Ideological Perspectives on Canada 9780773590915

Table of contents :
Cover
CONTENTS
EDITOR'S PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1 IDEOLOGY AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
CHAPTER 2 INDIVIDUALISM AND EQUALITY
CHAPTER 3 FREE ENTERPRISE IN (RELATIVELY MORAL) NATION STATES
CHAPTER 4 CLASSES IN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
CHAPTER 5 THE OLD LEFT
CHAPTER 6 THE NEW LEFT
CHAPTER 7 IDEOLOGY AND SOCIAL CHANGE
LIST OF TABLES
1 SHARES OF TOTAL NON-FARM FAMILY INCOME RECEIVED BY NON-FARM FAMILIES RANKED BY INCOME, 1951-1969 (AFTER TRANSFER PAYMENTS)
2 POVERTY RATES BY FAMILY SIZE
3 OCCUPATIONS OF THE FATHERS OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS, 1961-1962
4 REPRESENTATION OF MEN AND WOMEN AT INCOME LEVELS OF $10,000 OR MORE WITHIN SELECTED OCCUPATIONS AND EDUCATIONAL LEVELS, 1972
5 OWNERSHIP OF ESTABLISHMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY
6 PERCENTAGE MAJORITY OF NON-RESIDENT OWNERSHIP AS MEASURED BY ASSETS
7 NUMBER OF CORPORATIONS BY ASSET SIZE IN CANADA, FOR SELECTED INDUSTRIAL SECTORS, 1970
LIST OF FIGURES
1 FAMILY POPULATION DIVIDED INTO EQUAL FIFTHS, PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL INCOME TO EACH FIFTH
2 PER CENT DISTRIBUTION OF LABOUR FORCE, MAJOR OCCUPATION SECTORS, 1901-1961
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
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B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
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Citation preview

IDEOLOGIGIL PERSPECTIVES

ON Cm/DA

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IDEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CANADA M. PATRICIA M A R C H A K

MCGILL-QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY PRESS Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

©McGill-Queen's University Press 2011 ISBN 978-0-7735-3868-9

Legal deposit second quarter 2011 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec Printed in the United States on acid-free paper First published in 1975 by McGraw-Hill Ryerson Limited. McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities. Acknowledgments I wish to thank Information Canada for granting permission to use materials from various Federal Government publications and other publishers as noted in the footnotes for quotations used. The enthusiasm of students in the Canadian Social Issues class at UBC through 1973-74 indicated to me the need for such a book and for further discussions along these lines. Their puzzles and enquiries provided the framework, and I thank them for their help. I wish to thank as well Jane Douglas, who typed and retyped the manuscript in its various stages and maintained her cheerful countenance throughout. Our continuing debate on these issues at home provides the fuel for such books. While William, Geordie, Lauren, and Wilhelmina may opt for other ideological perspectives and should not be held in any way responsible for the views expressed here, this book is dedicated to them with much gratitude and love. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Marchak, M. Patricia, 1936-2010 Ideological perspectives on Canada / M. Patricia Marchak. Originally published: Toronto : McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1975. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7735-3868-9

i. Canada-Social conditions-1945-. 2. Canada-Economic conditions-1945-. 3. Canada-Economic policy-1945-. 4. Ideology. I. Title. HN103.5.M37 2011

320.50971

€2011-902999-5

v

CONTENTS EDITOR'S PREFACE

vii

INTRODUCTION

viii - ix

CHAPTER 1 IDEOLOGY AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION CHAPTER 2 INDIVIDUALISM AND EQUALITY

1 12

CHAPTER 3 FREE ENTERPRISE IN (RELATIVELY MORAL) NATION STATES CHAPTER 4 CLASSES IN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY

35 57

CHAPTER 5 THE OLD LEFT

69

CHAPTER 6 THE NEW LEFT

85

CHAPTER 7 IDEOLOGY AND SOCIAL CHANGE

102

LIST OF TABLES 1

SHARES OF TOTAL NON-FARM FAMILY INCOME RECEIVED BY NON-FARM FAMILIES RANKED BY INCOME, 1951-1969 (AFTER TRANSFER PAYMENTS)

2 POVERTY RATES BY FAMILY SIZE 19 3

19

OCCUPATIONS OF THE FATHERS OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS, 1961-1962

4

17

22

REPRESENTATION OF MEN AND WOMEN AT INCOME LEVELS OF $10,000 OR MORE WITHIN SELECTED OCCUPATIONS AND EDUCATIONAL LEVELS, 1972

5

OWNERSHIP OF ESTABLISHMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY

6

24

27

PERCENTAGE MAJORITY OF NON-RESIDENT OWNERSHIP AS MEASURED BY ASSETS

40

7 NUMBER OF CORPORATIONS BY ASSET SIZE IN CANADA, FOR SELECTED INDUSTRIAL SECTORS, 1970 47

47

vi

Contents

LIST OF FIGURES 1

FAMILY POPULATION DIVIDED INTO EQUAL FIFTHS, PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL INCOME TO EACH FIFTH

18

2 PER CENT DISTRIBUTION OF LABOUR FORCE, MAJOR OCCUPATION SECTORS, 1901-1961

76

vii

EDITOR'S PREFACE In this second century of Canadian nationhood, sociologists are giving more thought to the ways in which Canadian society is unique. As always, there is a strong desire to generalize from Canadian experience to the human condition at large. Likewise, some are still inclined to believe that the findings of American and British research can be directly applied to any analysis of Canadian social life. Yet many teachers and students have wanted to understand Canadian society in terms of its own particular organization and history. Some feel quite certain that Canadian sociologists have been lying on a Procrustean bed. We may have given too much attention to international similarities in social structure and process, and too little attention to international differences. It is now time to redress the balance. The McGraw-Hill Ryerson Series in Canadian Sociology is written by sociologists who have considered how Canada is both similar to and different from other societies. The component volumes are no mere exercise in nationalism. They represent a serious attempt to answer the questions: What kind of society is Canadian society? and What kind of people are Canadians? Each book deals with a key area of sociological interest and brings to bear the most relevant recent work on that topic. Canadian research is intrinsic and central to this series; it is not added afterwards to give a Canadian flavour. Some of the books in the series are intended to be read as individual entities; some of the books are on related topics and can be read as a debate between contending viewpoints. When the kinds of questions asked in this series are asked by Canadian sociologists as a matter of course, there will be no need for so explicit a Canadian focus. But that time has not yet come. We think the McGraw-Hill Ryerson Series will prove invaluable in filling the present gap between scholarly research and undergraduate instruction in sociology generally, and on the character of Canadian society in particular.

LORNE TEPPERMAN

Vtll

INTRODUCTION This book is about two versions of the Canadian reality. One of these describes Canada as a liberal democracy governed by representatives elected by a majority of adult citizens. The society is maintained by a stable and self-sufficient freeenterprise economy staffed by reasonably happy and affluent workers. The . second describes Canada as a society ruled by an hereditary oligarchy and multinational imperialist corporations, maintained by a large and increasingly impoverished working class. We will call the first version the dominant ideology of Canadians. It is the version most widely accepted, most often cited in Canadian textbooks and propaganda, most often used by way of contrasting Canada to such nations as Russia, China, or Brazil. The second we will call the counter ideology. It confronts the dominant ideology at its most basic level: its definition of the organization of society. Both the dominant and the counter ideologies refer to the nation-state. Both grew out of the industrial revolution in Europe, and both had their breeding grounds and their early tests in Europe and the United States. Neither is peculiar to Canada, and yet both have had their peculiar Canadian history and they continue to be the major ideological influences in Canadian life. The book is also about the organization of Canadian society. It is not, however, a definitive text on how Canadian society is organized. It is rather an examination of various facets of Canadian society from the perspective of the two ideologies. How do we describe, explain, and interpret the economic organization of Canadian society from the perspective of the liberal and from the perspective of the class theorist? How do we make sense of the trade union movement? How do we come to understand the conflicts in Quebec? What is the Canadian Nationalist movement all about? Our objective is not to argue the case for one of the ideological perspectives on these aspects of our collective lives, but to examine the cases which are presented. This, then, is an introduction to ideology and to those theories in social science that articulate the ideologies and describe the organization. It is intended specifically for the undergraduate who is embarking on a study of Canadian society. Chapter One provides an introduction to the study of ideologies at a general level: what they are, how they relate to social organization, their relationship to social change. Chapters Two and Three are examinations of the conventional wisdom, the dominant ideology. What are the tenets, the values, the explanations given within this ideology, and how well do they describe social facts? The facts in Chapter Two consist of statistical data provided by the Canadian government on income distributions. Does the ideology have means of explaining the fact that a

Introduction ix quarter of the population lives below the poverty line, that less than two per cent of the population receives nearly a third of the total income, that there are systematic differences in wealth and access to social positions between women and men, and between English-speaking and French-speaking Canadians, that the native population is largely outside the labour force and the educational institutions? In Chapter Three, we examine the case for Canada as an independent nation-state and her claims that her economy is characterized by free enterprise and competitive capitalism. Does the liberal framework explain the extent of foreign ownership and control of the economy, the degree of concentration of ownership, the existence of the multi-national corporations, the locus of decision-making, the financing of political parties, and the relationship between political and economic institutions? It becomes evident that the ideology is deficient as an explanatory device: there are too many anomalies that it fails to explain. There are other alternative explanations for these anomalies, but the approach which has consistently attracted the largest number of adherents and which has been most clearly articulated is that explanation which rests on the analyses of Marx and Lenin. Chapter Four is an introduction to their arguments on the class structure and imperialism in a capitalist system. Their analyses have given rise to the counter ideology, the peculiar Canadian history of which is described and discussed throughout Chapters Five and Six. The dominant and the counter ideologies refer to a particular arrangement of institutions, a distribution of power and wealth, and a set of relationships among the various sectors of the population. They define these differently, and they promote different moral concerns, but both refer to the same institutions and relationships among members of the population. Yet society is not static. Whichever way it changes, it does indeed change. A description of its structure does not remain forever valid, even if it approaches a true picture at any one moment. Descriptions, moreover, are always simple approaches. The reality is extraordinarily complex, and no description covers it adequately. Neither liberals nor revolutionaries have a monopoly on truth, and the counter ideology fails to account for facets of Canadian life just as does the liberal ideology. In Chapter Seven, we attempt to move beyond these ideological perspectives with a review of some arguments and analyses in current theoretical literature on the nature of the corporate state. We do not arrive at neat conclusions about the Canadian social structure—but that is not our objective either. Our objective is rather to introduce the approaches. If the approaches in the final chapter are tentative, then that is an accurate reflection of contemporary understanding of where we are.

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1 IDEOLOGY AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION Ideologies are screens through which we perceive the social world. Their elements are assumptions, beliefs, explanations, values, and orientations. They are seldom taught explicitly and systematically. They are rather transmitted through example, conversation, and casual observation. The child asks the parent: "Why is that family poorer than us?" and receives an answer such as "because their father is unemployed," or, "because postmen don't make as much money as sales managers." The accumulation of such responses provides a ready index to the organization of the society in occupational terms, and with reference to age and sex roles. The child is informed by such responses that some occupations provide higher material rewards than others, that an occupation is essential, and that fathers, not mothers, earn family incomes. The child is not provided with an explanation for the differential between postmen and sales managers, between the employed and the unemployed, between families in one income group and families in the other, but some children think to ask. There are, then, additional responses such as: "If you work hard at school, you can go to the top," or "sales managers are more important than postmen," or "well, if people don't work, they can't expect to get along in the world." On the surface, all of these comments are true and they are seen to be true. They do reflect the realities people experience. If one does not get an education, one clearly cannot go to the top. If one doesn't work, one will indeed have problems. Salesmen do earn more than postmen and material wealth does confer status. Ideology is not typically a systematic analysis of society. It does not generally proceed far beyond the descriptive level. For most people at most times, this is sufficient. This is sufficient, as well, for societies. The dominant ideology—or conventional wisdom—provides the ready references, the rules of thumb, the directives to the eyes and ears of its members. It is the glue that holds institutions together, the medium that allows members of the population to interact, predict events, understand their roles, perform adequately, and— perhaps above all—strive to achieve the kinds of goals most appropriate to the maintenance of any particular social organization. There are, nonetheless, those who are dissatisfied with the superficial responses. They seek other explanations, they question the assumptions and beliefs and critically assess the values. Why is education related to occupation? What is meant by "the top," and why should people want to go there? Why is status associated with material wealth? What does a sales manager do that makes him important and to whom is his work important? Why would anyone not 1

2 Ideological Perspectives on Canada work when the penalties for unemployment are so severe? These kinds of questions lead to three different positions. One of these is the role of social critic who points out the inconsistencies, the lack of congruence between empirical evidence and ideological statements. Such critics often seek reforms in the social organization, not so much because they challenge the ideology as because they find discrepancies between it and their observations of social reality. Another is the role of social analyst, who strives to understand why people believe what they believe, what relationship those beliefs have to empirical evidence, and how beliefs affect social action. These two, the critic and the analyst, strive to transcend their own ideological perceptions: an undertaking that can never be entirely successful. There is a third position for those who ask difficult questions. It is the adoption of a counter ideology: the placing of faith in an alternative version of society, an alternative set of beliefs, assumptions, values, and orientations.

•i • Dominant and counter ideologies grow out of the same social organization. They take the same economic arrangement, the same territorial boundaries, the same population as their units of analysis. But they posit- different relationships between these units and different organizations within them. Although the two major ideologies of our time—which we will label liberalism and popular Marxism—claim to explain society in historical and comparative perspective, they both originate in the period of the European industrial revolution, and both are unmistakably locked into industrial society as it emerged in Europe at that time. Because they grow out of the same organization, they have much in common. They are the two sides of a single coin: one describing how the entire structure looks to one who accepts it and expects it to survive; the other, how it looks to one who rejects it and anticipates its demise. Elements of both versions are persuasive when one reviews the empirical data which they use as evidence, and neither is the whole truth. Ideologies are explanations for the social organization, but they are, as well, evaluations of it. These evaluations tend to be circular: the social organization gives rise to certain beliefs about what is right, appropriate, and desirable, that is, to certain values. These values are then assumed, and the society judges itself by those values. The liberal democracy gave rise to positive evaluations of equality, individualism, material prosperity, and personal freedom. The society is then judged within that framework: does it allow for the realization of these values? The dominant ideology rests on an affirmative answer: yes, this society provides the necessary conditions for equality, material prosperity, and personal freedom. It is only by contrast that alternative values are considered. China provides

Ideology and Social Organization 3 the contrast to the industrialized societies at the present time: here the values include community welfare, sharing and public ownership, self-reliance at the community level, and social rather than individual progress. These are not the values by which European and North American societies judge themselves, nor do these values grow out of the kind of social organization maintained in Europe and North America. The counter ideologies also begin with this framework. They, too, grow out of the social organization. In the industrial society, this includes a mass production technology, money, wages, markets, industrial property, ownership rights, and distinctions between work and non-work. Counter ideologies initially depart from the dominant ideology not so much in their framework of values, but in their assessment of the society's competence in meeting those values. Equality, material prosperity, and personal freedom are also assumed as "right" values, but the society is judged as deficient in providing for their realization. This negative judgment leads to an analysis of social organization which diverges from that propagated by those who hold the dominant ideology and believe it to meet its own objectives. If society is judged within its own terms, and those terms arise easily from the kind of social organization it supports, its members do not seek radical solutions to organizational problems. Many, indeed, will not perceive any problems, a tribute to the success of the ideology in appearing to account for events and to realize its own values. There will be problems, however, for any large population with any organization. There will be some positions that are more desirable than others, and not everyone can occupy them. There will be some rewards given to selected members of the society, which others will covet. In industrial societies where material prosperity is extremely uneven—as it is in European and North American societies—there will be problems of poverty on the one hand and affluence on the other. Recognition of these problems can and does take place within the dominant ideological perspectives, and reforms are sought where the problems confront the values. If equality is a value, then gross inequalities are harshly judged. If equality is not valued, inequalities can be justified, explained, or ignored. Some explanation for the existence of conditions that fail to meet the values is required, and this is supplied within the ideology usually in terms of history, biography, or happenstance. Explanations, for example, of the differences in power and wealth between French- and English-speaking Canadians can be provided in terms of the early history of lower Canada after the Conquest. Or they can be explained in terms of differences in cultures and religions that create different appetites for business. In other words, it is not the organization of the society that is questioned when problems are recognized; nor is it the values espoused by that society. It is, rather, particular circumstances that give rise to particular exceptions. Reforms, then, are to be made by changing those particular circumstances. Poverty is to be solved with a welfare system, not with a change in the organization of property and power; the differentials between French- and

4

Ideological Perspectives on Canada

English-speaking Canadians are to be solved with legislation on equal wages, government-sponsored opportunity programs for Francophones, and exhortations to the English-speaking population to behave within their own value system, i.e., to stop discriminating against their French countrymen. The search for solutions takes on a much keener edge among those who adopt a counter ideological perspective. If for them the social organization inevitably gives rise to poverty, and poverty is one of its essential conditions, then welfare systems and guaranteed incomes do not appear to be solutions. It is extremely difficult to live with a critique of one's own society, where one does not simultaneously know how to erase the problems or build new foundations. Alternatives, some of them Utopian, are part of the rhetoric of those who shun the dominant ideology. Individuals may vaccillate between dominant and counter ideologies. They are unlikely to be always consistent when they adopt revolutionary positions simply because they, like others in the culture, have learned the dominant position so well. Since the barrage of information available in the society will generally uphold the dominant ideology, and that ideology will generally be shared by those who teach in its educational institutions and those who report and editorialize in its media, the revolutionary ideology seems, at times, to be paranoic, hysterical, extreme even to its own spokesmen. Versions of society that question a society's most consistent interpretation of itself are difficult to sustain, and revolutionaries, like all others, cannot avoid occasionally seeing themselves as others appear to see them. For this reason revolutionaries may from time to time be persuaded to adopt reformist attitudes within the dominant range, or to work with reform groups while maintaining their revolutionary stance only for special events. The difficulty that revolutionary groups have in maintaining their position is an important element in an explanation of how dominant groups co-opt the dissidents in their midst.

• 2» The two ideologies of our time grew out of the industrial revolution in Europe. In order to appreciate their reflection of that society, we will try to take the stance of the analyst. We want to explain why that particular social arrangement gave rise to the particular values which we have inherited. In the feudal society, each man knew his place. No illusion of potential mobility obscured the class divisions between landed aristocracy and tenant farmers or between priests and laity. Equality within classes was matched by inequality between them. Alexis de Tocqueville has argued that there are few institutions with as great an extent of equality as the Catholic Church.1 Below the hierarchical priesthood, which is relatively small, all members are equal: all are sinners, all penitants, all obedient servants, regardless of their secular ranks outside the institution. In the same sense, all peasants were equal in the feudal

Ideology and Social Organization

5

state. The equality was based on deprivation: few had the opportunities to exceed the common condition. The classes were tied to the land: one class owned it, and the other worked it. But the two were tied together by an ideology of mutual obligations. The peasant could not become a lord, but he could expect the lord to provide for him. Collective good was to be achieved not by individual effort, but by knowledgeable leaders guiding obedient subjects to the light or at least to safety in an often violent social world. The burden of responsibility of the rich for the poor was often lightly borne, but the belief in that obligation was nonetheless important to the maintenance of the state. At the level of ideology it was in these two ideas—class differences and mutual obligations—that the feudal society differed most noticeably from the industrial society. The agrarian society gave rise to surplus produce which was used to support the artisans who built the palaces and cathedrals, staffed the theatres and provided the entertainments and arts for the landed aristocracy. Urban centres first catered to the tastes of landed lords and served as market places for peasants, but inevitably they developed their own momentum as skilled and unskilled workers, merchants and traders, artists and professionals became populations divorced from the land-based organization of society. These were populations that did not fit neatly into either of the existing classes, and populations whose obligations and rights were ambiguous: they were responsible for no one and could look to no one for aid. Over time, they developed their own ethos. They were competitive for markets, and competition can flourish only where rivals have equal opportunities. They demanded a new kind of equality: not equality of condition within a class, but equality of opportunity to exceed one's class and to amass wealth. They were inventive of new techniques, and inventiveness flourishes where the inventor profits from his inventions. Thus they sought legal protections on goods other than land. They were mobile and restless and unwilling to have a church censor their ideas; thus they sought legitimation of a creed they called the rights of the individual: the right of each man to determine for himself his moral obligations. Equality, legal protections of property rights, and personal freedom or individualism were their basic demands. These demands did not grow out of the earlier ideologies; they grew out of a changed social context and they reflected the conditions of that urban context. As the industrial society developed, it became essential, from the point of view of entrepreneurs who owned industrial property, to untie the peasants from their plots of land and to develop a labour pool of competitive workers whose need for wages would ensure the growth of enterprises. In the early days of the industrial revolution, this was done through legislation such as the Enclosure Acts. As the needs of industrial organizations changed, and as urban populations burgeoned, there arose a need for literate and more specialized workers. This could be achieved by the development of public schools, schools which taught practical skills rather than philosophy, schools which disciplined the workers so

6 Ideological Perspectives on Canada that they could contribute their skills to industrial institutions. Equality of opportunity was in due course translated as equal chances to compete for higher paid and higher status jobs in industry through educational attainment. A labour force for which educational attainment was vital provided the support for an ideology proclaiming the virtues of individualism, private achievement, the pursuit of wealth, and competitive equality. The leaders of this industrial society had established their personal freedom to determine their own moral obligations: they had dispensed with the belief in reciprocal obligations. They could do this because their own role in that system of reciprocity had been ambiguous from the start. The system of mutual obligations had rested on the open recognition of classes, the legitimation of the class structure, and the common bondage to land and agriculture. The new system of contracts and wages ignored class distinctions and thus left the wealthy free of moral ties to the poor. One of the preconditions for these forms of equality was the development of the nation state. While it is conceivable that the industrial revolution and capitalism might have developed within a different organizational framework had the State not already been developed, it provided an ideal vehicle for control of the new forces. It seems unlikely that a more amorphous and voluntary form of organization would have promoted and at the same time controlled the new appetites. Capitalism rests on contracts: the standardization of money and forms of exchange, the relations between employers and workers in which wages rather than personal obligations are the medium, agreements between buyers and sellers, and legally sanctioned guarantees of the right to own private property, including the means of production. These contracts can be maintained through control of power: where the State has a monopoly of armed power, internal dissent to the forms of contract is quickly extinguished. In the early stages of the industrial State, control of power shifted from the landed aristocracy and their representatives to the bourgeoisie and theirs. The development of colonies from which raw materials could be extracted gave rise to higher standards of living in the mother countries for the growing middle class as well as the owners of industry and provided space for the settlement of excess populations. The competition between States, each organized against internal war, provided much of the impetus for the growth of industrialism and the search for colonies. Armies and merchant navies became avenues of mobility. When these avenues and those of the educational institutions were utilized, the arguments of the bourgeoisie for their rights were appropriated by the workers for theirs. The ideology of the urban owners filtered down through the ranks and became the dominant ideology of the capitalist state. The transition from the feudal aristocracy to bourgeois capitalism is described by Joseph Schumpeter in this way: "Capitalist entrepreneurs fought the former ruling circles for a share in state control, for leadership in the state. The very fact of

Ideology and Social Organization 7 their success, their position, their resources, their power, raised them in the political and social scale. Their mode of life, their cast of mind became increasingly important elements on the social scene. Their actions, desires, needs, and beliefs emerged more and more sharply within the total picture of the social community. In a historical sense, this applied primarily to the industrial and financial leaders of the movement—the bourgeoisie. But soon it applied also to the working masses which this movement created and placed in an altogether new class situation. This situation was governed by new forms of the working day, of family life, of interests—and these, in turn, corresponded to new orientations toward the social structure as a whole. More and more, in the course of the nineteeth century, the typical modern worker came to determine the overall aspect of society; for competitive capitalism, by its inherent logic, kept on raising the demand for labor and thus the economic level and social power of the workers, until this class too was able to assert itself in apolitical sense." 2 The Marxist interpretation does not differ in its view that the liberal ideology predominated. It does differ in its interpretation of the role of the working class. For Marx, competitive capitalism by its inherent logic raised the power and wealth of the bourgeoisie while condemning the workers to a continual downward spiral. Their political power in the democratic state was, he argued, illusory: nonetheless, it was an illusion they adopted. Two events emerged with the development of capitalist society and liberal democracy. One of these was the breaking away from a land-locked class system and the creation of new channels of mobility; the other was the development of an urban working class and a class of industrial owners. It is to the first of these that the liberal ideology pays attention. It emphasizes the lifting of barriers to personal achievement. It is the second of these that the Marxist ideology considers important. It emphasizes the creation of new barriers to collective freedom. Both grow out of the same reality, both begin with the same values. They differ in what they select from that reality to be the paramount feature of the capitalist society.

•3» The industrial society is not a static social organization. The processes set in motion by the development of urban populations and competitive capitalism continued. They destroyed the feudal aristocracy and the peasantry. They created new forms of government. They destroyed societies and created new ones in far-off colonies. Change occurred at many levels simultaneously: at the level of the family unit, at the level of education. The liberal ideology explains

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these changes as cumulative growth. Society is always progressing, always adjusting to new conditions. Its growth is limitless, its perfectability is a viable goal. The analogy is to a wheel turning over new territory and adding always to its conquest of distance. Marx posited quite a different kind of change—cumulative, still, but fraught with internal contradictions. The growth in competitive capitalism would give rise to monopoly capitalism. The growth of wealth at the top would create the growth of poverty at the bottom. The more successful the capitalists were in developing technology and organizing the work force for their own ends, the faster they brought about their own demise by an organized, efficient proletariat. The wheel in this analogy spins ever faster only to break down from over-use, and its riders are obliged to make a new wheel out of the parts. Marx envisioned the final stages in these words: "Owe capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the cooperative form of the labour process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labour into instruments of labour only usable in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as the means of production of combined, socialized labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world-market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolise all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working-class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. "3 The progression theory assumes a certain consistency to social evolution. The total society is somehow in equilibrium, advancing steadily while keeping its parts intact. We invent the automobile, then we develop new ways of organizing the work process so as to mass produce it, then we add an arm to government and new taxing procedures so that we can finance the roads it requires, families adjust their life style to new kinds of mobility and to new working day schedules. The dialectic process used by Marx and current in the popular Marxist literature envisions rather a society in constant crisis, lacking internal consistency, growing unevenly. We invent the automobile which gives us geographical mobility, but to produce it we must enslave labourers to an assembly line; we allow the producer to accumulate profits on the sale of cars, while the society must bear the burden of costs not only for roads but for fuel exhaustion and pollution caused by the invention.

Ideology and Social Organization 9 Whether one takes the progression view of history or the dialectic view, one is struck by the observation that cumulative growth in any aspect of social organization eventually becomes destructive of that organization. Whether we eventually arrive in a different town by riding the wheel from one place to another, or whether the journey itself transforms the travellers, the fact is that the industrial society of the 1970s is not the industrial society of the 1920s or the 1880s. It is qualitatively a different society. The technology has changed dramatically. The social organization has changed. The population balance has changed. The relations between nation states have changed. What has noticeably failed to change is the ideology. The ideologies at the popular level are very much the same as they were in these other times. Speeches to the Chamber of Commerce reflect the same abiding faith in progress, material prosperity, and general affluence; the same evaluation of private property, individualism, and achievement; the same belief in the existence of equality and opportunity. The slogans of the Left are remarkably similar to those uttered in the trade union struggles of the turn of the century. There is the same belief in massive exploitation by a ruling class, the same faith in the nobility of labour, the same conviction that pervasive equality is both yet to come and highly desirable. There are two ways of explaining this sameness in the midst of change. One is that although the conditions have changed, they have changed cumulatively and the underlying structure has remained the same. Curiously enough, the proponents of both ideological perspectives assume this condition, although for the Marxist the structure that fails to change consists of classes in conflict, and for the liberal, it consists of mobile individuals. The other explanation is that ideologies tend to get locked in. They change, and they change cumulatively, but they do not change in response to social changes. They change rather in response to their own internal logic. They become more systematic, more internally consistent, more elegant—but they do not become more reflective of the changing social organization they describe. The Catholic theology of the late feudal period is an instructive example. Yet the ideological perspectives of the industrial society are not those of the feudal period: therefore, a change in ideology must have occurred. As suggested in the sketch of the shift from feudalism to industrialism, what occurred was the creation of a new population in the urban centres whose social realities were so different from those of the rural population that it developed new explanations for its actions, new values, and new orientations. Some aspects of these new perspectives did, of course, grow out of the old ideologies. Protestantism emerged from Catholicism, for example. But in large part, they were indigenous developments peculiar to the urban population. It is entirely probable that, long after the urban populations had moved into the industrial era and successfully developed an ideological perspective on industrial society, inhabitants of rural areas remained untouched by both industrial society and industrial ideologies. If they were asked to explain society, they would continue

10

Ideological Perspectives on Canada

to assume the rural class system, the rights and obligations of feudal lords, the virtues of humility and obedience, and the need for piety. Our task is to understand this changed society. We begin with certain lands of evidence that somehow fail to find explanations in the dominant ideology. There is poverty in the midst of affluence: the liberal ideology fails to notice it, or ignores it. The Marxist has an explanation for this, but cannot then go on to explain the very real mobility and wealth of a sizeable proportion of the population of workers. There is evidence of interference in the political process by privately owned corporations. The liberal ideology has no explanation. There is also evidence of independent decisions made by judges, politicians, academics, and journalists. The Marxist has no explanation. One is obliged to test the evidence against the ideologies, to select and re-fashion the beliefs as best one can. This is the task of the analyst, but it is not the process undertaken by the members of the population. It is as if we were part of the final stages of the feudal society and had to scan the evidence on industrialism through the perceptions of the lord or the serf whose views are anchored solidly in a system of relationships that no longer embraces the whole of society. One of our ways of getting beyond the ideologies is to strive to understand why they are held and by whom. This is what the remainder of this book is about. One word of warning: the terms "liberalism" and "Marxism" are used in a general way to refer respectively to those positions which posit a mobile society with a free enterprise economy, and those which posit a class-divided society with a monopolistic capitalist economy. While these two positions are distinct, there is a range of positions within each. There is a conservative tradition in Canada which does differ from that of the traditional liberal position in some significant respects. Socialist parties, although interpreting society through Marxist eyes, are very different from various revolutionary parties that have arisen from time to time in Canada. Their emphasis on democratic elections puts them in a different framework from that taken by groups which argue for the forceful overthrow of democratic governments. Because we are concerned in this book with the interpretations of society proposed by these groups rather than with their solutions to ills, we have treated them as Marxists alike. For our immediate purposes this may be useful, but the distinctions between left and left and right and right, as well as between left and right should be kept in mind: the dichotomy suggested here is — like all dichotomies — too simple.

Ideology and Social Organization

11

CHAPTER 1 • NOTES 1 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 2 vols., New York: Schocken, 1961, Vol. 2, p. 356. 2 Joseph Schumpeter, Social Classes/Imperialism, translated by Heinz Norden, Cleveland: World Publishing, 1965, p. 67. 3 Karl Marx, Capital (1867), translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, New York: International Publishers, 1967, vol. 1, pp. 762-763.

2 INDIVIDUALISM AND EQUALITY It is perhaps unfortunate that one of the major political parties in Canada is called the Liberal Party, since it may appear that a discussion of liberalism is merely a discussion of the practices and policies of Liberals. The Party is but one manifestation of an ideological position which goes far beyond party politics and has its origins outside Canada. It still has its strongest expressions and most eloquent defences in other industrial countries, especially the United States. There is a saying that is no doubt familiar to Canadian ears which catches much of the flavour of liberalism: "I don't care what you do when you grow up, my child, just as long as you are happy." The statement assumes that personal happiness is a legitimate goal and that it can be sought and developed by each individual. It assumes that each child may choose his way of life, determine his own future, arrange his itinerary, that all are equal in this opportunity. It assumes that there are alternatives available and that a range of equally suitable alternatives exists, to be sampled according to personal taste. It also, but more subtly, assumes that one's happiness is linked with some activity and that the activity in question is a respectable occupation. This is one of those statements which, because they are so frequently expressed and so widely believed, are not recognized as ideological positions. One may test immersion by noting reactions to a statement that rests on very different assumptions about the world, such as: "You have a duty to perform, my child, and that is to give generously of your talents to the society which has nurtured you," or, "You know your place, my child. Don't try to overstep it." The liberal ideology rests on the premise that the individual is more important than the society and that the society does not have the right to limit his freedom to pursue happiness as he chooses to define it. The statement to the child provides the basis for later statements: the individual has the "right" to self-fulfillment, to self-actualization, to the seeking of a personal identity. Individualism may be seldom practised, but it is applauded as a "good thing" and the courage to stand alone is the message of many a childhood romance. The belief that there is equality of opportunity in the educational system lays the burden of proof on the individual. As education becomes ever more the criteria by which status is achieved, individualism and equality of opportunity become ever more the central values of the ideological system. The general belief in the existence of equality and personal freedom enhances the motivation of individuals to utilize the educational opportunities to achieve occupational status and to view their eventual status as the legitimate outcome of their personal and unaided efforts. It is a short step to look back at others who haven't made it and assume that for them, too, the outcome is 12

Individualism and Equality

13

attributable to personal abilities. It is congruent with these beliefs as well to limit one's charitable donations to the "deserving" since the poor, the unemployed, and the failures must carry the burden of their own short-comings. Their problem is private, not social. When Canadians are asked why medical doctors earn such high salaries, they explain this in terms of their importance to society and the length of time they spend in educational institutions. When they are asked why managers of firms have decision-making powers while men on the assembly line do not, the answer is again in terms of the greater importance of the decision-maker. There are reasonable grounds for rejecting these answers as "real" explanations for these events. Doctors may be important to society, but so are many others with and without lengthy educations who receive relatively low wages: garbage-men, kindergarten teachers, and nurses, for example. The second response actually provides no explanation at all. It says, in effect, that managers are important because they make decisions and that is why they are allowed to make decisions. There are alternative ways of explaining these inequalities which Canadians, by and large, will not generally offer. It isn't so much that they reject the alternatives, as that the alternatives don't occur to them. Medicine, for example, is organized into private practices from which private profits are extracted. Where it is organized as a community service, as in Austria and Soviet countries, doctors are not especially wealthy members of society, even though their importance to the health of the nation is presumably the same as it is in Canada. Commercial organizations, in the second example, are also organized as private enterprises, and those who own them employ others at the price they think those others are worth to the business, given the supply of workers in those areas. Managers may be no more vital to the enterprise, but they are in better positions to determine their own worth.

•i• In order to understand why Canadians give the answers they do to such questions, it is useful to obtain a general picture of the organization of society as described by the liberal democrat. Think of society as a jigsaw puzzle. The pieces fit together, their jagged edges appearing smooth when linked together. No one piece alone indicates what the total society looks like; the final picture needs all the parts. The pieces of this jigsaw are the institutions of society: the economic, educational, political, legal, communications, military, and religious institutions. If the shape of any one of these institutions is altered, then the other pieces must adjust their own shapes to accommodate that piece. Society, in this view, is always undergoing a process of cumulative change, responding always to slight shifts in population, new forms of technology, altered relations with other societies, or deliberately created changes in the political arena.1

14 Ideological Perspectives on Canada Every institutional sector has an occupational hierarchy. Those people who occupy the top positions, that is, the positions with the most authority and responsibility, are specialists: people who have the skills, the knowledge, and the talent to coordinate and plan the overall activity within that sector in response to an always changing world. In order to motivate the best people for these important tasks, high rewards are offered: high status, prestige, and income. Beneath these most important positions are a range of professional and technical positions, and for these, too, high rewards are given so there will be the best qualified people filling the posts. As the specialist skills required for jobs decrease, the supply of workers available increases. Then the allocation of workers to jobs is determined by a law of supply and demand. Where the supply falls below the demand, the material rewards are increased. Where the demand falls below the supply, the rewards are decreased. Workers will seek out jobs with the highest rewards, so there will be a tendency toward equilibrium between the jobs that must be filled if the institutional areas are to operate and the supply of workers able and available to fill them. Positions must be filled in accordance with an independent principle, that is, some principle that distinguishes between the most capable and the least capable for certain tasks. In some societies, this principle is blood relationship, or kinship. Chiefs teach their sons or nephews the arts of chieftainship. As societies move into the more complex technological classification, kinship is inadequate as a means of ensuring that the most competent people will perform the most important tasks. Competence depends on the acquisition of technical skills and complex knowledge. The principle that can be utilized to ensure a supply of competent leaders is education. The educational system, then, becomes the means by which the natural leaders and specialists prove their merit, and all people find their levels of entry into the society. One of the institutional spheres is a coordinating body, the function of which is to deliberate on the inconsistencies that naturally arise in such a complex arrangement, to smooth out these wrinkles with legislation, and to adjudicate between the conflicting claims of different sectors of the society. This institution, called government, is the only institution whose leading members at any one time are temporary. All are subject to an electoral vote and may be replaced if unsatisfactory.

• 2» This view of society provides no recognition of classes. Inequality is recognized, but it is attributed to individual differences, or to imperfections in the system and historical circumstance. The latter can be corrected, and the consequences of the former can be alleviated. When Canadians are asked to which class they belong, they are inclined to answer either that there are no classes in Canada, or to identify the middle class. 2 The great middle, in their opinion, encompasses

Individualism and Equality

15

almost everybody, and the lower and the upper—which must exist if there is a middle—can only be defined in terms of relative wealth. A few may be rich, a few may be poor, but most people, according to this belief, are somewhere between these small groups. This classless society is a pervasive belief and one renewed with the daily reading of the newspaper, the viewing of television, the study of literature, or history, or social science. Canadians may not quite believe that all people have equal opportunity, that birth has no effect on rank, or that anyone may rise to the top. But they see the defects as imperfections in a classless and mobile society, to be reformed or acknowledged perhaps, but not to be interpreted as evidence of a class structure. Golf, appliances, deodorants, and Beethoven are equally available to all, and the lack of class distinctions is nowhere more apparent than in the market place. Canadian novels reinforce this classless image of Canada. They are not, in the main, about classes, let alone class struggles. They tell of individual struggles, private agonies, and personal tragedies, often set in an overwhelming context of indifferent and cruel nature but seldom concerned with an overbearing social context.3 There is concurrence in this classless view from historians. They have tended to accept Lord Durham's dictum on the Canadian struggle: "a struggle between two nations warring in the bosom of a single state...a struggle, not of principles, but of races."4 Thus, the English Canadian may hear much of the injustices of British rule over French Canada, but the inequities are seen as temporary injustices, consequences perhaps of racial bigotry, and not as the events of a class struggle. Similarly, the building of the railroads is depicted as a courageous conquest of a rugged terrain, the fur trade is remembered as a series of rather romantic adventures, and the pioneers are described as stout-hearted individualists. Whether or not these descriptions have truth, what is noticeably absent from the picture is any form of class conflict, any explanation of events in terms of the development of industrial classes, or the exploitation of immigrants as hired labour.5 The ideology allows us to expect differences between individuals, since achievements lead to differences in wealth, power, and access to goods and services, but it does not allow for an expectation of consistent and persistent differences between identifiable groups whose common characteristic is socially, not individually, defined. If we find, in fact, that high income and power are highly concentrated within a small sector of the population, and that access to education, or the congruence between rewards and educational achievement differ systematically by ethnic group, sex, place of birth or family of origin, then to that extent we are faced with evidence that cannot be explained through the prevailing ideology. Also to that extent, the ideology obstructs our vision, explains superficially and inadequately facts which derive from circumstances not recognized within that ideological framework.

16

Ideological Perspectives on Canada

•3« Contrary to the general belief that Canadians form one vast "middle class," there are considerable and measurable differences between sectors of the Canadian population. We will first consider differences in wealth. At the top of the income and power distributions rests an elite consisting of about two per cent of the population. Members of this group hold nearly a third of the total wealth, as well as the majority of significant decision-making positions in the economic institutions. John Porter, author of The Vertical Mosaic, provided evidence of strong homogeneity within this class. The members of this group tend to be related through marriage, and families tend to inherit both wealth and position. By descent, they are almost exclusively British. By occupation, they are mainly in financial, professional, and managerial positions, but their income is not derived mainly from salaries or wages as it is for other groups in the population:it is derived from inheritance and investment profits.^ In 1969, there were 191 individuals in Canada with reported incomes of $200,000 or more. There were 1560 individuals with reported incomes between $100,000 and $200,000. Including a much lower income bracket, a total of 70,425 persons reported incomes of $25,000 or more. These 70,000 individuals represent considerably less than one per cent of the population of adult income earners. If their incomes are treated as total family incomes, that is, no other members of their families earn additional money, they represent 1.8 per cent of the families of Canada. The 1500 represent a fraction of one per cent.? There is a considerable gap between this class of super-wealthy investors in Canada and the next sector of the population. The incomes of the next top eight per cent of families in 1969 ranged between $15,000 and $25,000. Altogether, the top fifth, that is, the top twenty per cent of families, earned about two-fifths or forty per cent of the total national income in 1969, and this share was not very different from its earnings in 1951. From this top fifth, there is a sudden drop in share of the total wealth. The distribution is shown in Table 1, and a clearer image of it is shown in Figure 1. As can be seen, the bottom fifth of the population (including as many families as the top fifth), earned just over a twentieth of the total income. In 1969, the Senate established a poverty committee whose task it was to determine how many Canadian families had incomes that did not permit them to live at a "reasonable" standard, and what were their characteristics. The method of determining a reasonable level was to estimate what it costs to feed, house, and clothe a family of a certain size in Canada for any given year, and then compute the number of families who were unable to meet those requirements and still have any discretionary income for education, medicine, recreation, and such other items as allow people to participate in the industrial society. Table 2

Individualism and Equality 17

Table 1 Shares of total non-farm family income received by non-farm families ranked by income, 1951-1969

Year

Lowest fifth

Second fifth

Middle fifth

Fourth fifth

Highest fifth

Total

1951 1954 1957 1959

6.1 6.5 6.3 6.8

12.9 13.5 13.1 13.4

% 17.4 18.1 18.1 17.8

22.4 24.4 23.4 23.0

41.1 37.5 39.1 39.0

100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

1961 1965 1967 1969 Upper limits

6.6 6.6 6.8 6.9

13.5 13.3 13.3 13.0

18.3 18.0 17.9 18.0

23.4 23.5 23.5 23.4

38.4 38.6 38.5 38.7

100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 Average $

1951 1954 1957 1959

1,820 2,220 2,380 2,650

2,700 3,240 3,600 3,920

3,480 4,150 4,680 5,000

4,640 5,680 6,350 6,690

n.a. " " "

3,535 4,143 6,644 4,968

1961 1965 1967 1969

2,800 3,500 4,090 4,600

4,270 5,250 6,060 7,050

5,460 6,810 7,930 9,280

7,180 9,030 10,650 12,110

» " "

5,317 6,669 7,756 8,927

"

Sources: Staff Study; D.B.S., Incomes of Non-Farm Families and Individuals in Canada, Selected Years, 1951-1965 (Cat. No. 13-529), Tables 4 and 12; D.B.S., Income Distributions by Size in Canada, 1965 (Cat. No. 13-528), Tables 13 and A 11; D.B.S., Income Distribution by Size in Canada, 1967 (Cat. No.13-534), Table 3, as computed and shown in Senate, Poverty in Canada, Ottawa, Information Canada, 1971, Table 3, p. 15. 1969 figures as shown in Ian Adams et al., The Real Poverty Report, Edmonton, M.G. Hurtig, 1971, Table 1.4.iii, p. 21 are based on 1969 Preliminary Estimates (cat. no. 13-542) on the assumption that families are evenly distributed within the published income classes and that the proportionate relationship between total income and non-farm family income is the same as for previous years. Reproduced by permission of Information Canada.

18 Ideological Perspectives on Canada

Figure 1

Income Classes, 1969. Family population divided into equal fifths, percentage of total income to each fifth.

gives the estimates of that committee: a quarter of the population lives below that poverty line. The Economic Council of Canada estimated that 29 per cent were in this position in the same year, and some estimates exceed this.8 For those whose incomes exceed the average, purchasing power has increased since the second war. Since the average income is very much lower than the income received by the top quintile or even by the two top quintiles, their purchasing power has increased very much faster than that of the majority of the population. Leo Johnson, in a study of impoverishment since World War II, has provided a breakdown of incomes and purchasing power which suggests a decline in purchasing power of 16 per cent between 1948 and 1968 for the

Individualism and Equality

19

Table 2 Poverty Rates by Family Size, 1969^ Family Unit Size

Senate Committee Poverty Line Income $

No. of family units below poverty line

No. of individuals below poverty line

(thousands)

(thousands)

Poverty rate

%

1

2,140

629

629

38.7

2

3,570

408

816

28.4

3

4,290

161

483

16.8

4

5,000

157

628

15.6

5 or more (av. 6.2)

6,570

416

2,579

28.5

1,771,000

5,135,000

Avge:25.1

Totals

^Source: Senate, Special Committee on Poverty, Poverty in Canada, Ottawa: Information Canada, 1971, Table 2, p. 12. Population in Canada 1969 was 20.5 million; the rate is computed as the number of families below the poverty line as a percentage of the total population in that category. Numbers have been rounded to the nearest thousand units. Information in this table was based on Staff Study, D.B.S., Income Distribution by Size in Canada, 1969 (Cat. No. 13-542) Table 2. Reproduced by permission of Information Canada.

lowest ten per cent. Concurrently, the top 40 per cent have increased their purchasing power by 50 per cent or more.9 It would appear that the poor are getting poorer, and the rich, richer. Where, then, is the middle class? Porter suggested a cut-off point of $8,000 annual family income as the bottom of the middle-class for 1961.10 He defined the middle class as one with a fairly affluent life-style, including the ownership of a house, a car, and possibly a boat or a summer cottage, with the chance of occasional holidays abroad or the capacity to maintain a university student. This

20

Ideological Perspectives on Canada

is the image of the middle-class portrayed on American television. Yet as Table 1 indicates, less than 20 per cent of the population of 1961 had $8,000 or more. The mean income was $5,317. The members of the three bottom quintiles -60 per cent of the population—had less than the mean. The middle class by life-style definition, then, could not be very large: perhaps 20 per cent of the population. Another definition of middle class is: all families and individuals whose major source of income consists of wages and salaries or self-employment income, and whose welfare and investment incomes are both less than ten per cent. In other words, the working class. This definition would include all but the top two per cent and a bottom ten per cent who must live on welfare. By this definition, classes are not defined by wealth—though there is a great difference in their income positions—but by their relationship to the productive mechanisms of the society. The top class owns those mechanisms—the plants, the mills, the resources, the commercial enterprises, in short, industry. The working class is employed at wages to operate the mechanisms. The bottom class is marginal to the industrial mechanisms, unemployed and therefore unable to maintain itself. Within the working class as a whole, an important development has been taking place. The number of wage earners per family has increased, although the total distribution of incomes has not appreciably changed since 1951. To earn the same relative income, families require more wage earners today than they did in 1951.11 This definition masks the considerable differences within the working class. There are differences in wealth, for example, with a range from $2,000 to perhaps $50,000 for families; differences in status and authority, from that of manager to that of janitor; and differences in life-styles, from that of lawyer to that of miner. A modified description of the middle class by life-style definition, together with that by relationship to the productive mechanisms of the society would provide a middle class consisting of most of the population earning over the mean income level; that is, about 40 per cent of Canadian families. The ideology which suggests one homogeneous middle class has no way of explaining the circumstances for the remainder of the population. The question is, though, do these differences persist over generations? Are the children of the rich born to be financiers and managers in their turn, and are the children of the poor doomed to inherit poverty? The ideology argues that all have equal opportunity and that the opportunity is experienced within the educational system.

Individualism and Equality 21

.4. When we examine the university population, we discover that it is not evenly distributed over the total population of families. Students tend to belong to families whose heads have high incomes and high status occupations. Table 3 shows a listing of the proportions of students in various faculties compared to the proportion of males in various occupational categories in the labour force. Children of professionals and managers make up half or more of all students in the professional schools, although their fathers compose about one-sixth of the labour force. At the other end of the scale, the children of labourers are scarcely represented, although their fathers compose a tenth of the labour force. This suggests that educational advantages are experienced not only by the generation in the labour force, but also by that generation's children. In 1966, ten per cent of the population over the age of 14 had some university education. Yet 36 per cent of the population whose fathers had university educations had such education, while at the other end of the scale, 5.5 per cent of those whose fathers had elementary schooling had university educations. The same continuity from generation to generation is found for those whose fathers had elementary education and themselves have elementary educations. Nearly 50 per cent of such children are in this position, the remainder almost all with fathers whose education did not include university. Less than seven per cent of those whose fathers had university educations left school with elementary standing only.12 If no children from the homes of labourers and low income families ever entered university, a class system would be easily recognized. Some children from these backgrounds do enter university, and some from more privileged backgrounds do not. However, the process of inter-generational mobility via the educational channels is less effective for the lower income groups than for the middle-income groups. Where fathers are clerical workers and in skilled trades, there is a much better chance of their children attending university. The congruence between father's occupation and attendance at university leads to questions about the social, rather than the individual and private, reasons. Such reasons may include the costs of university attendance, regional disparities in educational facilities, cultural influences of homes, and conditions in the school programs and surroundings that lead to disadvantages for children not in the "middle" class. Whatever the explanation, an assumption of equal opportunity is not valid.

Table 3 Occupations of the Fathers of University Students,] 7 961-62 Education

Engineering

%

%

%

13.7 13.3 19.8

9.0 7.2

2.5 3.5 2.9 0.3 0.6 1.5 8.5 8.0 4.2

Arts& Science Occupation of father Owners & proprietors Managers & Superintendents Professional occupations Engineers Teaching professions Physicians & surgeons Dentists Pharmacists Legal professions Other professions Commercial & financial occ. Clerical occupations Manufacturing & mechanical occ. Transport & Communication Construction Service & recreation occupation Farmers Other primary occupations Farm & non-farm labourers All other & not stated Totals

Law %

Medicine

Dentistry

Pharmacy

Classical Percent o Colleges Male Labo % Force

%

%

%

12.3

21.3 11.3 19.3

12.9

16.6

3.9

9.6

18.0

19.2

1.5 2.9 2.7 4.3 0.5 0.6 6.8 7.4 3.4

1.1 2.6 1.8 0.7 6.6 0.5 4.7 5.8 6.0

2.5 3.2 4.4 0.7 0.7 2.1 5.6 7.7 6.6

7.6 0.9 1.4 0.4 0.1 0.1 0.3 4.4 5.6 6.9

13.0

14.3

10.4

22.0

5.8 3.4 3.4 6.4 1.8 1.6 1.9

6.2 5.2 7.0

13.4 1.5 2.4 3.4

4.5 5.3 4.2 9.6 2.2 2.0 2.1

8.0 6.3 8.5 8.2 3.8 9.6 3.6

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

12.6

10.1 11.3 15.3

14.9 11.4 26.4

1.4 5.2 1.0 0.1 0.1 0.2 4.7 6.8 5.2

4.5 2.5 0.9 0.6 0.3 0.3 6.2 5.5 6.8

4.0 2.8 2.7 0.9 0.3 8.9 6.8 7.3 5.4

10.4

10.4

14.3

10.3

5.7 3.9 6.2 7.4 2.8 1.6 3.0

6.4 6.6 5.3

6.1 5.3 4.5

18.7

11.1

6.7 2.3 2.8

3.0 2.6 4.1

3.2 2.4 5.4 5.9 1.6 1.1 4.7

7.5 5.7 9.5 4.5 3.7 2.3 7.0 2.4 2.9 2.8

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

9.9

29.5 2.6 2.3

10.8 1.1 1.0 1.2

10.5

9.9

1 In Dentistry & Pharmacy percentages below 5 are questionable. In the other faculties the numbers are larger and the percentages more reliable. Source: Dominion Bureau Statistics, University Student Expenditure and Income in Canada, 1961-62, Part II, Ottawa, 1963, table 16. Reproduced by permission of Information Canada.

Individualism and Equality 23 Education is a major component in the success story, as the ideology suggests. The economic elite studied by Porter consisted of very well educated men (not women). They were engineers, scientists, lawyers, chartered accountants, and financial experts, or people who had already achieved successful careers in political, military, and other professional areas. The political elite—those who had occupied cabinet positions over the 1940 to 1960 period of his study—were also highly educated. Eighty-six per cent had university educations, and 64 per cent of these were lawyers. Of those whom he identified as having the top positions in the federal civil service, 87.5 per cent had university degrees, and in the intermediate positions in the federal service, professionals in law, science, engineering, and the social sciences were the usual incumbents. 13 The disparity between the ideology and the reality does not come with its linking up of education with success, but in its assumption that all have equal chances of gaining an education, of entering university, and of reaching the most powerful positions even with university educations. Those positions—the corporate directorships and the heads of dominant companies—are overwhelmingly reserved for the children of those who already occupy top positions.14 Some people, regardless of education, are most unlikely to move up the ladder into even the intermediate management positions: women, particularly; Indians, most noticeably; and within Quebec, French-speaking Canadians.

•5«

Regardless of the jobs they fill, and regardless of their educational attainments, women earn considerably less than men. So much less, indeed, that the differences between the sexes are greater at each level than those between men at different levels of education and occupational standing. Table 4 shows comparisons between the sexes' incomes by occupation and education. More detailed breakdowns by specific jobs show that income inequalities attributable only to sex run as high as 120 per cent in the 1970s. That is, men earn two and one-fifth more than women in the same jobs. 15 The differences are particularly marked in industries for which high education is not required, and where employees have very low bargaining power, as in low value-producing manufacturing industries (e.g., leather products, furniture and fixtures products).

24

Ideological Perspectives on Canada

Table 4 Representation of Men and Women at Income Levels of $10,000 or More Within Selected Occupations and Educational Levels, 1972.^

Per Cent Earning $10,000 or More

Women Per Cent Earning $10,000 or More

Managerial

66.1

13.7

Professional

29.7

13.3

Clerical

18.3

1.9

Sales

36.4

2.9

Service

21.6

0.7

Completed University

60.1

21.9

Completed non-University Studies

40.5

5.8

Completed Secondary School

34.2

1.9

Completed Elementary School

17.4

0.7

Men

Occupation^

Educational Level

-"•Source: Income Distributions by Size in Canada, 1972, Ottawa, Information Canada, August 1974, Tables 43, 44 (cat. no. 13-207). Occupation by educational level for 1971 not available at time of publication. In 1961, 5.7 per cent of men in the labour force with elementary education, compared to 3.5 per cent of women in the labour force with university education held managerial jobs. ^Other occupational categories omitted due to low representation of women.

Individualism and Equality 25 In addition to these differences in income, there are differences between the sexes in access to top positions in business and industry, in universities, in schools, in hospitals, and in government institutions. In 1971, 33 per cent of the labour force consisted of women, but of all managerial workers, only 13 per cent were women. Women are to be found in three kinds of jobs: clerical jobs, service jobs, and the low-paying professional jobs, especially teaching and nursing. These are not only low income jobs; they are not on the hierarchical ladder that leads to high positions. As Table 4 indicates, these distributions are not attributable to differences in education: there are more men with elementary schooling in managerial positions than there are women in the same positions with university educations.

•6

There are considerable differences in educational attainment for various ethnic groups in Canada. The majority of native Indian and Eskimo people of working age have no or minimal elementary education. Asiatic, Jewish, and British people have relatively high proportions whose educational attainment includes university. The Italian, Ukrainian, and French people have relatively high proportions whose educational attainments are less than secondary school level. 16 Differences in educational attainments carry through to occupational and to income differences. The British, Asiatic, and Jewish groups have greater representation at the high levels and lower representation at the lower levels of the occupational ranking scale than the other ethnic groups. The total population of Jews and Asians is small, and in fact the majority of high-ranking positions are held by British descendants. At the bottom of the occupational and income scale are the native populations, the vast majority of whom are engaged (if they are in the labour force at all) in primary industry (fishing, trapping, logging, mining) or as labourers and service personnel. These results may be explained in a number of ways: differences in cultural background, differences in motivation to obtain high educational

26 Ideological Perspectives on Canada standings, differences in access to educational institutions by region, language differences, and religious influences: but they cannot be explained in terms of individual characteristics. The income distribution presents more puzzles when ethnic groups are compared, especially the distribution between French-speaking and Englishspeaking peoples. Using the index of mother tongue, we find the differences in income in 1969 to favour the British—which is not surprising considering the occupational structure. What is more surprising is that those whose mother tongue is neither English nor French have average earnings higher than those whose mother tongue is French, and that those who are bilingual and of French origin earn less than those who are unilingual English. The Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism studied this evidence and concluded that it could not be explained in terms of differences in education. Regardless of education, French-speaking people were likely to earn less than their English-speaking counterparts.17 According to John Porter in his study of the composition of the elite in Canada, people holding the major economic positions are predominantly British and Protestant, and this remains so even though with each decade their proportion in the total population decreases. Less than seven per cent of the economic elite were French-Canadian in the decade of the 1950s, even though their population share has consistently comprised a third of the population. It is not only among the elite that the French-Canadians are under-represented. French representation in the key positions in industry has not increased since 1931. In particular, they have very little ownership in the major value-producing industries of Quebec, and their representation in professional and managerial occupations has not increased proportionately to other French-Canadian occupational groups in Quebec. 18 Table 5 provides information on ownership of industries in Quebec.

Individualism and Equality 27

Table 5 Ownership of Establishments in the Manufacturing Industry Size of manufacturing establishments owned by Francophone Canadians, Anglophone Canadians, and foreign interests, measured by value added — Quebec, 1961 Percentage of total value added in establishments owned by Francophone Canadians Food Beverage Tobacco products Rubber Leather Textile Knitting mills Clothing Wood Furniture and fixtures Paper Paper products Printing and publishing Iron and steel Non-ferrous metals Metal fabricating Machinery Transportation equipment Electrical products Non-metallic mineral products Petroleum and coal products Chemical and medical products Precision instruments Miscellaneous All industries Source:

30.9 4.7 0.9 8.0

49 A 2.1

24.7 8.2

84.0 39.4 4.8

22.0 28.2 11.7

Anglophone Canadians

Foreign interests

32.0 64.9 31.2 37.5 46.3 68.3 53.2 88.6 13.2 53.6 53.3 41.2 65.7 28.9 11.6 35.9 17.0 14.4 58.0 51.2

38.1 30.4 67.9 54.5

100

3.2

100

2.8

100

7.0

100

41.9 33.8 6.1

0.0

24.5

16.4 23.5 41.3

15.4

42.8

41.8

14.8

4.6

100 100

6.5

6.4 6.6

100 100

29.6 22.1

0.0

3.7

100

4.3

59.4 84.7 40.4 64.7 79.2 35.4 34.0 100.0 77.1 71.9 34.2

23.7 18.3

Total

100

100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

100

A. Raynauld et d/.,"La propriete des entreprises au Quebec." Cited in Report of Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, Vol. Ill, 1, Chapter IV, Table 20, page 56. Reproduced by permission of Information Canada.

28

Ideological Perspectives on Canada

•7« To explain the ill-fitting inequalities in industrial societies, recourse to history and culture may be used. If occupation and education were the only criteria for excellence, and if people moved into positions solely because of their abilities as shown through education and occupation, we should not find inequalities by sex or ethnicity. The historical and cultural explanations do not challenge the liberal theory. They supplement and modify it. With respect to the ethnic differences between European descendants, for example, an historical explanation of inequality may be provided. One can point to the conquest of 1760, the dominance of the Catholic church and the seigneural system of tenure in Quebec throughout the nineteenth century, the quasi-feudal nature of Quebec right into the twentieth century, the classical colleges in that province which could not compete with the business schools elsewhere on the continent, and the wages of English-speaking, and particularly, of American immigrants to the commercial cities during the critical years of the British colony. These historical events may be used as explanations for the present inequalities between the English and French charter groups. Other ethnic groups entered Canada at different periods, and according to their settlement patterns, the skills they brought with them, their original wealth, and their ability to fit into the dominant Anglo-Saxon and English-speaking world, they obtained their respective ranks. Of recent date, the great population and technological sophistication of the Americans have made them a dominant power, and their large degree of control of the economy of Canada may be explained in these terms. Supplementing the historical explanation are cultural explanations of stratification by n on-utilitarian measures (ethnicity and sex). Various groups perceive the world and themselves through particular cultural interpretations which disadvantage them in competing with other groups. Languages, religions, and world-views differ in their emphasis on material goods and public power, on the place of the individual and the rights of the collectivity. They also provide different evaluations and even measurements of time, space, and mankind as a part of nature. Industrial man is distinguished from pre-industrial man in his view of the individual as a distinct entity with personal prerogatives over which the community has no rights, in his pursuit of personal wealth and power, in his division of time into minute portions to be parcelled out with utmost care, and in his systematic exploitation of nature. Industrial society has divided the world of experience into work and non-work, into the economy and the social sectors. A member of this society gains his status from his work role, and obtains his material wealth from that role. Other roles tend to be subordinated to that one, and it is seen as somehow distinct from his other roles as father, husband, friend, neighbour, and member of non-economic institutions such as churches and social clubs.

Individualism and Equality 29 This is an alien arrangement to pre-industrial societies, where work and communal activity were consonant, and where economic activity was simultaneously religious, political, and family activity. It is not "natural" to seek private possessions at all costs, to have no strong links with a community, to live life at the pace of the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland or to separate work from other aspects of life. These are part of a learned ethos and one, as far as we can understand of history, that arose painfully during the industrial revolution. It was not the ethos of the North American Indian societies, nor of many of those from which Europeans migrated to Canada. These people, then, were at a disadvantage in competing with those European immigrants who came from industrialized areas, people who already shared such an ethos. 19 Conspicuous among the latter were British Protestants who inhabited the New England States and who, after the American War of Independence, came to Canada as the Empire Loyalists. These people were already urban dwellers, used to a money economy, and imbued with what has since come to be known as "the Protestant Ethic."20 Whether the religious ethic promoted the spirit of capitalism, as Max Weber argued, or simply grew out of it and supported capitalism, remains a central debate of Western thought. Weber contended that Protestantism, by emphasizing individual responsibility for sin and redemption, and by insisting—in its Calvinist form—that each man must prove his eligibility for heaven, gave rise to the characteristics that underlie an industrialized and capitalistic economy. Catholicism, on the other hand, by concentrating on the rewards of the after-life and the essential equality of all sinners in this life, maintained the characteristics necessary for the feudal, community-oriented economy.21 These differing conceptions of life and the individual, combined with historical circumstances, have given rise to the present inequalities of positions in the Canadian society. Protestants and Jews (who share the present- and individualistic-oriented ethic) have reached the top positions because they first and most consistently held the beliefs and sentiments suitable for an industrial society. Catholics of French, Ukrainian, Italian, and Irish descent have lower positions because they clung to future-oriented and community ethics. Native Indians were left far behind because they shared none of the sentiments that paved the way for industrialism. A similar argument may be made with respect to differences between the sexes. Socialization of boys and girls takes different forms, so that while boys are taught to want certain social goals that lead to wealth and power, girls are taught to want other goals such as love, children, and homes dominated by men.22 These are cultural differences, even though the same culture distributes the two versions of appropriate goals and values. Cultural differences could also be cited with respect to the disadvantages of children from low-income families. Low occupation and low education are frequently associated with particular ethnic and religious group memberships. The children in families characterized by these memberships may not attend

30

Ideological Perspectives on Canada

universities because their general cultural orientation disadvantages them with respect to individualistic and commercial pursuits. But beyond this, for low income families of all ethnic groups, the general cultural awareness within the family may fail to motivate children to seek a higher level of living than their parents. These explanations allow for a modification of the bargaining or functionalist model without challenging its major definitions of the social structure. Reformers who work within these explanations may debate the specific rankings of different jobs, or may point to the obstacles encountered by underprivileged groups which are contrary to the belief in equality of opportunity. They may attempt to change people's beliefs about the needs for certain jobs, or about the respective merits of the sexes or of the ethnic groups. They may also attempt to change the self-images and goals held by the sexes and ethnic groups. Action toward reform may be directed toward removal of barriers to education for certain groups, or toward the raising of incomes of certain occupational groups.

•8« The empirical evidence supports the liberal ideology to a sufficient degree that the middle and lower middle income groups can explain their circumstances in its terms, even if those circumstances include a high degree of unrealistic expectation of mobility. But a close scrutiny of the wealth distribution suggests that there are too many factors unaccounted for in this conventional wisdom. Two of these factors are ownership rights and group bargaining powers, both of which are hard, objective economic conditions and not ones attributable to "cultural" or ideological causes. Those who accept the conventional perspective on the basic organization of the society, but recognize the inequalities, may identify these factors as irrational or accidental forces which distort the overall structure, but they are less easily explained away than ethnic and sex differences. Differential incomes, for example, are held to motivate competent people to take on the most important tasks in the society. Yet the total wealth of individuals is not the same as earned income. Two additional sources are inherited wealth and investment profits. While high income may act as an initial motivator to potential recruits for functionally important jobs, high income over time generates new income from investment sources and confers on the wealthy a range of ownership rights. Ownership rights include the purchase of labour and the profiting from the products of others' labour. Those who become most wealthy need not be those who could best perform important tasks, and indeed the tasks for which they gain an income may become less important to them as a source of wealth than their investments. Wealth, in addition, can be transmitted to another generation. Wealthy young people are not receiving high rewards for their functional position in society, but for their inheritance rights. The major

Individualism and Equality

31

proponents of the functional theory of stratification admit that this phenomenon of ownership rights and inheritance wealth cuts across the distribution of functions by ability. " In such a case it is difficult to prove that the position is functionally important or that the scarcity involved is anything other than extrinsic and accidental. It is for this reason, doubtless, that the institution of private property in productive goods becomes more subject to criticism as social development proceeds toward industrialization. "?3 In addition to these differences in access to wealth, the liberal theory tends to ignore differences in bargaining power held by groups in the society. Conventional wisdom treats groups as aggregations of individuals who share common histories and cultures. But industrial society is not made up only of individuals all seeking, within their varying conceptions and possibilities, their share of the available goods and services. It also consists of organized groups which act as single units vis-a-vis the rest of society. These groups include corporations which have virtual monopolies over certain sectors of the economy, government corporations, organized professional associations, employers' associations, and labour unions. Within the liberal framework, we are led to a view of society which has many of the attributes of a free market. Each individual or each group sells a commodity at the best price and buys at the best price. As the more talented manage their market affairs more efficiently, they push out the less capable and these must accept lower rewards for lesser talents. In a sense, the entire process is a bargaining system. However, these organized interest groups cannot be treated as competitive individuals in the market place, or at least the market place cannot be treated as free and open to all comers where these organized interest groups exist. Whatever the importance of their task to the industrial society, any group which possesses the collective right to strike or to set prices has greater bargaining strength than any individual. Dentists, for example, have remarkably high incomes, second only to doctors and judges on the occupational ranking scale. It seems odd that they should have higher incomes than professors and kindergarten teachers, if in fact the educational mobility channels are so important to the maintenance of society. Although much discomfort can be occasioned by a toothache, few careers are lost for the sake of tooth. The difference between dentists and teachers is organization. The dental associations in Canada have a monopoly on the teething of the nation. Teachers have tended to form very loose associations with no bargaining power and no binding agreements between employers and individuals represented by the associations. The same inequality of bargaining power is evident between clerical workers (mostly female) and truck drivers, construction workers, and longshoremen. Although as a group, labourers have a low average income, these particular

32

Ideological Perspectives on Canada

groups within that occupational category have relatively high incomes. Clerical workers, on the other hand, are not organized in any large numbers, and this is particularly true for workers in offices which contain mainly female workers. 24 Similar organization affects the incomes and power of any group of employers who act collectively vis-a-vis the workers in any industry. If only one firm provides employment for a certain class of worker, or for all the workers in a given region, that firm is in a position to establish wages which may be higher or lower than those offered elsewhere, and which are not necessarily in line with the overall distribution of incomes by occupation and education. In addition, those who have a monopoly of capital may, given sufficient technological expertise, establish industries that are capital intensive, that is, which require very little manpower for their operation. Where this is possible, labourers have no service to sell and no bargaining power. These organized interest groups cut across the institutional sectors, and while they provide for a hierarchy of incomes that is roughly congruent with education and occupation (modified by sex, ethnicity, and age), it is doubtful that they provide for a hierarchy of power that fits the functional model. Power becomes the property of organized groups, and these are not evenly distributed nor do they balance one another within the various institutional sectors.

Individualism and Equality

33

CHAPTER 2 • NOTES 1 At the level of sociological theory, the leading proponents of this perspective on industrial society are Talcott Parsons, Marion Levy, Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore. The most systematic attempt to apply this system to the Canadian social structure is that by Daniel W. Rossides, Society as a Functional Process: An Introduction to Sociology, Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1968. 2 For a discussion of subjective class membership, see Peter C. Pineo and John C. Goyder, "Social Class Identification of National Sub-Groups," in J.E. Curtis and W.G. Scott (eds.), Social Stratification in Canada, Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1973, 187-196. The questions suggested in the text were in fact asked in questionnaires to students in two classes at the University of British Columbia. The responses were those indicated here. (Tests conducted in 1973.) 3 For a discussion of this, see Robert L. McDougall, "The Dodo and the Cruising Auk ."Canadian Literature, No. 18 (Autumn, 1963) 6-20. For a perspective on Canadian literature as a tale of personal tragedies and cruel nature, see Margaret Atwood, Survival, Toronto: Anansi, 1972. 4 Lord Durham, Report, 1839. Selections are given in J.M. Bliss (ed.), Canadian History in Documents, Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1966, 50-62. For a review of the historians' interpretations of Canada, see S.R. Mealing, "The Concept of Social Class," The Canadian Historical Review, 46:3 (Sept., 1965), 201-218. 5 There are three notable exceptions to this generalization: Gustavus Myers, History of Canadian Wealth, reprinted by James Lewis and Samuel, 1972; Leandre Bergeron, The History of Quebec, A Patriote's Handbook, Toronto: New Canada Publications, 1971; and Stanley Ryerson, Unequal Union, New York: International Publishers, 1968. 6 John Porter, The Vertical Mosaic, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967, Chapter IX. 7 Department of Internal Revenue, Taxation Statistics, 1969, Ottawa: Information Canada, 1971. 8 Economic Council of Canada, Fifth Annual Review, Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1968. 9 Leo Johnson, Incomes, Disparity and Impoverishment in Canada since World War II, Toronto: New Hogtown Press, 1973, Tables II, III, pp. 1-5. 10

Porter, op.cit., p. 112.

11 Johnson, op.cit. 12 Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Special Labour Force Study no. 7, Educational Attainment in Canada: Some Regional and Social Aspects, Ottawa: Information Canada, 1968. 13 Porter, op.cit., chs. X-XVIII, and V. 14 As described in Porter, loc.cit. 15 Canada, Department of Labour, Women in the Labour Force, 1970 and 1971,

34

Ideological Perspectives on Canada

Ottawa: Information Canada, 1971, and 1972. 16 W. Kalbach and W. McVey, The Demographic Basis of Canadian Society, Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1971, Fig. 8:6, p. 209, and Table 10:8, p. 258. 17 Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, Report, Book III, Part I, Ottawa: Information Canada, 1969. 1° Jacques Brazeau, "Quebec's Emerging Middle Class," Canadian Business, March, 1963, 30-34, 39-40. 19 For a long discussion of the differences in mental attitudes and life-styles between the industrial and pre-industrial people, see Karl Polyanyi, The Great Transformation, Boston: Beacon Press, 1944. 20 The phrase, now generally applied to any work ethic, derives from Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, New York: Scribner and Sons, 1958. 21 Ibid., see also Gerhard Lenski, The Religious Factor, Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1963, for a current discussion of the thesis and a test of its major hypotheses. 22 For a review of this argument, see Royal Commission on the Status of Women, Report, Ottawa: Information Canada, 1971. 23 K. Davis and W. Moore, "Some Principles of Stratification,'Mmeriow Sociological Review, 10:242-249 (April, 1945). 24 There is evidence that this is not due to the disinclination on the part of women to join unions, but is rather due to the failure of union organizers to represent adequately those women who are organized in unions that also represent men, and to the difficulty of organizing workers who are employed in small offices and shops. See, for studies of women and unions, P. Geoffrey and P. Sarnie-Marie, Attitude of Union Workers to Women in Industry, Study no. 9, Royal Commission on Status of Women, Ottawa: Information Canada, 1971; and Patricia Marchak, "White-Collar Workers and Unions," Canadian Review of Anthropology and Sociology, 10:2 (May, 1973), 134-147.

3 FREE ENTERPRISE IN (RELATIVELY MORAL) NATION STATES The liberal ideology rests on three distinctive organizational features of the societies in which it is held. The first is that those societies support one or another form of representative government within the framework of the nationstate. This support involves periodic elections of members of a government by the population inhabiting a given territory. The second is that their economies are not directed exclusively or even mainly by the governments, and profits from economic transactions may be legally retained—subject only to taxation laws—by private citizens or privately owned corporations. The third is that judicial courts evaluate the merits of individual, corporate and government actions with reference to legislation provided by governments, when any two individuals or other entities disagree on the nature of their prerogatives. The first of these conditions underlies a range of beliefs and values widely held. One of these is that majority rule is achieved when governments are elected through majority votes of the people, and that rule by majority vote is both democratic and just. In part this belief in justice reflects the further belief, discussed in the second chapter, that there is general equality of condition among the people, so that a government's decisions will equally affect all members. The majority and the minority are assumed to belong to the same, homogeneous population. Also involved is the belief that, since all people have the same single vote, a government does not represent the interests of any one sector of the population, including the wealthy sector. Since there are no classes, parties cannot be class organizations nor governments the means of promoting class interests. There is a certain contradiction at the core of the liberal view of government. On the one hand, governments are the managers of the system, subject to the wishes of the majority and acting in their interests. On the other, the economy is not directed or managed by governments. Governments, to be sure, are able to enact various kinds of legislation that affect the economy, but such legislation is expected to be regulative and to restrict in no fashion the rights and privileges of the owners and directors of the major economic institutions. Free enterprise means, essentially, private business or business not directed by governments. It is assumed, and often argued, that where a large number of people pursue private profits through individual initiative, the net result is a prosperous and free society. The corollary of this belief is that those 35

36 Ideological Perspectives on Canada societies in which governments own or control large segments of the economy are neither prosperous nor free. The contradiction is not resolved by the functional model of society postulated within the liberal ideology: a model of independent but interacting institutions, each balancing the others and responding to actions taken in the other sectors. The difficulty lies in the fact that only one of these institutions is subject to electoral vote, and the institutions of the economy are neither required nor expected to subject themselves to majority control. The managers of the system, then, must respond to the directors of the economy and must account for their responses to the citizens; the directors may or may not respond to the managers and are not accountable to the citizens. To the extent that economic institutions influence the daily lives of citizens independent of government management, governments do not govern. Their independent actions are restricted to other spheres, or to responses rather than initiatives in the economic sphere. Majority government, then, does not mean—as it is assumed to mean—direction and control of the society by representatives of the majority. The precise role of governments is not altogether clear, but the general direction of their actions is, according to the ideology of the liberal state, to provide the framework of legislation by which individuals may pursue their private objectives successfully. As stated by a former prime minister of Canada: "[the problem] is posed in the necessity of preserving the independence and self-reliance of the individual, driving home the realization that he stands above the state, which is the essence of liberalism, with the obligation, in the complicated organization of society which we have today of the state to protect the individual when protection is required. "^ The belief in the rights of the individual and the supremacy of the individual over the state are intimately linked to the restriction on government action in the economic sphere. The assumption, then, is that government control of the economy would restrict private freedom, independence, and individual selfreliance. The assumption lies behind the words of John Stuart Mill in 1849: "There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with independence...."2 and, "The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is selfprotection. "3 It is more explicitly stated by Lester Pearson in 1958: "No intervention of the State in the affairs of the individual is justified if it doesn't liberate and release the forces of the individual so he will be better able to look after himself. "4 Mill talked to recent converts and lingering skeptics in an England torn

Free Enterprise in (Relatively Moral) Nation States

37

between the remnants of a land-based class system and the needs of an industrial and urban society. Sentimental attachments to the feudal aristocracy remained. Ideologies do not die easily, and Edmund Burke's eloquent defence of the past written half a century earlier bespoke a passionate attachment to stability, order, and community still felt by many English workingmen as well as by Lords.5 Yet the conditions had irrevocably changed, and the change predated Burke's appeal. Burke might rail at the pettiness of the commercial entrepreneurs, at the tragedy of Marie Antoinette's pretty head, at the loss of religion and sense of propriety signalled in the French Revolution. But it was Mill who caught the flavour of the new industrial state. It was a flavour of motion rather than stability, freedom rather than control, personal salvation rather than the collective good. Let a man choose his way of life, he preached, and the collective good will result; let a man act as he pleases, and it will please him to serve his community; let a man serve himself and all men will be well served. Enlightened self-interest—a catchphrase for the laissez-faire economic doctrine of the eighteenth-century philosopher Adam Smith—became an exciting new venture as Bentham, Mill, and others of the school called "the Utilitarians" preached the new ideology of individualism and efficiency. The liberal state of the 1970s expresses little admiration for the feudal aristocracy. It has labelled "good" those events of history that brought it to an end: the industrial revolution in Britain, the French Revolution, and American War of Independence, the development of colonies, the extension of the franchise, the creation of a landless and mobile labour force, and the establishment of public schools. Individualism is so well entrenched, indeed, that those who called themselves revolutionaries in the 1960s were able to do little more than proclaim the virtues of this creed. To do one's own thing was thought of as remarkably novel, though it was precisely what the leaders of the liberal revolution were doing two centuries earlier. The threat to individual freedom in this long-developing creed is from governments; governments, therefore, must be restricted. The question, however, is whether governments are the only source of threat. To deal with that question, it is essential to gain some understanding of the economic conditions which are basic to the society, and of the economic framework within which governments of nation-states must operate.

• i• The assumption that the world is divided into independent nation-states is not peculiar to the liberal democracies. The development of nation-states in Europe throughout the late medieval and early industrial period affected those areas which chose other forms of organization as well as those which chose a capitalist democratic framework. For many, the nation state was imposed by external forces, while imperialist powers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

38

Ideological Perspectives on Canada

divided amongst themselves the non-European territories. Colonies are not nations, but the territories defined by the colonisers as theirs become the boundaries of the new states when independence is declared. Such is the history of Canada, a territory defined by its resistance to inclusion in the American nation while it was still a British colony. In defining Canada as a nation-state, it is assumed that the government of the territory may take independent action, that the economy is under the control of the citizens of the territory, and that the citizens are sovereign in every other respect. These assumptions are modified in the post-war world by a general recognition that nation-states are interdependent through trade and cultural ties, and that peace and international law require the cooperation, and sometimes the waiving of sovereignty, of all nations. These modifications give rise to a high value being placed on internationalism, by which people appear to mean openness or tolerance of other nations and other ways of organizing society. Internationalism, however, depends on the existence of independent nations, and nationalism is its prior condition. Independent nation-states engage in trade: the importing and exporting of goods. Canada's most important export market is the United States. While a nation-state is dependent on its export trade with other countries, and while its dependence is more delicate when its trade ties are predominantly with one other country, this kind of dependence is not, in itself, a threat to national sovereignty. Neither is investment in a nation's industrial assets by non-nationals when the investment takes the form of loans. Canada borrowed money from British investors throughout the late nineteenth century: this led to foreign indebtedness and high interest rates on the loans, but it did not preclude Canadian ownership of the industries so financed. The outright purchase of Canadian industries through what is known as direct investment is a different process, and unlike trade or portfolio investment (loans), it does pose serious questions about Canadian sovereignty. Over the twentieth century, the dominant form of investment in Canada has been direct investment, and the investors have been mainly, though not exclusively, American nationals. The development of an economy in which foreign-owned subsidiaries form an ever larger share of the total assets began shortly after the turn of the century. Reverses in Britain and the remarkable growth of the United States economy pulled Canada into the American orbit. In 1911, tariffs were erected by Canada on certain manufactured goods precisely for the purpose of inducing American firms to set up Canadian subsidiaries. Of this tariff, the finance minister of the Laurier government asserted: "We have some evidence of a gratifying character that the tariff\ without being excessive^ is high enough to bring some American industries across the liney and a tariff which is able to bring these industries into Canada looks very much like a tariff which affords adequate protection. "6

Free Enterprise in (Relatively Moral) Nation States

39

By 1945, about 40 per cent of all foreign long-term investment in Canada took the form of direct investment. The process accelerated during the 1950s, and by 1967 this had increased to 60 per cent, of which 85 per cent was American and 10 per cent British.7 (Including all forms of foreign investment in 1967, 81 per cent came from American sources.) This direct investment by 1968 created an economy in which at least two-fifths of all non-financial assets (industrial assets outside the sector of financial institutions) were owned, and a somewhat larger proportion were controlled by non-Canadians.8 The intention of the Laurier government in the early part of the century was to create employment by inducing the firms to establish in Canada. By the second half of the century, these firms owned a significant share of the Canadian economy. Table 6 shows the extent to which assets in various industrial sectors were 50 per cent or more owned by non-Canadians in 1968. Control of industries may be held with considerably less than 50 per cent ownership, depending on the distribution of shares for any given company. Therefore, this measure of ownership is an underestimate of the degree of control of Canadian industries held by non-nationals. Foreign ownership and control are especially dominant in the resource industries and manufacturing. Petroleum and natural gas, mining and smelting, chemicals, rubber products, transport equipment, and tobacco products are owned and controlled mainly by non-residents. Other industries with high degrees of control include electrical products and machinery. Canadian ownership tends to be in the less strategic and technologically less advanced industries such as leather products, wood, textiles, and food and beverages. Foreign corporations operating in Canada establish subsidiaries in new industrial sectors, but they also compete with established firms. For reasons described below, this competition is heavily weighted in their favour, with the result that they are able to take over the existing firms. Between 1945 and 1971, foreign-owned companies acquired at least 1700 existing companies. The number of foreign acquisitions increased considerably over the 1960s, and toward the end of that decade approximately 160 firms were being taken over each year.9 The industries in which take-overs were greatest were petroleum and coal products, metals, paper, food and beverages, and non-metallic mineral products. It should be noted that where a foreign firm takes over an existing firm, the net control to outsiders is increased without any increase in employment opportunities for Canadian workers (the original explanation for foreign entry into Canada).

40 Ideological Perspectives on Canada

Table 6 Percentage Majority of Non-Resident Ownership as Measured by Assets Industrial Sector Manufacturing Food and beverages Tobacco Rubber products Leather products Textiles and clothing Wood Furniture Printing, publishing and allied Paper and allied Primary metals Metal fabricating Machinery Transport equipment Electrical products Non-metallic mineral products Petroleum and coal products Chemicals and chemical products Miscellaneous manufacturing Mining Construction Transportation Communications Public Utilities Wholesale Trade Retail Trade Financial Industries Source:

Per Cent

58.1 31.3 84.5 93.1 22.0 39.2 30.8 18.8 21.0 38.9 55.2 46.7 72.2 87.0 64.0 51.6 99.7 81.3 53.9 63.0 14.5 8.9 1.0 2.7 27.9 20.5 12.8

Government of Canada, Foreign Direct Investment in Canada, Ottawa, Information Canada, 1972, Tables 5 and 6, and comments page 5 with respect to Mining, as abstracted from CALURA, Annual Report, 1968. Reproduced by permission of Information Canada.

Free Enterprise in (Relatively Moral) Nation States

41

Once an industry has passed through its initial establishment phase, the need for additional capital investment is greatly decreased. The industry generates profits and these profits are reinvested in improved and enlarged facilities, research and development, and the creation of supplementary industries. Thus when foreign companies expand or take over existing firms though their subsidiaries in Canada, they need not generate any large amount of new money from their home base. Of the total financing to foreign firms in Canada over the period 1960 to 1967, only 19 per cent was obtained abroad. The remainder came from retained earnings, that is, profits which have not been distributed to shareholders, from capital consumption allowances and depletion allowances in Canada, and from Canadian investors through Canadian financial institutions.10 In the same period, referring only to expansion funds, 38 per cent came from retained earnings and 21 per cent from Canadian investors. Thirty-three per cent of the expansion funds came from the owning countries as new capital investment.11 In dollar terms, this amount was less than the outflow of capital from these companies to shareholders and in management fees and interest rates. In other words, a foreign company once established in Canada can expand and take over other firms without bringing into Canada any substantial amount of capital. At the same time, it uses the Canadian capital which might otherwise be provided to new and competing firms owned by Canadians. Kari Levitt, in her study of foreign ownership, has given evidence that in the critical area of mining and petroleum, where U.S. investment has increased steadily, only 15 per cent of the new funds for expansion between 1957 and 1964 came from United States sources. Seventy-three per cent came from retained earnings and depreciation reserves, and 12 per cent was provided by Canadian banks and other financial institutions in Canada. ^ With this reinvestment potential, the same corporations which own major resource extraction industries (e.g., mining rights) can establish processing firms either in the dependent nation or in the mother country, and can buy into the transportation, communications, research, distribution, and sales firms which are all connected with the processing of the original resource to its final form as a product for consumption. It is this process of expansion from an original base in Canada which underlies the fact that Canada has a higher degree of foreign control than any other industrial nation. As pointed out in the Gray Report on Foreign Direct Investment: "if the government should wish to deal with the rate of growth in foreign control completely, it would not be sufficient to look exclusively at new direct investment. It would also be obliged to take account of the finances obtained from Canadian capital markets and the application by the individual firms of the internal cash-flow. "13 The organization within which much of the foreign ownership and control is located is the multi-national enterprise. This is an enormous corporation which

42

Ideological Perspectives on Canada

straddles several different countries and whose major form of control is direct investment. This investment is intended to bring raw materials needed by a parent company from another country, or to extend a manufacturing empire from a home base to outlying areas. The majority of the multi-national corporations are based in the United States: about two-thirds of the top 300.14 These 200 corporations account for about 80 per cent of all United States foreign direct investment, about 30 per cent of which is in Canada. 15 A giant corporation extending over several countries may form a partial or a complete industrial process. Often operating under a variety of names, and listed as separate firms, the total process may include everything within a single industry from extraction of the raw material, primary processing, shipping, manufacturing, to sales. Subsidiaries buy from the parent firm or sell to it, so that even where the subsidiary appears to lose money in any one year, it may be a profitable link in the chain for the parent company. The parent company, moreover, can afford to lose money on a subsidiary for a period of time if the loss results eventually in the deterioration of competing firms which cannot likewise afford losses. Subsidiaries do not require research and development facilities or expenditures: they become arms of a parent which maintains the research facilities on the home base. Thus to the extent that an economy is dominated by subsidiaries, it is not generating competition or new technologies: it is imitative and supportive of the parent firm. The multi-national enterprise is not, in fact, multi-national in any respect other than that it produces materials through subsidiaries in territories other than its home country. According to the Gray Report on Foreign Direct Investment of the 18,851 top managerial positions in the largest multi-nationals of the United States, in the late 1960s, only 1.6 per cent were held by nonAmericans, l^ Their major market remains the United States, and subsidiaries are located, funded, moved, used, and directed according to the needs of the parent firm and its major market, not according to the needs of the dependent countries. Further on in this chapter, we will return to another aspect of the multi-national companies: their share in the concentration of control of the economy. There are several reasons for Canadian concern over the degree of foreign control of their economy, but one of the critical concerns is the loss of the decision-making power that this implies. Those who control the industries also have the right to make major decisions about their location, their employment practices, the kinds of skills to be used in the subsidiary as contrasted with those needed in the parent firms, the amount of technological research to be done, the wages and prices to be paid or received, and the conditions for continued operation. To the extent that Canadian industry is dominated by non-Canadians, these decisions are not within domestic control. This raises a serious question about the sovereignty of Canada. Political sovereignty which does not include the right to make major decisions affecting workers, investment, or location of industries is not a very strong form of sovereignty.

Free Enterprise in (Relatively Moral) Nation States 43 Canadian sovereignty has another dimension which is also affected by her economic situation and by the role played in that situation by American multinational corporations. This is Canada's international role as an independent nation-state. Since the Second World War, Canada's military forces have been largely integrated with those of the United States, and her manufacturing enterprises in the arms and strategic industries have come under American ownership and control. The production of arms and military equipment in Canada is tied in with the Defence Production Sharing Agreements, formally signed in 1959. The stated objective of these agreements is: "...to increase the participation of Canadian industry in the production and support of North American defence weapons and equipment. The continuing long-term objective is to coordinate the defence requirements, development, production and procurement of the two countries in order to achieve the best use of their respective production resources for their common defence in line with the concept of interdependence and the integration of military arrangements. "17 The military arrangements were aimed at preventing Soviet attacks on the United States. Canadian government spokesmen of the 1950s asserted that the defence of the United States was congruent with Canadian defence.18 They did not, therefore, consider a policy of neutrality during the "cold war," nor did they perceive the power distribution of the post-war period in terms other than those stated by United States leaders. The armaments, aircraft, and electronics industries, together with those industries which provide essential minerals for armament production, are dominated by American subsidiaries operating in Canada. In some of these industries, aircrafts particularly, Canadian firms strove to compete with American firms for defence contracts in the early 1960s. Although the Canadian government financed much of their research, provided capital grants, and purchased war materials, the major purchaser was the U.S. Defence Department. However, Canadian-owned manufacturing firms competed on unfavourable terms with American firms for American contracts. They tended to either shift over to production of component parts, thus becoming segments of an American industry, or to sell out to American corporations already dominant in the field. By 1963, nearly 80 per cent of the aircrafts industry was foreign controlled, and similar proportions of other industries connected with defence production were under foreign—mainly American—control. With respect to the aircrafts industry this meant, for example, that U.S. corporations built aircraft in Canadian subsidiaries for sale to the American Defence Department. Furthermore, they were supported financially by the Canadian government, through that government's purchases toward continental defence, and through grants for research and development which totalled nearly 50 per cent of all financing of the industry.19

44

Ideological Perspectives on Canada

As this book goes to press, the Federal government has announced its purchase of the de Havilland Aircraft of Canada from the Hawker-Siddeley group of London, and its intention to purchase Canadair from General Dynamics of St. Louis. The overall objective is the "restructuring (of) Canada's aerospace industry." The announcement stated that the government would subsequently turn these companies over to "responsible Canadian interests," that is, private Canadian corporations.20 This move toward repatriation of the aircrafts industry appears to remove the absurdity of the situation described above, but it does not remove the problems of dependence on American defence contracts which originally created the situation. Coincident with the integration of defence production industries, Canada has joined alliances and undertaken contracts which provide for an effective integration of her military forces with those of the United States. Under the NO RAD agreements of 1957, Canadian military forces came under the command of an international body headquartered in Colorado Springs. One test of national sovereignty under such agreements occurred during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Although the agreements specify that Canada should be consulted in advance of important NORAD actions, there is considerable evidence that Canada was not consulted in advance of United States action, and that when Canada's Prime Minister refrained from giving the orders to the Canadian military forces to go on alert, the military went on alert anyway under orders from Colorado Springs.21 Foreign ownership and integration into the overall military policies of the United States undermine the economic and political sovereignty of Canada. To begin with, the subsidiaries of U.S. firms are subject to American laws, specifically with respect to export contracts. Under the U.S. Trading with the Enemy Act, subsidiaries of U.S. firms must obtain their government's approval for export sales, and may not sell any goods to countries defined by the United States as enemies. A great many items produced in Canada are either produced by American subsidiaries or are dependent in various ways on U.S. supply routes. Thus, to the extent that Canadian industry in general and the arms industry in particular are owned by U.S. corporations, Canada may not export goods outside the U.S. sphere, and enemies of the United States are by definition enemies of Canada. Secondly, Canada cannot maintain neutrality in United States wars. Although maintaining an official neutrality in Viet Nam, the Canadian government subsidized, the Canadian workers produced, and the Canadian people accepted the production of war materials for Viet Nam in U.S. subsidiary operations in Canada. Throughout the war, the United States purchased millions of dollars worth of arms from Canada.22 Many of the Canadian materials were parts, small arms, mines, bombs, and chemicals. But the more strategic materials were minerals essential to the continuation of the war and to the military stockpiling in the United States. Canada has no control over the uses of these materials once they have left her territory.

Free Enterprise in (Relatively Moral) Nation States

45

•2*

We have concentrated on those aspects of the economy which affect the nationstate, because the assumption that Canada is an independent nation-state is fundamental to the notion that the Canadian government governs, and governs subject to the wishes of Canadians. The erosion of the nation-state, however, is more in the nature of a result than a cause. To understand why it should have occurred, we must return to the second condition of liberal democracies: the system of private enterprise. Private enterprise means private ownership of economic resources, the means of production, and property, and the right to profit from such ownership. Those who invest money in enterprises are the owners. Those who work in enterprises are not the owners. In a system of totally private enterprise, governments own no shares in industry. Most liberal democracies support some forms of government ownership, however, usually in the non-profit spheres, such as postal services. Where this occurs, the economy is mixed: private and public. Canada, in part because of the sparseness of population and the vastness of territory, in part because of the slow development of capitalism and a capitalistic labour market,23 and in part because of the rejection of the American model by the Empire Loyalists and the Family Compact, has developed a liberal democracy in which government initiatives in the economy have been more readily accepted than they have been in the United States.24 Private enterprise has been supported by public enterprise, and in some vital areas—utilities, transportation, communications—governments have held control of significant parts of the industry. Free enterprise in Canada, therefore, means private enterprise in the profit-making sector; public enterprise in the non-profit sector; and public support for private profit-making ventures: a mixed economy, with emphasis on the private sector. Free enterprise and private enterprise are often used interchangeably, by way of indicating the absence of government intervention or ownership. Free enterprise also means, however, an economic market system in which all comers compete equally for the attention of consumers, and the consumer, through a free choice of products, is sovereign. Within such a system, it is believed that laws of supply and demand will operate: when the supply exceeds the demand, some firms producing the item will fold, leaving the field to the most efficient producers. Likewise, when the demand exceeds the supply, there will be room for new firms to enter the field. The profit margin is determined by consumer sales. The market, in theory, is self-adjusting and the price of goods represents their relative value to consumers. Those who invest their labour in firms receive an income, the income level to be determined by the value of particular skills to the owner. This, in turn, is determined by the value of the product and the profit margin: what it is worth to the owner, given what price he receives for the product. Ultimately, then, wages and prices are determined by consumers in a free and competitive market.

46

Ideological Perspectives on Canada

The assumption that such a free and competitive market is alive and well in Canada is illustrated in the comments of a one-time cabinet minister in a Liberal government: "Liberalism seeks the welfare of all Canadians. In economic affairs, it values the efficiency that springs from free initiative, and from the prevention of monopolistic power. ...Liberalism opposes the concentration of economic power in a few hands. It rejects all measures that profit special interests by sheltering them from competition; it rejects politics that help business corporations or other organizations to become unnecessarily big and powerful...." 25 It is not important that the speaker is a politician for a particular party, and the word "liberalism" as a political party label may be ignored: if the speaker referred to the Conservative party, the underlying assumptions would be the same. They are that free initiative operates in the market-place, that concentration of power is not good, and that government is not a coalition for the benefit of special interest groups. The theory of competition and free enterprise rests on the belief that there are a great many separate businesses competing for the consumer's attention. Competition rests on an equality of condition: that is, equals may compete equally. When, however, there are a few enormous corporations sharing among them a very large proportion of the total market, together with a large number of very small businesses sharing the remainder, it is no longer accurate to talk of a single competitive market. Such is the case in Canada. Corporations with assets of over $1 million in 1970 constituted 6.5 per cent of the total number of corporations, but they controlled 87 per cent of all corporate assets, 71 per cent of total sales and 86 per cent of total profits. Corporations with assets of over $100 million constitute a fraction of one per cent of all corporations: they control 54 per cent of all corporate assets.26 The relationship between the number of corporations in given industrial sectors and the degree of assets controlled by the larger corporations is shown in Table 6. The degree of concentration is increasing. The very large corporations have increased their share of the markets each year. They have also purchased or invested in other corporations, so that some of the separate corporations are in fact subsidiaries of the same parent corporation. The figures shown in Table 7 actually under-represent the degree of concentration. This concentration of control in Canada is in part an extension of the concentration of control in the United States. The large corporations with head offices in that country are the same corporations which control large sectors of Canadian industry. In 1932, two American economists, Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means, argued that if the large corporations grew at their current rate, 85 per cent of all corporate wealth in the United States by 1950 would be held by 200 corporations, and these would control half of the national wealth. 27

Free Enterprise in (Relatively Moral) Nation States

47

Their predictions were largely borne out. By the end of the 1960s, 100 corporations owned nearly 50 per cent of all assets in the manufacturing sector, and similar concentrations were evident in other sectors.28 In 1968, Professor J.D. Behrman, formerly the U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce, predicted that the total world production under American control would reach 80 per cent by 1990, and the multinational corporations alone would control a third of all production in the non-Communist economy by 1987.29

Table 7 Number of Corporations by Asset Size in Canada, for Selected Industrial Sectors, 1970. Corporations with Assets $25 million or more Total

Sector Agriculture Forestry & Fishing Mining Manufacturing Construction Utilities Finance Wholesale Trade Retail Trade Services Total (all sectors) Total NonFinancial

No.

% Total

Corporations with Assets $100 million or more No.

% Total

3

*

0

0.0

97 271 21

75 64 *

30

52.4 43.7

61 305 35 26 17

83 75

24 96 5

75.6 67.0

9 0

21.8

219,809

837

66

240

53.6

144,724

388

56

144

40.6

6,353 3,735 21,811 19,920 8,203 75,085 24,493 31,372 28,837

17 32 *

74 2

*

5.8 0.0

*Information not available Source:

Statistics Canada, Corporation Financial Statistics 1970 (Cat. No. 61-207) Table 5A, pp. 194-215, and Statement 3 p. 10. Reproduced by permission of Information Canada.

48

Ideological Perspectives on Canada

American interests, however, do not control the utilities and the financial institutions in Canada, yet the degree of concentration in these is extremely high. Utilities, transportation, and communications (included in Table 7 under Utilities) are both privately and publicly owned in Canada. Twenty-four corporations control three-quarters of all assets in these sectors. The financial institutions are privately owned, although constrained by legislation in their activities. Ninety-six corporations control over two-thirds of all assets. Financial institutions in addition control nearly half of all assets in the total economy. Where a few corporations—the multi-nationals and the banking institutions of Canada—control the majority of industrial enterprises in the country, one must have serious reservations about an ideology promoting the belief that there is free enterprise and competitive capitalism. There are, in fact, two distinct economies: the centre, which controls most of the wealth, and the periphery, which competes for the remainder. The degree of competition at the centre is open to debate. In some areas, the number of independent corporations is so small, or the degree of concentration so great, that a virtual monopoly exists. In others, the situation is better described as oligopolistic: a number of extraordinarily large firms sharing most of the market between them. There may be competition within an oligopolistic market, but there are also very effective means by which the large companies can reduce their competitive risks. Among these are vertical integration, that is, the buying out of companies which provide the raw materials or service the production company, or provide parts, or undertake the sales of the main company. A vertically integrated corporation reduces its risks by setting its own prices in the supply areas and determining its own costs from the extraction of the material right through to the sale of products. Another method is to create the needs and demands of the market: thus the disproportionate amount of corporate funds given over to advertising. Corporations do not simply wait for consumer demand: they introduce new products and advertise these for purposes of creating new demands. Over the past decade, a further development in the economy has occurred: the rise of the conglomerate corporation. This is a corporation which owns other corporations in very different areas of the economy; a transportation and communications corporation such as Brascan, for example, which also owns breweries or hotels. Robert Heilbroner, an influential American economist, argues that while fewer corporations owned larger proportions of the total assets of U.S. industries in 1968 than in 1948, the concentration of corporate power has been off-set by the rise of conglomerates. He cites the example of International Telephone and Telegraph, the diverse subsidiaries of which include hotel chains, automobile rental agencies, bread companies, insurance companies, and mutual funds as well as its original product: telecommunications systems in countries outside the United States. It is his contention that the large conglomerates have not actually increased the tendencies toward monopoly. 3° However, he overlooks the effects on a total economy of conglomerate control. In Chile prior to the democratic election of a Marxist government in 1970,

Free Enterprise in (Relatively Moral) Nation States

49

a few foreign-owned conglomerates controlled a range of industries that included shoe manufacturing, rubber production, petroleum distribution, communications, and tourist facilities. Foreign-owned corporations controlled the vital resource industry, copper. When the new government attempted to nationalize the copper industries and make other changes in the economy which were disadvantageous to such foreign corporations as International Telephone and Telegraph, Kennecott, and Anaconda31 , a series of embargoes on imports and exports were employed by the foreign interests. The combination of control over a vital resource and a wide range of control over other resources and services make it possible for a foreign company, alone or in cooperation with other corporations, to cut off foreign markets (in this case for copper), to restrict essential imports, and to prevent the inflow of alternative funds (including the stoppage of World Bank financing), so that the economy cannot be managed by the elected government. A military invasion could hardly be more effective in guaranteeing the downfall of any government whose actions fail to coincide with the interests of the multi-national corporations.32 When one attempts to determine who actually owns the largest corporations, an incredibly intricate pattern emerges. A parent company is owned by one or more finance companies which may or may not all be in the same country, though one of these will have the controlling interest. This parent company in turn may wholly own some twenty companies which in turn wholly or partially own another twenty or more companies, which yet again themselves partially own yet further companies. Some of the finance companies are themselves owned by other finance companies. Decision making has several levels in this complex structure. While decisions about the production within a subsidiary firm may take place within its own board of directors, those directors in turn are appointed by the corporations which own the subsidiary. Their decisions will reflect their own corporate policy and ultimately the interests of the investors in the parent corporation: increasingly this parent is a financial corporation, not a production corporation at all. It is often thought that these shareholders are numerous and representative of the total population. Nothing could be farther from the truth, especially in Canada. The investment class is small, and the elite within it which holds controlling shares in the major industries is extremely small. The representatives of that investment class may be found on the boards of directors of the major financial institutions. According to John Porter, for the period 1948 to 1950, some 907 individuals shared among them 81 per cent of the directorships in the nine chartered banks, and 58 per cent of those in the life insurance companies.33 According to C.A. Ashley in a 1955 study, 97 individuals who were directors of Canadian banks held 930 directorships in other corporations in every sector of the economy.34 These persons, however, represent only the Canadian investment class. They do not have control of the dominant multi-nationals, although their policies in the boardrooms of the five largest chartered banks (with 93 per cent

50 Ideological Perspectives on Canada of the assets of the chartered banking industry) and life insurance firms (five of which hold 63 per cent of the assets in that industry) and other financial institutions,35 provide an increasingly large share of the financing for the foreign expansions. Parent companies may control subsidiaries by controlling strategic financial decisions, retaining all rights to technological innovations, keeping research and development facilities and personnel in the head office, and retaining the right to make decisions over production planning, marketing, employment, labour relations, and expansion. In addition to these decision-making powers reserved for parent companies, the parents have the power to influence Canadian management decisions through appointments to the boards of directors of subsidiaries. According to data gathered by sample survey of firms with assets exceeding $25 million in 1962, 66 per cent of the directorships in Canadian firms majority owned by non-residents were held by non-citizens; 47 per cent were held by non-residents as well as non-citizens. As the degree of foreign ownership increases, the percentage of directors who are neither citizens nor residents increases.36 The same picture emerges for officers of firms. As the percentage of non-resident ownership increases, the likelihood of Canadians being among the presidents or corporation officers decreases.37 Whether the decision making is done by Canadians or foreigners, there is one important difference between the decisions made by corporate owners and those made by governments: corporations are not accountable to an electorate in any way. They may or may not make decisions that benefit the general public, but they are not required to demonstrate, defend, or even publicly announce those decisions to a Canadian (or other) population. Indeed, in Canada, they are not even required to report fully their financial standing. They make decisions that affect not only their shareholders (whose controlling shares are typically owned by very few individuals or organizations) and not only their employees (whose numbers may be very considerable), but the entire population, and the economic environment and political possibilities of the entire nation (indeed, of many nations). Yet they make those public decisions in private and with reference to private goals and private profit. The ideology of private enterprise is invoked at precisely this point, even though the private enterprise may be financed by government institutions and may be well past the point of competitive enterprise and consumer control.

•3» We can now return to the proposition that governments are representative of the majority of the population within the territory of the nation-state. Granted their limited powers in the economic sphere, it remains within their prerogative to enact legislation. It was, for example, a government which entered the Defence Production Sharing Agreements. It was a government which created

Free Enterprise in (Relatively Moral) Nation States

51

the Combines Investigation Act. It was a government which gave life to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the National Film Board, and many regulatory bodies which do affect the lives of the electorate. Can we at least agree with the prevailing ideology, that the government is an independent institution, representing everyone equally and not the interests of one sector over others? There are two impediments to this belief. One is that political parties are financed by particular interest groups. A detailed study of the 1953 elections provided the information that 50 per cent of the Liberal party campaign funds were derived from commerce and industry, 40 per cent from businessmen in a few particular firms, and 10 per cent from private individuals. 38 A study prepared for the 1966 Committees on Election Expenses indicates that 90 per cent of Liberal party income comes from particular large business concerns.39 The finances for the Conservative party came from the same sources and in the same proportions, as did those for the provincial Social Credit parties when they were in power.40 The CCF/NDP income has been derived from trade union affiliations (most of which are international unions), membership and sustaining membership fees. Between 39 and 45 per cent came from trade union sources throughout the 1960s.41 There are obvious drawbacks to this kind of financing. It builds in a bribery process, even if overt acts of bribery or direct payment to individuals never occurs (and we are not here suggesting that it does). Where a large multinational corporation is a major contributor to the funds of a political party, the fortunes of the party are dependent on that corporation. There is a natural tendency for such parties, should they obtain government power, to act in the interests of such contributors. More than this, however, it ensures that only those parties well financed are likely to survive—quite independent of whether they might fare well or badly at the polls. Campaigns are expensive and become ever more so. Individuals who run for office incur heavy private costs, including absence from work during the campaigns. A poor party cannot field the candidates or keep up a competitive campaign all across the country. Those parties, therefore, which obtain the financial backing of the rich are in a noncompetitive position vis-a-vis those parties which do not, and the result is that while there may be more than one party seeking election, there is one interest group behind them. In effect, the alternatives are removed in advance. The alternatives that have arisen in Canada, as elsewhere, have seldom lasted through a decade, and those that last are of necessity themselves backed by specific interest groups which have the ability to provide funds. The second problem is that recruitment to political office is not evenly distributed throughout the population. No matter whom politicians purport to represent, they are inclined to diagnose problems and make choices through the perspectives of their own positions in society. Where all are representative of the same positions in society, some perspectives are never taken. If, moreover, their positions are all or mainly in an elite sector of society, they cannot—willing

52

Ideological Perspectives on Canada

though they may be—represent the total population. John Porter's study of elites indicated that those who enjoy political careers, especially those who occupy cabinet positions in the federal government, are not representative of the population at large in terms of educational level, occupation, or income. Eighty-six per cent of those in the political sphere who had occupied cabinet positions during the 1940 to 1960 period had university educations, and 64 per cent of these were lawyers.42 A number of the cabinet leaders have, on retiring from politics or losing an election, moved into top corporate positions and directorships, a further indication that there are many affinities between the political and the corporate elite. The candidates for office are chosen by political parties, not by the population at large, and this again reduces the chances for the average citizen to exercise political power or to choose representatives who can articulate his or her needs, his or her perspectives.

.4. The strength of the liberal ideology lies in its apparent accommodation of diversity. All people are equal, all choices are legitimate, all alternatives are worthy. Good and evil are relative terms, and the latitude for personal action is wide. Life is a marketplace of competing claims for the attention of consumers. Having no apparent philosophical commitment to a hierarchy of values, the liberal must pose all problems as questions of strategy. Such questions are solved by the application of scientific research and the probing of the general will. For this reason, liberalism never appears to its adherents as an ideology. Marxism, Communism, Conservatism—but not Liberalism. Liberalism appears to them as simply a common-sense approach to life. After all, it is their common sense. The "end of ideology," heralded by the American writer, Daniel Bell, in a book by that title, seems an appropriate title for the liberal age—to the liberal.43 Yet when each man can choose his own moral obligations, there are no guarantees that a variety of social demands will be met. No lord is responsible for the poor, no employers for the unemployed, no upper class for the lower class. The young are not obliged to care for the old, the healthy for the sick, the educated for the ignorant. The moral obligations of manufacturers to consumers, corporations to employees, universities to the public, the mass media to viewers and readers, and governments to voters are all extremely vague. To answer that the solutions are matters of strategy is to assume that without moral obligation, and in spite of the ideology of achievement, individualism, material profit, and personal success, people and institutions will somehow ignore their private interests and act on behalf of the society as a whole whenever the two pose different requirements. Strategies are worked out after values and goals are chosen; they are means to desired ends. Desires are translated into action to the extent that people are able to make this translation.

Free Enterprise in (Relatively Moral) Nation States

53

In a society where wealth is of utmost importance, those with wealth can translate more desires into actions than those without wealth. There is no reason to expect them to put the desires of others above their own, and it is not surprising if they assume that their own desires are congruent with the social good. The thesis of moral relativity provides a view of society as a collection of individuals whose interaction requires a coordinating body to ensure fair play. The question for the liberal is: when is intervention justified? When is protection required? Mill was famous for his defence of the principle that another man's liberty stopped short of this one's nose, but the room for abuse is far in excess of physical force. Is one's liberty impaired by polluted water, by political parties financed through organized corporations and international unions, by noise, by expropriation rights of governments acting in defence of other property interests, by tax spending on military defence, by control of industries by nonnationals, by the concentration of wealth and power? Whose liberty is impaired when corporate directors make decisions in the interests of the corporation which are not in the interests of their workers or the communities in which they operate? The liberal can have no philosophical answer to such questions, since liberty itself is defined in relative terms. Social good becomes whatever the will of the majority defines it to be, should the majority find a way of entering its competing claims, and subject to the decisions already made within the economic sphere not by the governments at all but by non-elected directors whose liberty is unimpaired by democratic procedures.

54

Ideological Perspectives on Canada

CHAPTER 3 • NOTES 1 Lester Pearson, Canadian Liberal, X:l (September, 1958) p. 2. 2

John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty," (1849) in The Utilitarians, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961, p. 479. 3

Ibid., p. 484.

4 Lester Pearson, Canadian Liberal, X:l (September, 1958) p. 2. 5 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1968. 6 Cited in Kenneth McNaught, The Pelican History of Canada, London: Penguin, 1968, p. 190. 7 Government of Canada, Foreign Direct Investment in Canada, Ottawa: Information Canada, 1972, Table 1, p. 15. 8 Ibid., the higher proportion of control as shown in Table 2, p. 16, indicates a more rapid growth in control than in ownership. U.S. firms account for 80 per cent of foreign control. 9 Ibid., Table 11, p. 64. 1Q

Ibid., Tables 9, 10, and text, p. 25.

H/bitt, Table 9, p. 25. 12 Kari Levitt, Silent Surrender, Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1970, p. 64. 13 Foreign Direct Investment in Canada, op. cit., p. 26. Reproduced by permission of Information Canada. 14

Ibid., p. 52.

15 Loc. Cit.

16 Ibid., p. 57. 17 Eighth Report of the Department of Defence Production, 1958, Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1959, p. 26. Reproduced by permission of Information Canada. 1° For an account of this see John W. Warnock, Partner to Behemoth, the Military Policy of a Satellite Canada, Toronto: New Press, 1970, Chapter 7, and Philip Resnick, "Canadian Defence Policy and the American Empire," in Close the 49th Parallel, edited by Ian Lumsden, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 94-115. 1" The Canadian Government provided 48.5% of the financing between 1959 and 1967 of 306 projects under the Defence Production Sharing Agreement. Under the Defence Industrial Research Programme, Government grants for 50% of the total costs are given to industries with no obligations for repayment and the industry retaining benefits. See Warnock, op.cit., pp. 254-256, Tables from House of Commons Debates, Jan. 15, 1969, p. 4316. 20 News Release, Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce, May 27, 1974.

Free Enterprise in (Relatively Moral) Nation States

55

21 Warnock, op.cit., provides a detailed account of this episode. 22

The Financial Post, "Defence Sharing Deal is Truly Big Business," Feb. 4, 1967. Estimates here are of $500 million in materials for U.S. Military use in the early 1960s, much of this in nickel, steel, copper, iron ore, and aluminium. The sale of these raw materials together with arms, planes, and component parts of U.S. armaments is estimated by Warnock, op.cit., as in the neighbourhood of $900 million for the 1965-1967 period. In addition to these, there are chemical warfare items such as defoliants, herbicides, and gases which were tested or manufactured in Canada for use in Viet Nam. 23

For a brief but illuminating history, see H.C. Pentland, "A Capitalistic Labour Market," Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XXV, No. 4 (Nov. 1959) pp. 450-461. 2

4 For a view of the differences between the American and Canadian developments, see Gad Horowitz, "Conservatism, Liberalism, and Socialism in Canada, An Interpretation," Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, Vol. 32, 1966. 2 5 From The Liberal Party by J.W. Pickersgill reprinted by permission of The Canadian Publishers, McClelland and Stewart Limited, Toronto. 26

Corporation financial statistics, 1970, Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 1970, pp. 12-13.

2

? A. Berle and G. Means, The Modern Corporation and Private Property, New York: Macmillan, 1948, p. 36, as cited by Robert Heilbroner, The Making of Economic Society, Englewood Cliffs, N.Y.: Prentice-Hall, Fourth Edition, 1972, p. 120. 28

Heilbroner, ibid., p. 123.

2

9 J.D. Behrman, address to Couchiching Conference 1968, and Interim Report on Competition Policy, Economic Council of Canada, Ottawa, 1969, p. 180. as quoted in Kari Levitt, Silent Surrender, Toronto: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 92-93. 30

Heilbroner, op. cit., pp.123-124.

31 A Canadian corporation, Noranda, also owns mines in Chile. Althogether, 80 per cent of the copper resources were owned by foreign concerns. The entire economy depended on the sale of copper. 32 In Canada, the most detailed account of the Chilean coup of 1973 and the role of I.T. & T., Kennecott, and American government agencies, is given in Canadian Dimension, Vol. 9, No. 7 and 8, 1973. A full history of I.T. & T. in Chile and also in Germany, Hungary, Britain, and Canada is given in Anthony Sampson, The Sovereign State of ITT, Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1973. 33

John Porter, The Vertical Mosaic, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967,

p. 234.

34 c.A. Ashley, "Concentration of Economic Power," Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XXIII, No. 1, (Feb. 1957) as cited in Porter, ibid., pp. 234-235. 35 Foreign Direct Investment, op. cit., pp. 100-101. 36

CALURA, 1962 report as cited in ibid, Table 24, p. 143.

31 Ibid., Table 25, p. 143.

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Ideological Perspectives on Canada

3% Khayyam Z. Paltiel, Political Party Financing in Canada, Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1970. With reference to a study by E.E. Harrell, "The Structure of Organization and Political Power in Canadian Political Parties, A Study in Party Financing," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1958, pp. 251-252. 39 H.S. Crowe, "Liberals, New Democrats, and Labour" in Laurier LaPierre, et al, (eds), Essays on the Left, Toronto: New Press, 1971. Leo Johnson, op. cit., quotes R.G. Rankin, chairman of the Ontario Liberal Party fund raising committee, to this effect: "The Liberal Party has operated for many years on the support of 95 major Canadian corporations," cited in Toronto Star, Feb. 14, 1972. 40 Paltiel, op. cit. 41 Ibid., sources: Report of 16th National Convention, CCF, 1961; Report to NDP Annual Conventions, 1962 to 1964; NDP Financial Statements, 1966-1968. 42 Porter, op. cit., p. 137. 43 Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology, Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1960.

4 CLASSES IN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY There are many gaps between ideology and reality, and when the ideology is subjected to close study, there are many flaws in its internal logic. When the members of the elite, or those who most obviously benefit from their activities, state that the interests of the community are best served by an absence of government interference in their private affairs, the gap between their prosperity and the poverty at the bottom is brought into stark contrast. When it is said that those at the top are there because they are the smartest, best educated, most useful members of the community, those who supply the labour to keep the machines in action may wonder at the presumption. How do we determine whether a financier or a doctor is more important than a coal miner? A society couldn't operate without its miners, clerks, elementary school teachers, and labourers. How does it happen that those with capital are more important than those with energy and skills? These questions lead to a search for alternative explanations. In general, societies provide, via a socialization process reinforced with rewards of various kinds, an interpretation of reality that a large number of its members accept, the assumptions of which are the basis of culture and the distinguishing feature of that particular culture. This provides an explanation for the organization of social structure, which is to say, an explanation for the distribution of wealth and p'ower. This we have called the dominant ideology, and for Canada we have labelled the dominant ideology liberal democracy. We might also have used the term "capitalism" since liberal democracies are capitalist organizations. The major counter ideology uses the term capitalism in reference both to the social organization of this society and to its ideology. This counter ideology is the major alternative explanation for Canadian (but also for all liberal democratic) society. A counter ideology is one which defines the nature of the social organization in a different way, one which challenges the assumptions of the dominant ideology and which attacks the values that arise from those assumptions. There may be many different counter ideologies, varying in the degree to which they diverge from the dominant definitions of society. In Canada, for instance, there are several religious ideologies which reject the dominant themes. But the most influential counter-thrust derives from theories of classes and imperialism formulated by Karl Marx and V.L Lenin during the nineteenth century. At the level of scholarly treatise, analysts have attempted to bring these up to date. At the level of popular ideology, there is little evidence of change. The popular ideology is somewhat superficial in its rendering of Marx but it is less important that the present ideologues simplify Marx than that they see the world in a different way 57

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and challenge the premises about that world held by their fellow citizens. We want to examine how Canadian society looks to them. Since they invoke the original theories, it seems wise to begin with a brief review of these theories.

•i• When Karl Marx was explaining history or exhorting the workers to rise up against their oppressors, he wrote of a world divided sharply into two classes. In the Communist Manifesto we meet these two: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight. "* The oppressors and the oppressed are elsewhere shown to be related by their respective positions relative to the productive mechanisms of the economy. Marx defined three classes in industrial England: those who provided labour power, those who owned capital, and those who owned land. The last of these, however, became merged with the capitalists (bourgeoisie) in his two-class model. The polarized class model consists of workers—the mass of people who sell (alienate) themselves for wages, and capitalists—a small elite who buy labour as a commodity, realise increasing profits through the use of bought labour, re-invest these profits in ever more areas of industrial production, and thereby gain control of the total wealth of the society. The critical difference between the two classes is that the one which invests only capital owns the product although he adds no value to it, controls its price, and becomes ever more wealthy through an initial investment, whereas the one which invests labour, although the more important of the two for creating new value for any materials, gains only a wage, has no security, has no control over prices and becomes ever poorer.2 Such a polarized system, in Marx's view, would eventually emerge from the industrial conditions of nineteenth-century Europe and America. Meanwhile, the two quasi-classes are buffetted, and the class struggle obscured, by the existence of middle or transition groups, and groups which exist beyond the realm of the industrial sector, remnants of the feudal stage. The middle groups include, for example, small business owners and merchants whose capital is insufficient for long-term investment and who will, in due course, be bought out by larger capitalists and become, in their turn, wage labourers; professionals who earn high incomes but are not in positions to reinvest or gain control of the economy; intellectuals and civil servants who, in blindly serving the interests of the status quo, are unable to realize that they are akin to wage labourers; artisans and white-collar workers in the private sector who likewise identify with bourgeois capitalists. Outside the sphere of industrial society, there is a peasantry: the rural

Classes in Industrial Society 59 agricultural workers and farmers, who will inevitably be lured to cities and become the proletariat (wage workers). Within the industrial society but not included as wage workers are the unemployed. These form a critical group in the maintenance of the class structure, since their existence provides a labour pool from which capitalist employers can withdraw numbers as required and so keep down the wages of employed workers. The economic power of the capitalist class system lies with the bourgeoisie, that is, with those who provide capital rather than with those who provide labour. Marx argues, however, that economic power becomes political power: those who control resources in industry also control the direction of state power. Thus, political power is invariably harnessed in the interests of owners, never in the interest of labourers. The two classes are therefore total classes: the structure of society in all its phases is determined by economic classes. The production relations between classes are translated into distribution relations as well as political relations. It is for this reason that many other theorists attribute to income or other rewards the distinguishing features of class. Marx emphasized ownership of productive mechanisms as the distinguishing feature of the classes and objected to the less strict uses of the term: "The vulgar mind commutes class differences into 'differences in the size of purses,' and class conflict into 'trade disputes.' The size of the purse is a purely quantitative difference, by virtue of which two individuals of the same class can be opposed quite arbitrarily. It is well known that medieval guilds quarreled with each other 'according to trade.' But it is equally well known that modem class differences are by no means based on 'trade.' Rather, the division of labour has created very different types of work within the same class. "3 Marx argues that those who control production will also control distribution, such that they will not only determine how much of what is to be produced, but how much of what they will receive, and how much the workers will receive. Income, forms of property other than the means of production, prestige, honours, and non-economic positions are all within the control of the bourgeois owners. The precise psychological composition of the classes is somewhat vague, as Marx sometimes appears to believe that psychological attributes are important criteria of the class definition, and other times that they are epiphenomena to the "objective"—that is, production relations—conditions of the classes.4 As the owners and non-owners become more distinct, each group becomes more conscious of its membership in a class. The owners recognize their common interest in maintaining control of productive machinery and organize more effectively to use political channels for that purpose. At all times, the owners have effective control of the ideological institutions and use these to

60 Ideological Perspectives on Canada perpetuate an ideology suitable to the maintenance of the status quo. Workers, likewise, become more aware of their common plight and recognize their mutual interests first in trade union associations and then in political organization. As workers in different trades and with different statuses recognize their common bondage to ever fewer capitalists, the grip of the bourgeois ideology weakens and the class struggle becomes an open conflict.5 Social change, in this theoretical framework, coincides with a class struggle. History is a continuing class conflict. The stage preceding the capitalist one consists of the feudal classes related by their varying positions relative to land: the lords and the peasant workers. These relations become weaker as an urban society grows out of its midst, consisting of merchants and traders, artisans and domestic servants. The urban merchants gain economic power and in due course seek the political power still held by the landed aristocracy. This conflict between bourgeoisie and nobility leads to the bourgeois revolutions—the American and French revolutions. But these revolutions are scarcely over before the next stage of the class struggle is undertaken. This stage involves a growing commercial class giving rise to a growing class of artisans and urban workers. As the bourgeoisie develop the financial processes of the capitalist economy, the workers become ever more dependent on factory employment. Their craft guilds give way as mass production and the replacement of skilled with unskilled labour undermines their job security. Simultaneously, the small merchants are unable to compete for markets, and they join the ranks of the workers and the unemployed. The process of downgrading of labour and increasing prosperity for an ever smaller class of capitalists continues until eventually society consists of two classes: owners and workers. The final stage of the class struggle would be, in Marx's view, the overthrow of the owners by the proletariat.

• 2« Capitalism in its early forms was a system by which individual entrepreneurs sought to enlarge their private fortunes through increasing their share of the market. They could do this in a number of ways: by producing a better product than their competitors, by mass-producing cheaper products, by paying low wages to workers, by introducing new products, and by creating a demand for their products. Marx, like other economists, assumed that the market mechanism was basic to the capitalist system. Yet he predicted that the market would be undermined by the growth of monopolies with control of resources, labour, and consumers. These two systems—competition and monopoly—are very different. Monopolistic and oligopolistic capitalism are systems by which one or a few very large concerns own and/or control an economic sector, thus increasing profits not through the market mechanisms but through sole ownership of resources, through being the only employer, and through producing the only product in that industrial sector. Marx identified these two systems as contradictions of one

Classes in Industrial Society 61 another. He argued that the contradictions of each stage of capitalism would give rise to a new stage, culminating in the socialization of production. Monopoly capitalism grows out of, just as it defeats, competitive capitalism. There are other contradictions within the capitalist system which Marx identified. The most significant of these is the growth of surplus together with the growth of poverty. The surplus is controlled by the owning class and used by them to increase their revenues and industrial holdings rather than for the society's welfare, thus creating the contradiction of poverty in the midst of enormous wealth. This contradiction extends to regions: wealthy cities and poor rural areas, rich nations and poor nations. The study of these themes was advanced by Lenin, in his examination of imperialism as what he believed to be the final stage of capitalism.

•3« Although Marx foresaw the development of monopoly capitalism, he did not provide an analysis of that stage. Contemporary theorists have attempted to provide such an analysis by way of updating the Marxist framework. Among these are Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy. 6 The features of the corporate state identified by Baran and Sweezy are these: (i) Control of corporations is in the hands of a board of directors and chief executive officers who are, for all real purposes, independent of shareholders. They are a self-perpetuating group, and their interests and careers are tied to the fortunes of the corporations they direct. Corporations are independent of outside sources of finance; they generate their own growth from re-investment. The objectives of corporate policy are growth, power, and profit: profit being the means and the index of power. (ii) Large corporations do not compete with one another in price-setting. They respect territorial claims. They avoid risks, engage in long-range planning, and purchase into a field only after the risks have been eliminated. They can do this precisely because they are not competitive. (iii) Governments tend to act on behalf of the interests of the class of corporate directors. Where they were, in the time described by Marx, useful primarily as the providers of services (roads, schools, non-profitable utilities) and as the regulatory bodies which gave legal frameworks for the activities of entrepreneurs, they have now become major purchasers of corporate goods. They are required to increase productive capacity and increase demands and total employment through purchases. They engage in massive expenditures on such items as armaments, space programs, armed forces, and new bureaucracies, all of which directly enhance the wealth of private corporations from which they purchase these goods and services, and create a consumer population for the same purpose. Baran and Sweezy put the limit on government action at the point of

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Ideological Perspectives on Canada

competition with, rather than support for, private enterprise. Thus such items as public health and public housing have low priority in government expenditures. So too does public education, which, in these authors' view, aids the working classes by providing for their mobility into lower positions in the corporations; but aids the oligarchy only so long as it is mediocre. This version of American—and by virtue of her junior partner status, Canadian—organization is helpful in updating two critical features of Marxist thought: the class composition, and the nature of the market and generation of surplus. Like its predecessor, it assumes the continued existence of the nationstate, and the continued congruence of interests between political institutions as well as leaders, and economic institutions as well as directors. When Marx wrote Capital, the nation-state was a politically homogeneous entity in fewer areas of the world; it was not yet a culturally homogeneous entity served by a financially strong central government with taxing powers and the machinery to enforce them, nor a political arena backed up by an enormous civil service. As Baran and Sweezy point out, the growth in government has been a corollary of the growth in monopoly capitalism. As the corporations grew, so too did the government to service them. Since corporate growth and wealth depend on massive expenditures of governments, this argument leads to the next: that corporate states thrive on foreign wars. Wars, in this view, are among the means of extending the imperialist state which is embedded in the nature of corporate and monopoly capitalism. To pursue this argument, we might well begin with Lenin's analysis of imperialism.

• 4« This quotation is attributed to Cecil Rhodes of Boer War fame by Lenin: "I was in the East End of London yesterday and attended a meeting of the unemployed. I listened to the wild speeches, which were just a cry for 'bread,y 'bread' and on my way home I pondered over the scene and I became more than ever convinced of the importance of imperialism...My cherished idea is a solution for the social problem, i.e., in order to save the 40,000,000 inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statemen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets for the goods produced in the factories and mines. The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists. "7 Perhaps these words catch, as clearly as the sophisticated analysis of Lenin, the meaning of imperialism. Imperialism, however, like capitalism itself, has stages. One stage is the export of surplus populations, usually supported by the

Classes in Industrial Society

63

military presence of the imperialist nation. A second stage, and it is this to which Lenin addresses himself, is the export of capital for purposes of exploiting a natural resource, labour, and commodity markets in other countries. With this form of economic imperialism, Lenin argues that the world becomes divided among the biggest capitalist powers through monopolies in various industrial sectors. Those who own and control the monopolies are the financiers, whose base of operations consists of finance and holding companies, banks, insurance corporations and similar enterprises.^ The few imperialist powers identified by Lenin in 1915 were Britain, United States, and Japan. These countries, he argued, carved up the world into their colonial territories, from which they extracted raw materials for their manufacturing industries and through which they provided wage employment for the people in their nations at the expense of the colonial peoples. Thus the world became one divided between the haves and the have-nots, the rich nations and the poor nations. The First World War was, in Lenin's view, a struggle between the capitalists of these nations for the division of territories and spoils, brought on by the growing strength of Germany. Lenin expected that the growth of monopolies following that war would enslave nations until the workers of all countries united in rebellion against their imperialist masters. The contradictions within monopoly capitalism—such as the enormous surpluses created by the poor nations—would eventually give rise not only to revolution but to decay from within the system. "Monopoly... inevitably engenders a tendency to stagnation and decay."9 A modern thesis built on the theory of imperialism is current in sociological literature. This is variously called the metropolis-hinterland thesis, or the centre-periphery thesis. 1® It is particularly applied to the relationships between the United States and Canada, Asia, Africa, and Latin America; the Soviet Union and her satellites; European capitals and parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America; and Japan and her neighbours. It is also applied to Canada's relationship with some third world countries, especially where Canada operates together with American multi-national corporations. A country like Canada may simultaneously be the exploiter and the exploited. Branch-plant economies are dependent economies. Their control, ownership, direction, research, expansion, markets, and manpower allocations are determined elsewhere. Foreign companies obtain access to natural resources, and through reserving the rights to process these into manufactured products, increase their profits very rapidly without encouraging the development of competing national industries. Though such firms must repay the loans, or interest on the loans floated for purposes of the initial purchase, and must as well pay taxes and wages for local workers, they can in very short order so increase their profits that they no longer require additional investment funds in order to continue expanding. Their expansion tends to provide for vertical integration of their industry: that is, they move into supporting industrial areas such as construction, transportation, manufacturing of tools and machinery, research and retail sales, and so gain a large degree of control over the total

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Ideological Perspectives on Canada

industry. This inhibits growth of potential competition, it inhibits local investment in local firms, and it creates a spiralling dependence of the local labour force on the foreign industry. This process is frequently referred to as modern economic imperialism. It involves very little outright force, depends instead on the cooperation and aid of a small elite within the dependent country, and does not require the export of its own nationals in any large numbers or as settlers. Following the lead of Andre' Gunder Frank, some writers refer to this form of imperialism as "the development of underdevelopment" because where it is successful, it necessarily under-develops or hinders the development of an independent economy in the host country while fully developing the central or imperialist economy.H The host country, or the branch plant economy, is referred to as the periphery, the satellite, or the hinterland, because its economic development is geared to the policies and practices of another country. The other country is referred to as the metropolis, the centre in which the major economic decisions are made and to which the lion's share of the profits is delivered. This process is replicated at the local level within a country. The metropolis at any level is simultaneously the hinterland at another level. Thus Canada as a whole is regarded as a hinterland to the United States, but within each of these countries, the large metropolitan areas use the resources of their respective hinterlands. In Canada's case, the hinterland to the Toronto-Montreal axis includes the Canadian prairies and the East Coast; the hinterland to Vancouver on the West Coast (itself a hinterland to the United States West Coast) is Northern and Interior British Columbia. As any centre grows, it attracts the most capable people from surrounding territories. The city attracts workers from rural areas; the large metropolitan areas attract, as well, the most talented intellectuals, artists, writers, technicians, researchers, and administrators. In return, the metropolis feeds the hinterland its own surplus products, including people who cannot find jobs in their homeland. These people take over the subsidiary plants and staff the other institutional sectors of the hinterland economy: the media, the universities, the schools, and the theatres. This assy metrical flow of excellence toward the metropolis12 was essential to the development and maintenance of the Roman empire, the Austro-Hungarian empire, and the British empire, and it is argued within this theoretical framework that it is still an important factor in the present imperialist empires. The consequence for the hinterland areas is that their potential leaders are drained off, and they are, instead, led by people whose allegiance is to the metropolis, not to the hinterland and their decisions and influence create a replica of the metropolis, rather than an independent or culturally different society.13 This theory, in addition, attributes a share of unemployment in the hinterland areas to the exploitative nature of economic imperialism. Large corporations, in order to continue developing their products and creating ever more products and markets, engage in various kinds of research and develop-

Classes in Industrial Society 65 ment. This is the area in which skilled technicians and scientists are employed. The unique contribution of American capitalism has been its capacity to create markets where none existed, to create demands for new products, to constantly refine and alter the nature of existing technology so that new products to meet new conditions are always required. The capacity of innovation depends on the maintenance of considerable investment in research and development and on the monopoly of these processes so that the parent firms are always one step ahead of potential competitors in other nations. This can be done by maintaining all important research and development processes within the parent company and on home territory. Subsidiary firms are not generally engaged in any basic research, and their promising technicians are provided with better paying positions within the parent company. Unskilled workers and skilled workers, on the other hand, are dependent on the continued interest of the parent firm in the subsidiary. If market conditions tighten up, employment is more likely to be curtailed in the colony than in the metropolis. Thus both the technicians and the labourers experience insecurity in their employment conditions within a branch-plant economy. The dominant ideology of under-development (a theoretical interest that has largely emerged since the Second World War) involves the premise that countries are in varying stages of the same industrializing process. This theory, articulated particularly by W.W. Rostow,14 has it that there are stages of industrial growth. At some particular point, the turn of the century for Canada, technology, population, and means of transportation coalesce in some fashion to alter abruptly the concatenation of productive forces in the society. It "takesoff" into the industrial cycle and leaves its agricultural under-developed base behind. This theory is the natural extension of the liberal framework discussed in earlier chapters. But it is also implicit in the major writings of Marx. He said in the Preface to Capital: " The country that is most developed industrially only shows to the less developed the image of its own future."15 Although he identified the contradictions that moved society from the competitive to the monopolistic and imperialistic stage of capitalism, he did not consistently recognize the qualitatively different positions of imperialist and colonial territories. The general theory of imperialism as advanced by Lenin, and that presently being forwarded by others, suggests quite a contrary process. As one country enters an intense phase of industrialization, those countries which provide it with raw materials and manpower lose their relative strength. They are depleted in their productive capacity and of necessity become exporters of raw materials and fuel, importers of consumer products and surplus goods. Their economies are truncated, their talent drained off, and their political independence eroded. They are not on the road to industrialization, and they are not merely under-developed versions of industrial societies. ,• The Marxist ideology has been translated into slogans and actions by various groups in Canada over the present century. Of recent years, a number of

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Ideological Perspectives on Canada

Marxist scholars have attempted to update the theory: to deal, for example, with the implications of monopoly capitalism, with the modern uses of surplus, with the relationship between surplus production and wars. These theories are not, in general, expressed in the social movements of the Left, which continue to depend on the original source. Lenin's theory of imperialism has been updated at the level of more general ideology, and the more general application of it as briefly outlined here underlies much of the contemporary action among leftwing groups. In the following chapters, we will examine the analyses of society offered by these groups. We will reserve discussion of contemporary theories related to monopoly capitalism for the final chapter.

Classes in Industrial Society 6 7

CHAPTER 4 • NOTES 1 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, (1848), Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1972, pp. 30-31. 2 These brief descriptions of the Marxist position are based on the author's reading of Capital, edited by Frederick Engels, vol. 1, New York: International Publishers, 1967.1 have found useful the analysis of Anthony Giddens in Capitalism and Modern Social Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971, Parts 1 and 4. The dichotomous class theory is that of the Communist Manifesto rather than that of other works such as The Class Struggle in prance, 1848-1850, with the much-quoted introduction by F. Engels. The contrasts in these two perspectives are drawn by Stanislaw Ossowski in "The Marxian Synthesis" in Edward O. Laumann, Paul M. Siegle and Robert W. Hodge, The Logic of Social Hierarchies, Chicago: Markham Publishing Company, 1970, pp. 149-168. 3 Karl Marx, "Die moralisierinde Kritik und die kritische Moral" as quoted in translation by Ralf Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957, p. 11. 4 Stanislaw Ossowski, "The Marxian Synthesis" in Edward O. Laumann, Paul M. Siegel and Robert W. Hodge, The Logic of Social Hierarchies, Chicago: Markham Publishing Company, 1970, discusses the ambiguity pp. 152-154. 5

Karl Marx, Capital, (1887), edited by F. Engels, vol. 1, The Process of Capitalist Production, New York: International Publishers, 1967, especially Chapter XV "Machinery and Modern Industry." 6 Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966, especially Chapter 1. 7 V.I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1970, pp. 93-94. Quote from Die Neue Zeit XVI, I, 1898, S.304. 8

Ibid., especially Part VII, pp. 104-118.

9 Ibid., p. 119. 10 See, for example, Arthur K. Davies, "Canadian Society and History as Hinterland Versus Metropolis" in R.J. Ossenberg, Canadian Society: Pluralism, Change and Conflict, Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1971; Philip Resnick, "The New Left in Ontario" in D. Roussopoulbs, (ed.), The New Left in Canada, Montreal: Black Rose Press, 1970. While different language and different perspectives in other respects have been advanced by other writers, the same general view of Canada as a colony and as a part of an imperialist empire has been developed by George Grant, Lament for a Nation, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1965; Walter Gordon, yl Choice for Canada, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1966. Some of this material refers for evidence to the work of Harold A. Innis, The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History, revised edition, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1956, and, more recently, A.E. Safarian, Foreign Ownership of Canadian Industry, Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1966. H Andre Gunder Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969.

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12 This apt phrase was suggested by W.E. Willmott, U.B.C., in an exchange of memoranda regarding the crisis of employment for Canadians in Canadian universities, February, 1973. 13 For a sustained argument on the effects on culture of economic domination see Kari Levitt, Silent Surrender, Toronto: Macmillan, 1970. 14 W.W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth, A Non-Communist Manifesto, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960. 15 Karl Marx, Preface to the First German edition, Capital, edited by F. Engels, Vol. 1, New York: International Publishers, 1967, p. 8.

5 THE OLD LEFT Marxism has never appealed to any large segment of the Canadian population. Schumpeter appears to have been right in his judgment that the ideology of the bourgeoisie trickled down and was accepted as the ideology of the working class. One or another version of the class struggle, however, has been promulgated by small groups at various times. In an attempt to understand why the general theory did not appeal to any large numbers, it is useful to examine these small groups and occasions against the background of development of the labour force and of capitalism in Canada.

•i• Three-quarters of a century before the "New Left" emerged in Canada, workers in the mining and logging towns of British Columbia and the Atlantic provinces phrased their grievances in terms of a class struggle. During the late 1890s and the 1900s, several socialist parties were formed in various of the provinces, those in British Columbia being the most radical. Here one group demanded "the public ownership of all industries controlled by monopolies, trusts, and combines, and ultimately of all the means of production, distribution and exchange."1 "The Revolutionary Socialist Party of Canada proclaims itself the political exponent of the working class interests. It will deviate neither to the right nor to the left of the line laid down in its platform. "2 It elected two members to the B.C. legislature, one of whom had been a Liberal member who declared on leaving the Liberal Party that it did not believe in "class legislation." The peak for the socialists came in the election of 1909 where their party superceded the Liberal Party as the official opposition in British Columbia. The party paper exulted: "Wiping out of the Liberal Party cleared the field for a struggle to the death between the two extremes of capitalist society; capital on the one hand, dominant, aggressive and brutal; on the other, labour awakening from the lethargy of ages and determined to conquer its freedom from class rule and class exploitation." 3 The success was short-lived. By 1913, the party no longer had representation in the parliament, several leading trade union members had been ousted from the 69

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party and others had quit, and the movement was split apart by dissension. What was it that made the miners and loggers of the two coastal regions different from the Toronto tradesmen? Two conditions: isolation and the lack of a middle class. The effect of isolation has been studied in cross-cultural perspective by Clark Kerr and Abraham Siegel. They argue that: "The strike for the isolated mass is a kind of colonial revolt against far removed authority, an outlet for accumulated tensions, and a substitute for occupational and social mobility. "4 They found that workers in typically isolated conditions were very much more likely to engage in frequent and long strikes than workers in urban industries. The conditions of isolation are partly geographical, but they are, as well, social. The workers in strike-prone industries, according to Kerr and Siegel, form a homogeneous mass, undifferentiated in status, wealth, life-style; they share common grievances and are able to communicate these to one another. No other groups intervene, no buffer state exists between these workers and their employers. No likelihood or expectation of mobility compromises individuals, and there is no easy exit route. Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island, was a centre of radical activity at the turn of the century. It was also a two-class town: employers (some representing distant interests) and workers. The workers had all of the characteristics described by Kerr and Seigel. They were also the most vocal, the most violent, and the most likely to speak of their activities as a class struggle. It was these workers who supported the early socialist parties and the radical arm of the early trade union movement. The conditions of isolation did not long remain for large numbers of these workers. Immigration was constant, new industries were developed, urban centres became established to which these workers could move or where they could spend a few weeks from time to time. Professionals, merchants, skilled tradesmen, and families obscured the class divisions, offset the isolation, and dissipated the class identity of the workers. The two-class nature of Nanaimo and other similar towns disappeared. These coastal towns at the turn of the century were already dissimilar to the manufacturing areas of central Canada. There the transition from quasi-feudal society to liberal capitalism had already occurred. The appeals from B.C. to Toronto tradesmen to join their brothers in revolt made no impact. The conditions of the isolated towns had no parallel in Ontario, where a stratified society had been in existence for a very long time and where urban conditions and high immigration and emigration rates provided for a heterogeneous mobile work force. During the three decades at the end of the nineteenth century, emigration from Canada was greater than immigration. During the early part of the new century, immigration had its ups and downs while emigration continued steadily. Most of the emigrants left for the United States, where there were more jobs and

The Old Left 71 better salaries. The reasons for this situation go beyond our enquiry. They include the very slow development of manufacturing industries in Canada, a condition in turn developing out of the relatively small and widely dispersed population, the domination of capital markets by a "Family Compact," and the dependence of Canada on staples production for export trade. For present purposes, the immigration/emigration situation is important because it has a bearing on the lack of class consciousness amongst workers in the urban centres. The new manufacturing industries of the 1870s suffered from a lack of skilled labour. British workers, in high demand, would emigrate to Canada rather than the United States only if there were some advantages in doing so, and workers would stay in Canada only if the conditions of work were commensurate with those in the United States. The early trades union organizations, intended strictly for skilled workers in high-demand trades, took advantage of the shortage and the need. The legislature of 1872 provided the first bill allowing Trades Union organization after a very explicit recognition that the workers were essential to the growth of manufacturing. 5 The need for skilled workers in the manufacturing centres was matched by the need for unskilled workers in the outports, and for agricultural workers across the prairies. The unskilled workers were the mainstay of the labour force in the isolated towns; the skilled workers formed a hierarchy of occupational groups in the urban areas. However, the need for the skilled workers steadily increased and that for the unskilled decreased. Thus, in addition to the heterogeneous nature of the population in urban centres, and to the immediate need for particular skills, there was a general need for skilled workers which could absorb immigrants, migrants from rural areas, unskilled workers willing to learn a trade. The opportunities were considerable, and where they failed, emigration to the United States remained a possibility. Under such conditions of high mobility and labour demand, workers are unlikely to view themselves as oppressed even when they do view themselves as deprived. Deprivation can be cured by strikes for shorter hours and larger wages as long as employers are in need of workers. The workers in British Columbia continued to promote radical unionism throughout the early twentieth century, but their appeal was never widespread, and their successes were invariably short-lived.

.2. The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 is sometimes cited as a major class conflict. Kenneth McNaught, for example, has this to say of it: "...the Winnipeg strike was a most significant occurrence in Canadian history, if for no other reason than that it was the first and only time in Canadian history that a majority was split clearly into two opposing classes. "6

72 Ideological Perspectives on Canada Briefly, the history of the Winnipeg General Strike is this: employers in the building and metal trades in Winnipeg refused to negotiate with the Metal Trades Council, who took their case to the Winnipeg Trades and Labour Council. That body held a vote, and an overwhelming majority indicated their willingness to engage in a general strike. Some 30,000 workers, of whom 12,000 were not union members, walked off their jobs. These were supported by the Army and Navy Veterans' Associations, and sympathizers across Canada joined the strikers. In Vancouver, an equally long and massive strike was mounted. The Winnipeg Council fired their civic employees and eventually fired as well all but sixteen members of the Winnipeg police force who refused to sign an anti-strike agreement. A Winnipeg Citizens' Committee—composed of leading businessmen and professionals—organized a "special police force" and on the twenty-seventh day of the strike, clashes between this force and strikers turned into a riot. Employers in the metal shops offered some conciliatory proposals, and railway workers called for an end to the strike a month after it began, but at the same time strike leaders were arrested by federal authorities. A supporting parade for the strikers was organized, prohibited by civil authorities and interrupted by Mounties and special police. At least one person was killed, some thirty were injured. The Riot Act was read. Main Street was patrolled by soldiers with rifles, Mounties, and trucks with machine guns. The Union newspaper was banned. On the forty-second day of the strike, the Trades and Labour Council capitulated, and workers returned to their jobs. Newspapers of the time claimed that the arrested leaders were to be deported without trial. They were in fact tried on charges of "conspiracy to bring into hatred and contempt the governments of the Dominion of Canada and the province of Manitoba and to introduce a Soviet system of government." One was convicted and imprisoned for six years, five were imprisoned for one year, arid one was freed.7 The violence and duration of this strike make it a critical event in Canadian history, but more important, the workers who engaged in it included clerks and postal employees, transportation, telephone, electrical, railroad and telegraph employees, bread and milk delivery workers, restaurant and barber shop employees, firemen, and finally even policemen. This far-ranging support is what sets the Winnipeg strike apart from other industrial disputes. Interpretations of the strike were as opposed as the employers/government and the workers themselves. The first group, supported by most Canadian newspapers, declared it to be part of a Communist conspiracy: "There is no longer any doubt about it. Bolshevism has for certain planted its tent at Winnipeg. "8 (La Presse) "...Their avowed purpose is not shorter hours, or better working conditions, or the recognition of trades unions, but the

The Old Left 73 destruction of the present social system and the introduction of the Marxian form of political and industrial organization under which only manual workers would have any share in the government of the country and the community and in the ownership of the implements of industry. "9 (Globe and Mail) "...they oppose all bargaining, and are out to destroy the whole industrial, financial and governmental institutions of Canada, including the present system of labour unions...10 (Morning Leader) The strikers had a different interpretation. According to the strike leader, FJ. Dixon, the strike occurred because: "...the masters refused an eight-hour day and a larger hour wage, but chiefly because of the employers' refusal to recognize their union....Here we have the two vital causes of the strike: (1) a living wage, and (2) the right to organize. "H The strikers' interpretation was later supported by the Robson Commission, appointed to investigate the causes of the strike. The strike did not happen in a vacuum, and the context is important to our understanding of an event which seems to have no parallel in Canadian history. Part of the context was economic: inflation was making life difficult for all wage-earners. Part was political: conscription was introduced in 1917, and the federal government had developed a pattern of intervention in industrial disputes. Wartime profiteering created a great deal of hostility and brought into question many of the moral arguments that had induced the workers to engage in the war: "Is it patriotism to manufacture implements of war at scandalous pro fits?...Is it patriotism to speculate in the most vital part of the soldier's existence, that of foodstuffs?..."^2Beyond this, two patterns were evolving that greatly affected the trade union movement: (i) the membership was increasing rapidly throughout the closing years of the war and was growing in crafts and industries hitherto unorganized; and (ii) the split between Western radicals and the Trades and Labour Congress was coming to a head. The Congress had supported conscription against the Westerners and had refused to support the formation of "One Big Union": industrial unionism on a broad front as contrasted with many craft unions loosely joined in a federation. The One Big Union organizers kept alive the ideology of class struggle and did this with increasing hostility to the "conservative" craft unionists: "There is no hope for the worker in the arena of politics. The ruling class had corailed (sic) all the political machinery that there

74

Ideological Perspectives on Canada is for a democratic government. As they have treated the worker in the past they will treat him in the future....Only by the One Big Union can labour ever realize its solidarity and bring pressure to bear upon the exploiting class that will result in justice and a square deal for the workers. "^

The Union convention expressed in resolutions its acceptance of the principle of "Proletarian Dictatorship" and its support for the revolution in Russia. The One Big Union was not, in fact, responsible for the Winnipeg General Strike, 14 but it did give rise to fear among employers and to a heightened interest in industrial or at least industry-wide bargaining units among workers. The issue that sparked the strike was precisely this: the refusal of employers to recognize a federated body as the bargaining agent for a number of affiliated unions. Clearly industry-wide or industrial bargaining appeared as far greater threats to employers and governments alike in 1919 than crafts unions acting independently or with little formal alliance. The strike of a craft union, however inconvenient, could not cripple an economy or jeopardize a government; the general strike of all workers in an industry or all workers in several industries could do both as the Winnipeg Strike demonstrated. Yet the strikers did not take over the Winnipeg city government, let alone the provincial or federal governments; at the height of the strike, the only services they were able to handle were emergency food distributions. The Canadian historian D.C. Masters has argued cogently that government intervention in the Winnipeg strike was inevitable given the failure of the strikers to assume political control. 15 Those who share McNaught's interpretation of the strike argue that the failure of the strikers to take control signalled the conclusion of significant class action: that is, action that unambiguously had a class base and that its protagonists understood in those terms. The difficulty with this argument is that while the employers and newspapers labelled the strike as a class war, it is not at all clear that the workers saw it in those same terms. They claimed to be fighting for the right to organize and to strike and for better working conditions and wages. Such a struggle is not a proletarian revolution: it is rather a demand to be included, as workers, in the capitalist state. There is no evidence, apart from the claims of the One Big Union organizers and the fears of the editorial writers and parliamentarians, that the Winnipeg workers intended at any time to overthrow capitalism, take control, or attempt to set up a workers' society. Their failure to take control when it might have been possible (although, of course, that is a slim possibility, given the range of opposition forces across the country) seems to have its origins in a lack of motivation to do so. Again, an explanation for the acceptance of the political arrangements of capitalism seems to rest with an account of the developments in the labour force, in manufacturing, in wages, and in immigration patterns. Throughout the first half of the century, including the period of the strike,

The Old Left 75 roughly a quarter of the population in Canada at any one time consisted of immigrants. 16 The proportion of foreign-born was greater in cities than in rural areas. The largest groups of immigrants were British, and these were familiar with trade union activities. They expected the right to organize and to demand better wages, but at the same time, they came to Canada because there was more opportunity here than in their homeland. The opportunity was defined in terms of getting a decent job, being able to purchase a home, sending children to public schools. They were, in short, mobile and desirous of "getting ahead." These immigrants entered a rapidly changing labour force. In 1901, most workers in Canada were in unskilled occupations or in agriculture. By 1911, the drop in proportions in these areas was marked. Skilled workers were joined by an ever increasing number of workers in white-collar occupations and in service jobs. White-collar workers — managers, professionals, clerks, salesmen — were in high demand at the time of the Winnipeg strike. "Getting ahead" for many workers, immigrants and native-born, meant moving away from unskilled work and farms and becoming clerks, postmen, managers, salesmen. Thus the workers who went on strike were not those described by Marx. They were not losing their occupational status, or becoming ever more alike as unskilled labourers. They were, on the contrary, moving up, becoming more differentiated in skills, status, and authority. The increase in the number of distinctive skills and statuses within the industrial, urban labour force continued throughout the 1920s up to the depression. During these years, American capital began to support the development of manufacturing industries such as automobiles, utilities, synthetics, and electrical products. These industries required new skills, and the new skill groups did not have a history of unionization. Some of the old skill distinctions were breaking down, and as they did this, the attention of the workers was directed toward saving the remnants of their own trades rather than organizing others.17 Contrary to the Marxist prophecy, the skill changes did not bring about a general downgrading of labour. These facts appear to account for the failure of the Marxist ideology to take root amongst Canadian workers. The liberal ideology, in fact, with its emphasis on achievement, getting ahead, and private ownership was entirely congruent with the ambitions of workers and with their opportunities. In explaining the decline of union activity during the 1920s, Stuart Jamieson touches on this: "...the social climate and prevailing ideology of the times, with the idealization of 'free enterprise' and competitive individualism, were favourable to employers and hostile to unions. Employers in many industries were able to take advantage of the situation to launch a widespread attack on unionism. A nation-wide campaign for the1open shop' was given the appealing title of the 'American Plan.y The adoption of company unions was only one of a

Figure 2 PER CENT DISTRIBUTION OF LABOUR FORCE MAJOR OCCUPATION SECTORS, 1901-1961

Source:

Sylvia Ostry, The Occupational Composition of the Canadian Labour Force, 1961 Census Monograph, Ottawa, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, 1967, Chart 2, p. 10. Reproduced by permission of Information Canada.

The Old Left 77 panoply of anti-union tactics of the more belligerent kind, while a variety of policies classed under the term 'welfare capitalism9 had primarily the same objectives and similar effects. "18 Liberal party handouts and official platforms of both parties in the 1920s emphasized the welfare policies designed to "guard the home and protect the good name of Canada. "19.Some legislation was enacted to extend wage reforms to government employees and limit the control of monopolies (e.g., Combines Investigation Act). Such Acts were said to "provide protection for the great mass of the consumers against illegal business consolidations." 2° The government also reiterated a phrase that has since become a central core of the prevailing rhetoric: "Liberalism and the Liberal Party are founded on the principle of consideration for the rights and welfare of ALL people, not the interests of a privileged and powerful few.>>21 In a two-class system, the powerful few are easy to find. In a multi-class system, the spread of privileges obscures the existence of an elite. Even where its existence is recognized, the range of interest groups from top to bottom provides for a range of very different needs, and the elite becomes (from the point of view of those further down) just the most powerful in the hierarchy. The ideology of classlessness and government for the people may smother the cries of those under the heap, but for those in the intermediate and mobile middle class, it apparently makes more sense than the ideology of class conflict.

•3« Up to 1930, there was always employment of some kind. And there was emigration to the U.S. for those whose skills could bring higher prices there. The depression brought unemployment to both countries. Unemployed workers had never been organized. As the depression set in, there were violent strikes and encounters in several industries but the demands of the workers were only for those conditions from which they themselves could benefit: wages, hours, and union contracts. At the height of the depression some 20 per cent of the labour force had no work, and in spite of the much talkedabout welfare measures, welfare consisted of little more than Salvation Army soup line-ups. No level of government was prepared to cope with the vast numbers of families and homeless unemployed men. When the Communist Party attempted to organize the unemployed, the Conservative government of the day arrested eight Communist party officials and imprisoned them under Section 98 of the Criminal Code with the explanation that the unemployed workers were suffering from low morale and were "very susceptible to the contagion of Communist ideas and to the influence of subversive organizations." 22 The next

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year they established a system of work relief camps under military administration. The men were paid $1.00 per day of which they received 20 cents, the remainder going for their food and housing in isolated camps. In the spring of 1935, an estimated 4,000 men from the camps in British Columbia gathered in Vancouver to press for higher wages and abolition of military control. Although they had no success in pressing for these reforms, they kept the Vancouver police force busy for several weeks of demonstrations which culminated in the reading of the Riot Act and the provision of meal tickets to strikers for six days. But it required Federal Government action to change the conditions in the camps, and with numbers dwindling and no response from Ottawa politicians, an army of 1000 planned a "trek to Ottawa." Their numbers doubled between Vancouver and Regina where federal officials met them. The officials met them head on with enforcement from the RCMP and city police. The Regina riot was bloody and ended in the deaths and injuries of rioters, policemen and civilians. Seventy-six strikers were arrested, and those who were still able retired to the Exhibition Grounds in Regina under RCMP guard. Some of these were returned to Vancouver by the Saskatchewan government. The riot had brought no better wages, camp conditions, or civilian control. But as it happened, the economy began to regain its health and the numbers of unemployed declined. While the unemployed suffered the conditions of the military work camps in British Columbia, the prairies gave birth to a new political movement. In its early years, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation provided the most consistent counter ideology and by far the most articulate analysis of Canadian capitalism that any movement in Canada has produced. The CCF did not gain the support of a majority of the population even at its most successful period, but it was the strongest anti-capitalist group to emerge in Canada prior to the 1960s. It is instructive to examine in some detail the ideological development of the party. This begins with a cry of despair at the conditions of the depression. It softens to a whimper with the onset of the war and becomes a relatively polite request for reform before the war is over. Its development coincides with the improvement in economic conditions due to the growth in war industries and the re-employment of the population. Its members and leaders were intellectuals, social workers, lawyers, and clerics. Its leading spokesman was a Methodist minister, and his interpretation of Christianity informed and suffused the early programs. As a party, it steadfastly argued for parliamentary democracy and for reform within the democratic system, an argument that alienated the more radical socialists. Its strategists called themselves The League for Social Reconstruction, and they collectively wrote a long and scholarly analysis of the Canadian economy entitled Social

The Old Left 79 Planning for Canada. 23 Such a membership under such a title did not appear as the likely successor to the demagogues of the One Big Union and earlier labour movements, but they spoke in no less compromising tones: "...every CCF member should insist and understand that in no sense is the socialism of the CCF mere reformism, mere gradualism, or compromise with capitalism of any kind. A CCF government attaining power must proceed promptly, drastically, thoroughly to liquidate the power of capitalist forces and secure for the socialist party in control of the organs of the state the most ample assurance that capitalist interests could not sabotage, weaken or overthrow socialism..." 24 In the opening chapter of Social Planning for Canada, the authors observed that: "Peculiar to Canada as a new country is the slowness on the part of the majority of her citizens intelligently to diagnose the situation. The middle class optimism even of the disinherited groups, the lack of militancy in the trade union movement, the calm acceptance of the success psychology of individualism by the mass of the people, reveal the absence of a realistic analysis of our social structure. Less naive have been the attitudes and tactics of the privileged group. Behind a carefully controlled and manipulated press, our economic overlords have refurbished the fading illusions of individual independence and democratic freedom while they consolidated the control which completed the negation of these ideals. "25 The rest of the long book is a scholarly and probing analysis of the Canadian economy, its operation, its control, and its political system. The founding convention of the CCF in 1933 produced the Regina Manifesto. This clearly recognized the existence of a class society and dedicated the movement to its eradication. Twenty-three years later, at the Winnipeg Convention, a second declaration of principles spoke of the domination of an elite, but found that there was much room in the economy for private enterprise. Between the two declarations, the party had moved from a revolutionary to a left-liberal version of how society is structured, and its objectives had shifted from the replacement of capitalism to the reform of capitalism. Following are sections of the two manifestos: REGINA MANIFESTO: July, 1933 "Power has become more and more concentrated into the hands of a small irresponsible minority of financiers and industrialists

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Ideological Perspectives on Canada and to their predatory interests the majority are habitually sacrificed. When private profit is the main stimulus to economic effort, our society oscillates between periods of feverish prosperity in which the main benefits go to speculators and profiteers, and of catastrophic depression, in which the common man's normal state of insecurity and hardship is accentuated. We believe that these evils can be removed only in a planned and socialized economy in which our natural resources and the principal means of production and distribution are owned, controlled and operated by the people. "26

WINNIPEG DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES (1956) "...The CCF has always recognized public ownership as the most effective means of breaking the stranglehold of private monopolies on the life of the nation and of facilitating the social planning necessary for economic security and advance. The CCF will y therefore, extend public ownership wherever it is necessary for the achievement of these objectives. At the same time, the CCF also recognizes that in many fields there will be need for private enterprise which can make a useful contribution to the development of our economy. The co-operative commonwealth will, therefore, provide appropriate opportunities for private business as well as publicly owned industry. "27 While trade unions elsewhere had given birth to Socialist Labour alliances, the Canadian unionists, like their American brothers, did not support the CCF. The unions were affiliated with the American Federation of Labour (AFL) and tended to share its view that they should not take direct political action but should instead support whichever candidates were "friends to labour." The Trades and Labour Congress kept busy throughout the 1930s with its internecine fights over the status within the AFL of the Canadian Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO). The initial constitution of the CCF did not provide for the affiliation of unions, but a 1938 revision did not succeed in bringing in any enthusiastic response from organized labour. Nor was the lack of enthusiasm unidirectional. The unionists were widely regarded as "right-wing" conservatives, and the 1938 motion was bitterly contested by the teachers, church and social workers who led the movement.

The Old Left 81 The movement was generally intolerant of "mere reformers" in these early days. Its public statements bristled with condemnations of compromise with the capitalists. But if it was intolerant, so too was the general public, who, like many trade unionists, condemned its proselytizers as Bolsheviks and crackpots.28 The first and possibly the most remarkable reversal in the stance of the socialist movement was the adoption of support measures for Canada's participation in the second war. From an unambiguous condemnation—"We stand resolutely against all participation in imperialist wars. Canada must refuse to be entangled in any more wars fought to make the world safe for capitalism"29 — the National Council came to support Canada's entry when the vote was put forward to the 1939 Parliament. "Our opposition to the war was not on the ground that we are Socialists, but that we are Canadian Socialists....To brand the war as purely imperialist would imply that all the Socialists of Great Britain, France and Poland were completely wrong...."30 These were among the ambiguous explanations as the party shifted policy. Of this shift, Leo Zakuta in his analysis of CCF policies, argued that: "...the abandonment of pacifism was unquestionably a major turning point for the CCF. In so doing, it removed the largest barrier to its association with the world and for the first time, aligned itself with the over-whelming majority of Canadians against a common enemy. "31 Zakuta examines the national party statements to show a move from "conscription of wealth rather than manpower" to "no conscription of manpower without the conscription of wealth" and then to "conscription of wealth as well as manpower." He suggests that as the war progressed, providing as it did an external enemy as well as an upswing in the economy, the appeal of class conflict diminished.32 The second major shift in ideology for the CCF marked the upswing of its political fortunes and the transformation of a revolutionary movement into a reform party. In 1944, with the support now of trade unions and a large share of the electorate, and against a background that included the Liberal and Conservative parties championing welfare measures and a planned economy, the National Convention announced: "The socialization of large-scale enterprise...does not mean taking over every private business. Where private business shows no signs of becoming a monopoly, operates efficiently under decent working conditions, and does not operate to the detriment of the Canadian people, it will be given every opportunity to function, to earn a fair rate of return and to make its contribution to the nation's wealth."^ With the end of the war, the party's fortunes declined. The Liberal party, having reached its low point in popularity in the early stages of the war,

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hastened to adopt the reforms pressed on it from a popular left. Unlike earlier political parties of the left, the CCF, and later the New Democratic Party (an alliance of the CCF with the Trades Unions of 1961), became a permanent and significant political organization in Canada. But it did this as a reform party, not as a revolutionary movement.

The Old Left 83

CHAPTER 5 • NOTES 1

Martin Robin, Radical Politics and Canadian Labour, 1880-1930, Kingston, Ontario: Industrial Relations Centre, Queen's University, 1968, p. 41, quoting The Independent (Nanaimo, B.C.), May 24,1902. 2

Loc. cit.

3

Ibid., quoting L.T. English, Vancouver World, Dec. 11, 1909.

4

Clark Kerr and Abraham Siegel, "The Inter-Industry Propensity to Strike," in A. Kornhauser, et al. (Eds.), Industrial Conflict, N.Y.: Prentice-Hall, 1954. 5 H. C. Pentland, "A Capitalistic Labour Market," Canadian Journal of Economic and Political Science, XXV. no. 4. (Nov. 1959) 450-461 describes the development of a capitalist labour market in Canada. For accounts of the development of the trades-union movement see Charles Lipton, The Trade Union Movement in Canada, 1827-1959, Montreal: Canadian Social Publication, 1966, and Bernard Ostry, "Conservatives, Liberals, and Labour in the 1870's," The Canadian Historical Review, XLI, no. 2. (June, 1960), 93427. 6 Kenneth McNaught,yl Prophet in Politics, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1959, p. 99. ' This chronology is based on the account in Stuart Jamieson's history, Times of Trouble: Labour Unrest and Industrial Conflict in Canada, 1900-66, Task Force on Labour Relations Study No. 22, Ottawa: Information Canada, 1971, Chapter HI; and on A. Belawyder The Winnipeg General Strike, Toronto: Copp Clark, 1967. 8

La Presse, Montreal, May 19, 1919, quoted in Belawyder, Ibid, p. 16.

9 The Globe, Toronto, May 19, 1919, quoted ibid., pp. 16-17. 10

The Morning Leader, Regina, May 30, 1919, quoted ibid., pp. 16-17.

H K. J. Dixon's Address to the Jury, Winnipeg: Defence Committee, 1920, no. 6, quoted ibid., pp. 17-18. 12 Charles Lipton, The Trade Union Movement in Canada, 1827-1959, Montreal: Canadian Social Publications, 1966, p. 170, quoting Alphonse Verville, June 28, 1917 and June 29, 1917, in speeches in the House of Commons.

13 Western Labor News, editorial, April 25, 1919, quoted in Belawyder, op.cit., p. 13. 14 Jamieson, op.cit., pp. 175-176. 15 D. C. Masters, The Winnipeg General Strike, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1950, p. 112. 1" For a general review of the population growth, see W. E. Kalback and W. W. McVey, The Demographic Bases of Canadian Society, Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1971. 1'Jamieson, op.cit., describes these conditions in Chapter IV also with reference to the study of United States conditions during this period by Irving Bernstein, The Lean Years: A History of the American Workers, 1920-1933, Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books, 1966.

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Ideological Perspectives on Canada 1° Ibid., p. 194. Reproduced by permission of Information Canada. 19

See Liberal Speakers' Handbook, no. 17 (Sept., 1925) Ottawa: National Liberal Committee, pp. 11-12. The legislation in question was actually an anti-narcotics bill. 2Q

Ibid., no. 24 (Sept. 1925) p. 10.

21

Ibid., no. 17 (Sept. 1925), Part I, p. 4.

22

Jamieson, op.cit., p. 235, quoting Debates, House of Commons, 1934, II, 1523, and Final Report on the Unemployment Relief Scheme for the Care of Single Homeless Men Administered by the Department of National Defence, 1932-1936, Ottawa, 1937, vol. I, p. 1. Other works on the Relief Camps and riots are few, and scholarly study of this period is not well advanced. Jamieson includes excerpts from R. Liversedge, Reflections on the On-toOttawa Trek, Vancouver: Broadway Printers, no date, for a participant's view. Another, journalistic account, is given in W. Gray, The Winter Years — the Depression on the Prairies, Toronto: Macmillan, 1966. 23 Research Committee of the League for Social Reconstruction, Social Planning for Canada, Toronto: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1935. The writers were: Eugene Forsey, J. King Gordon, Leonard Marsh, J. F. Parkinson, F. R. Scott, Graham Spry, and Frank H. Underbill. The Methodist minister who wrote the foreword and played such a significant role in the early movement was J. S. Woodsworth. 24 Report of Executive to Ontario Provincial Convention, 1936, quoted in Leo Zakuta, A Protest Movement Becalmed, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964, pp. 37-38. ©University of Toronto Press, 1964. 25

Op.cit., p. 32.

2

^ Co-operative Commonwealth Federation Programme, adopted at First National Convention held at Regina, Saskatchewan, July, 1933, second paragraph. 27 Winnipeg Declaration of Principles of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation/Parti Social Democratique du Canada, 1956. 2

^ Zakuta, op.cit., chapter 2 for a description.

29

The Regina Manifesto, section 10.

30 Zakuta, op.cit., quotations from "Special Bulletin", Sept. 12, 1939, issued by the National Secretary. 31 Ibid., p. 55. 32 Ibid., p. 60. 33 Ibid., p. 61, statement issued by 8th National Convention, 1944.

6 THE NEW LEFT There is much in common between the conservative and the socialist ideologies. Both view social events as distinct phenomena different from the total collection of individual events and society as an entity greater than the sum of its individual parts. Both are concerned with the social responsibilities of individuals and with the rightful claims of society on its members. Both accept the reality of classes, both are opposed to the individualism, the greed, the materialism of the liberal society. "The Archbishop of Quebec deplored the system in which a worker was viewed as a production machine, devoid of human dignity or a soul, and where the company owners ignored the worker's responsibilities to God and to his family...."^ "The great condemnation of our system is that it makes an interest in 'things' the major interest to the almost complete exclusion of an interest in values. The basis of privilege is wealth , the creed of privilege is a belief in the making of money, the measure of human achievement is a monetary yardstick. "2 (League for Social Reconstruction). Their differences are, however, significant. The one argues that authority flows from God and thus establishes the eternal legitimacy of the hierarchical class society; the other argues that it flows from the people, which, taken to its logical conclusion, destroys the legitimacy of the hierarchy. Between them, liberals accept God in the name of the people, thus destroying by fiat both popular control and class rule. "Sovereign authority, by whatever government it is exercised, is derived solely from God....It is therefore an absolute error to believe that authority comes from the multitudes, from the masses, from the people, to pretend that authority does not properly belong to those who exercise it, but that they have only a simple mandate revocable at any time by the people. This error, which dates from the Reformation, rests on the false principle that man has no other master than his own reason.... "^ This was the word in Quebec as late as 1956. It was a message with a long history. Historians are of two minds about its origins. Officially it began with the Conquest, but there is a growing suspicion that it didn't really dominate Quebec before the twentieth century.4 Whichever turns out to be the truer case, there is little doubt about the overwhelming dominance of the Quebec version of 85

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Catholicism between 1900 and 1939. It was an ideology of pre-revolutionary France: authoritarian, feudal, conservative, and class-conscious. "At the present time there are two Frances, the radical France and the conservative France, the France of unbelievers and Catholic France, the France that blasphemes and the France that prays. The second France is our France. "5 The church defined competitive enterprise as evil, thus removing the French workers from the temptation to become more integral parts of the industrial world. At the same time it defined the authority structure as God-determined, thereby establishing the right of materialistic Anglo-Canadians to maintain their empire. In return for a careful policy of non-interference from the authorities, the Church ensured that its members in the industrial labour force would be passive. The workers had the right to demand a decent salary to feed a large family, but not more than this: "...the fundamental rights of workers include the right of freedom of conscience with respect to life, to moral surroundings, to the rest prescribed by God, to a salary adequate for a family as well as the right to organize into an association...."& The association in question was the Confederation des Travailleurs Catholiques du Canada (CTCC), organized by the Church. If the message needed clarification during the unemployment of the 1930s, special directives were sent out warning that the CCF was Communistinspired. The message of the Catholic Nationalist union was that: "...a Catholic cannot allow neutral unions because the latter consider all the problems of work as economic so that moral considerations do not enter into the solutions to these problems. They are guided only by self interest which does not always coincide with justice.... >f1 Unfortunately, there is difficulty in determining how much opposition to these views the Quebec people had or expressed. Judging from the extent of suppression, the frequency of reported brutality by police, the eruption of various little "sects" and pressure groups that seldom lasted as long as a year, there was, throughout the 1930s, a significant current of opposition. However, it was not until the war years and afterwards that the monolithic facade showed signs of cracking.

•i• Why did it last so long, this pre-capitalist ideology? How was it possible to maintain a conservative enclave within a liberal stronghold, even while the capitalist society was in daily contact with the French workers?

The New Left 87 According to some commentators, the Church, as a property-owner and major shareholder among the Corporate elite, was spreading the ideology of the ruling class through active suppression of all alternatives and a monopoly on the socialization institutions. According to others, the French workers simply lacked the skills to enter the industrial labour force and so succumbed to Church control. Both views can be accommodated with a third: the religious version explained the conditions of life to a colonial people, as liberalism did not. To begin with, it explained why there were two separate hierarchies in Quebec: that for the English-speaking, and that for the French. The explanation was a conquest. The Conquest of 1760 has earned a reputation in Canada that it scarcely deserves. The difference in population between the settlers of the New England states and those of New France, together with the vast differences in economic circumstances between the two groups, made the outcome of the war superfluous at any level other than symbolism. At that level, however, it was an important event. It clearly identified the enemy, and in ideology, it accorded him the rights of the victor. His ideology was inappropriate precisely because it was his. "What is crucial is Quebec's being a colony, not in the politicalgeographical sense of the term, but in the human, social and economic senses. It is an entity controlled from outside, a society which can act and decide only within limits circumscribed by the colonizer. "8 With no power, no mobility, no individual hopes for change, shared servitude, the religion of the collectivity made more sense of life than the religion of free enterprise. The Church was the instrument not only of the elite for keeping the colonials in hand, but also of the colonials themselves for maintaining their explanation of what they experienced. If the Church and its version of Catholicism was a two-edged sword, then we would expect it to suffer losses once the conditions experienced by a large number of adherents underwent marked change. And this, indeed, seems to be the case.

• 2» Elsewhere in Canada the war, prosperity, and employment renewed the faith in liberal progress. In Quebec, the same events gave rise to the second liberal rebellion (the first being the unsuccessful revolt of 1837). Thousands left the farms for manual work in the cities. It is estimated that the rise in the number of manual workers was greater than the increase over the entire previous century. Industrialization proceeded at a rate greater than that of Canada as a whole.9 As the impact of changed realities began to challenge the official interpretation, workers, clergy, intellectuals, and journalists began the search for a new explanation.

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Within the period of roughly 1945 to 1960, Quebec went through the process that the rest of Canada experienced between about 1830 and 1920. But with one difference: its economy was already dominated by an external elite, and its most obvious and evident opposition came not from that source but from the remaining supporters of the old regime. The search for new rules began, therefore, with condemnations, litanies of grievances, and strikes that failed to bring forth any strong class ideology because the industrial conflict was confused by the intermediary presence of the remaining church, the remaining authority in the form of the Union Nationale, and the remaining faith. The 1949 Asbestos Strike seems to have been the breaking point. This strike against the Johns Manville Company in the little town of Asbestos was a violent one and had the pattern of other strikes at earlier periods in both Quebec and other parts of Canada at those times and places where union development had been impeded. Police intervened on behalf of employers, strikebreakers were brought in, strikers were arrested and beaten even in their own homes. The Riot Act was read and strike leaders were arrested on conspiracy charges. Five months after it began, the strikers returned to work with a wage increase and the recognition of their union (the Catholic Confederation). Apart from its violence and the massive use of force by police, the remarkable feature was the sources of outside support received by the strikers. The most significant source was the clergy. Archbishop Charbonneau of Montreal used strong words in a sermon at Notre-Dame-de-Montre'alto express his support: "The working class is the victim of a conspiracy which wishes to crush it, and when there is a conspiracy to crush the working class, it is the duty of the Church to intervene. "We wish social peace, but we do not wish the crushing of the working class. We are more attached to man than to capital. This is why the clergy has decided to intervene. It wishes that justice and charity be respected, and it desires that more attention cease to be paid to financial interests than to the human factor."^ Students, journalists, and other workers supported the strikers, and support from both Catholic and international trade unions provided the strikers with living funds over the long period. One year after this strike, the bishops of Quebec issued new directives on the relations between employers and employees: "This document was a landmark in the development of social thought in Quebec...."^ was the judgment of historian Mason Wade. The document recognized, as no earlier act had done, that Quebec had become and would remain an industrial society.

The New Left 89 Le Devoir, La Presse, and Le Standard had openly published accounts of the Asbestos strike in 1949, which allowed a reading public to know of the workers' situation. During the 1950s, these established papers continued to exercise a previously unknown degree of press freedom. Radio, television, and a National Broadcasting System under Federal control completed the overthrow of monopoly control on the thoughts of the nation. Universities became places of political debate, and Cite Libre was established. A group of intellectuals, journalists, and trade unionists of liberal and socialist persuasion gathered together to devise a strategy to oust the Duplessis government. All of this activity held a theme of liberalism—free speech, freedom to organize, the legitimacy of private pursuits, freedom of religion, and freedom to engage in trade were the components of the revolutionary ideology. While the main thrust of the movement was an attack on the traditional ideology of the church, the elite, and the corrupt politicians, the models for reform appeared as Ottawa and the United States. Repression did not abruptly end any more than it had in 1837. Sir Bond Head had his parallels in 1957, and they were more openly ruthless in opposing reform. But in the long-run, the gulf between reality and ideology could be bridged only by an ideology that made sense of changed circumstances. In 1960, the Liberal Government was elected. The educational system was overhauled, a middle-class bureaucracy was developed, and the State actively intervened in the economy with the nationalization of electric power. It should be understood that we are not here arguing that the liberal ideology did in fact take into account all of the "realities" of the Quebec situation, any more than it did or does now of the economic realities elsewhere in Canada. What it did, rather, was explain those realities that people could see, feel, experience: it established goals that were obtainable, addressed itself to problems people lived with, redefined the world in a way that seemed indeed to coincide with the world of daily activity. It was an ideology for urban workers on the way up, an ideology for those who were receiving salaries and buying houses and supporting students, an ideology for industrialized people who were no longer so sure where the classes began and where they ended. Liberalism is a useful ideology for a large middle class, for urban workers, white-collar workers, skilled craftsmen, technicians, professionals. But to maintain its dominance, it must provide either the reality or a very successful illusion of unlimited mobility. Elsewhere in Canada, partly because the United States could always absorb the talented with no place to go in Canada, the illusion and to some extent the reality have been maintained. It is only since the publication of Walter Gordon's book, A Choice for Canada, and the Task Force Reports on concentration of control and foreign domination, that knowledge of the extent of foreign control has become public property. It is still only the property—the mental experience—of a minority in the English-speaking population. In Quebec, the barriers to the top were always apparent. Under the corporate theology, the barriers were explained: they were established by the

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collective enemy. Under the liberal ideology, their continued existence begs further justification. Liberalism came under attack almost before it became established in Quebec, and sooner than in English-speaking Canada. By 1970, the attacks in the various forms of separatism, nationalism, socialism, and creditist ideologies were creating a lively and sometimes vicious debate. The latter half of the 1960s and the first part of the 1970s are perhaps too close for understanding. How the events are interpreted depends on which version of the liberal society one takes.

"3" The perceptive French-Canadian sociologist, Hubert Guindon, argued in 1964 that the liberal regime was giving rise to a bureaucratic class employed largely within the public sector. The political power of this class and its upward mobility did not match its growing economic wealth and expectations. Control rested with the same old elites, and the Anglo-Canadian directors and managers were all too apparent as they blocked the way to this growing class of professionals and bureaucrats. It was this class, in Guindon's opinion, that sponsored separatism: "Separatist leaders as well as their rank and file are to be found among the better-educated y younger, professional and semiprofessional, salaried, white collar ranks. This class constitutes the core of its support. The nature of separatist grievances also underlines its class bias. Separatist discontent, in the final analysis, boils down to protest against real or imagined restricted occupational mobility. The objects of separatist indictment are the promotion practices of the federally operated bureaucracies, of Crown and private corporations. This class bias is also the reason why the separatist appeal has gone by largely unheeded by the rural classes and the lower social strata of the cities. "12 A year later, the same theme was developed by Charles Taylor: "I have maintained that the new nationalism...is mainly a middleclass phenomenon, largely the creation of what I have called the intelligentsia, that its roots are to be found partly in the situation of this class, competing for promotion and careers in a modern economy which is in origin and stamp largely AngloSaxon....Nationalism has little intrinsic appeal to classes lower in the social order, worker or peasants; it appeals only when it is linked with the solution of deeply felt economic ills...."13 It was the Creditiste Party that appealed to the rural population, and especially to the rural working class. In an extensive study of the Creditiste

The New Left 91 Movement, Maurice Pinard has shown that this was a protest of those who were excluded from the new regime, against the liberals, the middle classes, the elites, but not specifically against the foreign elites and not a movement that could be mobilized by the middle classes in that direction. Nor was this an ideological rejection of liberalism as a philosophy. Pinard argues that it was a pragmatic protest against the new establishment by those who were dispossessed.14

• 4« The separatist movement was but partially embodied in the Parti Quebecois (PQ) of the late 1960s. It split into several different ideological camps, one of which particularly concerns us. Suppose we interpret events in another way. Suppose we argue that what really happened in Quebec with the Quiet Revolution was that the needs of the real corporate elite (American corporations) had changed. From using Quebec solely as a source of raw materials and cheap labour, they had moved toward the development of a middle class of consumers. Their labour needs, likewise, had shifted from illiterate and unskilled workers to educated bureaucrats capable of staffing the middle administrative ranks of industries, providing the engineering skills at the lower levels, and selling the goods in Quebec. Behind the Church at all times had been the Anglo-American industrial interests, and during the heyday of the old regime, the class composition of Quebec suited those interests. With the developments in American industry since the Second World War, it no longer suited them. It was in their interests to get rid of a regime based on moral and physical coercion, and to establish one based on a paid labour force with a well-developed taste for American consumer products. A conscious elite can manipulate a front. In an age of mass-produced and ready-made goods and services, real differences are camouflaged. Real differences in power can be camouflaged, too, by the vast battery of intermediaries in modern bureaucracies. If the front is successful, the elite should enjoy unchallenged power. Of course, if they're seriously challenged, if their ownership of social and natural resources is questioned, then they will have to use force just as their predecessors used force. But ideology is the superior weapon, an ideology that is so widely shared it needs no reenforcements. The dominant ideology, then, is that best suited to the maintenance of the dominant class, maintained by the manipulation of conditions experienced by the majority. This is the perspective of the New Left in Quebec. Here is how one of their most widely read writers in the muck-raking tradition explains the situation: "The role played by the former Negro-Kings, Duplessis and the Clergy, was not useful enough to our colonizers, American and English-Canadian capitalists, in the modern system of exploitation. The requirement was no longer a Negro-king preaching hard

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Ideological Perspectives on Canada work and an austere existence, but a Negro-king who could make the Quebecois people believe that they had to work hard and live extravagantly. That is, that they had to consume, and consume. Therefore, a new elite was needed, a liberal lay elite who would adopt and preach the American way of life, gradually Anglicizing the Quebecois to make them into 'real' Canadians—in other words, second-rate Americans who are submissive producers and servile consumers for American imperialism."^*

Among the tools used by such an elite, in the opinion of Leandre Bergeron, are social insurance funds to appease popular discontent, ensure that the population would act as consumers, and prevent different sectors from recognizing their common slavery to the American system. Another tool is the nationalization of electricity—not to give ownership to the people of Quebec, as we might thinkbut to ensure that American industries have a planned source of energy. "Electricity is another service the state offers to industry, just like the roads it builds."16 In addition, they used democracy. Says Bergeron of the 1970 election in which the Liberals were returned after a four-year interlude with the final gasps of the Union Nationale: "The Quebecois were slowly learning that bourgeois democracy is bourgeois dictatorship; and that any contest for power that follows the rules of those who will not relinquish it is as predictable as a stacked deck of cards. "17 This view is shared by a vocal and literate but unknown number of students, writers, and trade unionists. Their analyses, all based on the imperialist theme, run through the pages of many monographs published by the numerous radical movements of the late 1960s and shibboleths and slogans of the street-fighters. For English readers, the theme runs through the pages of such magazines as The Last Post. ^ The common theme here is that the Anglo-Canadian elite in Quebec and in the rest of Canada is a puppet show manipulated by and shielding American monopoly capitalist power. Separation only from Canada is therefore no solution; rather, complete separation from the American orbit, from capitalism is needed. The proponents of this revolutionary ideology are particularly opposed to the Parti Quebecois. It, too, represents the interests of bourgeois democrats, and it deflects the anger and awareness of the workers. When the FLQ, representing the desperate arm of the working class, proclaimed in its Manifesto of the October crisis that it wanted a complete change, it meant the overthrow of capitalism in Quebec: "The FLQ wants the total independence of Quebecers, reunited in a free society forever purged of its clique of voracious sharks, the patronizing big bosses and the lackeys who make Quebec

The New Left 93 their protected domain of cheap labor and exploitation. "19

unscrupulous

•5» In a closely argued analysis of the varying threads of ideology in Quebec, two French sociologists, Bourque and Laurin-Frenette, have identified a double-sided bourgeois class.20 The first of these is what they call the "technocrats": French-speaking, well-educated, and technically competent managers who are concentrated in the public sector. The second they call the "neo-capitalist" faction: entrepreneurs, financiers, and executives engaged in private corporations and engaged in the tasks of property ownership and control. This group is small. These two groups combined, in the view of these authors, to push through the reforms of the early 1960s, but their interests are not identical. One faction seeks state intervention in the economy, and greater national (Quebec) control of the economy. The liberal slogan of 1970,"Maitres chez nous,"is their slogan, and it represents their interests. The enemy is the English-speaking elite. The neo-capitalist faction, while supporting the technocrats in such areas as educational reform, economic planning councils, the creation of new industries, the development of a bureaucratic class, reforms in the Federal civil service and government, stops short of repatriation. Nationalism is not in the interests of international capitalism. These authors argue that the rural class is reactionary in the sense that it does not identify with the interests of the majority middle class and does not benefit from most of the reforms that have been implemented. On the contrary, it has lost its social institutions, its security, and is not sharing in the new prosperity. It will vote Creditiste, Parti Que'becois, or Liberal almost indifferently, according to whichever party properly exploits its discontent and promises solutions. The working class remains divided. While some segments of the trade unionists are militant (as represented in the "Common Front" tactics of the CNTU in a strike against La Presse in 1971, and the CNTU document "There Is No Future for Us in the Present Economic System"), many are trying to find a way of fitting in to the capitalist state and sharing in the distribution of goods and services. Voting for the Parti Quebecois is one such response and voting Liberal is another. Since both parties represent liberal interpretations of the Quebec situation, the difference is one of popular appeal, leadership, and varying positions on the proper degree of Quebec control of her economy.

• 6» English-speaking Canada has been an economic satellite of the United States for

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half a century; indeed, some might argue that the condition was conceived with Confederation and came of age with the building of the railroads. From time to time, she has protested, and she has on several notable occasions resisted outright annexation, preferring the gentler variety of foreign domination. There have been occasional writers who protested at length, and often articulately. But it was not until the 1960s, and even the late 1960s, that any significant segment of the population attacked the giant. Like the French-Canadian protest against its dual domination, the EnglishCanadian protest is carried by intellectuals, professionals particularly in the media and universities, and a very few trade unionists. Like the French technocrats, these are the people whose mobility is blocked by American academics in universities, by the American stranglehold on publication distribution and sale, and by American international trade union control of the labour movement. Like French nationalism, this has two different characters: one, a simple anti-American response, enhanced by the Viet Nam opposition and ridicule of the Nixon Watergate scandal; two, an attack on monopoly capitalism. It may be argued, as it is so often argued for the French-Canadian variety and as we've suggested above, that this is mainly an upper middle-class nationalism, an ideology born of blocked aspirations and over-sized expectations. As in Quebec, it does not represent the aspiring working class nor what is left of the rural class. Furthermore, it is contrary to the interests of the English "neocapitalists"—the British elite—in exactly the same way as it is contrary to the interests of the French elite. The differences between the two populations are (i) that the French have two colonial masters, the English-speaking population has only one; (ii) the French can identify their masters all the more easily because they have a distinctive culture and language. These have been nurtured, perversely enough, by the same forces that were overthrown with the Quiet Revolution of the early 1960s. And (iii) the Corporate society from which the French have so recently emerged defined the world in class terms. They do not have the century of forgetfulness against which the class analysts of English-Canada must struggle. Their nationalism, their class analyses, their awareness of the situation are all the more acute for these differences, but the society they analyse and the class version of it that the militant arm proclaims is essentially the same as that proposed by "the New Left" in the rest of Canada. It is in the writings of the revolutionaries that French- and Englishspeaking Canadians are of one voice. English-speaking political analysts begin with Quebec and quickly recognize the extension of the problem to the rest of Canada: • «T rudeau fry fa insecure intransigeance ensures the deepening crisis, not of liberalism only, but of Canada. One might add—of Canada constructed on the rickety base of the colonial BNA Act, and on the corrupt and corroded fundament of private-corporate capital, and on the irremediably 'unequal union' of two nations, embedded in a social matrix that is obsolete. "21

The New Left 95 For English-speaking Canada, there were several landmarks: the Park and Park analysis of Big Business,22 the Watkins Task Force Report on Foreign Ownership,23 the Economic Council Report on takeovers of Canadian firms,24 and Walter Gordon's defection from the Liberal position. There was no FLQ, no widespread ferment, no violence, no test, and no October crisis. The high point of the national debate came with the "Waffle Resolution" to the NDP convention of 1969. The resolution was, in fact, moderately stated. It is quoted here at length because it embodies an ideology strongly held by the more militant societies in both cultures of Canada: RESOLUTION 133 "...The major threat to Canadian survival today is American control of the Canadian economy. The major issue of our times is not national unity but national survival, and the fundamental threat is external, not internal.... "...American corporate capitalism is the dominant factor shaping Canadian society. In Canada American economic control operates through the formidable medium of the multi-national corporation. The Canadian corporate elite has opted for a junior partnership with these American enterprises. Canada has been reduced to a resource base and consumer market within the American empire.... "...The American empire is held together through worldwide military alliances and by giant corporations. Canada's membership in the American alliance system and the ownership of the Canadian economy by American corporations precluded Canada's playing an independent role in the world. These bonds must be cut if corporate capitalism and the social priorities it creates is to be effectively challenged. "Canadian development is distorted by a corporate capitalist economy.... The problem of regional disparities is rooted in the profit orientation of capitalism.... An independence movement based on substituting Canadian capitalists for American capitalists, or on public policy to make foreign corporations behave as if they were Canadian corporations, cannot be our final objective.... Without a strong national capitalist class behind them, Canadian governments, Liberal and Conservative, have functioned in the interests of international and particularly American capitalism, and have lacked the will to pursue even a modest strategy of economic independence. "Capitalism must be replaced by socialism, by national planning of investment and by the public ownership of the means of production in the interests of the Canadian people as a whole. Canadian nationalism is a relevant force on which to build to the extent that it is anti-imperialist....

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"English Canada and Quebec can share common institutions to the extent that they share common purposes. So long as the federal government refuses to protect the country from American economic and cultural domination, English Canada is bound to appear to French Canadians simply as part of the United States. An English Canada concerned with its own national survival would create common aspirations that would help to tie the two nations together once more.... "^ The Waffle Manifesto was rejected by the NDP. In its place the "Marshmallow Resolution" was adopted. This decried American foreign domination but omitted the analysis of capitalism. Said David Lewis, the leader of the party: "We have made that decision...not for any narrow chauvinism, not for any arid nationalism, not for any ideological nonsense. We made that decision because of our conviction that unless Canada is free economically, it will not be free politically...."^ With this statement, the differing conceptions of Canada as well as of its future were underlined. The revolutionary definition was still not that of the majority, not even of the majority of socialists in Canada. Walter Gordon, a former Liberal Member of Parliament and Finance Minister, is one of the leading voices for the reform movement. "...more and more of us are realizing that we have become free of the British only to become a satellite of the United States...."?! It is this movement that Canadians support, just as it is the Parti Quebecois and the Liberals of "Maitres chez nous" that the Quebecois support. This is the movement that attracts students, workers, journalists, and office-workers. It coincides with the Canadian reaction to the American role in Viet Nam, to the apparent corruption of American governments and business. It is not, however, a rejection of government, state, or business, and it is not an appeal to class consciousness. As in Quebec, it is an ethnic appeal: we are Canadians, we should own our own house. This movement is unwelcome to some liberals and still unwelcome to those who dominate the business world and lead the Liberal party, as is evident in the rift between Gordon and his colleagues, in the defeat of Gordon's policies at the Liberal Conference of 1966 in Alberta. But as reform movements go, this one has had growing success. One of its manifestations is the election of liberalleft governments in several of the provinces, and growing pressure on the Federal Government to alter its policies on energy resources and corporation taxes. Another is the formation of various independence movements across the country, sharing the views of the Parti Quebecois. The common theme is an independent Canada: but a liberal one, and one still safe for capitalism. The theme finds its way into such non-revolutionary appeals as this, by the former leader of the B.C. Liberal Party:

The New Left 97 "The Columbia River Treaty represents too much of what has been wrong with Canada for it to be dismissed today with a federal shrug. It was one of Canada's greatest negotiating disasters and represents what a continental energy policy should not be. That is a policy where Canada provides the resource, commits the land, suffers the ecological damage, and in the end finds that politicians have allowed it to be sold for a fraction of its true value. The real test of new political values is the determination to seek renegotiation of one-sided arrangements of which the Columbia River Treaty is a prime example. "28 The statements of the New Left do not persuade the population, but they do influence its thinking. Though the more radical often express contempt for piece-meal reforms, their strongly worded attacks create reformers. Those who do not share their views seek ways of overcoming their complaints. Here is an analysis of both the situation presented by the separatists in Quebec and the reforms required to modify it, given by a liberal social scientist to the House of Commons in 1971: "...We have witnessed a rising tide of dissent against the established order. Indeed, it would be inconceivable to speak of the crisis of Canadian federalism without mentioning that other crisis which, perhaps more radically, is shaking the very foundations of Canada's socio-political order....The challenge is no longer directed against federalism alone: the socio-political system itself is being questioned....It is therefore necessary, in the attempt to reform the structure and operation of the Canadian political system, to strive for a fairer socio-political order for all sectors of the population and all regions, and for the pre-conditions of genuine participatory democracy, as well as for a new modus operandi between the two main cultural groups, and between Quebec and the rest of the country.... "29

•7» Some facts are clear: ownership of Canadian industry is increasingly concentrated, and control by American corporations is increasing. Two-fifths of all Canadian industry is controlled by foreigners and four-fifths of industry in Quebec is controlled by American and Anglo-Canadians. There is poverty in the midst of affluence; there is unemployment in the midst of a highly productive economic system; there is an enormous gulf between the investing class and the welfare class. Those who control (but not necessarily own) the means of production remain those who make the vital decisions of the society. The bulk of the population consists, if employed, of wage-labourers; ever fewer are self-

98 Ideological Perspectives on Canada employed, and in such institutions as universities where some independence once existed, the professionals are signifying their recognition of their status as workers by joining unions.30 Why, then, does the Marxist ideology not prevail amongst the working class? The Marxists provide their explanation: the ruling class ideology is disseminated by the ruling class through the media and schools, and alternative versions are systematically stifled. An additional explanation is termed "false class consciousness"—the identification of an urban middle class with its employers, induced through a system of rewards and false promises. But if the argument in Chapter One is valid—that an ideology may be that of a ruling class, but its success depends on its ability to explain the daily circumstances of others to themselves—then these reasons are inadequate. They may be true, but they are not adequate. Marx predicted the steady impoverishment of the working class and the loss of skill differentiation amongst its members. What has occurred, instead, is an increase in the numbers of workers who are steadily employed, and who are employed in white-collar and lower managerial positions. The kinds of skills which were disappearing a century ago have been replaced not by unskilled labour but by a hierarchy of entirely new skills. Although the workers are not affluent, as is the financial class, and although a larger number of wage-earners in the same family are earning the same relative total income as they were before the second war, the overall conditions of the working class are not accurately described as impoverishment. Workers find it ever more difficult to purchase private homes, but they are able to eat nourishing meals, their children are able to obtain at least several years of education, some of their children do proceed to universities and obtain scholarships or government loans for their education, and automobiles and television are common possessions. Although on the assembly line, workers are in constant contact with one another and have common grievances, they are not in general isolated, and their total lives are not shared in common. Once off the line, they have contacts with numerous others whose positions in the overall social structure are different. They do not form a homogeneous mass. The working middle class is mobile. Its upper regions are becoming affluent, and their affluence is being used to purchase a never-ending array of consumer goods and services. They have not needed to invest, to scrimp, to build an empire in order to live well. Why indeed should they concern themselves about the long-term defects of monopoly capitalism? That is simply not a reallife experience for them, and their ignorance is compounded by a studied absence of information on the economic structure in their schools. Batik, group therapy, and basket-weaving, not to mention keep-fit classes at the *Y' and the children's ballet lessons, deflect the boredom as well as the occasional hostility to red tape, bureaucracy, and pointless office work. The popularity of astrology, novel forms of psychotherapy, and manipulated sexual encounters all attest to the pervasiveness of the "do your own thing—you're the only one who counts" philosophy.

The New Left 99 "Tell me, God, who am I?" is the quest of our time, and it leaves little room for discovering the class structure within which not only one's identity but one's relationship to others are anchored. Civil rights for individuals are important in this framework; civil rights for classes cannot be seriously discussed since classes are invisible. Individualism as a creed provides an explanation for differences in wealth and status: we make it on our own, and deserve what we get. The class thesis proposes a different explanation, and for a middle class in transit, whose education still provides it with supervisory jobs, the class thesis does not describe a life experience. At the same time, ethnic nationalism can appeal to such a class. It touches their collective pride and impinges on their personal identities. The marginal class at the bottom of the Canadian social structure is not an organized class. It is not , for the most part, represented in any unions, including the internationals, and its interests are not those of the skilled workers who are steadily employed. It consists of unskilled workers with little education, women and particularly women who are raising families on their own, old people—of whom a disproportionate number are also women, young people trying to enter the labour force, and families whose parents simply cannot find work. It includes a disproportionate share of Indians, Metis, and French Canadians, and a disproportionate share of residents of the Atlantic region and of other regions which have not shared in the prosperity of post-war Canada. Do these people see their situation in class terms? It seems most unlikely that they do, or even that they see themselves as having anything in common. The young still expect to get ahead if they can just get into the mainstream, and they do not see their position as similar to that of the aged. The elderly who are poor are not members of senior citizen's groups which take jaunts around the countryside: they stay alone in rented rooms, bewildered by a world that cannot see them and grateful when the pension cheque arrives. The others, when they find one another and discover their common complaint, tend to define their poverty in terms of their other characteristics: their regions, their ethnicity, their sex. They want in to the system, not out of it. They do not see themselves as being exploited. They see rather that they are not being used. The sophisticated analysis of a Mel Watkins, even the crude handbook style of Leandre Bergeron provide no means of entry. They ask for jobs, for steady incomes, for welfare, and for community: these are not the cries of a conscious class. As to nationalism: what difference does it make who owns the factory if I have no job?

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CHAPTER 6 • NOTES 1 Henry Milner and Sheilagh Hodgins Milner, The Decolonization of Quebec, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973, p. 109; translations and synopsis of passages from Jean Hulliger, L'Enseignment Social d'Eveques Canadiens de 1891-1950, Montreal: Editions Fides, 1958. 2 Research Committee of the League for Social Reconstruction, Social Planning for Canada, Toronto: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1935, p. 37. 3 Pierre Trudeau, "Some Obstacles to Democracy in Quebec" in Federalism and the French Canadians, Toronto: Macmillan, 1968, pp. 103-123, at p. 110; quoting radio station CBF program, "Prieres du Matin: elevations matutinales," June 20, 1956. 4 For discussion of this see Fernand Dumont and Guy Rocher, "An Introduction to a Sociology of French Canada" in Marcel Rioux and Yves Martin, French-Canadian Society, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1968, vol. 1, pp. 178-200, esp. pp. 188-197. 5 Marcel Rioux, Quebec in Question, Toronto: James Lewis and Samuel, 1971, p. 60, quote from Thomas Chapais,Discours et converences, Quebec, 1908. 6 Milner and Milner, op. cit., p. 120, translation and quote from Gilles Laflamme, L'Education Syndicale a la Confederation des Syndicats Nationaux, M.A. thesis, Laval University, 1968, p. 30. 7 Ibid., p. 120. 8 From The Decolonization of Quebec by Henry Milner and Sheilagh Milner reprinted by permission of the Canadian Publishers, McClelland and Stewart Limited, Toronto. 9 Albert Faucher and Maurice LaMontagne, "Economic Structure and Social Stratification" in M. Rioux and Y. Martin, op. cit., p. 267. 10 Mason Wade, The French Canadians 1760-1967, Toronto: Macmillan, 1968, vol. II, pp. 1109, quoting Le Devoir, 2 Mai 1949. 11 Ibid., p. 1109. The document was: Le Probleme ouvrier en regard de la doctrine sociale de I'eglise, Quebec, 1950. 12 Hubert Guindon, "Social Unrest, Social Class, and Quebec's Bureaucratic Revolution," Queen's Quarterly, LXXI (Summer, 1964), 150-162. 13 Charles Taylor, "Nationalism and the Political Intelligentsia," Queen's Quarterly, LXXII (Spring, 1965), 167-68. 14 Maurice Pinard, The Rise of a Third Party, Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1971. 15 Leandre Bergeron, The History of Quebec, A Patriote's Handbook, Toronto: New Canada Publications, 1971, p. 217. 16

Ibid., p. 217.

W Ibid., p. 229.

The New Left 101 18 Last Post articles have been brought together, edited by Robert Chodos and Nick Auf der Maur, as Quebec: A Chronicle 1968-1972, Toronto: James Lewis & Samuel, 1972. 19 FLQ Manifesto, as quoted in Vancouver Province, Oct. 9, 1970, p. 2. 20 Gilles Bourque and Nicole Laurin-Frenette, "Social Classes and National Ideologies in Quebec, 1760-1970," translated by P. Resnick and P. Renyi from an original article published in Socialisme Quebecois, no. 20, 1970, in Gary Teeple (ed.) Capitalism and the National Question in Canada, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973, pp. 186-210. (c) University of Toronto Press, 1973. 21 Stanley B. Ryerson, "Quebec: Concepts of Class and Nation," in Teeple, op. cit., pp. 212-227. 22

L. C. and F. W. Park, Anatomy of Big Business, Toronto: Progress Books, 1962.

2

3 Report of the Task Force on Foreign Ownership and the Structure of Canadian Industry, Privy Council Office, Ottawa, January 1968. 2

4 Grant L. Reuber and Frank Roseman, The Take-Over of Canadian Firms, 1945-61, prepared for the Economic Council of Canada, special study no. 10. Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1969. 25 "The Waffle Resolution, October 1969" in Dave Godfrey (ed.), Gordon to Watkins to You, Toronto: New Press, 1970, pp. 103-108.

26 Ibid., debate at National Convention, N.D.P., p. 114. 27 Ibid., Walter Gordon's statement at University of Alberta, Edmonton, November 27-29, 1969, pp. 120-125. Mr. Gordon advocated a 30 per cent take-over tax as a deterrent to foreign investors. When asked in the House of Commons by T. Douglas (NDP) whether the Government was considering such an action, Mr. Benson (Liberal Minister of Finance) replied: "I will consider this to about the same degree as my hon. friend is considering the suggestions of Mr. Watkins." 28 Patrick McGeer, editorial, "The View from B.C.: The Great Columbia Giveaway," Maclean's, June, 1973, p. 12. 2 9 Leon Dion, "Quebec and the Future of Canada," in Dale C. Thomson (ed.), Quebec Society and Politics: Views from the Inside, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973, pp. 251-263, at p. 253. Original text was presented in French as a brief to the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and of the House of Commons on the Constitution of Canada, March 30, 1971.

30 The teachers in Quebec were the first to organize, and the movement had spread to British Columbia by 1974.

7 IDEOLOGY AND SOCIAL CHANGE We have argued throughout this book that the liberal ideology is a dominant theme in our collective Canadian life. It includes the assumptions of a competitive economy, the separation of government and economic institutions, equality of condition and opportunity, the homogeneity of the population in terms of wealth and power, and the independence and sovereignty of nation states. We have suggested that while these assumptions can be faulted on the evidence available, such evidence is not common property, is not visible to a large section of the population, and can, in any case, be dismissed with various historical and cultural explanations. At the same time, the Marxist framework, while accounting for many of the features of economic society that are omitted in the liberal explanation, fails at the popular level to account for the affluence, skill differentiation, ranks of authority, and independent decisions by a judiciary or independent actions by academics and journalists: in short, fails to account for the persistence of a working class that is not impoverished and degraded. Above all, it does not provide the approval for this class, nor a ready rationale for its actions. It brushes aside the differences between this class and those workers and the unemployed who are at the bottom of the ladder; it ridicules the integrity of this class when it attempts reforms; it refuses to recognize the claims of such workers on their employers and on governments. The persistence of the liberal ideology reflects the continuity in the structure of Canadian society. The continuity is a process of cumulative change, and the process is not yet at a stage where the independent growth of divergent classes and institutions creates an obvious conflict of interests. There is no single point at which one can say: here is the break with the past; here, at this moment, we enter a new kind of society. The most one can do is attempt to monitor the kinds of changes that are occurring and advance hypotheses about the nature of those changes and their direction. •1 •

The first hypothesis is that the "ruling class" is not a homogeneous class possessed of identical interests within the industrial society. Private corporations continue to need money to finance their growth. However, they are no longer dependent for this wealth on private individuals or on a class of investors. The larger part of their financing comes from within the organization, as is the situation for Canada as described in Chapter Three.

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There remains an independent class of financiers, and they continue to play a role in the financing of private enterprise, but this is no longer the critical and vital role that it was even in the 1920s. This class could, in fact, be dispersed and yet the corporations would survive. This is not to say that the elite class has no relationship to the corporations: on the contrary, it provides the recruits for the top positions, and those in the top positions hold shares in the corporation. What it does not do is exert the kind of individual and ultimate control that it did when its wealth was the essential ingredient of the capitalist process.1 At the same time, the corporate structure has taken on a new institutional framework because while the actual number of individual stockholders has decreased, the shares in producing corporations held by financial institutions have increased. For example, we may find a mining corporation which has 17,000 public shares of which some 40 per cent are owned by one financial corporation. There are thus two corporate hierarchies, and while financing comes from within, the financial institutions have considerable control over the allocation of the reinvested funds. The shift in the role of the private financiers has implications for the composition of the dominant class. On the one hand there are the wealthy families, but their private wealth is no longer the power behind the thrones. On the other hand, there are two sets of corporate directors. One of these consists of the directors of financial institutions; the other, of producing institutions. Such directors are actually employees of corporations, and they can be dispossessed of their positions by other directors. While they are in positions of power, they are the personnel of the effective dominant class. It is they, not the private financiers, who make the decisions which affect other workers, smaller businesses, and governments. It is they who control the most powerful economic units in the liberal democracies. It may be assumed that these two groups have identical interests. The prime objective of the financial class of wealthy families is to increase its share of profits. The prime objective of the corporate directors is to increase the profits of the organization through continual growth. As long as the growth provides long-run profits, the two objectives are congruent. However, the impetus to growth has a tendency to develop independently. Sheer size confers power in much the way that money has, since the industrial revolution, conferred power on its possessors. Size is not always profitable in monetary terms. The costs of maintaining an enormous empire are prohibitive, and while profits may continue to accumulate, they may be less imposing than the profits obtained through smaller operations. The interests, then, of the two groups within the dominant class may, at some point, diverge. The interests of the two sets of corporate directors may also diverge. The objective of the financial institutions is to make profits overall, and profits may be best made by playing off Peter against Paul. A subsidiary in Toronto may be run at a loss so that a parent firm in New York increases its profits; one firm may be used as a supplier of parts to another, though it could be more profitable

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were it to make the entire piece of machinery and compete with the other firm. The objective of the producing corporation is to make profits and grow on its own, and its subjection to the parent firm or to the overall objectives of the financial institutions often inhibits such growth. Thus within the corporate oligarchy, the interests of directors are not always congruent. Why would growth take on an independent aspect in the motivation of corporation leaders? The ladder of success is from middle management to top management of relatively small organizations to middle and to top management of the giants. These directors are paid enormous salaries and obtain dividends from shares, but their private wealth does not confer on them their status and power. These are functions of their position both within an organization and within the inter-corporate hierarchy. The larger their corporation, the higher their status and the greater their power. The larger their corporation, the more likely they are to be recruited to other, still larger corporations and higher status positions. This urge for private power is part of the explanation, and it differs little from the striving for recognition among academics or writers: it is the instrument or medium rather than the motivation which differs. In addition to private motivations of directors, however, there is the compelling need to keep growing that is built in to the capitalist process. It is through continual growth that affluence is generated and maintained. New products, new markets, built-in obsolescence of products, the use of surplus to create entirely superfluous products, advertising campaigns to persuade populations that they require these superfluous products—all of this is basic to the economic system, and without this, the system goes into decline. The growth may not put immediate funds into the hands of private financiers (indeed, is not likely to, since it is financed through the reinvestment, not the distribution, of profits). But it will provide employment, and it will keep the corporation (as contrasted with the private shareholders) in a highly profitable position. The corporation, then, is the important unit, rather like the empires of an earlier age. The preservation, through growth, of that unit is the fundamental objective of corporate directors, who, like monarchs, become the instruments of the institution's survival. There is yet another potential division within the corporate elite. As the role of the financial class diminishes, the need to restrict recruitment to that class also diminishes. More important than lineage is technical knowledge, administrative sophistication, and, perhaps above all, financial expertise. While these are cultivated by the financial class and therefore most likely to be found there, they are not restricted to that class. Decisions about the directions of growth in corporations are made on the basis of technical advice. Large corporations plan their resources, their manpower, their technology, their markets, and their profit reinvestment. There is little left to chance or to open competition. It is this aspect of the modern corporation which has gained the description "the planned economy " from the economist John Kenneth Galbraith.2 As he points out, the planners must have a great deal of sophistication about modern tech-

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nology and finance and must be able to use the developments of science to the advantage of the corporation. The recruits to the planning jobs are increasingly likely to be financial experts, engineers, corporate lawyers, and scientists. Accountants like Harold Geneen, the president of International Telephone and Telegraph during its high growth phase of the 1960s, may be recruited from the financial elite (as he was), but may as easily be recruited from below.3 They may be directors of corporations, or they may be advisors to the directors and thus form another layer to the dominant class. Technical advisors may be assumed to have interests similar to those of corporate directors. This is not necessarily true. It may become less and less true as we move down the hierarchy of technical staff. Technicians are employed because of technical knowledge and expertise: they should not be assumed to lose abruptly their interests in technical development by virtue of gaining organizational power. They are as likely to subvert the latter to the former, or to perceive the latter as a function of the former. The overall objectives of the organization as seen by its directors may require less perfect technical inventions than a technician is capable of providing, or may require more coordination between departments than is congruent with the ability of an administrative expert to perfect the organization of his own department. Competition within large organizations, pursuit of limited objectives, and concentration on immediate goals are characteristics which are not necessarily coincident with the aims of a corporate elite. Perhaps a simple analogy will make the point clear. The objective of a restaurant manager is to make profits. The objective of the cook, however, is to make meals and enhance his reputation as a master chef. The making of excellent meals and the making of profits may quite easily conflict. And meanwhile, the customer becomes impatient waiting for service because the waiter has defined his immediate task as the cleaning up of a dining room. Technicians do not necessarily have a financial stake in the corporation beyond the earning of a salary. They may be motivated by higher salaries, of course, and their employment is contingent on the continued growth of the corporation. But there is no reason to expect them to hold dear the interests of investors to whom they have no personal relationship. They have no cause to defend the rights of private investors to own, control, or direct the corporation. They have no obvious stake in an economy dominated by private enterprise. They already work within a highly planned economy: whether that planning is done in the name of public governments or private governments is not crucial to their performance and security, provided it does not affect their jobs. On the other hand, the demise of the nation state would affect the careers of those whose objectives are tied to the public governments. In the industrial countries, government bureaucracies are headed, as are private bureaucracies, with highly specialised and technically sophisticated personnel. If power and status are the motivating forces for corporate executives, there is no reason to suppose that they would be less so for government executives. If these people identify with the nation-state, they have reason to perceive conflicts of interest

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between that state and the demands of the private corporations. This independent interest for those who fill government executive positions must be postulated in order to explain independent judgements or public inquiries which affect private corporate interests. Baran and Sweezy argue forcefully that democratic governments are no more than the instruments of corporate oligarchies. The opposition to this control might arise from voters, but, they argue, if voters somehow managed to wrest power from the oligarchy by winning a democratic election, the corporations would abandon the democratic framework. "What happens...is the oligarchy, which controls either directly or through trusted agents all the instrumentalities of coercion (armed forces, police, courts, etc.), abandons the democratic forms and resorts to some form of direct authoritarian rule...."^ This perspective allows one to anticipate the revelations of Watergate, but not to anticipate the Senate and judicial investigations, or the resignations of investigators when subjected to pressure to desist. To explain this, we must postulate that governments or their agencies have developed an independent momentum. Corporate capitalism may have given rise to the large bureaucratic state, but that does not mean that it will forever retain control over this child, any more than the feudal lords retained control over the urban populations they had likewise created. Led by government executive officers in the judiciary or the elected bodies, organized opposition to corporate control would perhaps arise from government employees more readily and more successfully than from dissenting voters. With this suggestion, it should be kept in mind that we are discussing only the conflict of interest that occurs within the industrial state. It is in the developed nations that the private corporations are indigenous organizations, where the governments have been most extensively developed, and where a sizeable proportion of the population is employed in both institutions.

• 2« If the elite class is more than a single layer, the working class is even more complex. It cannot be defined in terms of its relative position to ownership of the means of production, since although the majority of its members have no ownership even of the nominal variety (shares), the corporate elite also do not own these productive mechanisms. The corporation in a very real sense is independent of its personnel and transcends them. The difference between the workers and the directors is rather one of control and decision-making power. With this observation, Ralf Dahrendorf, a German sociologist, has attempted to re-define the class structure in terms of differentials in authority.5 Authority is dispersed, unlike real ownership at an earlier period of capitalism. How widely dispersed it is is open to debate, but that there are various levels of decision-

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making responsibility within corporations is a fact with considerable implications for the cohesiveness of a working class. Contrary to the predictions of Marx, the total working force did not become a single proletariat with common interests. Skills have changed, but they have not all undergone erosion. The skill hierarchy, on the contrary, has grown: there are more skills, and more differentiated skills, than at any previous time. These skills are associated with steps on the status ladder and with the gradation of authority within and among the corporate empires. The result appears to be the development of two different classes of workers. These two may have quite different economic interests. The upper class consists of the technicians, scientists, planners, and administrators in private and public corporations. The academics, journalists, and some independent professionals are loosely affiliated. These are not the workers of the early factories. They are, in the main, wage labourers; but then, so are the directors of the corporations. They are literate, have a fair measure of independence, and some bargaining power. Their upper ranks merge with those of directors and vicepresidents, so that the class division is not clear. Their purchasing power is increasing, for these are the people in the two top quintiles of the income distribution as shown in Chapter Two. This upper class does not work in a competitive economy. On the contrary, theirs is a planned economy, their jobs have a high degree of security and predictability, the channels of mobility are clear, and the relationship between education and position is manifest. There is no reason beyond inertia for this class to cling to that part of the liberal ideology which rests on a competitive base. Private ownership of the means of production is meaningless for them. Take-overs by governments should occasion no grieving in their ranks. It would be in their interests, indeed, since it would increase the likelihood of recruitment from the ranks for the top positions. As the large corporations lose their ties with share-holders, it might be expected that they would turn toward another electorate: their employees. The technicians and professionals in the ranks need not invariably and inevitably identify with unresponsive directorships. Increasingly they will make demands on corporations, and increasingly these demands will move beyond those for greater incomes. Indeed, greater incomes are already the accepted price for their work, and it is easily paid since it provides a return in the form of purchasing power for this same population. The corporations need no longer make their profits out of cheap labour. The greater demands are for accountability, and we may anticipate a move toward employee sessions, reports to employees, and various forms of propaganda and campaigns not dissimilar from those used by political parties during elections. As the corporations become more like independent empires in other respects, they are likely also to take on some of the characteristics of the modern state vis-a-vis their citizens. These citizens of corporations and public bureaucracies are a privileged class, however. While they resemble the rising bourgeoisie during the early stages

108 Ideological Perspectives on Canada of the industrial revolution, there is another class that resembles the growing proletariat. This class includes the employees of small businesses, the lower levels of the white-collar workers (clerical staff, sales-clerks), service workers, some skilled tradesworkers, and most unskilled workers. Small businesses must cope with costs and supplies which are determined by the corporate sector. They cannot be competitive with respect to wages. They are much more likely to scrimp on labour costs, to use labour rather than machines which they cannot afford, to depend on family members to work cheaply, and to employ poorly paid part-time help. The net effect is to create a working class which does not have the affluence of the workers in the corporation. In some businesses, the proprietors are more properly placed in this class than in the owning class, since their working day and take-home profits are more like those of their employees than of the middle management in large corporations. Together with the employees of small businesses are the large number of public and private sector employees whose skills are interchangeable and who are therefore easily replaced. They have no individual bargaining power. Where these workers can gain a monopoly on the labour pool in their particular skill area, they can gain some collective bargaining power. Such power is useful only as long as there is no alternative to their labour in the form, for example, of machines. In many sectors of the economy, it is difficult for such workers to create a collective bargaining unit because they are widely dispersed. Another difficulty is created by the constant change in skill requirements. While demands for new skills are constantly being advanced, they are not the skills possessed by current workers. Unions therefore tend to lose membership as their members either seek to upgrade their skills in other areas, or drop out of the labour force. For these reasons, total union membership has not increased since the mid 1950s.6 Among those groups which have organized unions, the gradation of status and authority attached to different skills tends to create over-riding concerns with relative positions rather than with class interests.7 The claims of the early crafts unions for a share of the wealth consonant with their particular position in the community is now echoed by the only sector of the labour force that is gaining union membership. This is the public sector of white-collar employees, and it includes teachers, professors, nurses, and government clerks. The gap between the incomes and independence of these workers, and the incomes and independence of the upper strata of the working class is becoming more apparent. The lower levels of the working class are characterized by lower levels of education and fewer or less valuable skills. The difference in education between the top and the bottom of the working force is such that Galbraith suggested education, rather than wealth or authority, is now the main distinction between the classes.8 By this he means education that is useful to the corporations. As the skill hierarchy becomes more complex, and those at the top increase their

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value, those without special skills and education lose ground. Their incomes do not rise at the same rate, so that their income position is lower than it was a decade ago. As automation continues to erode jobs once done by unskilled workers, the bottom of the labour force becomes unemployed. For various reasons, the lower and middle sectors of the working class provide the strongest support for the liberal ideology. Those whose current positions are better than the positions of their parents—and this remains true for many children of immigrants, and for those who have moved up through educational channels to relatively secure positions—the liberal ideology continues to best explain their status. As long as education is in high demand by employers, and educational channels remain open to large numbers, there is no reason to expect any change in the ideology. Those who are associated with small businesses, indeed, are most likely to defend the rights of private property owners. Unlike the managers of corporations, they do work in a competitive economy, and they are very close to the real owners (and indeed may be the real owners). These workers are not at the bottom of the social scale: that position is reserved for the unemployed. Those who are employed may, therefore, glance behind them and feel some pride in their achievements. One particular population of workers inhabits a large number of the positions in the lower half of the occupational hierarchy. This population consists of women in their jobs as service workers, sales and office clerks. These workers are well educated and are skilled. They have taken over the position in the labour force akin to that of the immigrant unskilled workers of an earlier period: highly replaceable, no bargaining power, easily exploited. However, their numbers are increasing: as pointed out in Chapter Two, they are now a third of the total work force. As their numbers increase, their cohesion as workers also increases. Since about the late 1960s, their demands for equal opportunities and wages have become ever more insistent, and affiliations if not unions of women are being established. Some of these have taken on a Marxist approach to political economy. This, however, is fraught with problems because Marx, like other economists, ignored women as a separate group. Classes in the Marxist literature consist of male workers and their families, with the status and class attributes of families dependent entirely on a man's job. The liberal writers tend likewise to treat women as appendages. The inapplicability of both ideological approaches to the status of women is apparent to many women, and the search for alternative explanations of the social structure is active among them.9 Nonetheless, the major thrust of the women's movement is very much in keeping with liberalism. They want into the economic structure, and they don't want it changed before they make their entrance. This is the view from the Status of Women Commission: "A woman suffers when she is not recognized as having an individual identity as a person with her own aspirations, strengths, weaknesses, tastes and ideas that are not necessarily

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Ideological Perspectives on Canada those of all other women whether married or unmarried, whether wives at home or workers outside. She does not accept with good grace the easy generalizations, often accompanied by the superficial idealization of the concept of womanhood, that fill so much of the literature, thought and even languages of western countries. Many Canadian women protest against the stereotypes imposed upon them: 'Women are not a homogeneous group, and their needs are variable in relation to their social arid economic status, their role and contribution in employment, and their role and responsibility related to the needs of children.' "10

This is far removed from a class-based critique of society: it is indeed the liberal revolt. It will be satisfied only when father says to his daughter:: "I don't care what you are when you grow up, my child...."

•3» There is, in addition to the two classes of workers, another class. In some sectors of industry, unskilled work is still an important area and an essential one: in mining and in forestry, for example. But in many other areas of industrial activity, unskilled work is no longer available. Technological expertise has superceded the need for manpower, just as planning and internal financing have overcome the need for capital investment. Workers who have neither skills nor education are unable to find work. Together with the aged, the single parents and their children, and others who cannot work, they become part of an unemployed class which is outside the social structure as it is organized by the corporations both public and private. There is an overlap between class membership and ethnic group membership which does have historical roots. Those groups which in the past were employed as unskilled workers are the ones who, today, are over-represented among the unemployed. Where these groups gain access to the educational channels of mobility, they move into the working class—as is true of Eastern Europeans and Asiatic immigrants or the children of such immigrants. Where they do not gain such access—the Indian population, most noticeably—their position deteriorates with each generation. The shift to education as the main route upward does provide for more mobility for a larger proportion of a population; but it also creates an immovable barrier to employment for those who are without academic qualifications. The industrial society is unavoidable for those who inhabit its territories. This has been discovered by those Indians who prefer an alternative way of life. In the James Bay area of Canada, some 6000 Indians live by trapping and hunting over a wide territory. The Quebec government decided to build there a hydroelectric installation; the Indians objected and took the matter to court. They claimed aboriginal rights to their land. Although a lower court granted an

Ideology and Social Change 111 injunction which prevented the project from going ahead, a higher court of appeals lifted that. In a justifying editorial in one of Canada's metropolitan newspapers, we hear the rhetoric of the liberal ideology sweep aside the rights of a minority group to choose an alternative, where that alternative inhibits the progress of the industrial state: "The appeal court's decision implies that a decision by the Quebec government should not be frustrated by Indian claims to the land any more than a private property owner of any other race has a right to stand in the way of the 'general and public interest.' This is the essential principle in all expropriation law. "The rights of private property are not extinguished by government decisions. Those rights basically deal with fair compensation. The life and welfare of a private property owner may be damaged in the same way that the James Bay Indians claim their lifestyle is being endangered. But that private owner has no right to stand in the way of government policy. "...In our system, the majority rights carry the most weight, as the appeal judges said." H There is a particular irony in the James Bay case. The Indians do not have a vote in Quebec elections. This, however, is not the crucial issue: it is that all people are obliged to live by the rules of the liberal democracy; moral relativity ends where preference for remaining outside begins. Cultural genocide is easily accepted where it is performed in the name of a majority, the majority of whom will gain material prosperity in the process. What we have suggested, then, is that the two classes of the early industrial phase—capitalists and unskilled labour—have moved off centre stage in the developed countries. They have been replaced by what we might call the corporate oligarchy and a highly stratified, literate, and technically competent working class which has been taught to take democracy seriously and may demand more of it for themselves in the work-place. They are less likely to demand it for the unskilled, small business workers, or unemployed, whose interests they do not necessarily share and to whom they are not similar. The two new classes have grown out of the old, just as the corporations and the government bureaucracies have grown out of the earlier phases of competitive capitalism. If the two have divergent interests and if such interests lead to class conflict, it is because this sector of the working class is affluent, educated, skilled, and able to develop its own momentum, rather than because it has reached the point of absolute deprivation. In this it resembles the bourgeoisie as they overtook the landed aristocracy.

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• 4« The size of the giant multinational corporations can hardly be over-estimated. Several are larger than many nations. They have larger gross products, more valuable assets, and far more internal control over their wealth and its uses. They are not accountable to an electorate, and their shareholders, as discussed above, are not sufficiently vital to play the role of an electorate. They operate in several countries, have a network of producing units throughout the world, and are the employers to thousands upon thousands of workers in different countries. Their internal services keep extending: they have their own forms of transportation, communication, accounting, postal services. Their travelling employees may, for example, stay at "their" hotels, eat food from "their" food processors in "their" restaurants, rent "their" cars, use "their" telegraphs, all this while pursuing business in quite unrelated product areas.12 Baran and Sweezy have pointed out that the corporation has taken over the activities and characteristics previously undertaken or displayed by the private entrepreneur: it is the corporation which engages in profit maximization, philanthropy, lavish and conspicuous consumption, public service, bribery of officials, and financing of political parties. However, the corporation and the individual differ significantly in two respects: the corporation outlives its directors, and it has access to more expertise in more areas than any private entrepreneur was able to manage.13 The corporations resemble empires, and increasingly independent and selfsufficient empires. The appropriate model from history may be the Catholic Church, which likewise has operated a vast multi-national network with tight internal controls and self-financing capabilities. And like the Vatican the corporations chaff at the restrictions imposed by national governments: "// what we really need is a free and responsible society, corporate power is a desirable counter-force to the excessive power of government. Modern government is unresponsible to the taxpayer because of the way the franchise has been extended. It responds mostly to the demands of people with no stake in society. The corporation represents those who do have a stake in society—the stockholders. The fact that developing nations must tailor their policies to big corporations is all to the good. It makes rather irresponsible governments more responsible. They have to compete for favours from the more responsible elements in society. The multinational corporation is a great force for internationalism. "14 * Such is the view of a Canadian executive of a large corporation. It is a long way from the version of society offered by the liberal democrats. It has, in fact, overtones of the Family Compact ideology as expressed by Sir Francis Bond * THE GLOBE AND MAIL, TORONTO.

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Head in the 1830s. The difference is in the unit envisioned as the ruling class: no longer discrete families, but rather corporations. There is no pretense here that democracy is to be honoured. Democracy is that "radical reversion of the pyramid of society" to which Sir Bond Head referred. 15 The antipathy to interference by government in corporate affairs is, of course, long-standing. It finds its early expression in Mill's dictums quoted earlier. Yet capitalism has flourished with democratic governments protecting property interests; why then is the executive objecting in such strong terms? Part of the explanation may lie in the growing independence of government and the development of the class of independent technicians and administrative personnel in governments. But there is another explanation; that is that it is not the governments of the developed countries which are in question in this quotation. Throughout the Third World, a disenchantment with United States leadership has emerged. On the one hand, there are the local elites who clearly benefit from the presence of American and Canadian multinational corporations. There is a small middle class in most Third World countries which likewise benefits from employment in North American-owned corporations. On the other hand, there is a peasantry which has been used as unskilled labour in the past and is no longer required for jobs that have been superceded by technological advances, and a peasantry that has ceased to subsist on the land available to cultivation. Large numbers of these peasants eke out livings on the outskirts of cities, and their resentment at their lot smoulders as the Hiltons and Sheratons proliferate. The classes are sharply distinguished, and the ideological perspectives tend likewise to polarize. It is in this atmosphere that the executives of the corporations view political activity and the potential development of anti-American or anticapitalist governments with alarm. The difference between Chile and the United States is that the latter, not the former, is the most developed capitalist system, and it is in the latter that both corporations dominate and government bureaucracies proliferate. Gradual change may occur in the metropolis as a result of the cumulative growth of the contradictory forces of corporations and governments, but in the underdeveloped countries, no such gradual change is likely. Power is unmistakably held by the corporations and the governments of the developed countries, whose interests abroad are identical. Corporate economic imperialism is supported and backed up by metropolitan governments, and if corporations were owned and controlled by these governments there is no reason to expect that the pattern would change. In camouflaging his comments with a reference to the interest of stockholders, the comments by the executive appear to fit in to the liberal version of the competitive society. In fact they go far beyond this and postulate a population that is not discussed, not perceived, and not imagined within that ideology: people with no stake in society. Who are the people with no stake in society? According to the executive, they are the opposite of stock-holders, yet people to

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whom the franchise has been extended. The reference, all too clearly, is to voters who are unemployed, peasants who are marginal to the corporate economy, people who are not convenient to or needed by the corporations. When such comments are linked to the growing debate on over-population, the spectre of genocide is uncomfortably close. One might wonder why the surplus populations of the under-developed countries or the unemployed in the developed countries should come to the attention of the corporations. The explanation lies in the uses of the territories and the resources of the Third World, and the kinds of limitations on technological advance that are now appearing. The most evident level of change over the past century has been at the technological level. The significant feature of industrial society is that the range of possible kinds of organization is so extensive. On the surface, at least, the constraints imposed by technical possibilities have been lifted. But the technology of the industrial society depends on fuels and other non-renewable resources. The most advanced industrial society is extremely dependent on resources it does not have within its national borders, and that, at some point in the future, no nation will have. The more developed the nation, the more dependent it is on scarce resources. This technological constraint is of a kind similar to a diminishing wildlife for the hunting society. The obvious and immediate way to alleviate the shortage is to move into other territories, while the tribe still has the strength to conquer. In considering the nature of the social classes in the industrial nations, this possibility must be kept in mind. The growing concern with over-population and illiteracy of the under-developed world expressed by the literate classes of the developed world may well be a genuine and humane concern, but the economic interest of the corporate society is too obviously contrary to the development of the Third World to shun skepticism on this point. The illiterate and unskilled are of no economic use to the multi-national corporations or the multi-national state. They are in the way of the full exploitation of resources. Their food and fuel requirements prevent unlimited growth. The developed world can either shove them aside or reverse its pursuit of growth. There is nothing in the present trends to suggest a voluntary reversal. Indeed, the main thrust of the Department of Trade and Commerce in Canada is to extend the powers and wealth of Canadian multi-nationals in the Third World.16

•5» In a time of change, the dominant class may undergo extensive regrouping as it did during the industrialization period. This regrouping may occur gradually and without revolution, as in England, or may involve an open confrontation between the old ruling class and the new, as in France. When the change is gradual, we might expect that it will also be more successful, since changes in

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conceptualization of the social organization will, over generations, coincide with the experience of changes in the organization rather than with exhortations to change the organization. The first French Revolution was, in fact, not particularly successful. Although a bourgeois class had become established in the urban areas, and that class clearly held the economic power, the experience of the people was not yet such that this class could proceed unhindered with industrialization. The former ruling class maintained a great deal of power, and its ideological perspectives remained the dominant force in large parts of the country. A class which is clearly dominant and well-established in a society has means to disseminate and persuade the population that its interests are theirs. This is particularly true of the modern society, with its vast network of communications, its public education system, and its government bureaucracies. Nonetheless, the propagation of an ideology cannot occur in a vacuum of experience; there must be a fair amount of congruence between personal experience and ideological interpretation for the propaganda to be successful. Where force is required to maintain the perspective, that congruence is certainly missing. This is not to say that the explanations given for events need be true or complete, but that they must appear to account for those events which are widely shared experiences. If, for example, the president of General Motors says that what is good for General Motors is good for the world, his message is accepted by that population whose own material welfare is secure and depends on such corporations as General Motors. That population may reason: if this corporation were not here, I would not earn this income; therefore, the statement is correct. The statement, of course, ignores the larger part of the world, ignores the organization of the society into private enterprises making public decisions in private for private ends, and ignores a large part of the consequences of that kind of organization. However, the assenting population also ignores the context, since their experience is not of the world at all, but is limited to their jobs and private lives. Thus the dominarit ideoldgy is a pervasive ideology and need not be imposed on the population from above. This kind of statement finds assent provided a significant portion of the population is employed by General Motors or its equivalents, or otherwise benefits from the existence of such establishments. What, .however, happens when such is not the case? There are two cases of interest to us. One is that of a population whose material progress and security is increasingly independent of the affairs of General Motors (or any other ruling class). The statement then is immaterial, although it may have to be countered. The population is carving out an ideology suitable to other circumstances. Such is the example of the transition to urban and industrial society. The other is that of a population which is divided into those who benefit from the existence of General Motors, and those who, having no alternative and independent means of subsistence, do not benefit from the establishment. The

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latter, perceiving General Motors to be the ruling class (as it perceives itself in such a statement), recognize the cause of their misery. Theirs is a counter ideology. But the former, likewise, must explain their preferred status. It is not just a relatively better status, as it is where the majority of the population benefits in some way from the arrangement. It is a qualitatively different status. This elite requires an ideology that justifies its prerogatives, clearly explains why others do not likewise benefit, and legitimates whatever action is required to maintain the status quo. The statement on behalf of General Motors is patently untrue in such a society. In the industrial society of the developed nations, a majority continues to hold the sarrie ideological perspectives on its society. It is a minority who challenges that view, and the minority includes a disproportionate number of social critics and analysts who are not prepared to believe that what is good for General Motors is good for the world. In the under-developed nations, versions of reality are more evenly distributed. The view from the top does not merge with that from the the bottom, because there is so little overlap in the everyday experience of people at either end. There are two distinct populations. It follows from this that the ideology espoused by the population of the developed nations does not take easily to transplants. It is not in the interests of the elite of an under-developed nation to assume the equality of humankind, to urge their countrymen to pursue individualistic ends, or to promote representative governments. The elite in the under-developed nation is not necessarily an indigenous elite. The developed countries have extended their operations to other territories and exported their technicians and administrators to them. These people, while adhering to the liberal ideology at home, require a different explanation for their positions abroad. Those explanations hold the seeds of change. They are often clothed in the rhetoric of the liberal ideology—they mention competitive capitalism, freedom of trade, majority rule, for example—but they bring in an element that is absent from the liberal rhetoric: the assumption of rights and prerogatives proper to a ruling class. There is a subtle but important distinction between the statement "what is good for General Motors is good for society," and the statement, "General Motors knows what is good for you." The rhetoric of the liberal democracy and of competitive capitalism is still very much a version of reality shared by the majority of the Canadian population. The rhetoric of the New Left provides both an alternative version and an alternative vision of the future, but it is not widely espoused. In the midst of these divergent ideologies there are statements that do not "fit." There are statements that question the virtues of equality—which both liberals and Marxists accept. There are statements that express contempt for the democratic framework, not, as in Marxist literature, because it fails to express the will of the people, but because it fails to represent efficiently the interests of the ruling class. There are statements that question the usefulness of nation states and their

Ideology and Social Change 117 governments and call on corporations and other governments to impose their will on recalcitrant populations. There are statements that say, in effect, cultural genocide is all right if it is undertaken in the interests of greater efficiency and profits. These statements may well express sentiments that have always been held. Marxists would not hesitate to argue that the liberal ideology has always been a gloss for ruling class interests. Nonetheless, they do not fit the prevailing ideology. They are the ideological statements of a society that is past and ritually buried, yet they refer to a society that may succeed the liberal democracy. In both, there is a ruling class which does not pretend to be something else.

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CHAPTER 7 • NOTES 1 This point has been discussed at length in, for example: John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (second edition), New York; New American Library, 1971; Ralf Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society, Stanford; Stanford University Press, 1957; and Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, New York; Monthly Review Press, 1966. 2 John Kenneth Galbraith, ibid., considers this development to be crucial to the direction of the corporate state. 3 For a fascinating case study of ITT and Geneen's role as President, see Anthony Sampson, The Sovereign State of ITT, Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Crest, 1973. 4 Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, op. cit., pp. 155-156. 5 Ralf Dahrendorf, op.cit., argues the case for a theory of classes divided by their respective positions of authority. 6 Trade union membership reached a peak in 1953, dropped during the 1960s, and rose again to the 1953 level by 1970 with the inclusion of public service employees. At the present time, 27.6 per cent of the civilian labour force, or 34.4 per cent of the non-agricultural labour force, are organized. About 18 per cent of the white-collar workers are organized, of these 80 per cent are in the public sector and have only recently joined unions. See Canada, Department of Labour, Labour Organizations in Canada, 1972, Ottawa, 1973, Table 1 for membership statistics. White-collar membership statistics were calculated by the author and are discussed in the author's paper, "Les femmes, le travail et le syndicalisme au Canada," Sociologie et Societes, vol. VI, no. 1 (mai, 1974), 37-53. 7 As contrasted, for example, with an equal wage for all workers - a demand that trade unions have never made, even within the ranks of a single trade. 8 Galbraith, op.cit. 9 For a discussion of women in the class system, see especially Dorothy E. Smith, "Women, the Family and Corporate Capitalism," and Margrit Eichler, "Women as Personal Dependents," in Women in Canada, edited by Mary lee Stephenson, Toronto: New Press, 1973, pp. 2-35, 36-55. 10 The Royal Commission on the Status of Women, Report, Ottawa, Information Canada, 1970, p. 3. Reproduced by permission of Information Canada. 11 Vancouver Province, November 23, 1973, lead editorial entitled "Majority Rights." 12 See Sampson, op.cit.,fot a description of this interlocking of the parts of the ITT holdings. 13 Baran and Sweezy, op.cit., p. 47. 14 J.W. Younger, secretary of the Steel Company of Canada, Hamilton, reported in the Globe and Mail, Feb. 11, 1969, cited in Kari Levitt, Silent Surrender, Toronto: Macmillan, 1971, p. 37.

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15 The former lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, Sir Francis Bond Head, responded to the demands of the 1837 rebels with a spirited defence of the Family Compact. "The Party, I own, is comparatively a small one; but to put the multitude at the top and the few at the bottom is a radical reversion of the pyramid of society which every reflecting man must foresee can end only by its downfall." This is reported in J.M. Bliss, Canadian History in Documents, Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1966, pp. 43-44. 1" See for explicit policy statements the bulletins of the Department of Trade and Commerce.

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ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY Selected Readings Supplementary to Text

CHAPTER 1: THE STUDY OF IDEOLOGY

The classic work on the relationship between social structure and ideologies is Ideology and Utopia by Karl Mannheim (New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1936). The most controversial in the same tradition but concentrating on the ideological basis of science is The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). Between these two publications in time, C. Wright Mills and Michael Polanyi were among the contributors to the sociology of knowledge. Recommended selections are: C. Wright Mills, "Language, logic, and culture, "American Sociological Review, IV, 1939, 670-680, and "Methodological Consequences of the Sociology of Knowledge," American Journal of Sociology, XVI, 1940, 316-330; and Michael Polanyi, "The Republic of Science," in Edward Shils, (ed.), Criteria for Scientific Development, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1962, 1-20). Current studies are growing rapidly as sociologists strive to understand both the belief systems of industrial societies and their own grounds for enquiry. Two anthologies are recommended for students who wish to proceed to more difficult material: Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, edited by Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970) and The Sociology of Knowledge, edited by James E. Curtis and John W. Petras (New York: Praeger, 1970). An introduction to the study of the role of ideas in the development of Western history is The Shaping of Modern Thought by Crane Brinton (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963). Two classics in this area are The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber, translated by Talcott Parsons (New York: Scribner and Sons, 1958), and Democracy in America, 2 vols. by Alexis de Tocqueville (New York: Schocken, 1st edition, 1961). Social Classes and Imperialism by Joseph Schumpeter (translated by Heinz Norden and published together in one volume, Cleveland: World Publishing, 1965), while somewhat dated, is an interesting perspective on the ideologies of industrial society. An in-depth study of one period in the development of modern society is provided by Robert Merton in Science, Technology, and Society in Seventeenth Century England (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1970). 121

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Bibliography

The most comprehensive study of the Industrial Revolution is The Great Transformation by Karl Polyanyi (Boston: Beacon Press, 1944). A small volume providing a critique of the perspective in John Porter's study of class in Canada, The Vertical Mosaic, is Everybody's Canada, The Vertical Mosaic Reviewed and Reexamined, edited by James L. Heap (Toronto: Burns and MacEachern, 1974). This critique brings the sociology of knowledge into the arena of Canadian politics and science.

CHAPTER 2: INDIVIDUALISM AND EQUALITY Three readings from the classics of Western Liberal Philosophy are recommended as background to the Canadian case: J.S. Mill, "On Liberty" in The Utilitarians (New York: Doubleday, 1961); Jeremy Bentham,"An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation," also in The Utilitarians; and Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations Edwin Cannan (ed.), (London: Modern Library, 1905). On stratification and classes in Canada from a liberal viewpoint but including a large body of material seldom found in textbooks or studies of the 1960s, The Vertical Mosaic by John Porter (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967) is essential reading. Because Anglo-Canadians have worked mainly within the liberal "functionalist" framework, most sociological studies in this area have been concerned with social stratification, differences between ethnic and occupational groups, and inter-generational mobility. Many of these studies have been published in the Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology (see especially vol. 7:1, May, 1970), and the Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science. There are, in addition, several anthologies with a majority of articles in this tradition; see especially, B.R. Blishen, et al. (eds.) Canadian Society: Sociological Perspectives (Toronto: Macmillan, Third Edition, 1968), J.E. Curtis and W.G. Scott (eds.), Social Stratification: Canada (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1973); and C. Beattie and S. Crysdale (eds.), Sociology Canada, Textbook and Readings published separately (Toronto: Butterworth, 1973). A textbook in which the functionalist framework has been systematically applied to the Canadian situation is D.W. Rossides, Society as a Functional Process: An Introduction to Sociology (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1968). A somewhat more eclectic selection of articles may be found in W.E. Mann (ed.), Social and Cultural Change in Canada, 2 vols., (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1970), and D.I. Davies and K. Herman (eds.), Social Space: Canadian Perspectives (Toronto: New Press, 1971). The following list consists of journal articles and full-length studies on selected features of the class and stratification system in Canada, except for the material on Quebec society and French-English relations in Quebec. Those publications appear below under Chapter 6.

Bibliography 123 Occupational Classes and General, Theoretical Literature on Classes Beattie, C. and B.G. Spencer, "Career Attainment in Canadian Bureaucracies: Unscrambling the Effects of Age, Seniority, Education, and Ethnolinguistic Factors on Salary," American Journal of Sociology, 77 (Nov., 1971). Blishen, B.R., "The Construction and Use of an Occupational Class Scale," Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XXIV, no. 4 (Nov.,1958). , "Social Class and Opportunity in Canada," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 7:2 (May, 1970). Blumenfeld, Hans, "Social Class and Opportunity in Canada," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 7:2 (May, 1970). Crysdale, Stewart, "Occupational and Social Mobility in Riverdale, A Blue Collar Community," unpublished Ph. D. Thesis, University of Toronto, 1968. , "Workers' Families and Education in a Downtown Community," in K. Ishwaren, (ed.), The Canadian Family (Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972). Hahn, H., "Ethos and Social Class," Polity, 2:3 (Spring,!970). Hall, Oswald, "The Canadian Division of Labour Revisited," in RJ. Ossenberg, Canadian Society, Pluralism, Change and Conflict (Scarborough: PrenticeHall, 1971). Harvey, E. and L.R. Harvey, "Adolescence, Social Class and Occupational Expectations," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 7:2 (May, 1970). Johnson, Leo A., "The Development of Class in Canada in the Twentieth Century," in Gary Teeple (ed.), Capitalism and the National Question, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972). __, Incomes, Disparity and Impoverishment in Canada since World War II (Toronto: New Hogtown Press, 1973). Jones, F.E., "The Social Origins of High School Teachers in a Canadian City," Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, 29 (1963). Kelner, M., "Ethnic Penetration into Toronto's Elite Structure," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 7:2 (May, 1970). Lawlor, S.D., "Social Class and Achievement Orientation," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 7:2 (May, 1970). Lorimer, James and Myfanwy Phillips, Working People: Life in a Downtown City Neighborhood, (Toronto: James Lewis and Samuel, 1971). McCrorie, J.N., "Discussion on the Farmer as a Social Class," in M.A. Tremblay and WJ. Anderson, (eds.), Rural Canada in Transition (Ottawa: Agricultural Economics Research Council of Canada, 1966). Marshall, T.H., "Class and Power in Canada," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 2:4 (Nov., 1966).

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Bibliography

Mealing, S.R., "The Concept of Social Class and the Interpretation of Canadian History," Canadian Historical Review, 46 (1965). McDougall, R.L., "The Dodo and the Cruising Auk: Class in Canadian Literature," Canadian Literature, 18 (1963) and 20 (1964). Ostry, Sylvia, "Wages in Canada: The Occupational Structure," in H.D. Woods and Sylvia Ostry, Labour Policy and Labour Economics in Canada (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1962). , Unemployment in Canada, (Ottawa: 1961 Census monograph, 1968). Podoluk, Jenny R., Incomes of Canadians (Ottawa: 1961 Census monograph, 1968). Pinard, M., "Working Class Politics: An Interpretation of the Quebec Case," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 7:2 (May, 1970). Pineo, Peter C. and John Porter, "Occupational Prestige in Canada," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 4:1 (1967), 24-40. Porter, John, The Vertical Mosaic (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967). Presthus, Robert, Elite Accommodation in Canadian Politics (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1973). Smith, David and Lome Tepperman, "Changes in Canadian Business and Legal Elites, 1870-1970," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 11:2 (May, 1974). Tepperman, Lome J., "The Natural Disruption of Dynasties," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 9:2 (May, 1972). Turritin, A.H., "Intergenerational Occupational Mobility in Ontario: A Secondary Analysis of 1968 Sample Survey Data," paper presented to the annual meeting of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association, Winnipeg, 1970. Wilson, J., "Politics and Social Class in Canada, The Case of Waterloo South," Canadian Journal of Political Science, 1:3 (Sept., 1968).

Educational Opportunities and Class Background

Breton, Raymond, "Academic Stratification in Secondary Schools and the Educational Plans of Students," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 7:1 (Feb., 1970). , Social and Academic Factors in the Career Decisions of Canadian Youth, (Canada, Department of Manpower and Immigration, Ottawa: Information Canada, 1972).

Bibliography 125 Pavalko, Ronald M., "Socio-Economic Background, Ability, and the Allocation of Students," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 4:4 (Nov., 1967). and David R. Bishop, "Socio-economic Status and College Plans: A Study of Canadian High School Students," Sociology of Education, 39 (Summer, 1966). Pike, Robert M., Who Doesn't Get to University and Why: A Study on Accessibility to Higher Education in Canada (Ottawa: The Association of Universities and Colleges, 1970). Siemens, Leonard B., "The influence of Selected Family Factors on the Educational and Aspirational Levels of High School Boys and Girls," (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba, 1965). and Leo Driedger, "Some Rural-Urban Differences Between Manitoba High School Students," (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba, 1965). Zsigmond, Z. and Wolfgang M. Tiling, Enrolment in Schools and Universities 1951-52 to 1975-76 (Staff Study no. 20, Economic Council of Canada, Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1967).

Studies of Poverty

Adams, Ian, The Poverty Wall ("Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd., 1970).

et al. y The Real Poverty Report (Edmonton: Hurtig,

1971). Baetz, Reuben C., "Causes of Poverty," Canadian Labour, vol. 14 (July-Aug., 1969). , "Poverty Integrated into Canada's Social Structure," Canadian Labour, vol. 13 (Dec., 1968). Canada, Special Senate Committee on Poverty, Poverty in Canada (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1971). Canadian Welfare Council, National Urban Low-Income Family Evaluation: Research Manual (Ottawa, 1967). Gagnon, Lysiane, "Growing Poor in Quebec," Canadian Dimension, vol. 7, (1970). Harp, John and John R. Hoffley, (eds.), Poverty in Canada, (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1971). Lithwick, N.H., "Poverty in Canada: Some Recent Empirical Findings,"Journal of Canadian Studies (May, 1971). _, Urban Poverty: Research Monograph No. 1 (Ottawa: Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, 1971). Sheffe, Norman (ed.), Issues for the Seventies: Poverty (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1970).

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Bibliography

Income Distribution: Sources of Data Canada, Department of Internal Revenue, Taxation Statistics, (annual) (Ottawa: Information Canada). Podoluk, Jenny R., Incomes of Canadians, 1961 Census Monograph (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1968). Statistics Canada, Income Distribution by Size in Canada, (annual) (Ottawa: Information Canada).

Ethnic Group Stratification (Except for French-Canada, Quebec)

Boissevain, J.F., The Italians of Montreal: Social Adjustment in a Plural Society, (Study No. 7, Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1970). Breton, Raymond and Howard Roseborough, "Ethnic Differences in Status," in Blishen, B.R. et al. (eds.), Canadian Society, Sociological Perspectives, Third edition (Toronto: Macmillan, 1968). Byers, Nancy, "Ethnic Stratification in Canada," unpublished Master's Thesis, Sociology. (Toronto: York University, 1972). Clark, S.D., "The Position of the French-Speaking Population in the Northern Industrial Community," in R.J. Ossenberg (ed.), Canadian Society: Pluralism, Change and Conflict (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1971). Danziher, Kurt, Socialization of Italian Immigrant Children, Ethnic Research Programme Monograph Series E4 (Toronto: York University, 1971). Darroch, A. Gordon and Wilfred G. Marston, "An Examination of the Social Class Basis of Ethnic Residential Segregation," American Journal of Sociology, 77:3 (Nov., 1971). Elliott, Jean Leonard (ed.), Minority Canadians, Immigrant Groups, vol.2 (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1971). Hebert, Raymond and Jean-Guy Vaillancourt, "French Canadians in Manitoba: Elites and Ideologies," in Minority Canadians, vol.2, ibid. Jansen, Clifford J., "Assimilation in Theory and Practice," in J. Gallagher and D. Lambert (eds.), Social Process and Institutions, (Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970). , "Leadership in the Toronto Italian Ethnic Group," International Migration Review, vol.4 (Fall, 1969). Jones, Frank E., "Some Social Consequences of Immigration for Canada," Proceedings of World Population Conference, Vol. IV (New York: United Nations, 1967). , "Occupational Rank and Attitudes Toward Immigrants," Public Opinion Quartely, 29 (Spring, 1965).

Bibliography 127 Jackson, J.D., "French-English Relations in an Ontario Community," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 3:3 (Aug., 1966). Kelner,M., "Ethnic Penetration into Toronto's Elite Structure," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 7:2 (May, 1970). Marston, W.G., "Social Class Segregation Within Ethnic Groups in Toronto," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 6:2 (May, 1969). Nagata, Judith A., "Adaptation and Integration of Greek Working Class Immigrants in the City of Toronto: A Situational Approach," International Migration Review, vol. 4 (Fall, 1969). Richmond, A.H., "Social Mobility of Immigrants in Canada," Population Studies, 18 (July, 1964). , Post-War Immigrants in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967). , "Immigration and Pluralism in Canada," International Migration Review, 4 (Fall, 1969). Roseborough, Howard and Raymond Breton, "Perceptions of the Relative Economic and Political Advantages of Ethnic Groups in Canada," in B.R. Blishen et al. (eds.), Canadian Society: Sociological Perspectives, Third edition (Toronto: Macmillan, 1968). Vallee, F.G. et al. "Ethnic Assimilation and Differentiation in Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, 23:4 (1957). Weiermair, Klaus, "Economic Adjustment of Refugees in Canada: A Case Study," International Migration Review, vol. 9, no. 12 (1970). Winks, Robin, The Blacks in Canada (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1971).

Indians and Eskimo Brody, Hugh, Indians on Skid Row (Ottawa: Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, 1971). Buckley, H., J.E.M. Kew, and J.B. Hawley, The Indians and Metis of Northern Saskatchewan: A Report on Economic and Social Development (Saskatoon: Centre for Community Studies, 1963). Cardinal, Harold, The Unjust Society (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1969). Carstens, Peter, "Coercion and Change," in R.J. Ossenberg (ed.), Canadian Society: Pluralism, Change and Confict (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1971). Cummings, P.A. and N.H. Mickenberg (eds.), Native Rights in Canada (Toronto: Indian Eskimo Association of Canada, General Publishing, 1972). Davis, A.K., "Urban Indians in Western Canada: Implications for Social Theory and Social Policy," Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, vol. VI, Series IV, (June, 1968).

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Bibliography

Deprez, Paul and Glenn Sigurdson, The Economic Status of the Canadian Indian: A Re-examination (Winnipeg: Center for Settlement Studies, University of Manitoba, Dec., 1969). Dunning, R.W., "Some Problems of Reserve Indian Communities," Anthropologica, vol. VI, no. 1 (1964). Elliott, J.L., Minority Canadians, Native Peoples, vol. 1 (Scarborough: PrenticeHall, 1971). Hawthorn, H.B., C.S. Belshaw and S.M. Jamieson, The Indians of British Columbia: A Study of Contemporary Social Adjustment (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1958). Hawthorn, H.B. (ed.),^4 Survey of the Contemporary Indians of Canada, 2 vols., (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1967). Laviolette, Forrest E., The Struggle for Survival: Indian Cultures and The Protestant Ethic in British Columbia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972). Matthiasson, John S. and W.S. Chow, "Relocated Eskimo Miners," in Occasional Papers no. 1 (Winnipeg: Center for Settlement Studies, University of Manitoba, 1970). Nagler, Mark, Indians in the City (Ottawa: Research Centre for Anthropology, 1970). , Perspectives on the North American Indians (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972). Pelletier, G. et al., For Every North American Indian Who Begins to Disappear, I Also Begin to Disappear (Toronto: Nee win, 1971). Renaud, A., Indian and Metis and Possible Development as Ethnic Groups (Saskatoon, Centre for Community Studies, University of Saskatchewan 1961). Robertson, Heather, Reservations Are for Indians (Toronto: James Lewis and Samuel, 1970). Stevenson, David S., "Problems of Eskimo Relocation for Industrial Employment," (Ottawa: Northern Science Research Group, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, 1968). Stratification by Sex Archibald, Kathleen, Sex and the Public Service, Report to the Public Service Commission of Canada (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1970). Allingham, John and B. Spencer, Women Who Work, D.B.S. Special Labour Force Studies (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1968). , The Demographic Background to Change in the Number and Composition of Female Wage-Earners in Canada, 1951 to 1961, Special Labour Force Studies, Series B-l (Ottawa: Dominion Bureau of Statistics, 1967).

Bibliography 129 Benston, Maggie, "The Political Economy of Women's Liberation," pamphlet, (Toronto: New Hogtown Press, 1969), also in New Left Review, 21 (1969). Canada, Department of Labour, Women in the Labour Force, annual, (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1971). , Occupational Histories of Married Women Working for Pay in Eight Canadian Cities (Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1959). Canada, Royal Commission on the Status of Women, Report (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1971). Eleven commissioned studies published separately. These include: Bossen, M., Patterns of Manpower Utilization in Canadian Department Stores, Study no. 3, 1971. , Manpower Utilization in Canadian Chartered Banks, Study no. 4, 1971. Lambert, R.D., Sex Role Imagery in Children: Social Origins of Mind, Study no. 6, 1969. Geoffroy, Renee and Paule Sainte-Marie, Attitude of Union Workers to Women in Industry, Study no. 9, 1971. Robson, R.A.H. and M. Lapointe, Comparison of Men's and Women's Salaries and Employment Fringe Benefits in the Academic Profession, Study no. 1. Cultural Tradition and Political History of Women in Canada (Three essays published together), Study no. 8. Canadian Council on Social Development, The One-Parent Family: Report of an Inquiry on One-Parent Families in Canada (Ottawa: Canadian Council on Social Development, 1971). "Canadian Labour Congress Survey on Women in Trade Unions," Canadian Labour, 10(1965). Charpentier, Yvette et Lucie Dagenais, Section 6, "Participation des femmes aux mouvements syndicaux," in Le Travail Feminin (Congres des Relations Industrielles de 1'Universite' Laval; Presses de 1'universite Laval, 1967). Canadian Union of Public Employees, "The Status of Women in CUPE: A Special Report Approved by the CUPE National Convention" (CUPE, 1971). Eichler, Margrit, "Women as Personal Dependents," in M. Stephenson (ed.), Women in Canada (Toronto: New Press, 1973). Gelber, Sylvia, "Which Side Are You On?" Canadian Labour (May, 1972). Greenglass, Esther, "The Psychology of Women: Or, the High Cost of Achievement," in M. Stephenson (ed.), Women in Canada (Toronto: New Press, 1973). James, Alice, "Poverty: Canada's Legacy to Women," (Vancouver: Vancouver Women's Caucus, no date). Jewitt, Pauline, "The Working Woman," Continuous Learning, 4 (1965).

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Bibliography

Kieran, Sheila, The Non-Deductible Woman (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1970). Kimball, Meredith M., "Women and Success: A Basic Conflict?" in M. Stephenson (ed.), Women in Canada (Toronto: New Press, 1973). Lee, John A., "Do Working Women Cause Unemployment?" Canadian Labour, 6(1961). L e m o y n e , Jean (trans. P. Stratford), "Women and French Canadian Civilization," in Convergences; Essays from Quebec (Toronto: Ryerson, 1966). Marchak, Patricia, Critical Review of the Status of Women Report," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 9:1 (1972). , "Women Workers and White -Collar Unions," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 10:2 (1973). , "Les Femmes, le travail, et le syndicalisme au Canada" Sociologie et Societes, 6:1 (Mai, 1974). Morton, Peggy, "Women's Work is Never Done....or the Production, Maintenance and Reproduction of Labour Power," in Women Unite! An Anthology of the Canadian Women's Movement (Toronto: Canadian Women's Education Press, 1972). Ostry, Sylvia, The Female Worker in Canada (Census Monograph 1961, Ottawa: Dominion Bureau of Statistics, 1968). Paltiel, Freda L., and Bryce Mackasey, Status of Women in Canada, 1972 (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1972). Rands, Jean, "Toward an Organization of Working Women," in Women Unite! An Anthology of the Canadian Women's Movement (Toronto: Canadian Women's Educational Press, 1972). Ricks, Francie et al., "Women's Liberation: A Case Study of Organizations for Social Change," Canadian Psychologist, 13 (1972). Rowntree, M. and J., More on the Political Economy of Women's Liberation, (Toronto: New Hogtown Press, 1970). Smith, Dorothy, "Women, the Family and Corporate Capitalism," in M. Stephenson (ed.), Women in Canada (Toronto: New Press, 1973). Stephenson, Marylee (ed.), Women in Canada (Toronto: New Press, 1973). Wood,. Myrna. "Equality for Working Class Women," (Toronto: New Hogtown Press, no date). Women Unite! An Anthology of the Canadian Women's Movement (Toronto: Canadian Women's Educational Press, 1972).

Bib liography 131 CHAPTER 3: FREE ENTERPRISE IN NATION STATES

Foreign Control and Multi-National Corporations One of the earliest publications on foreign control and large corporations is Anatomy of Big Business by L.C. and F.W. Park (Toronto: Progress Books, 1962). This outlines the situation of the late 1950s and provides detailed descriptions of the Canadian situation relative to American corporations. A handful of other books appeared in the 1960s, including A Choice for Canada by Walter Gordon, then Finance Minister in a Liberal government (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1966); and Foreign Ownership of Canadian Industry by A.E. Safarian (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1966). Some relevant articles appeared in Social Purpose for Canada, edited by M. Oliver (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961). This last book provides a "liberal left" perspective on Canadian social and economic problems as a follow-up to Social Planning for Canada published in 1935 by the League for Social Reconstruction. Of all these publications, Walter Gordon's book received the most attention largely because of his official position and his subsequent retirement from that position. Before retiring, however, he initiated the Task Force on the Structure of Canadian Industry. Its Report, Foreign Ownership and the Structure of Canadian Industry (Melville H. Watkins, Head of Task Force. Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1968) was hotly debated mainly outside parliament, and it laid the foundation for the large number of studies in the early 1970s. Several additional reports prepared by various government agencies or branches of government have explored various facets of the problem. Among these are The Takeover of Canadian Firms, 1945-1961, by Grant Reuber and Frank Roseman, prepared for the Economic Council of Canada (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1969); Foreign Direct Investment in Canada, working group headed by the Honourable Herb Gray, M.P. (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1972); and the Eleventh Report of the Standing Committee on External Affairs and National Defence, Respecting Canada-United States Relations, second session, 28th Parliament (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1970). The Gray Report is available in short form as A Citizen's Guide to the Gray Report, (prepared by The Canadian Forum, Toronto: New Press, 1971). Also useful are the annual publications of Statistics Canada, one of which, Inter-Corporate Ownership, lists

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ownership complexes of all companies, and another, Corporation Statistics, provides detailed information on the concentration of ownership of Canadian industry. For current information on company assets and ownership, two non-government publications are useful references: The Financial Post, which lists companies operating in Canada, and Fortune magazine, which lists the top 500 corporations every year and provides a breakdown by industrial sector. Perspectives on the problem of foreign control and its effect on the cultural and political development of Canada are given in Silent Surrender, by Kari Levitt (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1971); I.A. Litvak et al, Dual Loyalty: Canadian-U.S. Business Arrangements, (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1971); an anthology, Close the 49th Parallel, Etc.: The Americanization of Canada, edited by Ian Lumsden et al. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970); and Capitalism and the National Question in Canada, edited by Gary Teeple (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973). Since 1973, the number of anthologies has ballooned. Their quality varies, but all approach foreign investment as a distinct problem for Canadians and for Canadian national independence. One study by an American scholar is particularly interesting. John Fayerweather questioned Canadians, including the national elites in corporations, unions, and government, as to how they reacted to various aspects of foreign ownership. His book, Foreign Investment in Canada: Prospects for National Policy is worth reading (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1974). It is also worth considering why an American, rather than a Canadian, obtained the administrative and financial support to conduct these surveys. On military policy and the defence production sharing agreements, the two items listed in the footnotes to Chapter 3 are a reasonable introduction: J.W. Warnock, Partner to Behemoth: The Military Policy of a Satellite Canada, (Toronto: New Press, 1970) and Philip Resnick, "Canadian Defence Policy and the American Empire," in Close the 49th Parallel, Etc. With the recent announcement (see text) of new Canadian initiatives in the aerospace industry, some of the information in these sources will require updating.

Political Parties

On political party financing, the most extensive study is Political Party Financing in Canada by Khayyam Z. Paltiel (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1970). An earlier, brief study is contained in "Money in Canadian Politics," by E.E. Harrill in Party Politics in Canada, edited by Hugh G. Thornburn (Toronto: Prentice-Hall, 1963). Recruitment of candidates for parliament is studied in the article, "The Recruitment of Candidates for the Canadian House of Commons," by A. Kornberg and H.H. Winsborough in American Political Science Review vol. LXll, no. 4 (Dec., 1968). Other publications which investigate recruitment, party con-

Bibliography 133 ferences and the role of interest groups include: J. y Lele "Leadership et al. Conventions in Canada: The Forms and Substance of Participatory Politics," in Social Space: Canadian Perspectives, edited by D.I. Davies and K. Herman (Toronto: New Press, 1972); SJ.R. Noel, "Political Parties and Elite Accommodation: Interpretation of Canadian Federalism," paper read at the Canadian Political Science Association meetings, Winnipeg, 1970; Maurice Pinard, "One Party Dominance and Third Parties," Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XXXIII (Aug., 1967); Robert Presthus, "Interest Groups and the Canadian Parliament: Activities, Interaction, Legitimacy and Influence," Canadian Journal of Political Science, 4:4 (Dec,, 1971); and Robert Presthus, Elite Accommodation in Canadian Politics, (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1973); and Charles Taylor, The Pattern of Politics, (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1970). Two further articles in this area are worthy of attention. These are "The Structure and Membership of the Canadian Cabinet," internal research project of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1966); and J. Wilson, "Politics and Social Class in Canada: The Case of Waterloo South," Canadian Journal of Political Science, 1:3 (Sept., 1968). In addition to these studies, there are many survey and electoral analysis studies of Canadian election results or voting patterns. In particular, John Meisel publishes regular analyses and working papers on these subjects, (e.g., Working Papers on Canadian Politics, Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1972). There are many anthologies and text-books available on the Canadian political system. Of these, we mention just a few: R. MacGregor Dawson and W.F. Dawson, Democratic Government in Canada, revised by Norman Ward (Toronto: University of Toronto Press); F.C. Englemann and M.A. Schwartz, Political Parties and the Canadian Social Structure, (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1967); Paul W. Fox, Politics: Canada: Culture and Process, 3rd Edition (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1970); and Norman Ward, The Canadian House of Commons, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1950).

Political Philosophy, Ideology An analysis of the threads of political thinking in Canada, in contrast to those in the United States and in Europe, is given in "Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism in Canada: An Interpretation," by Gad Horowitz in Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, vol. XXXII, No.2 (May, 1966). Several publications by George Grant touch on this topic, including Philosophy in the Mass Age, (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1966), Technology and Empire, (Toronto: Anansi, 1969), and Lament for a Nation: The defeat of Canadian Nationalism, (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1965). Mentioned in the text is a book by Daniel Bell: The End of Ideology (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1960). Bell argues that the Marxist ideology has dis-

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appeared as a viable interpretation of the capitalist system by virtue of both changes in the class system and the development of problems in Communist countries. For a consideration of liberalism, recommended reading includes the publications of the Liberal and Conservative parties — e.g., The Canadian Liberal, The Conservative Canadian, and such "insider" books as that by Jack W. Pickersgill, a former cabinet minister, The Liberal Party, (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1962). In addition, one should read over collections of speeches given at such established clubs of business and political leaders as the Canadian Club, the Empire Club, the English-Speaking Union, the Chamber of Commerce. Most useful are the pages of Canadian metropolitan daily newspapers.

CHAPTER 4: CLASSES IN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY Marx's early writings on alienation and ideology may be pursued in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844) and The German Ideology (1845-46). The student embarking on readings in the Marxist tradition may find these writings more appealing than the later, more ponderous and more technical works, particularly Capital. In addition, such a student will want to read through the short Manifesto of the Communist Party. Of Lenin's writings, two essays are central: Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, and The State and Revolution. All of these publications are available in English in cheap editions by the Foreign Languages Publishing Houses of Moscow and the People's Republic of China. A number of contemporary scholars are contributing to the updating of Marxist theory. Among those easily read by students whose familiarity with the original texts is not extensive, Monopoly Capital by Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy is an excellent introduction (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966). Somewhat more difficult is The Political Economy of Growth by Paul Baran (New York: Modern Reader Paperbacks, 1957). In a very different framework is the work of Ralf Dahrendorf, whose Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society presents the case for treating classes as functions of authority distribution rather than as functions of differential ownership in the mechanisms of production. On imperialism, the writings of Andre' Gunder Frank are perhaps the most strident and certainly the best known. These include Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969). A short article by Frank discusses the relationship between development and underdevelopment in Monthly Review (New York) Vol. 18, No. 4 (September, 1966). Pierre Jale'e provides a heavily documented case against the capitalist societies in his several books on imperialism: Imperialism in the Seventies (translated by Raymond and Margaret Sokolov, New York: The Third Press, Joseph Okpaku Publishing Co., 1973); The Pillage of the Third World (New

Bib liography

135

York: Monthly Review Press, 1968) and The Third World in World Economy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969). Two other writers on imperialism are Andreas G. Papandreou and Rodolfo Stavenhagen. Papandreou, a minister in the Greek cabinet before the military coup of the 1960s, describes his interpretation of modern capitalism, the State, and the extension of monopoly capitalism in Paternalistic Capitalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Stavenhagen's works are not easily available in English, but some essays appear in a collection edited by him: Agrarian Problems and Peasant Movements in Latin America (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970). The application of these themes to the Canadian situation is a new development in academic circles. Various articles by Mel Watkins, who headed the Task Force on Foreign Ownership and the Structure of Industry, have contributed to the application of the "Metropolis-Hinterland" perspective. For sociologists, an article by A.K. Davies explores this line of enquiry: "Canadian Society and History as Hinterland Versus Metropolis," in R.J. Ossenberg, Canadian Society: Pluralism, Change, and Conflict (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1971). Other articles in this collection are within the same general framework. The most extensive application has been to Quebec, and describes the position of Quebec in the Anglo-American system. These items are listed in this bibliography under Chapter 6. CHAPTER 5: THE OLD LEFT Social History of Canada Harold A. Innis and his students at the University of Toronto explored Canada's economic development in terms of Canada's relationship to Britain and the United States in a series of studies which have recently been revived and now appear as the basis for those working within the "metropolis-hinterland" conceptual framework. Best known of these studies is The Fur Trade in Canada, revised edition, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1956). Sociologists have not generally engaged in historical studies, but S.D. Clark is an exception. His studies include: Church and Sect in Canada (1948); The Developing Canadian Community (1962); and Movements of Political Protest in Canada 1640-1840 (1959), all published by The University of Toronto Press. A series of volumes by different authors explores the social and economic aspects of settlement and development in Canada under the general editorship of W.A. Mackintosh and W.L.G. Joerg. This is entitled Canadian Frontiers of Settlement (Toronto: Macmillan, 1936). Several studies are now appearing on the depression era of the 1930s. Among these are The Dirty Thirties: Canadians in the Great Depression, edited by Michael Horn (Toronto; Copp Clark, 1971); The Wretched of Canada: Letters

136 Bibliography to R.B. Bennett 1930-35, edited by L.M. Grayson and Michael Bliss (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972); and Ten Lost Years 1929-1939: Memories of Canadians Who Survived the Depression, by Barry Broadfoot (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1973). Protest Movements Probably the best known study of a social movement is that by S.M. Lipset, Agrarian Socialism: The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in Saskatchewan: A Study in Political Sociology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950). This interpretation has been widely challenged. Some of the criticisms are contained in a recent edition (New York: Doubleday, 1968). Other studies of the C.C.F. include The Anatomy of a Party: The National CCF, 1932-61 by Walter Young, and A Protest Movement Becalmed: A Study of Change in The CCF (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964). An important source of information and insight on the socialist movement is a biography of J.S. Woodsworth by Kenneth McNaught, A Prophet in Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press). The Social Credit movement has also received much attention from social historians. One interesting study of the movement in the first province where it gained electoral success is that by John A. Irving: The Social Credit Movement in Alberta (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1959); another is by C.B. MacPherson, Democracy in Albert a (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1953). Two studies of social credit in Quebec are extremely interesting analyses: Michael Stein, The Dynamics of Right-Wing Protest (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973); and Maurice Pinard, The Rise of a Third Party (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971). A general discussion of the relationship between protest movements and social conditions is carried on by Pinard in "Poverty and Political Movements," Social Problems, vol. 15, no. 2 (Fall, 1967). Labour and Unions The most extensive account of labour history in Canada is Stuart Jamieson's Times of Trouble: Labour Unrest and Industrial Conflict in Canada, 1900-66 (Task Force on Labour Relations Study no. 22, Ottawa: Information Canada, 1971). This provides a fairly detailed examination of events in each decade and every region. A more political discussion of the early history of unions is Martin Robin's Radical Politics and Canadian Labour, 1880-1930 (Kingston: Industrial Relations Centre, Queen's University, 1968). A third history, also from the left perspective, is Charles Lipton's The Trade Union Movement in Canada, 1827-1959 (Montreal: Canadian Social Publications, 1966). Three recent studies of organized labour should be added to this basic list. These are Nationalism, Communism, and Canadian Labour by Irving M. Abella

Bib liography 137 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972); Canadian Labour in Politics by Gad Horowitz (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968); and Organized Labour and Pressure Politics: Canadian Labour Congress 1956-1968, by David Kwavnick (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1972).

CHAPTER 6: THE NEW LEFT Quebec Society Unlike their English counterparts, French-Canadian sociologists never eschewed a class analysis of their society. Their publications are profuse, and these are supplemented by studies conducted by English-speaking sociologists interested in Quebec society. Two classics are still worth reading: E.G. Hughes, French Canada in Transition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1943) and H. Miner, St. Denis: A French-Canadian Parish (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939). Current publications include Richard Jones, Community in Crisis: FrenchCanadian Nationalism in Perspective (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972); S.H. and H. Milner, The Decolonization of Quebec (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973); and Marcel Rioux, Quebec in Question (Toronto, James Lewis and Samuel, 1971). For a popular Marxist version of Quebec society see Leandre Bergeron, The History of Quebec: A Patriot's Handbook (Toronto: New Canada Press, 1971). The classic history of Quebec for sociologists is The French Canadians 1760 - 1967, two volumes, by Mason Wade (Toronto, Macmillan of Canada, 1968). Two studies of language and its role in Canadian society are Richard Joy, Languages in Confict: The Canadian Experience (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972); and Stanley Lieberson, Language and Ethnic Relations in Canada (New York: Wiley, 1970). The Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism provides the most extensive study of the relationship between language and economic opportunities for French-speaking Canadians. Two anthologies are important contributions to the study of Quebec. These are French Canadian Society, edited by Marcel Rioux and Yves Martin (two volumes, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1968); and Canadian Dualism, edited by Mason Wade (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1960). A recent collection edited by Gerald Gold and M.A. Tremblay should also be read, Communities and Culture in French Canada (Montreal: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973). In addition to these texts, a substantial literature on classes, Quebec's evolution toward an industrial centre, and the relationship between the Quebecois and the Anglo-community should be read by students who wish to become familiar with social conditions in Quebec. A selection of these appears below:

138

Bibliography

Beattie, C. et al, Bureaucratic Careers: Anglophones and Francophones in the Canadian Public Service (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1972). Boily, Robert, "Montreal, une fortresse liberale," Socialisme, 66. Bonenfant, J.C., "Involution du statut de 1'homme politique canadienfran$ais," Recherche Sociale, Paris, 7:1-2 (Janv.-Aout, 1966). Bourque, Gilles et Nicole Laurin-Frenette, "Social Classes and National Ideologies in Quebec, 1960-1970," in G. Teeple (ed.) Capitalism and the National Question (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972). Brazeau, J. "Quebec's Emerging Middle Class," Canadian Business, 36:3 (March, 1963). Chodos, R. and Nick Auf der Mair, Quebec: A Chronicle, 1968-1972, A Last Post Special (Toronto: James Lewis and Samuel, 1972). Dofny, Jacques and Muriel Garon-Audy, "Mobilites professionnelles au Quebec," Sociologie et Societes, I, No. 2 (Nov., 1969). Dofny, Jacques et M. Rioux, "Les Classes sociales au Canada franc,ais," Revue fran$aise de sociologie, vol. Ill no. 3 (Juillet-Septembre, 1962). Falardeau, J.C., "Des elites traditionnelles aux elites nouvelles," Recherche sociale, Paris, 7:1-2 (1966). Fortin, Gerald, "Milieu rural et milieu ouvrier, deux classes virtuelles" Recherches sociographiques, 6 (1966). Guindon, Hubert, "The Social Evolution of Quebec Reconsidered," Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XXVI, no. 4 (Nov., 1960). _ , "Social Unrest, Social Class and Quebec's Bureaucratic Revolution," Queen's Quarterly, 61 (Summer, 1964). , "Two Cultures: An Essay on Nationalism, Class, and Ethnic Tension," in Contemporary Canada, edited by R.H. Leach (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968). Hall, Oswald, "The Canadian Division of Labour Revisited," in R.J. Ossenberg (ed.), Canadian Society, Pluralism, Change and Conflict (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1971). Lessard, Marc-Andre et Jean-Paul Montminy, "L'urbanisation de la socie'te canadienne fran^aise,"Recherches sociographiques, IX, 1-2 (1968). Ossenberg, Richard J., "The Conquest Revisited: Another Look at Canadian Dualism," Canadian Journal of Sociology and Anthropology, no.4 (Nov.,1967). , "Social Pluralism in Quebec: Continuity, Change and Conflict," in Ossenberg (ed.), Canadian Society: Pluralism, Change and Conflict (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1971). Pinard, Maurice, "Working Class Politics: An Interpretation of the Quebec Case," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 7:2 (May, 1970). Quinn, Herbert, The Union Nationale (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963).

Bib liography 139 Raynaud, A. et al., "Repartition des revenus selon les groupes ethniques au Canada," study prepared for the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, 1967. Rioux, Marcel, "Sur Devolution des ideologies du Quebec," Revue de Vinstitut de sociologie (1968). Rocher, Guy, uLes recherches sur les occupations et la stratification sociale," Recherches sociographiques 3 (1962). Trudeau, P.E., Federalism and the French Canadians (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1968).

Nationalist Movement in Canada The nationalist movement as yet lacks a single focus or program, being split into the "independent Canada" group which wishes the repatriation of Canadian industry to Canadian business concerns, and the "independent socialist Canada" group which seeks a far more radical restructuring of Canadian society. Various of the collections and analyses noted above for Chapter 3 are basic readings. In addition, the collection by Gary Tee pie in Capitalism and the National Question (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973) is essential. The collection of manifestos, articles, speeches and historical notes by Dave Godfrey (ed.) in Gordon to Watkins to You (Toronto: New Press, 1970) is useful background material. Two Canadian publications provide the continuing thread to the movement: Canadian Dimension and The Last Post. These are both publications of the political left, and have generally moved further left as NDP governments in the western provinces have gained power but failed to satisfy the demands of the nationalist, socialist movement.

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INDEX Britain, British, 16, 25-26, 28, 29, 38, 63, 87,96 British Columbia, 69-71, 78, 96-97 Burke, Edmund, 37

A Choice for Canada, 80 affluence, 3 aircrafts industry, 43—44 America, American, anti-American sentiment, 94, 113 consumer products, 91 economic control, 46—47 immigrants, 28 imperialism, 63-66, 91-96, 112-117 in Viet Nam, 44, 63-66 military integration, 43—44 multi-national corporations, 42—44, 46—47 ownership of Canadian industry, subsidiaries, 27, 38-50, 88-89 Trading with the Enemy Act, 44 War of Independence, 37 way of life, 92 Anaconda, 49 analyst, role of, 2, 4, 10 Anatomy of Big Business, 95 Anglo-American interests, 27, 90—91 Archbishop, of Quebec, 85, of Montreal, 88 armaments, 43—44 Asbestos strike, 88-89 Ashley, C.A., 49 Austria, 13

CCF (Co-operative Commonwealth Federation), 51, 78-82 CNTU (Confederation of National Trade Unions), 93 CTCC (Confederation des Travailleurs Catholiques du Canada), 86 Canada, Canadian, armaments and aircrafts, 43—45 as hinterland, 62—64 as junior partner to U.S., 64 as nation state, 37—45 banking, 47-48 CCF/NDP, 51, 78-82, 95-96 CIO, 80 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 51 class consciousness, 14-15, 85-93, 109, 112, 115-117 classes in, 16-23, 69-81, 85-99, 102-112 Columbia River Treaty, 97 Combines Investigation Act, 51, 77 concentration of economic control, 46-50,97 Conquest, 85, 87 conservative ideology, 85—87 Criminal Code, 77 Defence Production Sharing Agreements, 43-44, 50 Department of Trade and Commerce, 114 depression, the, 77—81 early socialist parties, 69—71 education, 21—23 ethnic groups, 25—26, 28 ethnic nationalism, 99 executive speech, 112 federalism, 97 foreign ownership and investment, 38—50

BNA Act, 94 banking, 47-50 Baran, Paul, 61-62, 106, 112 Behrman, J.D., 47 Bell, Daniel, 52 Bentham, Jeremy, 37 Bergeron, Leandre, 91-92, 99 Berle, Adolf, 46-47 Bolsheviks, bolshevism, 72, 81 Bond Head, Sir Francis, 89, 112 bourgeois, bourgeoisie, 6, 7, 58—59, 92, 115 Bourque, Gilles, 93 branch-plant economies, 63 Brascan, 48

141

142

Index

in Viet Nam war, 44 income distribution, 16—20 Indians, 25, 110-111 investment class, 50 labour force, 70-71, 73-77, 87-90, 93, 97-98

Liberal Party, 12, 36, 46, 51, 69, 77, 81, 89,95-96 liberalism, 13-15, 35-36, 46, 75-77, 87-91, 102, 109-110, 112-113, 117 medecine in, 13 military, 43—45 NORAD, 44 New Left, 91-97 political elite, 52 poverty, 17—20 Quebec, 27, 85-93, 110-111 separatism, 90-91 sovereignty, 42—50 take-overs, 39 tariffs (1911), 38 trade, 38 Winnipeg General Strike, 71-77 women, 23-25, 109-110 Canadair, 44 Capital, 62 capital, capitalism, 6-8, 38-50, 57-66 , 69, 79-81, 86, 88, 91-93, 94-96, 102-106, 111-117 Catholic Confederation, 88 Catholicism, 4, 5, 9, 28-29, 85-87 centre-periphery, 65 chambers of commerce, 9 Chile, 48-49, 113 China, 2 Cite Libre, 89 classes, 4-6, 10, 14-23, 57-62, 69-81, 85-99, 102-117 cold war, 43 colonies, 6, 37-38, 62-66 Colorado Springs, 44 Columbia River Treaty, 97 Combines Investigation Act, 51, 77 Common Front, CNTU, 93 communist, 72 Communist Manifesto, 58 Communist Party, 77 competition, competitive, 5

market, capitalism, 45—46, 60—62, 65, 107,113 (see also: free enterprise, capitalism) concentration of economic power, 46—50, 97, 112-113 conglomerate corporation, 48—49 Conquest, the, 28, 85, 87 conscription, 81 Conservative, party, 46, 51 government, 77 conservative ideology, 85—87 conspiracy, 88 consumer sovereignty, 45 contracts, 5—6 contradictions of capitalism, 8, 60—62, 97 corporations, corporate control, 41—51, 61-62,87,95, 102-117 counter ideologies, 2, 4, 57—58 (see also: Marxism) Creditiste Party, 90, 91 Criminal Code, 77 critic, role of, 2 Cuban missile crisis, 44 cultural explanations for inequality, 25, 28-30, 102 culture, 57 Dahrendorf, Ralf, 91, 106 decision-making, 42, 49-50, 63-64, 103-107 Defence Production Sharing Agreements, 43,50 de Havilland Aircraft of Canada, 44 Department of Trade and Commerce, 114 depression, 1930s, 77-81, 86 de Tocqueville, Alexis, 4 development, 61—66 (see also: Third World, imperialism) dialectic process, 8 Dion, Leon,97 direct investment, 38—44 directors, 49, 103 disinherited groups, 79 doctors, 13 dominant ideology, 12, 3, 65 (see also: liberalism, capitalism) Duplessis, Maurice, 89, 91

Index Durham, Lord, 15 Economic Council of Canada, 95 economic imperialism, 62—66 (see also: imperialism) education, 5-6, 12-14, 21-26, 62, 89, 108-110, 115 electoral vote, 35—36 elite, 16, 23, 26, 51-52, 65, 91, 102-106, 116 Empire Loyalists, 29, 45 Enclosure Acts, 5 English—French differences, relations, 3, 26-29,87,93,96 English-speaking population, 3, 28, 87, 93-97 End of Ideology, 52 entrepreneurs, 5 equality, 2-6, 13, 15, 23 (see also: class) in market place, 35, 45 (see also: free enterprise, competition) ethnic groups, 25—29 expansion, corporate, 41 (see also: corporations) FLQ (Front de Liberation de Quebec) 92-93 Family Compact, 45, 71, 112 feudalism, feudal society, 4—7, 58 financial institutions, 48—50, 103—105 financing, political parties, 51 Foreign Direct Investment (Gray Report), 41 foreign ownership, 28, 38-50, 95-97, 112-115 Gray Report, 39-41 Resolution 133 (Waffle Manifesto), 95-96 Frank, Andre Gunder, 64 free enterprise, 31, 35-37, 45-50 French Revolution, 37, 115 French-Canadian, 3, 26-29, 85-94, 96 (see also: Quebec) functionalist theory, 13-14, 31, 35-36 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 104-105, 108-109 Geneen, Harold, 105 General Dynamics of St. Louis, 44 General Motors, 115-116 genocide, James Bay, 111 Third World, 114, 117 Germany, 63 "getting ahead," 75

143

Globe and Mail, 73 Gordon, Walter, 89, 95,96 government, 14, 35-38, 44-46, 49-53, 61-62, 105-107, 112-114, 117 Gray Report (Foreign Direct Investment), 40-42 Guindon, Hubert, 90 happiness, pursuit of, 12 Hawker—Siddeley of London, 44 Hielbroner, Robert, 48 hinterlands, 63—66 history, writing of, 15 explanation of inequality, 38 ideology, 1-10, 112-117 liberalism as ideology, 12-15, 23, 28-32, 35-37, 45-46, 48, 50-53, 57, 75, 77, 87-89, 92, 96, 98-99, 102, 110-111 Marxism as ideology, 69-74, 77-81, 85, 91-99, 102, 109, 111, 113, 116-117 immigration, immigrants, 28, 70-71, 75, 89 imperialism, 37, 62-66, 81, 87, 91-97, 112-117 income distribution, 16-26, 28-32 Indian people, 24—26; James Bay, 110 individualism, 2, 3, 5, 12, 36-37, 79, 99 industrial society, industrialism, 2—7, 28, 65, 87, 106,110-111,116 revolution, 2, 4, 37, 108, 114 unionism, 73—74 inequality, 16-32 inflation, 73 inherited wealth, 30 internal war, 6 international trade unions, 51, 53, 88 investment class, 30, 49, 97, 102-107 James Bay, 110 Jamieson, Stuart, 75, 77 Japan, 63 Johns Mansville Company, 88 Johnson, Leo, 18 justice, judicial system, 35 Kennecott, 49 Kerr, Clark, 70 labour, labour force, 5-7, 15, 22, 32, 57, 58-60, 64, 69-71, 73-77, 87, 89, 91, 107-109, 113

144

Index

LaPresse, 73,89 Last Post, The, 92 Laurier government, 38—39 Laurin-Frenette, Nicole, 93 League for Social Reconstruction, 78, 85 Le Devoir, 89 Lenin, V. I., 47, 62-66 Le Standard, 89 Levitt, Kari, 41 Lewis, David, 96 Liberal ideology, democracy, 2, 7, 12—15, 28-32, 35-37, 45-46, 48, 50-53, 57, 75, 77, 87-89, 96-99, 102, 109, 111, 113, 116-117 rebellion, 87 Liberal party, 12, 36, 46, 51, 69, 77, 81, 89, 95-96 low income families, 16—19, 29 "maltres chez nous", 93, 96 majority rule, rights, 35—36, 50, 111 managers, 42, 108 marginal class, 99 markets, 3, 31, 35-36, 42, 45, 48, 59, 62-63 "Marshmallow Resolution," 96 Marx, Karl, 8, 58-61, 65, 75, 98, 107, 109 Marxism and ideology of class conflict, 7-8, 10, 58-61, 69, 74-75, 77, 79-80, 91-93, 95-96, 98, 102, 107, 109, 116 Marxist government, Chile, 48 Masters, D.C., 74 McGeer, Patrick, 96-97 McNaught, Kenneth, 71, 74 Means, Gardiner, 46—47 medicine, 13 metropolis—hinterland thesis, 64 middle class, 14-16, 19-20, 70, 89-90, 98-99 mining, 41, 103 military integration, 43—44 Mill, John Stuart, 36-37, 53, 113 mining, 41, 103 mobility, 6-7, 30, 70-71, 75-76, 89, 98 monopoly, 48, 60 capitalism, 60—66 Monopoly Capitalism, 61, 95-96, 98 moral obligations, 6, 52, 56 moral relativity, 52-53, 111 Morning Leader, 73

multi-national corporations, 41, 47—48, 49, 95-96, 112, 114 NDP (New Democratic Party), 51, 82, 95 NORAD, 44 nation state, 6, 35, 37, 42, 45, 50, 105-106, 115 national broadcasting system, 89 National Film Board, 51 nationalism, 91, 93-97, 116 nationalization, electricity, Quebec, 89, 92 New Left, 91-96, 116 occupations, 1, 12, 14, (see also: labour force) October Crisis (1970), 92-93 oligarchy, 62 oligopoly, 48, 60—61 One Big Union, 70, 73-74 "open shop", 75 organized groups, 31 over-population, 114 ownership of industry, 3, 27-28, 30, 38-50, 58-63, 70, 87, 91-93, 95-97, 99, 102-117 pacifism, CCF, 81 Park, L.C., and F.W. Park, 95 Parti Quebecois, 91-92, 96 Pearson, Lester B., 36 peasants, in Europe, 5—7, 58—59 in Third World, 114 personal freedom, 2, 3 Pickersgill, Jack, 46 Pinard, Maurice, 91 planned economy, 104—105 Porter, John, 16, 19, 23, 26, 49, 52 portfolio investment, 38 poverty, 3-4, 16-18, 97 Poverty in Canada, Senate Report, 16—20 power, 3, 7, 30-32, 35-37, 38-50, 52-53, 58-62, 63, 79, 87, 91-93, 95-96, 103-104, 106, 108-109, 112-117 Prairies, 71, 78 pre-capitalist ideology, Quebec, 86 press, 79, 89 private enterprise, 35—37, (see also: corporations, capitalism) property, 3-5, 79-80, 103, 105, 108^-109 proletariat, 59, 74, 108

Index

145

Protestant, protestantism, 9, 26, Ethic, 29 public ownership, 80, 95, 105, 107, 113

ruling class, 9, 58-60, 73, 79, 87, 91-93, 102-106, 112, 114-117 Ryerson, Stanley, 94

Quebec, as colony, 87 Asbestos strike, 88-89 Bergeron, Leandre, 91-92 Bourque, Gilles and Nicole Laurin-Frenette, 93 conservative ideology, 85—87 educational system, 89 FLQ, 92-93 growth of middle class, 90 Guindon, Hubert, 90 Hydro Quebec, 89, 92, 110-111 industrialization, 87—89 James Bay, 110-111 Liberal Government, 89 liberal rebellion, 87-88 New Left, 91-93 ownership of industry, 27—28 Parti Quebecois, 91, 93 Quiet Revolution, 91, 94 separatism, 90—93 Taylor, Charles, 90

Schumpeter, Joseph, 6—7, 69 section 98, Criminal Code, 77 Senate, Committee on Poverty, 16—20 separatism, 90-93 sex, income differences, 23-24, 28-29 Status of Women Report, 109-110 shareholders, stockholders, 41, 49, 112-113 Silent Surrender, 41 skill hierarchy, 106-110 skilled workers, 70-71, 75 (see also: labour force) social change, 7-10, 60, 87-88, 102, 114 Social Planning for Canada, 79 socialist parties, 69, 78-82, 95-96 staples production, 71 Status of Women, Report, 109-110 strikes, 70 subsidiaries, 38—50 supply and demand, for labour, 14 for products, 45 Sweezy, Paul, 61-62, 106, 112

RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police), 78 recruitment, corporate, 102—105 political, 51-52 reforms, reformers, 2-3, 30, 89 Regina Manifesto, 79 riots, 78 reinvestment of profits, 41, 102—103 relief camps, 78 religion, religious influences, 3—5, 9, 28—29, 85-87 representative government, 35, 112, 116 research and development, 65 resources, resource industries, 39—41, 95, 114 Riot Act, Winnipeg (1919), 72 Vancouver (1935), 78 Asbestos (1949), 88 Robson Commission (1919), 73 Royal Commission, on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, 26 on Status of Women, 109-110

take-overs of Canadian firms, 39 tariffs, 38 Task Force on Foreign Ownership and the Structure of Canadian Industry, 89, 95 taxation laws, 35 Taylor, Charles, 90 technocrats, technical advisors, 93—94, 104-107 technological change, technology, 3, 114-117 Third World, 112-117 Toronto, 65, 70 trade, 38 unions, 9, 51, 53, 69-77, 80-82, 86, 88-89, 108 Trades and Labour Congress, 73, 80 Trading With the Enemy Act, U.S., 44 Trek to Ottawa, 78 Trudeau, Pierre E., 94 underdevelopment, 64—66, 112—117 unemployment, unemployed, 20, 64—65 77-78, 86, 97, 99, 109, 110-111, 114

146

Index

unequal union, 94 Union Nationale, 92 unions, 9, 51, 53, 69-77, 80-82, 86, 88-89,92,108 United States (see also: America), 41—44,46, 48-49, 63-66, 77, 89, 93-96, 113 unskilled workers, 21, 70-71, 75, 87, 90-93, 99, 109-111,113 urban population, 5—10, 71, 75 Utilitarians, 37 utilities, control of, 48 values, 2-3 Vancouver, 64 vertical integration, 48 Vertical Mosaic, 16, 19, 23 Viet Nam, 44, 96

"Waffle Resolution", 95 wages, wage-workers, 3, 6, 45, 59, 97 war, 61—66 profiteering, 73 Watergate, 106 Watkins, Mel, 95,99 Weber, Max, 29 welfare, 3-4, 77, 97 white-collar workers, 75-76, 89, 108 Winnipeg Declaration of Principles, 80 Winnipeg General Strike, 71-77 women, 23-25, 99, 109-110 working class, 5-8, 16-20, 58-60, 63, 69-77, 86-88, 93, 98, 102, 106-111 Woodsworth, James Shaver, 78 World Bank, 49

Wade, Mason, 88

Zakuta, Leo, 81