoths and to claim a good share of the kill for themselves and their families but society needs a totally new skill set nowadays. Now I don’t believe we should throw out the men in power so women can run the world but I do suggest that what is missing is the balance of both male ideas and approaches and female ideas and approaches to issues. In nature, when you don’t have a balance you have disease.
PS: I loved your analogy to spouse abuse because it was clear, concise and very illustrative.