LIFE letter to Cross-Canada PAR-L feminist email list on the topic of Guaranteed Livable Income
by a LIFE member - March 2006  

Preamble: PAR-L is a "Policy, Action, Research List" with 1500 participants from across Canada. According to their website, PAR-L is "a bilingual, electronic network of individuals and organizations interested in women-centred policy issues in Canada" and about their email list they state: This bilingual (English/French) list is open to any individual or organization interested in discussing policy, action, and research on issues of concern to women in Canada. The scope is intentionally broad to provide an open forum where feminist activists, scholars, and researchers can come together, communicate, share, and disseminate information in a supportive environment.

There was a recent (March 1-5, 06) flurry of emails on the PAR-L list responding to an email sent by Stephanie Lovatt, President of the Victoria Status of Women Action Group (closed in 2007), calling for support for Guaranteed Livable Income (GLI). This is the email that was sent by a member of LIFE to the PAR-L list.

To PAR-L members:

[P] quotes C. L'Hirondelle [email sent to PAR-L supporting Stephanie Lovatt] as stating:

"When people are this easily put off from trying to save the majority of the world's citizen's from death by artificial poverty, because the grassroots are ornery and don't talk 'proper' and especially if the grassroots speak urgently, forcefully and strongly (confused with "arrogance" and "disrespect" and even "intimidation") then I think there is a very real possibility they will never really be able to be allies anyhow because they will always be threatening to storm off if they get offended by a myriad of unpredictable violations of some unspecified standards. [...] Hundreds of right wing "free market" think tanks, have no problem condemning mothers as being the cause of all the world's problems, yet instead of organizing *with* Stephanie Lovatt, people want her to shut up or to tame her language."

In reply, [P] wrote [to PAR-L]: "This reminds me of the "if you're not with us, you're against us" mentality that pervades much political discussion today, which stifles dialogue…"

The problem with [P’s] comment is that we live in political societies based on laws which determine who has money and who doesn't. In Canada, there is no law which provides every citizen with a livable income; therefore, politically speaking there is no ‘us’ for everyone must compete against everyone else for the money necessary for survival -- which poses a problem for anyone who can't compete in the so-called free market -- especially for many mothers.

In her essay on Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826-1898), Lynne Spender wrote:

"Dealing with women's unpaid work in the home, Gage made the specific connection between it and the advantages that immediately accrued to men. As Dale Spender (1982 (b)) says, Gage was aware that because men own women's labour, the harder women work, the richer men get. Certainly Gage explained and exposed time and time again, that through the rationale provided by the church and the state, men had placed themselves in positions to ‘steal’ the fruits of women's labour."

Source: Feminist Theorists: Three Centuries of Key Women Thinkers," Edited by Dale Spender, 1983. | "Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them from Aphra Behn to Adrienne Rich," Dale Spender, 1982b.

People could argue that 'now' women don't have to do ‘unpaid work in the home.’ And in his book review, "Where Have All The Children Gone?", Eric Cohen wrote:

"[his emphasis] AND THIS BRINGS US TO THE HEART OF THE MATTER, an issue not adequately considered by either author: Why have children at all…" [The Public Interest Spring 2005 | "Fewer," Ben J. Wattenberg) | "The Empty Cradle," Phillip Longman]

One ‘economic’ answer to the question as to why have children is that they consume the products that allow adults with jobs to have money. In her book, "Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale (1986)," Marie Mies wrote:

"One area that has been almost totally left out for political struggle in the West has been the area of consumption… And yet, it is common sense knowledge that capitalism cannot function unless it is able to create and expand the market for its ever growing amount of material and non-material commodities"

I began to become more conscious of the fact that my mother didn't get paid an income despite all the all years of hard work she spent producing the ‘consumers’ the economy needs when I read Adam Smith's "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" (1776). In Book I, Chapter IV "Of the Origin and Use of Money" Smith wrote:

"When the division of labour has been once thoroughly established, it is but a very small part of a man's wants which the produce of his own labour can supply. He supplies the far greater part of them by exchanging that surplus part of the produce of his own labour, which is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the produce of other men's labour as he has occasion for. Every man thus lives by exchanging, or becomes in some measure a merchant, and the society itself grows to be what is properly a commercial society."

Given he was a supporter of political liberty for all citizens, Smith must have meant that ‘everyone’ could earn the money she or he needed to survive by being a ‘merchant’ and 'exchanging the surplus part of the produce of her and his own labour.' But this means the only ‘economical’ action my mother could have taken to have money and not risk living poverty was to not get pregnant with me and my siblings.

The startling 'free market' paradox is that if 'unpaid' mothers didn't give birth no one would exist to compete for money. Thus in his essay "The Wage System" Peter Kroputkin was only stating ‘the facts of life’ when he wrote, "It would be the extinction of the race if the mother did not expend her life to preserve her children…" (1920).

In her book "The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory,"
Marilyn Frye wrote, "One of the most characteristic and ubiquitous features of the world as experienced by oppressed people is the double bind--situations in which options are reduced to a very few and all of them expose one to penalty, censure and privation" (1983).

Clearly, mothers have been in terrible double bind and will remain so until there is a guaranteed livable income for all world citizens.

Finally, [F], wrote [to PAR-L]: "So I wanted to say to Stephanie: Thank you for urging us and inspiring such a thoughtful discussion. GLI is important and worth fighting for. However, it might be suggestable that we should be aware of the aspersions that may be taken by our readers. These can be inimical to the inspiration we all seek. We need to avoid contradicting our goals with our actions."

However, if everyone's goal is not the immediate implementation of constitutional law guaranteeing every world citizen a livable income, we are asking some people -- many of them mothers and children -- to disregard their own ‘self-interest’ and even their very lives. This is neither reasonable nor is it politically possible for as Frederick Douglass put it: "Power concedes nothing without demands - it never did and it never will."

The fact that we still don't have a guaranteed livable income is
evidence that Douglass knew what he was talking about.

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