Gilman's
proposals would simply make the difficulty a thousand times worse by
depriving women of men's help, what proposals are there to offer
instead?
The reply is that we must go back to first principles. We must drop all
our phrases about economic independence or dependence. They have urgent
and real meanings for each one of us at any given time, but when applied
to the problems of the reconstruction of society as a whole, they mean
nothing because they are based upon no vital truths whatever. A man may
be economically secure when he is producing absinthe or whisky, or he
may die of starvation because he is producing the songs of Schubert.
Economic independence and dependence mean very much to the prosperous
distiller whom men pay for poison, and to the immortal composer whom men
do not pay at all, but who yet produces that which nourishes the life of
all the future. The maker of death may live, and the maker of life may
die; we see it every day and history is the continuous record of it.
These economic dependences and independences consist only in the
relations of one man or woman to the others. They have nothing to do
with the real issue, which is the relation of mankind as a whole to
Nature. These economic questions are simply concerned with money--the
means whereby one man has more or less claim upon another: society may
have to be reconstructed in such a fashion that economic independence
and dependence, as at present understood, would have no meaning
whatever.
Pages:
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367