Women, Artists, Farmers and the Un-payed

Social credit’s enduring appeal is to the vast sections of society whose income insecurity precludes active participation as mainstream actors in the political economy. Industrial capitalism and all waged and salaried workers have clearly defined economic roles. Although home-makers, mothers, carers, farmers and ‘artists’ are essential to the maintenance of the social order, these roles are less easy to define within the terms of the formal economy. The ‘artist’ includes all whose work springs from internal motivation, not only the fine artist but also the writer, the musician, the crafts-person, the gardener, the inventor and the engineer, without whose work civilisation would not exist. These are the mainstay of support for the Social Credit movement, past and present.

The futility of securing political freedom without economic freedom is stressed throughout social credit literature. Recognition is also given to the significance of a National (Citizen's) Dividend, payable to the individual rather than to the family unit, as a means of securing women’s civil rights. The active role of women in the worldwide social credit movement has received scant attention in historical accounts, and remains a fruitful area for future research. To date the involvement of many thousands of women in the study and promulgation of social credit lies hidden by male command of public platforms, publications and historical analyses. Nevertheless, traces of women’s presence can be detected. A series of articles on women and social credit gave rise to a spirited debate in the correspondence pages of The New Age on the relevance of social credit ideas to women. R. Laugier argued that ‘Man has made a mess of managing the economy. Woman revolted once to become the equal of man; let her revolt again and be his superior’. Men’s responsibility for ‘the mess’ was not at issue. The debate centred on the extent to which men had usurped women’s role as providers and protectors. ‘Woman, when she does not imitate man, is a realist’, observed a reader of The New Age in 1934.

The economics of paid employment, and women’s role in the real-life economy, have, like the broader political movement, repeatedly risen to prominence, only to give way to ‘more important’ mainstream considerations. The Social Credit movement of the 1930s sought to enable women to step ‘out of the margin’ and into the mainstream. Following from women’s growing interest in ‘the new economics’ of CH Douglas across Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand’, America, women were encouraged to banish the notion that economics is a ‘man’s subject’. According to the American publication Independent Woman in 1934, man’s lust for power could be countered if women applied the simple test to all economic proposals: ‘Is it good social housekeeping?’ Women’s emancipation into ‘salaried slavery’, observed a writer in The New Age in 1934, has done nothing to ameliorate women’s status or conditions. Those words have not dated with the passage of time.

For details of social credit economic thought see the booklet Social Credit: Some Questions Answered, available electronically on www.douglassocialcredit.com

Revolt Again

Revolt from the Center

Niels I Meyer, K Helveg Peterson & Villy Sorensen

Translated by Christine Hauch

Marion Boyars, 1981

When published in Danish in 1978, Revolt from the Center sparked a vigorous popular debate across Scandinavia, giving rise to an ongoing influence on social legislation over the intervening decades. Written by three eminent figures in their respective fields of politics, philosophy and physics, the success of the book in a small Scandinavian country with a population of only 5 million is not perhaps remarkable. However, from the first the book was tailored for a world readership. Written in a single voice speaking, sound common sense within the setting of a world political economy already hell-bent on social and ecological devastation, the book has not dated with the passage of time. The central theme is the responsibility of the individual citizen to take account of the common good of the earth community as they go about their everyday concerns.

To assist in the process of freeing the individual from the inherited straight-jacket of welfare through paid work, the authors of Revolt from the Centre suggest the payment of a 'Citizen's Wage'. The unconditional payment of an income to every citizen from the moment of birth is seen as a means to blur the divisions between work, education and leisure. Over recent decades calls for a 'Citizen's Wage' have come from a variety of notable individuals and interest groups across a wide spectrum of opinion, speaking with varying degrees of experience and authority in their chosen fields. However, although discussions have ranged across the continents, engaging academics and activists concerned with social justice and environmental sustainability, they have been based on the assumption that the division of labour and the wages system as we know it are set in tablets of stone. In REVC we find refreshing discussion of devolution of power and responsibility to the individual and the local community.