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
