Allotments and the Household

 

An allotment is a plot of land made available for growing food and so forming a kitchen garden away from the residence of the allotment holder. Such plots are formed by subdividing a piece of land into a few or up to several hundred plots. these are assigned to be cultivated by individual households, in contrast to 'community gardens' where the entire area is tended collectively by a group of people.

The individual size of an allotment is suffiecient to provide for the needs of a family. Often the plots include a shed for tools and shelter, and sometimes a hut for overnight accommodation. There is usually an allotment association, which leases or is granted the land from an owner who may be a public, private or ecclesiastical entity. The allotment holders pay a small membership fee to the association and have to abide by the corresponding constitution as interpreted by the management committee. Allotments and community gardens can be found all over the world, and have a fascinating history.

In the UK, the Enclosure Acts and Commons Acts of the 18th and 19th centuries left many poor households without land for cultivation to provide for healthy food for their families. In due course of time allotment legislation was enacted. The law was first fully codified in the Small Holdings and Allotments Act, then modified by the Allotments Act 1922, and subsequent Allotments Acts up until the Allotments Act 1950. To this day, local councils have a duty to supply sufficient allotments to meet demand.

Studies of the socio-cultural and economic functions of allotment gardens see them as offering an improved quality of life, low cost food, relaxation, and contact with nature. For children, gardens offer places to play, to encounter the world of nature, and to experience activities like planting and harvesting. For parents, the elderly and for the depressed, and the physically challenged, allotment sites offer opportunity to meet people, to share good practice. The total number of plots has varied greatly over time. In the 19th and early 20th century, the allotment system supplied much of the fresh vegetables eaten by the poorer families. The better off families relied on the kitchen gardens attached to their residences. In both cases, the food supplied to the households was healthy and fresh, coming directly from soil to table, being free from agribusiness fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides and preservatives.

Over the course of the 20th century it became increasingly difficult for children to say with any certainty how their food made its way from soil to table. Many had no idea where on earth it came from. I have seen a 7 year old boy walking round and round a cabbage growing in my kitchen garden, trying to puzzle out why it was standing in the soil. Cabbages, for him, grew on supermarket shelves. The parents themselves had spent their childhoods indoors, feeding on pre-prepared food as their parents, in turn, honoured their supposed obligation to "grow" the financial economy.

To be continued...

You may already have seen this Julian Rose interview about organic farming and food agenda?

 https://www.ukcolumn.org/video/unearthly-interference-the-corruption-of-the-organic-movement-with-sir-julian-rose

See Also Blog; Child Care Policy and the Economy, Maria Lyons, 3 April 2024

Creative Listening

 

Additional note from unknown source

found in the Creative Listening booklet

So if you go to people expecting them to be something, you get it. If you go simply thinking, "I'm now going to see a son or daughter of God, somebody who really carries this wonderful divine spark inside the same as I do. I'm going to meet a sister or brother. Who knows what this will lead to, who knows what amazing promises will emerge," emerge they do, you see, as I've found out often enough. What helps these promises to emerge, when one meets people, is to make oneself very available to them, to listen very carefully.

Listening is a very important human ability which we are on the whole not good at because of the noise of our own thoughts, the noise of our own computer ticking over with its associations and its habitual responses. But if one really listens, it's an act of self-abnegation, making oneself available to that person, stopping being the automatic creature that most of us are most of the time, machine-like. One is becoming fully human, and the contact that one establishes when one is really listening and giving attention, awareness and consciousness to another person, is the contact which comes from the more real parts of ourselves below the part which is automatic and machine-like. The automatic and machine-like part is very important, of course. You have to be able to respond automatically, for instance, when you drive cars or ride bicycles or feed yourself or scratch when you've got an itch and not think about it. Otherwise it would take an interminable time. It's when this automatic part takes over what should be the human function, the human contact, then we do each other great damage. What is in our computer, the automatic part, is a skilled knowledge of how to cope with certain sorts of situations which need coping with mechanically, but it's also more. It has all sorts of false ideas, and it's ignorant about a number of things. It's also influenced by the pain from hurts which we have. They come out automatically, too, so our automatic response is sometimes based on ignorance. ... (continued in the pages of the unknown publication. )

COMMENT: Go to website : https://www.douglassocialcredit.com/Go to ESSAYS\Yorkshire Educational Association \ and find Creative Listening booklet by Rachel Spinney, reproduced as a guide to facilitating group discussions.

See also on the same page, The Tutor and the WEA.

Flyer No 1 for DSC Website

 It has belatedly been drawn to my attention that, in these days of crisis and confusion in the social sphere, much very useful literature is sitting idly on the https://www.douglassocialcredit.com/ website. You are therefore invited to explore the website by following a series of selected links, and in doing so to spot other interesting material you pass along the way.

DOUGLAS SOCIAL CREDIT

Promotes group study of the causes of war.

Mr Bevan's Dream

In 1989 Sue Townsend wrote a small but highly readable book entitled Mr Bevan's Dream. The book tells the story of the socialist dream of a National Health Service free at the point of need, and ...read more...

Find Mr Bevan's Dream by going to RESOURCES page, scroll down to SOCIAL ART RESOURCES, and scroll down to ART AND SOCIAL CREDIT. Some way down the list you will find the full document.

In passing, note Peter Maurin's Easy Essays, reproduced by The Catholic Worker.

Book Review The Political Economy

 Review of The Political Economy of Social Credit and Guild Socialism

by Bill Krehm

Review of a book by Frances Hutchinson and Brian Burkitt, Routledge, London, 1997

This remarkable book on the history of social credit was given to me by Michael Rowbotham some years ago. I must have read it carefully at the time for my margin pencillings are much in evidence. But clearly it required the disturbing developments in the intervening years for me to make a greater effort to appreciate fully some of the conclusions that Major C.H. Douglas had arrived at. The problem was that he was using an approach that varied from that of less unconventional reformers – to the point that they did not even grasp what it was that he was seeking and to an extent actually found. Reflecting that, his solutions and even his language seemed clumsily at odds with the accepted vocabulary and grammar of economic thinking, right or left. Even his A and B Theorem which seemed to us an unschooled blunder of an engineer lost in the labyrinth of accountancy and economic thought.

But the misadventures of the world are forcing us to penetrate the obscurities of his language that barred access to many potential allies.

But a bit of background. “The writings of Major Douglas gave rise to the social credit movement, popular throughout the inter-war years. Douglas’s earliest books, Economic Democracy and Credit-Power and Democracy, first appeared in serial form in the socialist journal the New Age in the period immediately following World War I. Close examination of the early Douglas/New Age texts alongside the literature of guild socialism reveals that the editor of the New Age, A.R. Orage, provided Douglas with a great deal more than editorial support in the formulation of the original texts. Without Orage’s guild socialist contribution [the Douglas doctrine] would have provided unpromising material for a popular debate which was to be sustained over two decades throughout the English-speaking world.

“Guild socialism and Douglas had this in common: In their different ways they both questioned the deep faith that Marxist and most brands of socialism shared with the prophets of capitalism – that economic growth was in itself beneficent and necessary, and ultimately liberating. The guild socialists questioned this on esthetic, philosophic and social grounds under the influence of William Morris, John Ruskin, and even of Robert Owen.

The guild socialists saw in excessive industrialization an undermining of the elements of pluralism and local autonomies in earlier societies. Current Globalization and Deregulation with its destructive effects on the environment, the family, the multiplicity of life styles, is only an explosive manifestation of this trend. As important as the effort to safeguard the jobs of workers may be, it is an uphill struggle, given the concentration of power in the financial sector. The incorporation into current price of the rate of growth already achieved brings with it the need to continue that growth, and its rate of its growth into the distant future. The slightest shortfall of this commitment triggers the collapse of the price structure. And since share values serve as collateral for further financing, it becomes unsustainable. The mathematics of the model in fact are those of the atom bomb.

An Unequalled Thoroughness

Douglas-Orage review the nature of money from the ground up with a thoroughness that has few if any equals. “Douglas stressed that production does not create money. It is possible to imagine a producer in a system of single-stage production [i.e., without the purchase of intermediate goods and hence not incurring costs that have need of money]. Having access to land (which has not been bought) and a discarded spade, and having saved seed potato and horse manure (discarded A), it is possible for a producer to plant, tend and harvest a potato crop at no financial cost. The crop can be put in a discarded sack and sold to a neighbour for £5. Has the producer created £5? Or any money at all? That is the sort of maddeningly basic question Douglas was given to asking.

“Nevertheless, at the point of exchange no value is created. However sophisticated the system, production of all commodities follows the same pattern as the potato example. All production requires inputs from the natural world which the economy cannot create. All production requires human inputs. First, an inherited body of knowledge, as in the ability to save seed, cope with pests and drought and so on. Second, a ‘producer’ who may be employed or self-employed, but who comes to the task physically developed from infancy to maturity and still requires social care. Neither form of ‘human input’ is produced through exchange on the market. Wealth creation can take place outside the exchange economy.

“Money is a commodity itself. In a single-stage production a large proportion of subsistence requirements can be seen to be produced outside the formal economy. Hence in newly monetized economies ‘cheap’ labour occurs because subsistence requirements continue to be provided from outside the cash economy.

“Money has no intrinsic properties, only those which people choose to give it. Hence a comment such as ‘There is no money in the country with which to do such and so’ is meaningless, unless it is an indication that the goods and services required to perform the task in question do not exist and cannot be produced. In that event it would be useless to create the money-equivalent of the non-existent resources. On the other hand, it is misleading to argue that the country ‘has no money’ for social betterment or for any other purpose, when it possesses the skill, the labour and the material and plant to create that betterment. The financial system in the form of the banks or the Treasury can, if they so wish, create the necessary money in five minutes. Indeed, they are creating money for ‘necessary’ tasks every day, and have done so for centuries.

“Money can be described as a ‘ticket system’ whereby money ‘tickets’ or grants the right to participate in the economy. The ticket office [of a railway] is not the place where the measurement of productive capacity should take place. To orthodox econ­omists steeped in general competitive equilibrium theory the dynamic relationship between money creation and policy formation in production and distribution was incomprehensible.

“‘In popular belief, banking is understood to be no more than a private pawnbroking transaction between borrower and lender: lenders place their savings in a bank, and borrowers take that same money to ­invest in new machinery, labour and materials. In reality the banker is in a unique position of lending something without parting with anything, and making a profit on the transaction’ (Douglas, 1923). ‘The bank lends new money; bank loans create money and the uses to which it can be put are dependent upon these transactions’ (Douglas, 1922c). ‘Every credit transaction affects the interests of every person in the credit area concerned, either through its effect on prices or through the diversion of the energies available for production purposes’ (Douglas, 1922c). ‘An overdraft, arranged perhaps on the basis of the title deeds of a factory, facilitates production. However, the overdraft is new money exactly as if the banker had coined goods for sale’ (Douglas, 1920). Hence the granting of credit by a financial institution is more realistically viewed as the creation of a mortgage on future production than as the allocation of the past savings of industry. The term ‘deposits’ is highly misleading, implying something deposited for safe keeping, like jewels in a safe deposit. Bank deposits are not like that. The deposits of commercial banks are to them liabilities, although they are assets to their holders.”

Our Censored Textbooks

“As later explained (by Encyclopedia Bri­tan­nica, 1979) – a bank that received, say, $100 in gold might add $25 to its reserves and lend out $75. But the recipient of that $75 would himself spend it. Some of those who received gold in this way would hold it as gold but others would deposit it in this bank or in other banks. If, for example, two-third were deposited, some banks would find $50 added to deposits and to reserves and would repeat the process. When this multiple expansion process worked itself out fully, total deposits would have increased by $200, bank reserves by $50 and $50 of the initial $100 would have been retained as ‘currency outside banks.’”

You will find that process explained in even greater detail in just about any textbook on economics published in Canada prior to 1991 when the bill was passed abolishing statutory reserves that banks had to redeposit as security against the deposits received in chequing accounts. By that the key mechanism of banking had been suppressed. That, of course, and the speculative banking orgies that have taken over since banks were deregulated to empower them to acquire brokerages, underwriting, merchant banking, derivative boutiques, are what have made the ideas of Douglas-Orage more important than ever before.

“‘Problems occur when the banking system operates according to its own agenda, with the requirements of the consumer a secondary consideration. Unlike the social reform business, the banking business is immensely powerful, talks very little, acts quickly, knows what it wants’ (Douglas, 1922b). ‘The quantity of money is dependent upon the power of the banker’s pen. Banks create new money which ranks equally with legal tender as a means of exchange. Although credit is more properly regarded as common property, it is administered by the banker primarily for the purpose of private profit’ (Douglas, 1923, 1919b). According to orthodox theory, money, equivalent to the price of every article produced, exists in the pocket, or in the bank, of somebody somewhere in the world. It is assumed that the collective sum of wages, salaries and dividends distributed in respect of the articles for sale at any given moment is available as purchasing power at the same moment. Some persons may have more money in their pocket or bank than they wish to spend on consumable goods. By abstaining from consuming, they form a fund which enables capital goods such as tools, plant and factories, to be paid for, and therefore to be produced. Crucially, the money which they ‘use to spend or invest is constantly created and destroyed by the banking system for its own financial advantage’ (Douglas, 1924a).

“Real credit is the ‘effective reserve of energy belonging to the community.’ Its administration has fallen to the banking system and financial institutions generally. Consequently the ‘creative energy of mankind’ becomes subject to artificial restrictions which bear no relationship to the realities of everyday existence’ (Douglas, 1919b). The potential real wealth of society is communal in origin and should therefore be subject to the control of the entire community. Financial credit is administered by the banking system ‘primarily for the purpose of private profit’ (Douglas, 1919b).

“The Douglas/New Age texts note that banking originated as a private venture, observing that at the time the Bank of England remained a private institution. Nevertheless, the guild socialists did not consider that a politically controlled central bank would be truly independent of private banking interests. Just as state capitalism, i.e., a socialist government under the existing economic conditions would produce wage slavery as effectively as private capitalism, so too would state banking continue the status quo in terms of financial control over industrial policy. Hence Orage’s derision of the Labour Party, on its rejection of the Douglas/New Age scheme.” History has confirmed his judgment, but it is, however, important to remember the international campaign of the Bank for International Settlements in the 1980s to declare the independence from their governments of all central banks. Given what it had in the works, the world banking community clearly needs all the safeguards and secrecy it could get.”

Finance Rules the Rulers of Kingdoms

“The creation of ‘financial credit’ ensures that ‘industry becomes mortgaged to the banking system’ (Douglas, 1924a). ‘Appreciation of the role of finance in initiating economic activity was noted in The National Guilds’ edited by Orage (1914) and originally printed as a series of articles by S.G. Hobson in the New Age in 1912-13. ‘A great financial network covers the world, operating on an informal but highly centralized basis. It rules the rulers of kingdoms.’

“At this point, Hobson and Orage went no further than suggesting that the (industry-based) guilds would have to become their own bankers, working through a national clearing house.”

At this point Douglas formulated his “A+B theorem,” which focused on an aspect of financing production quite different from what economists and accountants had even considered.

 “In 1908 he had been in India in charge of Westinghouse’s interests in the East. One of those concerned the survey of a large district with a view to installing hydro-electric equipment. The prospects were good. On his return to Calcutta, however, it became clear that there was no money to proceed with the project. At the time labour was plentiful in India and the manufacturers in Great Britain were short of orders. Furthermore, prices for machinery at the time were very low indeed. Douglas recalled having been taken into the confidence of the Comptroller-General of India in Calcutta on the matter of ‘credit.’ He was told of the trouble he experienced with the Treasury officials at home in England, and with their departments in India, in regard to the extraordinary operations they undertook melting down rupees to deal with the exchange. This was done with regard to ‘what they called the quantity theory of money.’ The Comptroller-General concluded that ‘money and currency and the silver rupees, etc., have almost nothing to do with this situation. It almost entirely depends on credit. Silver and currency form only a very small part of financial operations. Douglas noted this for future reference.’

“Some years later, before the outbreak of World War I, Douglas states he was employed by the British Government at home to design and ultimately construct a railway which runs underneath London from Paddington to Whitechapel. Despite the absence of physical or engineering problems and a plentiful supply of labour, the project could not be completed. Finance lay at the root of the problem. However, as soon as the war commenced, money was available for practically anything.

“After ‘an interval’ Douglas ‘was sent down to Farnborough, to the Royal Aircraft Factory, in connection with a muddle into which the institution had got.’ Douglas concluded that the only way to ascertain how work was being allocated ‘was to go very carefully into the costing which took place.’ The existing costing system produced ‘admirable information about what happened three years and two months before, but that was not of any use to me.’ According to Douglas, he introduced very early computers – ‘tabulating machines’ used on the London and North Western Railway. Information was punched on to cards and the cards were put into the machine that processed them. One day it occurred to him that by the end of the week total wages and salaries were not equal to the value of the goods produced during the week. The fact of this happening in every factory across the land at the same period of time meant that the purchasing power distributed in the form of wages and salaries will not be sufficient during any week to buy the product unless extra money is being injected into the system each week.”

That was the origin and significance of the notorious A+B theorem. It was not enough to point out, as did many including myself, that the discrepancy was because many items produced both as intermediate goods as manufacturing parts, buildings, engineering projects would be useful over many years and would be financed until they were fully depreciated years later. That is exactly what he wished to free society from – dependence on the financial institutions. Hence he brought in the concept of a social dividend representing the contribution of society over generations in creating the institutions, the inventions, the scientific and technical discoveries that made the productive potential of our world possible. It would include, too, the unrewarded labour of slaves, the contribution of martyrs and prophets that made possible the social and legal framework for modern society and its productivity. That could be allotted to all citizens and it would fill the gap and free society from servitude to financial capital.

Instead of patenting scientific discoveries, even genes, for speculative investors to collect a rent on them, the social dividend would contribute to gear down the drive to maximization of the financial sector. It would encourage alternative life styles that would cultivate other goals than the consumption of highly promoted items of little or negative usefulness.

The contribution of Douglas-Orage to the incorporation of the non-market sectors of the economy – health, education, social security, the environment – is crucial. The power-grab of the banking system that Douglas and his associates identified almost a century ago, have come into a lethal flowering. In the long-overdue reassessment for what passes as economic science, their ideas will require careful attention. The Hutch­in­son-Burkitt book is mandatory for preparing ourselves for the task.

William Krehm

Wikipedia: William Krehm (November 23, 1913 – April 19, 2019) was a Canadian author, journalist, political activist and real estate developer. He was a prominent Trotskyist activist in the 1930s and went to Spain where he participated in the Spanish Civil War. In the 1980s he co-founded the Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform (COMER) and continued as the group's principal leader until his death in April 2019 at the age of 105.[1][2] Read more on Wikipedia...

Maria Lyons on Childcare and the Economy

 

Childcare Policy and the Economy by Maria Lyons

Extended Version

The North East coast of Scotland is admittedly not known for its wonderful weather but we do have the occasional unexpectedly beautiful sunny day, even in the autumn months. On one such day a few weeks ago I took my daughter to the beach. The beach was deserted, save for a handful of older people walking their dogs. As we were digging and splashing in the breakers a woman came up to me to say she was so happy to see a child outside, playing in the sand like her children used to do. We chatted briefly about how one rarely sees (or hears!) children in public spaces anymore, because even the very young tend nowadays to be in nursery or some form of care during the day.

This strangely silent week-day world is of course a result of the fact that most parents of young children either want to work or must work. Whether a desire or an obligation on the part of parents, the gradual transfer of the care and raising of children from families to paid professionals is a socio-cultural phenomenon that is wholeheartedly encouraged by the present Government. Indeed, at a time dominated by political division and discord, there is one policy objective that is unanimously supported by all the political parties in the United Kingdom; that is the aim to increase provision of free childcare for three to four year olds from the current 15 hours a week to 30 hours per week. The impetus for this policy is economic. More affordable and flexible childcare, the rationale goes, will enable more mothers to enter the workforce thus boosting productivity as well as improving government finances through a combination of higher tax revenues and lower benefit costs.

In January 2018 it was announced that the Treasury Committee had launched an inquiry to investigate these claims about the relationship between childcare provision and the economy. The inquiry aimed to “examine the role high quality, accessible, flexible and affordable childcare can play in supporting labour productivity”.ⁱ As part of its evidence-gathering process, the committee invited submissions from members of the public and I took up the invitation to express my concerns.

My first comment was that the title of the enquiry is in itself very revealing about social attitudes toward children, parenting and work. Childcare policy is being looked at in the context of how it can best serve the economy. In my view we should be asking two entirely different questions: How can our policies best serve the needs of children and their families, and how can the economy best be aligned with those policies? In a liberal democratic society that claims to value individual freedom as well as take on social responsibility, the relentless focus on labour productivity and ‘getting mothers into the workforce’ is extremely disturbing. Not in the least because the argument that national wealth leads automatically to national wellbeing is increasingly unconvincing.

In the past the vast majority of mothers were denied the opportunity to earn their own living and participate meaningfully in the public realm. This was rightfully challenged and has, thankfully, changed. However, where once mothers were denied the opportunity to work, now many parents are denied the opportunity to raise their own children. They are denied the opportunity, that is, through the financial imperative to seek paid employment. This raises the important question of whether women, particularly mothers, are being offered greater freedom of choice or are merely being forced to make different ones.

Instead of pressuring mothers (through the tax system and other measures ⁱⁱ ) to return to the workforce, the Government should be exploring ways to enable mothers to make the choice not to. It should be asking if the funding available for subsidising childcare could not be made available to support parents to provide their own childcare if they so wish. This would not only ensure that women can make meaningful choices and thus would be a fundamentally progressive policy, but it would ensure children have the best possible chance of receiving high quality care.

For the evidence is quite clear on what sort of caring and environment helps children thrive. While it has been established that formal care settings, in very particular circumstances, can produce ‘better outcomes’ than a home environment, the fact is that these circumstances are far from the norm. Affordable childcare facilities are struggling, not at all surprisingly, to offer very young children the consistency, stability, attention, sensitivity, interest and affection that they need and deserve. At the same there is an army of mothers (or fathers or grandparents) willing to provide all of these things for up to 24 hours a day at a fraction of the cost of a formal care setting. It seems utterly ludicrous that so much effort is being spent on discouraging them from doing so.

Rather than pouring public resources toward the frankly unrealistic goal of making very high quality, affordable child care accessible for every child, why not invest public resources in high quality parenting? In other words, invest in the individuals, families and communities who produce the children and want to care for them; enhance their capacity to create richly stimulating, stable, healthy and supportive environments by easing their financial burden and increasing flexibility in their working lives.

Such a shift in policy could potentially benefit not only parents and children but the public purse and the wider economy. The Committee is examining how childcare policy is influencing the labour productivity and participation of today’s parents. The question that needs to be asked is what influence existing childcare policy is having on the day-to-day lives of a generation of children and how this might, in the long-term, affect the future prosperity of the nation. For today’s children are tomorrow’s labour force and any social policy that directly or indirectly affects their social, emotional, physical and intellectual development will also influence their capacities to contribute productively and creatively to their society.

I suggested that the scope of the enquiry should be much broader and more fundamentally questioning of prevailing policy and its underpinning ideology, since it has by no means been unequivocally established that the public interest is best served by the greatest number of citizens being employed for the greatest number of hours in the formal labour market. In fact, the nationally accounted economy could not function without the enormous contribution of unpaid labour and nothing is more valuable to the economy than the freely gifted time, effort and love parents offer their children. If we continue with current trends we will end up with a society where all caring is outsourced to private interests. In other words, all caring is for profit and no one has any time for any type of activity that is not measured in terms of GDP. I ended with a plea that we take a moment and think about what we are doing, lest we forget that the economy is supposed to serve the needs of the population and not the other way around.

Of course I was aware at the time of writing that this was far more an exercise in ‘getting it off my chest’ than it was a submission of evidence in the usual sense. However, upon reading the final report of the inquiry published in March I was surprised and extremely pleased to see that not only did the inquiry question the effectiveness of the Government’s policy on its own terms but it made two important acknowledgements. First of all, it noted that not all mothers want to pay someone else to look after their children. Secondly, it noted that labelling mothers who do look after their own children as economically unproductive is a matter of accounting, and accounting systems can be changed. This might not seem like much, but it does go a little way towards challenging the assumptions underpinning the political consensus described at the beginning of this piece.

Most interestingly, that these two points were given prominence in the final report is down to the number of submissions the inquiry received from individuals making much the same arguments I had attempted. In other words, submission after submission presents, either through facts and figures or personal experience, the case for moving beyond purely economic definitions of social value, of a purely contractual basis for caring relationships, of purely materialistic ways of understanding wealth and wellbeing and of purely cognitive criteria for measuring human development. Submission after submission emphasises the importance in childhood of love, freedom, personal connection, a sense of security, a sense of community and a connection to nature. What I found so striking, reading through the written evidence of the enquiry, is how much the experiences of people from all walks of life resonates with Rudolf Steiner’s teachings on education and social life.

Using the power of less

Although today’s policy-makers are unlikely to make any significant changes to their social programme in response to these submissions, there are signs that at long last parents and teachers are recognising that our social structures and cultural norms not only do little to encourage opportunities for outdoor play, they provide little or no protection for what ought to be totally sacred: childhood itself.

Kim John Payne argues in his book Simplicity Parentingⁱⁱⁱ that the wealthy industrialised West is an increasingly hostile place for children and young people, albeit in far subtler ways than in other parts of the world. The effects are not necessarily subtle. If you are familiar with educational debates you have probably heard a great deal in recent years about anxiety, stress levels, attention deficits, challenging behaviour, depression and even self-harming in young people. Payne expresses the underlying problem in a particularly striking way: many children in the United States and United Kingdom are suffering from a form of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Not as a result of a single traumatic event, but a gradual build up of stresses and strains as they are rushed through every aspect of learning and development, with no time to simply be, to rest, to process or to experience in their own natural ways. Education is entirely adult-driven, co-opted by commercial and political interests, and parents are literally buying into an approach to learning that is wholly dictated by people whose expertise lies in cultivating financial profits, not well-rounded human beings.

Building on his work with children in Asian refugee camps, Payne describes how youngsters are showing signs of a ‘cumulative stress reaction’ to immersion in the ‘media rich, multi-tasking, complex, information overloaded, time pressured’ existence we now call normal daily life. This is manifesting in all varieties of health problems. We have all experienced how periods of high tension can dramatically alter our physical or mental state. It can also alter our personality, morphing us in mere seconds from our ordinary selves to our worst selves, with sudden outbursts of negative emotion or behaviour. Thankfully these moments are usually short-lived and as we return to calm we regain a sense of self control. Payne asserts that in children if even moderate levels of excitement or stimulation become a permanent feature of daily life, never counterbalanced by interludes of peacefulness, predictability and even boredom, stress can act as the catalyst which turns what might have been only a quirk or tendency into one of the dreaded ‘disorders’.

Filtering out the adult world

Seen in this light, the solution becomes obvious. First and foremost we must reduce the stress in the daily life and environment of our children. This can be done by a process of ‘simplification’. He describes this process in terms of four areas that can be dealt with in turn: the environment, rhythm, schedules and filtering out the adult world. As with any transformation the first work is inner work. He advises parents to attempt to recover their dreams, to re-acquaint themselves with ideals of family life held dear before reality and its inevitable rush and clutter took over. This imaginative picture can be used as inspiration for change. From there, one can begin with what is do-able and capitalise on success in small steps to progress to the bigger, more important ones.

Modifying one’s physical environment is the most tangible and perhaps manageable step in the process of simplification. When it comes to stuff, the first order of business is quite simply to get rid of it. Or at least, as much of it as possible. While acknowledging the pressures that are pushing them in exactly the opposite direction, Payne urges parents to drastically reduce the amount of possessions their children have or have access to. Whether with toys, books, clothes or food, decreasing amount and variety in a child’s surroundings can help to instil the lifelong lesson that it is ‘relationships, not purchases, which sustain us emotionally’. After all, ‘nothing in the middle of a pile can be truly cherished’. With fewer choices and fewer distractions children have both physical and emotional space in which to develop their powers of attention, concentration and imagination, a greater depth of engagement with and an appreciation for what they have.

By gently turning our family’s attention away from the temptations of passive entertainment and instant gratification and toward more hard-won yet meaningful experiences, we encourage qualities and capacities that will be of both immediate and lasting benefit. These qualities can be further strengthened by increasing rhythm in daily life. Payne points out that any regular activity, event or chore can be made more rhythmical. The certainty of rhythms and rituals create ‘islands of consistency and security’ which punctuate the day and ground the child in space and time and within the family world. They are like the ‘place set at the table. An unquestioned invitation to participate, connect and belong’.

The same principles apply to how we organise and fill our children’s time. As with too many toys, too many scheduled activities, particularly ones with fixed rules, can stifle a child’s ability to be creative, independent and self-motivated. We have become so busy ‘enriching’ our children we have forgotten to allow them free, unstructured time in which to discover what they really love to do. Here again, balance is the key concept. It is not the particular activities themselves which cause problems, but pursuing too many at once, too intensely, or at an age which is not developmentally appropriate. Sports, for instance, can be a wonderful education in teamwork, cooperation, leadership, skill and self-discipline. But if imposed too early, organised sports can lead to burnout and young people can be robbed of pursuits that at a later stage would have been immensely rewarding. When it comes to our children’s schedules, then, we must pay attention to what, when and how much, remembering that as much as programmed events can be ‘enriching’ the spaces in between them can be equally so.

Worry, always a part of parenthood, seems in the last few decades to have come to define how parents relate to their children. As Payne observes, our ‘fears and concerns for our children have eclipsed our hopes for them, and our trust’. One of the key contributors to this is over-exposure to media and the hyper-sensationalism of bad news. Anxiety sells, and it is being delivered, nicely packaged for maximum impact, right into the heart of our homes and bursting out of multiple screens all clamouring for our attention. The diet of fear and exaggerated risk to which so many of us have become addicted is compromising our sense of perspective, and that in turn is polluting the way our children see the world. ‘Too much information doesn’t ‘prepare’ a child for a complicated world; it paralyses them.’ Much has been written about the harmful effects of television in recent years and Payne makes as convincing a case as any of the merits of ‘kicking out’ that ‘black hole of a house guest’. Unrestricted television and other forms of screen media work against simplification at every turn.

A decade ago Simplicity Parenting inspired a movement. Very accessible and brimming with valuable insights, it can be dipped into and out of as a reference or read as a comprehensive step-by-step guide. it will appeal to parents who are uneasy about the status quo but need practical suggestions for change. Likewise it will appeal to those dealing with specific problem behaviours but seeking a different set of answers from the conventional, frequently medication-based approach to child health. Payne’s observations and recommendations are made with great empathy and respect for the challenges parents face, as well as their motivations. Harnessing ‘the power of less’ is certainly an important step in re-attuning to the true needs of children today, to seeing the world from their perspective and ensuring that perspective is allowed to matter.

The task ahead is for parents and teachers – those with immediate responsibility for every individual child – to review their rights and responsibilities so that “A child may be a child in order for him to become a complete human being”.^iv

Universal Childcare: Is it good for children?

for CIVITAS

Maria Lyons

4 February 2024

I have just had a report on childcare published, I thought it might be of interest and please circulate to anyone who might find it useful. 

https://www.civitas.org.uk/publications/universal-childcare/

The Daily Mail wrote an article about it which you can see here:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13030585/Childcare-does-not-youngsters-best-start-life-love-attachment-absent-discussion-best-children-report-claims.html

Maria Lyons

Email: maria.s.lyons@gmail.com

Mobile:07928 370 696

iHouse of Commons Treasury Committee, Childcare, Ninth Report of Session 2017-19 (https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmtreasy/757/757.pdf)

ii For more information and analysis on how the tax system penalises parents who choose to remain with their children rather than seek employment outside the home, see the excellent organisation and campaign group Mothers At Home Matter (https://mothersathomematter.co.uk/).

iii Kim John Payne (2019) Simplicity Parenting: Using the power of less to raise happy, secure children, Hawthorne Press.

ivEvelien van Dort (2018) Why Don't Children Sit Still? A Parent's Guide to Healthy Movement and Play in Child Development, Floris Books. p93

Women, Artists, the Small Farmer and the Unemployed

 

NOTE: The body of economic theory known as 'social credit' was studied across the world in the inter-war years of the 1920s and 1930s, as ordinary men and women struggled to understand how it was that the world could afford the waste and horror of war. The Social Credit movement was supported by leading figures in the arts, sciences, the church, politics and social activism, all of whom presented the case for peace based upon social justice and environmental sustainability.

Women, Artists, the Small Farmer and the Unemployed

Social credit’s most powerful appeal was to the vast sections of society whose income insecurity precluded their active participation as mainstream actors in the political economy. Industrial capitalism and organised labour had clearly defined economic roles. Women, the unemployed, small farmers and ‘artists’ had essential supporting roles, but these roles were less easy to specify within the terms of the formal economy. The ‘artist’ could include all whose work springs from internal motivation, not only the fine artist but also the writer, the musician, the crafts-person, the inventor and the engineer, without whose work civilisation would not exist. These were the mainstay of support for the Social Credit movement.

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 question of the value of labour was presented in novel form, fully capable of amplification. In assessing the value of work, whether paid or unpaid, how is an hour’s work to be valued? What yardstick may be most appropriate to an evaluative comparison between the hourly value of the work undertaken by:

1. a professor at the LSE,

2. the Editor of The New Age,

3 the late Mrs Norman for her feat in bearing and rearing her son, our Montagu [the then Governor of the Bank of England]?

The rhetorical question encapsulates the vitality of the debate on social credit issues among women in the 1930s. The economics of work, and women’s role in the 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 provides a further example of a failed attempt by women to step ‘out of the margin’ and into the mainstream. For example, according to The New Age in June 1934, women of the Green Shirts Movement, led by Carol Dixon, national organiser of the Women’s Section, marched in uniform to present an official letter in support of ‘a Sane Economic System as propounded by Major C.H. Douglas’ to the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street. Similar reports of women activists in the Social Credit movement are commonplace in the social credit press. The quest of the 1990s women’s movement to free both women and men from the wage slavery of capitalism is echoed throughout the various Social Credit weeklies. For example:

Q. How will Social Credit affect the position of women in general?

A. By giving every woman a birthright income – i.e., the National (or Citizen's) Dividend based on the productive capacity of the community – it will ensure economic independence and freedom, for it will release her from being:

1 Tied to the home when she wishes to lead her own life.

2 Treated as a drudge, or as an inferior – i.e. the ‘chattel’ status.

3 Driven to marry for the sake of economic security.

4 Bound to some man who ill-treats her, or is in some other way unsuitable as a person to live with. 5 Driven into work-wage slavery in competition with men in order to keep alive.

Q. Will women get ‘equal pay for equal work’?

A. Yes, they will:

1 because a Social Credit Government will naturally stand for fair play for all citizens without distinction;

2 because employers will no longer need ‘cheap labour’;

3 because each individual woman will be able to say – ‘If I do this job as well as a man could do it, I shall want the same pay as a man.’ And if the employer says, ‘No,’ she will be able to say: ‘Very well, I refuse the job. After all, I can live on my National (Citizen's) Dividend.’ This places every woman in a very powerful position. (It will apply equally, of course, to badly paid male workers.)

Following from women’s growing interest in ‘the new economics’ of Douglas across Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand’, American 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, had done nothing to ameliorate women’s status or conditions.

NOTE: The above is an extract from Frances Hutchinson and Brian Burkitt, The Political Economy of Social Credit and Guild Socialism, Routledge, 1997, reprinted by John Carpenter, 2005 (p160-7). Available electronically on www.douglassocialcredit.com.

What If ?

 What if we’re the people we’ve been waiting for?

The book entitled The Household and the Planet (forthcoming) details the mess that Western Civilisation has planted on the Planet. The roots of the problems are not to be found in some distant faraway desert island. They lie right here, inside our very doorsteps. For decades, the same refrain has been repeated over and over again. Each and every one of us is responsible for those choices we make as citizens in the political sphere, as workers and spenders in the economic sphere, and as artists in the cultural sphere. To spell it out simply:

1. in the political sphere, it is not enough to cast a vote when elections are called, only to sit back and leave them to it, so that blame them when things go wrong. On the contrary, as responsible citizens we have the duty to support our elected representatives when they are working for us on the right lines, and to blow the whistle loud and clear when things are going wrong. How? Well, that's the duty of the citizen to find out, by attending council meetings at local, regional and national levels, asking questions, writing to the press and mass media and studying with others what is to be done about noise, air and light pollution, food banks and the other plights facing the same problems as in the Ken Loach film "I Daniel Blake".

2. as economic agents, it is our duty to consider very seriously our ecological and ethical footprint. Where and how do our consumer life choices and the kind of paid work we do, impact upon the life choices of other households, and upon the planet as a whole/? If we are happy about it, fine. If not, who is going to do anything about it? Who can effect change?

3. As cultural agents we have a duty to educate ourselves in arts, crafts, farming, and other practical skills, not just as a hobby to pas the time, but as worthwhile practical skills that produce food, clothing and the other necessities of life. Included in these skills is the ability to interact with others in music and dance to read, discuss and write and record thoughts.

These questions are not novel in any way. They have been asked persistently throughout the twentieth century by groups of individuals with the common good at heart. Their questioning has been poopooed by the devotees of progress and materialism - you can't put the clock-back, that's what the Luddites tried to do. etc etc. Nevertheless, a substantial bank of sound thinking is to be found if you look for it. As a start, you might investigate the Douglas Social Credit website https://www.douglassocialcredit.com/ .

Start with the HOME PAGE. The column on the right of the page, and the drop down menus, introduce worldwide bodies of alternative thought, debate and discussion. Copies of The Social Artist contain informative articles, views and reviews from well-established groups, networks and key figures from mainstream media, academia and the various non-governmental 'voluntary' bodies. Your attention is drawn to the Autumn 2019 edition of TSA (bottom left on your screen). There you will find and article by Helga Moss that amplifies upon the above mentioned comments on the role of the individual household. And, on page 36 Peter Maurin of The Catholic Worker, explains anarchism.

A guided tour of the rest of the website is to follow in due course of time. In the meantime, there is nothing to stop you investigating for yourself.

To access this Blog try https://understandinglifeanddebt.blogspot.com/