The Intelligent Woman's Guide -- GBS witty & on target

Full title: The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism published in 1928 by Brentano's, author: Bernard Shaw

Picked up an original copy at a great used book store recently.

Dedication: To my sister-in-law, Mary Stewart Cholmondely, the intelligent woman to whose question this book is the best answer I can make.



I have not read the entire work yet, but have been finding fascinating excerpts.

One more quote: "The social friction set up by inequality of income is intense: society is like a machine designed to work smoothly with the oil of equality, into the bearings of which some malignant demon keeps pouring the sand of inequality."

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/shaw/index.htm

From one of the essays;
"THE effect of the system on women was worse in some respects than men. As no industrial employer would employ a woman if he could get a man for the same money, women who wished to get any industrial employment could do so only by offering to do it for less than men. This was possible, because even when the man's wage was a starvation wage it was the starvation wage of a family, not of a single person. Out of it the man bad to pay for subsistence of his wife and children, without whom the Capitalist system would soon have come to an end for want of any young workers to replace the old ones. Therefore even when the men's wages were down to the lowest point at which their wives and children could be kept alive, a single woman could take less without being any worse off than her married neighbors and their children. In this way it became a matter of course that women should be paid less than men; and when any female rebel claimed to be paid as much as a man for the same work ('Equal wages for equal work'), the employer shut her up with two arguments: first, 'If you don't take the lower wage there are plenty of others who will', and, second, 'If I have to pay a man's wages I will get a man to do the work'."

I like that piece on the Lysenko Muddle.

The last chapter, simply titled "Peroration", in the book of the original post is brilliant, very nicely done. I would that an online excerpt existed. I may post a couple of the best paragraphs if I find the time. Pertinent thoughts for today.