Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory

Revue canadienne de theorie politique et sociale

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Arthur Kroker (Concordia)
Managing Editor
Marilouise Kroker
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David Cook (Toronto)
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C.B . Macpherson (Toronto)
William Leiss (Simon Fraser)
James Moore (Concordia)
Michael Weinstein (Purdue)
Deena Weinstein (De Paul)
Eli Mandel (York)
Frank Burke (Manitoba)
Dieter Misgeld (O .I .S.E.)
Andrew Wernick (Trent)
Ray Morrow (Montreal)
loan Davies (York)
Editorial Correspondents
John Keane (London, England)
Jon Schiller (Berkeley, California)
Robert Gehret (Boston, Massachusetts)
Research Editor
David Walker (Winnipee)
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 Canadian Journal
of Political and Social Theory

Revue canadienne
de theorie politique et sociale

QUBEC
Culture and Political Economy

Special Double Issue

Hiver/Printemps 1982 Volume VI : Numbers 1-2

 Contents/Sommdire
The Cultural Imagination and the National Questions
Arthur Kroker

In Defence of Canadian Political Economy

The Innis Tradition in Political Economy

Mel Watkins

Harold Innis and Canadian Capitalist Development

Daniel Drache

The Culture of Dependency

Deux pays pour vivre: Critical Sociology

and Canadian Political Economy
Ray Morrow

Quebec Manifestos

For a Socialist Quebec

Le Comite des Cent

Black Rock Manifesto

Danny Adams, David Fennario,
John Salmela et al.

...and Pierre Elliott Trudeau

Pierre Trudeau On the Language of Values and the

Values of Languages
Edward Andrew

Review Articles

Rationalism and Faith: Kolakowski's Marx

William Leiss
Narrative as a Socially Liberating Art
Patrick Taylor
It is Now-Always 1984
Michael Dorlan2l
 Debates, Debates
Lessons from De Sade

De Sade and the Dead-End of Rationalism 182

Andrew Wernick

The Sleep of Reason... 191

David Cook

Strange Loops

Itself a Strange Loop: A Comment on Eli Mandel's

"Northrop Frye and Cultural Freudianism" 195
Frank Davey

Drowning in the Metaphysics of Space 198

Daniel Drache

The Genealogy of Nihilism

Darby Replies to Shell and Kroker 200

Tom Darby

The "Blindspot" Reopened

Probing the Blindspot: The Audience Commodity 204

Sut Jhally

Working at Watching : A Reply to Sut Jhally 211

Bill Livant

Academic Freedom on Trial

Ollman vs. the University of Maryland 216
Books Received 218

Index to Volume Five 221

 issue iswinter
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Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory/ Revue Canadienne de theorie
politique et sociale, Vol . 6, Nos . 1-2 (Hiver/Printemps), 1982 .

THE CULTURAL IMAGINATION

AND THE NATIONAL QUESTIONS
Arthur Kroker

The Quebec Discourse

This issue examines contemporary developments in the national projects in

Quebec and English-Canada, and puts the question directly of the contrasts and
convergencies between the "two solitudes" . The recent appearance of two
important collective statements of position-the Black Rock Manifesto and the
Alanifeste du Mouvement pour un Quebec Socialiste-are indications both of a
fundamental realignment of Quebec politics and of the vitality of cultural critique
in Quebec as part of the public discourse . The predicament of the Parti
Quebecois, as it struggles with constitutional defeat from without and fiscal crisis
from within, indicates a coming transformation of the nationalist debate in
Quebec . As these documents indicate, Quebec is the centre of the most
imaginative political discourse in North America . In Quebec the national
question is articulated most eloquently and forcefully in public debates which call
not only for the revamping of political institutions, but also for the cultural
revitalisation of Quebec society . Curiously, while the American polls oscillates
between social darwinism and a flawed liberalism and English-Canada is
paralysed, seemingly having lost its will to survive, Quebec remains the centre of
the utopian imagination . Come what may, Quebec has initiated a political
experiment which is, in part, outside of the grim monotony of the technological
life-order of North America .
In a continent in which skepticism about democratic politics and futility in the
face of overwhelming power are normal responses, the sheer dynamism and
heterogeneity of Quebec politics are quixotic . The historical remembrance of the
conquest, passed from generation to generation ; the re-creation of the Quebec
polis as a forum for public debate ; the will to remain marginal, in language and
economy, to the pragmatism of North America : these are some signs of a society
which has attempted to recover an authentic public life. While North America
drifts towards stasis, if it is not already caught up in the adversities of a new
plague, Quebec remains as a centre of active political consciousness . It is the
"other" to North America, and this because the concern with language itself is a
metaphor for a grand reversal of the myth of progress, for the creation of a
cultural life which is potentially democratic and communitarian . Thus, while the
political economy of North America is ordered by the myth of accumulation, that
of Quebec is conditioned, however delicately, by the preservation of community .
And while, in fact, the public life of the United States and English-Canada are
ordered by the technological logic of political economy, the most vital tendencies
 ARTHUR KROKER

in Quebec are cultural . This is a community in which writers, artists and

playwrights are the articulators of the collective unconscious, and in which civil
society exists outside the domain of political economy. If Ortega was correct in
noting that cultural regeneration begins when intellectuals flee the institutions,
then Quebec is in the beginnings of a radical, but fragile, experiment in the
recovery of civil society. Not every society is as bold as to throw off, in a single
generation, the clerisy and to seek to limit the insistent demands of the
market-place.
Of course, the political experiment that is Quebec today is fraught with
contradictions . The immediate future seems to point to the purging of Quebec
society as a whole through a classic, and convulsive, crisis of the over-burdened
state . The defeat of the Parti Quebecois in the referendum on sovereignty-
association only now has its full price revealed . From the viewpoint of
legitimation demands, the Parti Quebecois is trapped in a classically
over-extended position. Its range of political manoeuverability is limited by the
swift, and inexorable, appearance of the suppressed fiscal crisis of the state. At
the same time, the charisma of the Parti Quebecois-it is, after all, the political
expression of the national project-requires that it satisfy simultaneously a high
and intense level of often contradictory expectations . To resolve the fiscal
predicament of the Quebec state, the Parti Quebecois would have to start on the
"weary journey" prophetically noted by Max Weber, from charisma to
routinisation . To mobilise the popular base necessary for winning the
referendum, the Parti Quebecois obligated itself to a wide range of social
commitments and, in fact, set in motion an economic planning process which
depended, for its success, on the political manoeuverability to be gained from the
popular mandate of the referendum . As long as the PQ could plan on the basis of
radically altered future, it could displace objective, economic contradictions-the
absence of a coherent strategey of socialised production or of control over capital
accumulation-to the sphere of social economy . Deficit financing, the expansion
of social services, the growth of the public sector : these were, in the end,
contradictory of the actual postion of the Quebec government as nationalist and
social democratic in its objectives, but radically dependent in its foundations on
the capricious logic of advanced capitalism. Consequently, the defeat of the PQ in
the referendum caught the government in a position of surplus-commitments,
but with a deficit of means to satisfy these obligations . And, like a classic social
democratic state, the government is now over-authorized in the social sphere,
but under-powered in the political arena. The "continuously repressed crisis"'
which Jurgen Habermas has alluded to as the fate of the state in advanced
industrial societies is emblematic of Quebec . Here, the crisis is displaced
successively from the economic system to the sphere of social economy. Or, as
Habermas has stated, that while the "crisis" has its origins in the economic
system, "the welfare state no longer allows the crisis to explode in an
immediately economic form".' A second front is opened, thefront of "collective
consumption", and it is in this general area of state funding for social services,
education, medicine, etc., that the most decisive, but nonetheless deflected,
 THE CULTURAL IMAGINATION

struggles take place over the growing irrationality of Quebec political economy.
The supressed fiscal crisis of the Quebec state thus erupts first in the displaced
form of the "overloading" of the mechanisms of social and political economy of a
social democratic state . Quebec hovers today between history and routinisation,
between utopia and economic necessity .
The Quebec discourse is now fragile and vulnerable precisely because it is caught
in the critical task oftransforming the heterogeneity and plenitude of the cultural
imagination into the critical realism of democratic socialism . And this task,
which is really a contemporary experiment in establishing a dynamic harmony
between politics and ontology, is constantly kept off balance by the application of
external shocks: the problem of capital disaccumulation ; the use of federal fiscal
policy to destablize the Quebec government; the continuous "drag" of economic
crisis. The cultural imagination, which is always utopian and progressive at one
of its poles, can under the pressure of external shock oscillate as quickly to its other
polarity-the tragic sense of fatalism. A politics which are informed by cultural
vision are, indeed, relentless. Normalisation, the falling back into the
technological life-world of North America, is resisted only at the price of living
between the margins of utopia and fatalism. It is not at all clear, at this time,
whether Quebec society will, or can, succeed in harmonizing culture and
economy. There are few examples in contemporary history of the successful
integration of the fullest degree possible of cultural freedom within a democratic
polity and a communitarian society. Every tendency in North America combines
to draw this radical experiment in cultural freedom back to the norm, the
structures of dependency, of technological society. The success or failure of the
Quebecois in rethinking and, moreover, relieving the dialectic of domination is
surely an early-warning system for those who would also attempt to name, and
then to resist, dependent being.

Domination in English-Canada

While the historical specificity of English-Canada makes meaningless a

"parallel" national project, there is something of fundamental value to be gained
from the Quebec experience. For too long, the national question in English-
Canada, the question of how best to comprehend and to overcome domination,
has had three decisive limitations. First, resistance to dependency has been
articulated within exclusively economistic terms . While in effect the industrial
sociology of the nineteenth-century may indicate the material contradictions of a
colonised economy, this perspective cannot account for other significant
dimensions of Canadian dependency . Like Quebec, but with its own historical
pattern of development, English-Canada has experienced not only political
coercion and economic oppression, but it has also experienced two other "deep
structures" of dependency-cultural repression and social supression. 3 Indeed,
cultural domination now successively reproduces and amplifies itself at the level
 ARTHUR KROKER

of economy . Second, critiques of Canadian dependency have often been vacantly

negative in character, analysing the structures of external constraints but leaving
unarticulated the precise character, the ontological possibility, of our situation
within the North American discourse . Cultural identity is not a given but a social
possibility. And as such, the coming to national self-consciousness requires the
breaching forever of the suppressed discourse of Canadian thought, and the diffi-
cult exercise of thinking anew the relationship of English-Canada, Quebec, Latin
America and the United States . A positive and informing vision of an alternative
society can only mean a coming home, really for the first time, to the New World .
Third, the national project in English-Canada has become a static meditation at
the level of politics and philosophy because the struggle against domination has
radically severed means from ends . A thesis on Canadian domination which
would claim to be politically vital must harmonize the critique of dependent
being with the analysis of dominating institutions . The national question is vital
only if the political practice which its statement encourages is intrinsically
transformative . The absence of intrinsic values as the fundamental principles of
the cultural, and hence political, imagination condemns perspectives on
Canadian dependency to repetition and dogmatism .
The national question in English-Canada is thus, at once, a matter of three
interrelated questions, each of which responds to a limitation in the traditional
equation of self-determination with the critique of industrial economy . The
renewal of English-Canada must begin with a theory of domination which is
sufficently comprehensive to provide an internally consistent explanation of the
patterns of cultural repression, social suppression, political coercion and
economic oppression . What is needed is a theory of dependency which links
ideology-critique with an explanation of the class-specific distribution of power
and wealth in Canadian life . In addition, the national question can only be put if
we are prepared to rethink the meaning of the New World for an understanding
of the Canadian experience . Our cultural identity is unique precisely because
Canada has acted traditionally as an archimedean point, an intellectual
mediation, between the technological dynamism of North America and the
historical foundations of European consciousness . The Canadian fate is as yet
unknown . It remains to have its genealogy discovered and its future disclosed
within the labyrinth of the New World . And, finally, the national question
involves, really for the first time, the incorporation of a theory of intrinsic public
morality into the discourse on dependency . As in Quebec, the struggle against
domination could be made self-reflexive if the act of resistance were itself an
agency for the transformation of the logic of Canadian society .

Rediscovering Regionalism

One brilliant beginning for the development of a more adequate theory of

Canadian dependency has been made by the essayist George Woodcock . In an
 THE CULTURAL IMAGINATION

elegant monograph (and one which deserves major public debate) The Meeting
of Time and Space, 4 Woodcock has called for a rethinking of the cultural
imagination in Canada. He proposes, in effect, that the only possible basis for
cultural renewal is an explicit recognition of Canada as a society conceivable only
in regional terms . "We are in cultural terms, as we should be in political terms, a
confederation of regions" . 5 Regionalism expresses a central and important truth
about Canadian society . "The full consciousness and experience of one's region in
a non-exclusive way enables one to understand better other lands and other
regions ." 6 In Woodcock's view, regionalism expresses the truth felt by Spaniards,
" . . .the most intensely regionalist people of Europe, when they used the term
patria chica to describe. . . the geographical feeling of locality, the historical feeling
of a living community, the personal sense of ties to a place where one has been
born or which one has passionately adopted" .' To the intellectual patriot,
Woodcock's thesis is haunting for it calls to mind that our entry into
technological society has been made possible only at the price of historical
estrangement and cultural forgetfulness . So much so in fact that the actual
experience of regionalism-the memory of Northern Ontario, the Maritimes,
the solitude of the prairies-becomes a regressive political category . It is not an
insignificant sign of cultural repression that both liberal and orthodox leftist analysis
combine to denounce the regionalist experience as somehow alien to the
centralizing qualities of the Canadian discourse . Such political orthodoxy is like
"forgetfulness of being" itself. It forgets that the origins of ontology are found in
memory, in the immedicacy of place . It also hides from attention the obvious fact
that in the age of hyper-technology all sectors of society are regionalist in
derivation . The centre is now only a provisional site, subject merely to the
capricious whims of a "bingo economy" .e Or, as Woodcock states so eloquently,
there has never been a genuinely creative political or cultural initiative which has
not been based on a regionalist impulse . Canadian democracy, such as it is,
continues to reflect the tragic experience of prairie populism the precursors of
Canadian literature are to be found in the Maritimes and the prairies ; labour
militancy has always been a product of the margins . Even the Great Lakes region
is distinctive in its intellectual contributions : it is from Toronto that there has
emerged a series of masterful studies of the crisis of civilisation, a fitting mode of
reflection for a region which is brushed daily by the experience of technology . In
pointing to the regionalist impulses of Canadian culture, Woodcock's intentions
are to indicate that Canada is a society different from the highly centralist
cultures of England and France . The recovery of the Canadian cultural
imagination begins with the fact that Canada has a number of "competing
cultural centres", much like Spain, Germany and Italy .
In its most concrete expression, the national question is bound up with the
creation of a new "way. of seeing" which reflects the reality of Canada as a
confederacy of regions, an alliance of cultural centres . This act does not begin in
the abstract, but on the basis of recovering the suppressed discourses of the
regions . For once, the indigenous, popular cultures of the confederacy of regions
must be allowed to speak for themselves, to articulate their own understanding of
 ARTHUR KROKER

the relationship between emotion, locale and expression.

It is Woodcock's thesis that regionalism contrasts with the pseudo-unities
imposed by political constraints. "Provincialism and regionalism are not exactly
the same, since provinces can be created by an arbitrary fiat of superior
governments, for they are merely political constructs, whereas regions come into
being by more organic and less formalized processes" .9 Regional discourse
begins as an expression ofcultural freedom-the fusing of the imagination with
the realities of a people's setting . Viewed as an alliance of "mature and
autonomous regional societies" (as opposed to the "centralized and long-
outdated nation-state of the type developed in eighteenth-century Europe" 10) the
Canadian reality would be rethought, or perhaps re-imagined, from its roots. It is,
in the end, a common cultural tradition, distinctive but non-exclusive, which
would be the basis for a new social accord among the regions of Canada. And
what is to be the principle of unity? Woodcock suggests that the regionalist
impulse, the rethinking of Canada as an active confederacy of heterogeneous
cultures, would possess appreciation as its intrinsic value . Regionalism is not
limiting, any more than true confederalism is . The full consciousness and
expression of one's region in a non-exclusive way enables one to understand
better other land and other regions ." Woodcock argues that the political
significance is clear :

I am sure that this view of confederation is different from the

centralizing and Jacobinical interpretation of Canadian
political structures posed by Pierre Elliot Trudeau and his
ruling Liberal Party, but I am convinced it is more in accord
with historical truth, more fitting to geographical factors, and
closer to the cultural actualities of Canada, where literary and
artistic tradthons are not homogeneous, but have developed
variously in various parts of our immense country and can only
be seen in their full richness if we understand how they differ
mutually and how they interweave into the general culture of
the country ."

Woodcock's thesis on regionalism as the indigenous basis of the Canadian

cultural experience is an appropriate beginning-point for a renewal of the
Canadian imagination . It speaks not only to the tragic consequences of cultural
and economic dependency, but suggests that by coming home to the popular
culture of the regions-Newfoundland, the North, the "Free City"
of Montreal, Ontario, British Columbia, the Maritimes-we can begin to recover
a cultural tradition which will distinguish English-Canada, like Quebec, from the
homogeneity of North America . The intention would be to develop cultural
plenitude by "connecting again" to the most indigenous impulses of Canadian
society . This is, therefore, an appeal for an end to the estrangement of a
dependent society . The thesis follows that cultural regeneration begins only by
seizing the particular. The appreciation of the arts, music, writing, drama,

10
 THE CULTURAL IMAGINATION

photography and poetry of a region and of their method and pace of

development is the one and certain foundation for a more vital cultural
imagination . And also, it might be added, for establishing a basis of common, but
critical, appreciation between the cultural sites of Quebec and English-speaking
Canada . In this way we would begin again to recover the legacy of Canadian
thought and to create the foundations of an indigenous cultural discourse.

Department of Political Science

Concordia University

Notes

1. Jurgen Habermas, "Conservatism and Capitalist Crisis", New Left Review, 115 (1979) .

2. Ibid.

3. This image of human domination as containing four intersecting dimensions of dependency was
developed by Michael A. Weinstein.

4. George Woodcock, The Meeting of Time andSpace: Regionalism in Canadian Literature,

Edmonton : N. West Institute for Western Canadian Studies, 1981 .

5. Ibid., p. 38.

G. Op. cit., p. 37 .

7. Op . cit., p. 9.

8. This term was devised by Mel Watkins to describe the accidental relationship between social
needs and economic planning in a resource-based economy.

9. Woodcock, p. 11 .

10 . Ibid., p. 23

11 . Op . cit., p. 11 .
Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory / Revue Canadienne de theorie
politique et rociale, Vol. 6, Nos . 1-2 (Hiver/Printemps, 1982) .

THE INNIS TRADITION

IN CANADIAN POLITICAL ECONOMY

Mel Watkins

Although the name of Harold Innis is not a household word in Canada, it

should be. He is without doubt the most distinguished social scientist and
historian, and one of the most distinguished intellectuals that Canada has ever
produced. Successively he wrote pioneering works in Canadian history and in
the history of civilizations, held together by the common thread of an intense,
passionate concern for scholarship and for the future of his country ; indeed, for
Western civilization itself. As an economic historian or economist, writing on
Canada, he was the central figure in creating an indigenous Canadian approach to
political economy that transcended economic history and economics to embrace
history, political science, sociology and anthropology. Yet the legacy of this "old
political economy" has been in recent years to facilitate the emergence of a "new
political economy", a new synthesis . That, at least, is what this paper will argue . I
In the process it will seek to answer a number of questions : What was the nature
of the old synthesis formed under Innis? How was its formation possible? Why
did it fall by the wayside? Why is it now being revived? Why, in terms of creative
work, is the new political economy mostly of a left - even Marxist -
persuasion, though Innis was certainly not a Marxist and was very much opposed
to the politics of his left-leaning colleagues?
Central to my argument, following the historian of science, Thomas Kuhn,z is
the power of paradigms to set the questions and to constrain the methods by
which answers can be sought to a limited list of questions ; that is, the powerful
manner in which the disciplines discipline. The phenomenon was familiar to
Innis, who opposed monopolies of knowledge and schools . The practitioners of a
discipline, as monopolists, set up barriers to the entry of dissenting ideas and so
generally impose their will with the consequence, at first evident to the student
but soon forgotten, that university departments are as much suppressors of
creative thought as they can be its supporters, places of unfreedom as much as
places of freedom. In Innis' arresting use of the language of orthodox economic
theory to expose the reality of its practice: "Imperfect competition between
economic theories hampers the advance of freedom of thought ."3 Intellectual
modes ofproduction are, in turn, related to real modes of production, so that the
dialectic of paradigm change must be related not only to matters internal to the
paradigm, following Kuhn, but also to the material reality . Concretely, we must
be concerned not only with the hegemonic nature of the paradigm (in our case
with the politics of economics) but also with the effect of the economy on
economics, including economic history : Carl Berger's history of Canadian
history4 might thus be better seen as notes toward an economic history of
Canadian economic history. As Innis put it: "We need a sociology or a philosophy

12
 INNIS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY

of the social sciences and particularly of economics, an economic history of

knowledge or an economic history of economic history" .5 Following Innis, the
recognition of the narrowness of the margin for intellectual manouevre, or for
creative freedom, can help us understand the bias of a discipline, and so
overcome it .
Now Innis was an economic historian which means, in the North American
tradition then as now, an economist who works on matters historical . The Innis
tradition in economic history can properly be said to be embodied in the so-called
staples approach, both in the concrete sense of the study of the great staple trades
and industries and in the methodological sense that the study of staple activity
broadly conceived was a unifying theme for the general historical experience at
the periphery . In a paper written on the occasion of the quarter-century since
Innis' death, the economic historian Hugh Aitken reminds us of "the golden age
of Canadian economic history that accompanied the statement and elaboration of
the staple theme", but he is critical of its legacy :

The fact of the matter is that, in Canadian economic history,_

Innis still dominates the field . . . Elsewhere [meaning the
United States], the last decade and a half in economic history
has been one of the most exciting periods ever experienced in
the history of the profession . Not so in Canada . . . [A]
reconstruction of the standard interpretation of Canadian
economic history is still a long way off . That standard
interpretation, enshrined in monographs and textbooks, is an
interpretation of the Innis model . It is no compliment to
Canadian scholarship that now twenty-five years after his
death, it still monopolizes the field .

Referring to "developments in Canadian economic history over the last decade

and a half - or rather, the relative lack of developments", he says "The strength
of the Innis tradition may be one explanation ."'
Aitken's evidence for "exciting" developments in the U .S . is the emergence of
the "new economic history" or cliometrics, forgetting Herbert Heaton's 1954
warning (significantly in the Canadian Journal of Economics and Political
Science) that :

The American cult of quantities is no mere turning tide . It is a

tidal wave, on which Clio's little craft seems likely to be sunk by
the swarms of vessels manned by statisticians, econometricians,
and macro-economists . . . . 7
 MEL WATKINS

The new economic history now has a track record and not all observers are as
impressed as Aitken . Paul Davenport observes that "the 'new' economic
historians tend to take the position that if a technique is acceptable to the
theorists it is acceptable for economic history." "The new economic history," he
writes, "is sometimes described as 'the application of economic theory to
economic history' ; far too often it becomes . . .'the application of history to
economic history." And the economic theory at issue is, of course, neo-classical
theory. Ian Parker observes that since World War II:

Within economics .. .the gap between mainstream economic

theory and economic history widened, despite Innis' argument
that 'Any substantial progress in economic theory must come
from a closer synthesis between economic history and
economic theory' and despite (and on occasion because of)
recent attempts to apply simple neo-classical 'cliometric'
models directly to the explanation of complex historical
situations.9

The American economic historian Donald McCloskey says the theory in question
is "especially the theory of price" and insists (properly) that it, and not counting,
is "the defining skill of cliometricians, as of other economists." He recognizes
that "the cliometric school is characteristically American" and, in a
characteristically American way, writes "the frontier of cliometrics is the wide
world beyond America ."'°
Predictably the technique has, in fact, spread to Canada, where it has been in
part devoted to testing the staple theory . In a review of that literature I wrote that

to the extent it poses real questions it has upheld the validity of

the staples approach - though making little or no
contribution to our theoretical understanding. The staple
theory has survived the worst onslaughts of Americanization
and for that reason alone must be as hardy and genuinely
Canadian."

Aitken is excessively critical of the lack of developments in Canadian economic

history while exaggerating the strength of the Innis tradition, at least in the
sense of a holistic approach .
Only three years after Aitken, a new Canadian economic history textbook
appeared (Canada : an Economic History by Marr and Patterson 11) which was
largely successful in blending the best, or less fanatical, of the new economic
history with some of the insights of both the old and the new political economy.

14
 INNIS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY

A new textbook was possible precisely because, as Kenneth Norrie put it in a

review: "There has been an explosion ofresearch activity in the field over the last
quarter century, from perspectives as diverse as cliometrics to the new political
economy." But, as Norrie also points out, the limitations of a text reflect those
of existing research . The Marr and Patterson book is "an economic history of
Canada ." It is not based on "a broader synthesis of economic with social and
political history" because, writes Norrie, himself of the new economic history
persuasion, "so few of us are ourselves involved in such broad interdisciplinary
work." 1 3
Norrie is here alluding to the nature of the paradigm, and there are deeper
flaws in Aitken's argument that result from the superficiality of his analysis of
economics as a paradigm and economic history as a field within that paragidm .
Traditionally, economic history had been critical of economic theory and, to a
considerable extent, prepared to generate its own analytical frameworks, loosely
related to the prevailing body of theory . As well, under Innis, economic history
was central to economics itself, and had, in turn, been the core for the broader
synthesis that constituted the old political economy. Beginning in the'30s with
Keynes, and greatly intensifying during the war and postwar period, economics
became obsessed with the immediate and the short-run, and hence became
ahistorical, falling victim to quantification and the reification of technique . In the
United States, the new economics, or the so-called neo-classical synthesis,
destroyed the surviving remnants of the institutionalism of Veblen and
Commons; in Canada, it destroyed the Innis school as a dominant influence in
economics and as the unifying theme for political economy. Innis survived within
Canadian economic history because the new economics sees economic history
essentially as a ghetto, and because those of the Innis tradition, particularly at
Toronto under the influence of V.W. Bladen and W.T. Easterbrook, were able to
resist the inroads of the new economic history. In terms of influence over the
profession, the successor to Innis was to be Harry Johnson located outside
Canada at the University ofChicago and the London School of Economics and, as
a happy prisoner of the orthodox paradigm, wholly committed to the
obliteration of borders as impediments to the free movements of goods, capital
and ideas .
Berger argues that Innis foresaw his fate and, in effect in his later work
deserting the paradigm of economics, contributed to it:

Innis sensed that excessive specialization in economics, its

presentist tendencies, and the desire for disciplinary autonomy
implied a breakup of the political-economy tradition that had
underlain his economic history of Canada.. .. The staple thesis
linked the history of Creighton, the sociology of Clark, and the
political economy of Innis . The common approach was
weakened in the forties ; there were complaints about the
subordination of political science to political economy...

15
 MEL WATKINS

Changing fashions in economics also foreshadowed a very

different style.. ..Innis's speculations on communications were
partly responses to the conditions that were leading to a
splintering of the'social sciences' . Ironically, they were also his
contribution to the dissolution of the political-economy
tradition. 14

It is difficult, however, to see how he could have avoided being read out of the
paradigm, for quantification and Keynesianism represented everything he was
opposed to as an economist . And in practice, Keynesianism - in the sense of
state activity to facilitate economic growth so as to maintain full employment -
was to mean for Canada in the postwar period a continuing if not increasing
commitment to the export of staple products developed by and for foreign
capital, that is, economicgrowth at the expense of deepening dependency . Daniel
Drache has argued that there are (even within the liberal paradigm) two versions
of the staple theory : Innis' dependency model and W.A. Mackintosh's
growth-mode1 ;15 Keyensianism was grafted onto the latter, not the former,
version of the staple theory . 16 Hence the influence of Keynes worked to erode the
influence of Innis - though Innis' suspiciousness of Keynesianism, given his
position within the profession with respect to academic appointments in
Canada, tended to weaken Keynesianism in Canada.
The prima causa of the fate of .Innis, and hence of Canadian political eco-
nomy, lies with the nature of mainstream orthodox economics from the late
'30s onward, its monolithic character and the arrogance of its practitioners, and
their intolerance of dissent. At the same time, however, some blame must be
attached to those whom Drache calls "the launderers" of Innis ." It is, after all, in
the nature of colonialism that at least some of the colonials are complicit ; the
essence of this comprador intellectual role (as we shall see below) consisted of
rejecting the dependency-model of the early Innis and the anti-American
imperialism of the later Innis.
The power of the neo-classical paradigm to kill reflects, of course, less its
external verities as theory and more its deadly consequences as ideology,
intensifying yet more powerful realities of global Realpolitik in the era of the
waxing of the American empire. As I have argued elsewhere,

Innis was able to exploit the already established bias toward

economic history at Toronto, the peculiar weakness of
economics generally as a discipline in the 1920s - its sterility
between Marshall and Keynes .. . - and the momentary
freedom as Canada moved from the British to the American
empire . Briefly, novelty was possible.'$
 INNIS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY

But the rise of the Toronto school was only followed by its fall as Canada
inexorably shifted into the American empire . The era of the Cold War saw the
Americanization of the social sciences as an aspect of the Americanization of
everything, and the destuction of a unified political economy appropriate to a
hinterland status . Canada became, for Canadian social scientists, a "miniature
replica" of the U.S., a "peaceable kingdom," America in slow motion with less of
both the good and the bad . Economics, with its pretensions to fine-tuning the
economy, became relevant with a vengeance when secular prosperity was
thought to have been "built-in". Canadian economics became a branch plant of
U.S. economics and, increasingly, of the Friedmanite orthodoxy of the University
of Chicago. The subtlety and sophistication of Innisian political economy was
replaced by the simplicity and banality of the dfctrines of free trade and
competition, notwithstanding the evident imperfections of competition that
inhered in the now-ascendant, transnational corporations . '.'The success of
laissez-faire has been paid for by the exploited areas of which we are one"
(Innis) . 1 9 "By the nineteen-fifties Innis and those who would have seen the
matter as he did were swamped by both the soft money Keynesian group and the
continentalist free traders" (Neill) .z°
The department of political economy at the University of Toronto, once
chaired with such distinction by Innis, grew quantitatively but, depending on
one's point of view, not necessarily qualitatively . Sociology broke away and its
assertion of discipline autonomy was followed, to some extent unavoidably, by
pervasive Americanization. Economics and political science held together, but in
the face of rising opposition from the economists that seems certain to triumph
shortly. (In any event, they already operate as if they were separate departments
and political economy as such is hardly taught .) The economists devote
themselves to redefining political economy, on the one hand, by reducing politics
to the narrowest margins of economic self-interest (for example, politicians
exchanging policies for votes ; nationalism reduced to a "taste for nationalism",
the better to vilify it)" and, on the other hand, by equating political economy
with the study of public policy. As the undergraduate Political Economy Course
Union recently pointed out : "It is presently possible for a student to gain a
four-year specialist degree in Economics at U. of T. without ever having read a
word of Harold Innis ." The university honoured Innis by naming a new college
after him, but I am told that the opening line of the Innis College song is, "Who
the hell was Harold Innis?"
If I have dwelt on economics particularly at the University of Toronto, it is
because there is the situation I know best, not because I think that situation is
unique. Nationally, the old Canadian Political Science Association combining
economists and political scientists split in 1967 ; significantly, when a Political
Economy section was created in 1976, it was not within the Canadian Economics
Association (CEA) but rather the successor Canadian Political Science
Association (CPSA). There is now more economic history, at least in the sense
that Innis would have understood, to be found at the meetings of the CPSA than
the CEA ; the same is true with respect to the Canadian Historial Association and

17
 MEL WATKINS

even the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association relative to the CEA .
Though this is what happened, it must be insisted that there is an important
sense in which it did not have to happen that way, namely, that neo-classical
theory could have incorporated Innis' staple economics . Innis, after all, was a
liberal, albeit a liberal with a difference.zz If he has been ignored, suppressed, and
laundered, it has happened more for ideological reasons than from theoretical
imperatives per se. The latter point is important not only in its own right but
because it is suggestive of developments that may in duecourse take place within
the beleaguered orthodox paradigm.
It seems to me that there are some ways in which the staple thesis could have
been seen as relevant to neo-classical theory . By 1963, the staple theory had been
restated as a theory of economic growth,z3 showing that Innis was respectable
within the orthodox paradigm ." Subsequent literature has been mostly devoted
to its quantitative testing (as noted) or to theoretical elaboration narrowly
focussed and taxonomic in character . 15 How might it have been effectively
'modernized'?
There could havebeen incorporated into the staple theory, as a resource-based
theory of growth, the importance of economic rents, as demonstrated by Eric
Kierans (and understood by Innis), and of policies directed toward further
processing of staples, that is, forward linkage or the "manufacturing condition"
as demonstrated by Aitken and H.V. Nelles .zb Thereby, the staple theory would
have been further elaborated as a theory of capital formation - the latter being a
central concern ofInnis and Kenneth Buckley .z1 The consideration of rents leads
to a concern with the loss thereof : their outward drain through foreign
ownership and the consequence, particularly at the regional level, for
underdevelopment ; alternatively, when the rents are retained but under foreign
control the power of foreign capital is entrenched. (Such considerations led, in
the real world, to the National Energy Program in 1980.) Attending to the
forward linkage potential of the new staple industries would have confronted the
reality of the power of the resource-based corporations to resist and subvert the
policies of hinterland governments (for example, Inco as documented by Nelles)
and the power of the American government with a tariff-structure favouring the
import of unprocessed resources. In effect, serious attention to these matters
would have confronted the economic historian with Canada's role as a resource
hinterland within the American empire, that is, with Canada's dependency, and
offered an alternative to the sterility of the new economic history. For the
orthodox paradigm, however, what could not be risked was the discovery of
neo-colonialism .
The rationale for extending the staple approach to allow for the institutional
fact of the transnational corporation transcends the matter of resource-
 INNIS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY

processing ; at issue is the larger reality of the emergent global economy and
polity . The task would have been facilitated by taking advantage of the American
literature on the rise of the giant corporation and its transnational spread (for
example, the work of Alfred Chandler and Mira Wilkins), 28 not to speak of the
American revisionist historians . Notwithstanding the failure to do so - except
by the historian Stephen Scheinberg - important work was done on foreign
ownership, albeit mostly on the contemporay phenomenon (by, for example,
Aitken himself, the early Stephen Hymer and Kari Levitt) and on Canadian
nationalism as a reaction to it by Abraham Rotstein building on Karl Polanyi . 29
Against this, and particularly the latter, the neo-classicists wheeled out their
heaviest cannon ; it all smacked of economic nationalism, dangerous nonsense by
second-rate Canadian academics in bed with second-rate Canadian businessmen . 3 o
The transnational corporations of the centre and the branch plant economy of
the periphery were reduced by Canadian economists to the single equation : the
Canadian tariff created inefficient industry. What could have been a promising
approach was emasculated in the name of the most literal neo-classical
orthodoxy ; nature should copy art and Canadian secondary manufacturing could
sink or swim on the tide of free trade . A less ideological response could have led
to the writing of genuine industrial history - something that has still not been
done. From the perspective of economic history proper, it would have been the
most useful way to build on Innis - by blending the fact of dependent
industrialization explicitly into the staple approach - and, by providing critical
building blocks that the economist is best equipped to provide, would have given
a firm foundation to the work of political, social and labour historians 3 ' and led
thereby to a new, but still orthodox synthesis . "The surface of the economic
history of modern Canada has barely been scratched, and until that task is taken
up systematically it will be impossible to write a convincing new synthesis of our
past" (Cook) . 32
What was above all at risk was the discovery of dependency - a possibility
that could not be tolerated, for to do so would risk legitimizing nationalism. The
result was to strangle economic history of the Innis variety . This decline of
economic history is evidence of the high cost of the evasion and suppression that
inheres in the dominant paradigm . The staple theory was at best tolerated only
within the context of the Mackintosh version where it could, by quantitative
testing, provide work for economic historians deemed appropriate by
economists . Nor were the historians proper guiltless ; Paul Craven (who calls the
Mackintosh version "the whig-staples view") writes with respect to j .B .
Brebner's classic North Atlantic Triangle :

Brebner's refinement of the whig-staples approach was to

make it explicitly continentalist in scope . The staples
orientation of the Canadian economy was an expression of
natural advantage, and the expansion of the turn of the century

19
 MEL WATKINS

reflected a continental partnership between a highly

industrialized United States running short of natural resources
and a newly united Canada rich in them.33

If the early Innis was laundered, the later Innis was simply beyond the ken .
Even those otherwise sympathetic to Innis (like Easterbrook) failed to see any
message in Innis' later writings for Canadian economic history, and certainly not
his recognition of Canada's increasingly satellitic status (contained in the now
often-quoted phrase of "colony to nation to colony") nor his trenchant warnings
against the newly intensified economic imperialism of the United States backed
by the might of the military and the mass media. The costs of compartment-
alizing Innis into the staples phase and the communications phase have been
very high for Canadian economic history.
These matters cut deeply, for they tell us much about the colonial intellectual
and the colonization of the mind. Writes John Watson :

It is Innis' colonial background which provides an explanation

for his intellectual tragedy . It offered him the orientation and
subject matter which eventually led, at the height of the Cold
War, to his incisive critique of American imperialism . Andyet,
the same background dictated that his thought, though lauded,
would not be fully appreciated and pursued.34

Watson calls this "colonial myopia" ; not to admit Canada's colonial situation was
a way for the Canadian intellectual to avoid facing his own colonial situation .
A re-stated staple theory of growth in terms of the leading role of exports and
in the context of an international economy powerfully influenced by
transnational corporations was one possiblity ; another was (and is) the
development of an Innisian theory of growth in terms of rigidities, monopolies,
imbalances, radical instability, etc. Even a casual reader of Innis quickly becomes
aware of his concern with constraints resulting from overhead costs, unused
capacity, the burden ofdebt, and so on. Robin Neill was the first to systematically
draw our attention to Innis' emphasis on the cyclonic nature of economic
development in Canada. (The contrast with the Mackintosh conception is stark.)
Drache has now generalized these themes in Innis' writings into an Innisian
theory of Canadian capitalist development . 35 Orthodox economics offers an
equilibrium model of capitalist growth through markets, linkages, harmonies,
etc. Innis offers us, Drache suggests, a disequilibrium model of rigidities; in
effect, a special, or limiting, case within the general model, with the further
critical feature that, unlike the neo-classical equilibrium model, it is an
open-ended, or dialectical, model. In Drache's terms, "rigidities" result in
"incomplete development" or dependency . Watson independently makes the

20
 INNIS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY

same point : "In the 'staples' period Innis was primarily concerned with
Icyclonics' or radical instability . . ." ; "By definition, an understanding of the
hinterland context revolves around a conception of imbalance, or disequilibrium
or dependency" 36 Notwithstanding the sharp contrast with the neo-classical
model, Drache reminds us that Innis never fully abandoned neo-classical
economics . Rather, the neo-classicists abandoned him . They have ignored and
suppressed the essence of Innisian theory because it was necessary to do so to
avoid facing its implications of inherent tendencies toward hinterland
dependency . 31 Significantly, Drache shows us how Innis can be understood
within the liberal paradigm, though he himself opts for the perspective of the
Marxist paradigm.
What actually happened was not the realization of any of these possiblities, but
rather the destruction of Innisian economic history ; the latter being central to
political economy, its destruction contributed to the destruction of political
economy . It is useful to imagine what might have been . A central theme for Innis
and his school was the notion of "centre-margin" ; in fact, I think we should say
the central theme in that, following Easterbrook, it is a unifying theme for
historical analysis . The terminology is Innis', from his masterful "Conclusion" to
The Fur Trade in Canada, where he writes of "the discrepancy between the centre
and the margin of western civilization . "38 Others have rephrased the theme in
the more popular terminology of "metropolis-hinterland ."
The theme is indeed pervasive in the writings of the old political economy.
Donald Creighton's Laurentian school of Canadian historiography, the
counterpart to Innis' staple approach, explored the interaction of economics and
politics in the creation of a transcontinental national economy, the empire of the
St . Lawrence born and reborn . 39 No one has shown as effectively as Creighton the
power of this theme to focus on the 'separateness' of northern North America.
Canada as 'hinterland' is explicit throughout . The beleaguered St . Lawrence
merchants face not only the competition of New York/Albany, but the
indifference of the British Colonial Office to their grand (sub-) imperial designs .
On the whole, though, the metropolis-hinterland relationship within the British
Empire is seen as a mutually beneficial rather than exploitative arrangement, at
least in contrast to later experience within the American empire (a similar bias is
evident in Innis' writing and is instructive in understanding the nature of his
nationalism) . The rise of the empire of the St . Lawrence in the British era is
followed by its "decline and fall" in the American era4° and the successors to Sir
John A . Macdonald become little more than puppets that dance to the tune of
American imperialism ; to read Creighton is never to be in doubt that Canada is
now an American dependency.
Where he errs" is in exaggerating the nationalism of the National Policy, and
in blaming Mackenzie King for a branch plant economy whose origins are to be
found in the years immediately after 1879 and which was already fully evident by
1913 in the leading sectors of the Second Industrial Revolution . Macdonald's
National Policy politically had an aura of "home rule" 42 and "American industry
in Canada" economically ; the basis was fully laid for the "unequal alliance" 43 of

21
 MEL WATKINS

hinterland and metropole . Indeed, even the St. Lawrence merchants of the early
Creighton limited themselves to searching for a better deal within the British
Empire; when it failed in the late 1840s, not a few of them sought to move fully
into the American empire; they were a most colonial-minded group.44 What
follows, then, is that Canada has always been more of a hinterland or colony
(subjected to, and its elites complicit in, metropolitan imperatives) than
Creighton tells us - though none of this is to deny that Creighton deserves
enormous credit for maintaining the focus on dependency .
In economic history based on the staple approach, the focus on the hinterland
status of Canada was less firmly maintained. In part, the problem was the initial
difference between Innis and Mackintosh, and their influence . Mackintosh's
study for the Rowell-Sirois Commission constituted a general economic history
of the years from Confederation to the '30s (the impressive historical overview
of Book I of the Report) ; it shows, in conjunction with Creighton on the
immediate pre-Confederation period, how a national polity and economy were
created but the problem of growing American influence (beyond the re-
orientation of Canadian trade patterns) is ignored . To Easterbrook, who
clearly worked out of the Innis tradition, Canada is characterized by a centralized,
more controlled kind of growth ("a pattern of persistence" appropriate to a
"margin"), in contrast to the more vital and diversified development of the
United States ("a pattern of transformation" appropriate to a "centre") . The
notion of Canada as a satellite ofthe United States would appear inherent to such
a view, but Easterbrook's writing contains little that is explicit on Canadian
dependency. 45
In the centre-margin/metropolis-hinterland framework, there is not only an
external dimension, but also an internal dimension of internal metropolis (or
sub-metropolis)/internal hinterlands . Innis' writings, notwithstanding his
emphasis on the 'naturalness' of Canada in terms ofgeography (the St. Lawrence
River and the Precambrian Shield) and the character of the great staple trades of
fur and wheat, always show a firm grasp of this (from the grievances of the
Western farmers against the C.P.R. in his first book to those of the Maritime
Provinces against Central Canada in The Cod Fisheries, and his appendix to the
1951 Royal Commission on Transportation) . 46 In many ways, the most
important writing in the Innis tradition has been the development of this theme:
for example, S.D. Clark on the Canadian frontier, with its protest movements as
controlled margins ; A.R.M. Lower on the forest frontier and the 'rip-off' by
Toronto and, beyond, New York; W.L. Morton on the West - regional history
important in its own right and essential, given the interplay of economic centres
and subordinate areas, to the writing of national history; George Britnell on the
impact of wheat on the West; Vernon Fowke on the exploitation of the western
farmer by the National Policy; C.B. Macpherson on the political protest of
Alberta wheat farmers and its limitation (emphasized, in the same series on
Social Credit, by J.B. Mallory's study of federalism) ; A.G. Bailey on the culture
of the Maritime Provinces as a marginal area.4'
The centre/margin or metropolis/hinterland framework is not only

22
 INNIS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY

two-dimensional ; what is also critical is the interrelatedness of the two . Again

this was clearly understood by Innis, as is evident in the following passage first
published in 1937:

The end of the period of expansion based on the St . Lawrence

and trade with Great Britain coincided roughly with the
achievement of dominion status which followed the Great War
and which was marked by the Statute of Westminster. The end
of the struggle for control over external policy has been
followed by problems of internal policy ; and the decline of the
St. Lawrence as a factor contributing to the centralization of
the Dominion has been accompanied by the increasing
importance of regionalism evident in the growth of the powers
of the provinces ....The extension of the American empire, the
decline of its natural resources, and the emergence of
metropolitan areas, supported capitalist expansion in Canada
and reinforced the trend of regionalism . The pull to the north
and south has tended to become stronger in contrast with the
pull east and west."

His later writings show a persistent concern with this issue of political
disintegration and balkanization in the face of Americanization . Garth
Stevenson refers to this as a "thin line of intellectual tradition, which... has ...
drawn attention to the relatedness of the internal and external threats ."49
Indeed, not all if Innis' successors have been able to keep their eyes focused
to see both threats and their deadly interaction. Creighton powerfully ana-
lyses the external threat, but has no sympathy for "regionalism ." "In all his
works," Berger tells us, "Creighton concentrated on the centre, not on the
periphery ofthe country .. ..He viewed with sarcastic disfavour both the growth of
provincial powers and scholarly efforts concentrated on regional history. "so
Morton, on the other hand, in Berger's elegant phraseology, maintained "the
delicate balance of region and nation."
In recent years, the Quebec question has increasingly intruded upon this
matter. The issue is not central to Innis - indeed, there is little in his writings
about Quebec which speaks to his limitations as an English-Canadian intellectual
- but it has much exercised his successors whose responses starkly indicate the
limitations, if not of Innis, then of the school . Creighton's rejection of the
nationalist aspirations of the Quebecois are well known and consistent with his
general stand on regionalism, but what may be more significant is the vehemence
with which both Morton and Lower have taken the same position on Quebeos 1
despite their general tolerance of regionalism (and Morton's long-standing
sympathy with the rights of francophones as well as Lower's for the aspirations
of Quebecers). I do not pretend to know where Innis might have stood on the

23
 MEL WATKINS

matter of Quebec, but it must be insisted upon that he was consistently suspicious
of centralization. He wrote of "the lack of unity which has preserved Canadian
unity.. ." and of "the common basis of union (being) one of debt and taxes ."'
According to Neill : "He exposed the underlying forces both of unity and
diversity, for the most part emphasizing the latter", 53 and Berger adds: "Innis
may have demonstrated the case for Canadian unity, but this dimension of his
accomplishment was exaggerated by those who were either oblivious of, orchose
to ignore, his own hostility to centralization of power and his concern with
staples that had diverse effects on the country."54 In the context of the recent use
(that is, misuse) ofnational unity to put down the aspirations of the Quebecois, it
is essential to insist that appeal to the old political economy need not lock us into
a one-Canada, anti-Quebec position .
The discussion may also cast light on the argument by William Christian that
Innis was not a nationalist ." It is, to say the least, an original position, the
counter-position being held by such diverse people as Creighton, Brebner,
Berger, Drache, Neill, Cook, etc. In terms of the above, Christian makes two
elementary errors. He fails to distinguish between the nationalism of the centre
and the nationalism of the periphery ; that is, between agressive nationalism
and defensive nationalism, the first being imperialist and the second
anti-imperialist. Secondly, he shows no grasp at all of the two-dimensional
character of the centre-margin dialectic and of the need, in the Canadian context,
to distinguish between nationalism as "national independence" and nationalism
as "national unity" (or what Drache has called, respectively, the nationalism of
dependency or self-determination and the nationalism of domination 56. With
a populist-like distrust of the Ottawa establishment, Innis did not relate well to
the latter . This is not to deny the subtlety of Innis' position, particularly in his
later works, nor the important point made by Watson (hinted at by Berger but
which escapes Christian) that "Innis was not an anti-imperialist in the sense of
having a prejudice against large-scale empires . On the contrary, he felt the
balanced empire represented that which was best in human achievement ." 51
This could have been Christian's strongest argument for the view that Innis was
not a nationalist, but it was the fatal flaw - for Christian's argument - that is
also explains why Innis was, in his later years, a Canadian nationalist. For, to
again Watson, Innis "was an anti-imperialist in the modern sense of being
committed to opposing the imbalance (in the form of military expansionism)
of contemporary empires . "58 This shows the importance of relating ideas to
the understanding of praxis. At the same time, it demonstrates the severe pit-
falls inherent to textual criticism per se. 59
Another major theme for Innis and the school was that of "the state and
economic life." In the nature of the case, the theme linked economics (or
economic history) and political science ; it also stood out as a theme for historians
(particularly Creighton) and for the sociologist S.D. Clark.b° An argument
central toInnis was that the hinterland state itself was almost a by-product ofthe
exigencies of staple production as defined by the imperial state. Both the Act of
Union and Confederation were essentially dictated by the need to create a larger

24
 INNIS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY

state to provide security for foreign capital to build first the canals and then the
railways to facilitate the movement of staples ; Creighton's British North
America at Confederation brilliantly documented the latter . Within economic
history proper, Fowke and Aitken showed how "the state and economic life"
could be a powerful unifying theme to the long sweep of Canadian history while
Alfred Dubuc, in another seminal article, spoke directly of the post-Confederation
period and the material basis for the erosion of federal authority. 61 In political
science, Drache contrasts the older statist tradition ofJ .A . Corry (that is, the state
actively engaged in the process of creating economic growth) with the new
"social democratic" theorists (for example, Frank Scott and Eugene Forsey) and
the role of the state as a housekeeper in an advanced capitalist economy . In the
latter, dependency tends to drop away in a manner analogous to its fate in the
Mackintosh approach (relative to the Innis approach) . Political science, like
economics, ceases to be political economy . 6 z C .B . Macpherson has described how
the search for discipline autonomy, in the context of American influence, worked
to sever the link between the state and economic life :

Much ingenuity has been used by American political scientists,

in the last twenty or thirty years particularly, in staking out a
territory distinct from any other social science . The
behaviouralists and systems analysts felt that they had to
establish their claims to a 'new' political science . The way to
escape from the confines of studying institutions was to see
politics as an activity . . . Not wishing to work with 'the state' as
the central concept, as the older political science had done, a
formulation which had at least allowed some interest in the
relation between the state and economic life, the new men in
effect built walls between the study of the state and the study of
the economy . 63

A return to a central concern with the state and economy-building is now evident
in general and, in particular, in important writings on the provinces . The
relevant disciplines are more often political science and history than economics
or economic history, and the authors are, to some extent, seen, by themselves and
others, as part of the new political economy and not merely as part of the
established order of their disciplines . 64
To return to the opening theme, I have argued that, post-World War II, the
dominant paradigm in economics suppressed Innis while paying him little more
than lip service . But the larger realities of the world could not be indefinitely
suppressed. In the world of ideas, political economy in general and Marxism in
particular have revived in the United States and elsewhere, including Canada, in
the past ten to fifteen years ; for Canada, this should be evident from the
bibliographic references presented so far in this paper. This development can be

25
 MEL WATKINS

presumed to reflect the greater contradictions of capitalism that manifest

themselves in the new era of economic crisis. The neo-classical paradigm is again
in trouble. As the Keynesian consensus broke down - in the face of persistant
unemployment and permanent inflation, or so-called stagflation - it was met,
first and foremost, by a retreat to pre-Keynesianism called monetarism. At the
same time, Marxism, dormant since the 30s, experienced a major revival in the
context of the antiwar and student radicalism of the late 60s and early 70s, while
Keynesianism, in the face of monetarism, transformed itself into a more
institutionalist, or Galbraithian, post-Keynesianism. In Canada, because of the
central importance ofdependency, these developments have been animated by a
powerful strand of nationalism inherent to dissent from the orthodox paradigm
with its cosmopolitan, or pro-imperialist, bias toward free trade and free
mobility of capital . Hence, there has been a revival of interest in Innis precisely
be of his understanding of Canada's satellitic position, his distrust of
orthodox economics and, notwithstanding Christian, his nationalism when it
mattered . In the context of the revival of political economy and the right-wing
bias of the dominant monetarist, or neo-conservative economics, Innis became,
by default, the property of the left. This is admittedly ironic given Innis' own
unwillingness to have any truck or trade with the intellectual left, particularly as
represented by the League for Social Reconstruction in the 1930s .bs
It is a tribute to the vitality of the new political economy in Canada - albeit
more evident in political science, sociology, history and anthropology than in
economics proper - that it would necessitate a separate paper to describe it with
any justice .bb Brief comments must suffice here.
Though I myself am not in doubt as to the legacy of the old political economy of
Innis and his school, two qualifications are in order . The first is that there has
been increasing interest in Innis by scholars who would, I presume, not wish to be
seen as tainted either by the leftish or nationalist biases of the new political
economy : The leading case in point would be William Christian, arguably the
most productive of Innisian scholars .61 One must also include under this heading
an interest in Innis within orthodox writing that consists not merely in ignoring
and neglecting him but in explicit attacks against him . The most important
example here is William Eccles' "belated review" of Innis' Fur Trade: it is a
tribute to the new political economy that this instantly produced an impressive
defense of Innis and rebuttal of Eccles by Hugh Grant.b8 A recurring theme of
this paper is the nature of paradigms ; the issue between Eccles and Innis, and
Eccles and Grant, then, consists of the contrast between the political economy
paradigm of Innis and Grant and the orthodox Canadian history paradigm of
Eccles with its enormous distrust of explicit theorizing and its tendency to see
economic analysis as inherently deterministic (though it should be borne in mind
here that that other distinguished Canadian historian, Carl Berger, is mostly
favourable to Innis) .
The second qualification is that some within the new political economy who
label themselves Marxist political economists the better to distinguish
themselves from political economists in general are critical of the Innis legacy,

26
 INNIS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY

holding it to be counter-productive to the development of Marxist political

economy. The leading instances here are David McNally's just-published critique
both of the staple theory and those of us who have written of the wedding of
Innis and Marx.b9 At the risk of trying the patience of the reader, what is at issue
is the nature ofparadigms and so we so we should not be surprised that some new
political economists are more rigid or doctrinaire than others . It cannot be
denied, however, that what all but the most sectarian would regard as "political
economy" has been influenced to some degree (and in some cases - such as my
own - decisively so) by Innis and his school. As well, the use of the Innisian
strand of political economy has the great virtue of being a protection against the
mechanical application of Marxist models of Canada generated outside Canada,
what Drache has called "metropolitan Marxism ." Significantly, Innis explicitly
warned against the limitations of imported theory when he himself set out to
create an indigenous Canadian theory .10
Let me make two final observations on the Innis tradition that seem, to me, to
be relevant to our contemporary situation . The first is that the later Innis
deplored the militarism and irrationality he saw gripping the United States at
the time of the origins of the Cold War. Once again, in the time ofRonald Reagan
and the re-creation of the Cold War, there is surely much to deplore . The second
seems to me, from reading Watson, to be Innis' most important message to
Canadian intellectuals . It is that we must recognize, but refuse to accept, our lot
as colonial intellectuals . This paper has been an attempt to describe the powerful
constraints within Canadian scholarship. Innis' achievement is the proof that
there is more room for manoeuvre than the orthodox pretend and we are today
the stronger for it.
But the last word I will give to the person who is arguably the most
distinguished contemporary Canadian intellectual, Northrop Frye (although I do
so because his point in this quotation is particularly congenial) :

Innis's influence, in Canada as elsewhere, will grow steadily,

because with practice in reading him he becomes constantly
more suggestive and rewarding . He was a curiously tentative
writer, which may account for something of his rather spastic
prose rhythm . He saw that every new form or technique
generates both a positive impulse to exploit it and a negative
impulse, especially strong in universities, to resist it, and that
the former always outmanoeuvres the'latter. But he had some-
thing of what I call the garrison mentality in him, the uni-
versity being still his garrison for all the obscurantism in it
that he comments on so dryly. Perhaps it is not possible to hold
a vision of that scope and range steadily in one's mind without
a more passionate commitment to society as well as to
scholarship. 7 l
Department of Political Economy
University of Toronto
27
 MEL WATKINS

Notes

1 . Earlier versions of this paper have been presented to the Symposium on Harold Innis :
Legacy, Context, Direction at Simon Fraser University, March 1978 ; to the Annual
Conference of the Atlantic Provinces Political Studies Association, Charlottetown,
P .E .I ., 1978 ; to the Economic History Workshop, University of Toronto, October 1978 ;
and to the University College Lecture Series, University of Toronto, October 1981 . 1
have benefitted from discussions on these occasions . I am particularly indebted to
Professor Liora Salter of Simon Fraser University for first suggesting the topic to me.
The reader will note that I am discussing the Innis tradition only in Canadian political
economy and not in communications as well ; this narrowing reflects my interests and
competence . For one of the very few writers who is able to discuss both Innises with
insight, see A . John Watson, "Harold Innis and Classical Scholarship", Journal of
Canadian Studies, 12 :5 (Winter 1977), pp. 45-61 and Marginal Man : Harold Innis'
Communications Works in Context, Ph .D. thesis, University of Toronto (1981) .

2 . Thomas S . Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, 1962 .

3 . H .A . Innis, Political Economy in the Modern State, Toronto, 1946, p . 100 .

4. Carl Berger, The Writing of Canadian History : Aspects of English-Canadian

Historical Writing, 1900-1970, Toronto, 1976; while Berger's book is most useful, it is
the history of history rather than the economic history of history; it describes ideas
with little or no reference to material circumstances and Realpolitik .

5 . Innis, Political Economy in the Modern State, p . 83 .

6. Hugh G.J . Aitken, "Myth and Measurement : the Innis Tradition in Economic History",
Journal of Canadian Studies 12 :5 (Winter, 1978), pp. 96-105 .

7. Herbert Heaton, "Clio's New Overalls", Canadian Journal of Economics and Political
Science (November, 1954) .

8. Paul Davenport, Capital Accumulation and Economic Growth, Ph .D . thesis,

University of Toronto (1976), pp . 342, 247.

9 . Ian Parker, "Harold Innis, Karl Marx and Canadian Political Economy", Queen's
Quarterly (Winter, 1967), p . 545 .

10 . Donald N . McCloskey, "The Achievements of the Cliometric School", Journal of

Economic History (March, 1978), pp . 13-28 .

11 . Mel Watkins, "The Staple Theory Revisited", Journal of Canadian Studies (Winter,
1977) p. 85 ; reprinted in William H . Melody, Liora R . Salter and Paul Heyer, eds .,
Culture, Comunication and Dependency : the Tradition of H .A . Innis, Norwood,
NJ ., 1981 .

12 . William L . Marr and Donald G. Paterson, Canada : an Economic History, Toronto,

1980.

13. Review by Kenneth H. Norrie, Canadian Historical Review, (September, 1981)

pp. 339-40 .

28
 INNIS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY

14 . The Writing of Canadian History, p . 191 .

15 . Daniel Drache, "Rediscovery Canadian Political Economy" in Wallace Clement

and Daniel Drache, eds ., A Practical Guide to Canadian Political Economy, Toronto,
1978, pp . 1-53 . For Mackintosh's view, see W .A . Mackintosh, "Economic Factors in
Canadian History" in W .T . Easterbrook and M .H . Watkins, eds ., Approaches to
Canadian Economic History, Toronto, 1967, pp. 1-15 .

16 . See David A . Wolfe, "Economic Growth and Foreign Investment: A Perspective on

Canadian Economic Policy, 1945-1957", Journal of Canadian Studies 13 :1 (Spring,
1978) pp. 3-20 .

17. "Rediscovering Canadian Political Economy" .

18. Mel Watkins, "The Dismal State of Economics in Canada" in Ian Lumsden, ed ., Close
the 49th Parallel, etc.: The Americanization of Canada, Toronto, 1970, p . 205 .

19. Innis, commentary in The State and Economic Life, Paris, 1934, p. 289 cited in Robin
Neill, A New Theory of Value: The Canadian Economics of H.A . Innis. Toronto, 1972,
p. 61 .

20 . Ibid., p. 118.

21 . For a critique of the latter, see my "The economics of nationalism and the nationality
of economics : a critique of neoclassical theorizing", Canadian Journal of Economics
(November 1978, supplement), pp . S87-S120 .

22 . See Daniel Drache, "Harold Innis : a Canadian nationalist", Journal of Canadian

Studies (May 1979), pp. 7-12 .

23 . Watkins, "A Staple Theory of Economic Growth", and Gordon W. Bertram,

"Economic Growth and Canadian Industry, 1870-1915 : the Staple Model and the
'Take-Off Hypothesis'," (May, 1963), Canadian Journal of Economics and Political
Science, pp. 141-58 and pp. 162-84 ; both are reprinted in Easterbrook and Watkins.

24 . Watson is critical of those who "use" Innis' work rather than "understanding" it, but it
is valid to translate from one paradigm (Innisian) to another (neoclassical or Marxist)
as a way of generating insights . As well, while every effort should be made to
understand Innis on his own terms (as Watson is doing), the ultimate test of the use of
anyone's work, including Innis', is putting it to use ; otherwise, scholarship bogs down
in textual criticism .

25 . With respect to the latter, see Richard E . Caves, " 'Vent for Surplus' Models of Trade
and Growth" in Trade, Growth and the Balance of Payments: Essays in Honour of
Gottfried Haberler, Chicago, 1965 .

26 . Eric Kierans, Report on Natural Resource Policy in Manitoba, Manitoba, 1973 ; Aitken,
"Defensive Expansion: the State and Economic Growth in Canada" in Easterbrook
and Watkins, pp. 183-221 ; Aitken, "The Changing Structure of the Canadian
Economy with Particular Reference to the Influence of the United States" in Aitken
et.al., The American Economic Impact on Canada, Durham, N .C ., 1959, pp . 3-35 ; H .V.
Nelles, The Politics of Development : Forest, Mines and Hydro-electric Power in

29
 MEL WATKINS

Ontario, 1849-1941, Toronto, 1974 . Innis saw the importance of rents and their
tendency to manifest themselves as profits; as well as royalties, taxes and license fees
as devices to capture rents, he advocated using the tariff on machinery and
equipment "to skim off a substantial portion of the cream by taxing equipment, raising
costs of production and thereby reducing profits which would otherwise flow off into
the hands of foreign investors" ; suggested labour legislation "be designed to prevent
exploitation of labour" ; favoured "the investment of surplus by large compannies in
Canadian enterprises and the holding of stock by Canadian shareholders" ;
supported devices for increasing the prices of raw materials ; and concluded,
cryptically with the note "Government ownership as a means." Innis, "Snarkov
Island," Appendix to Neill, pp. 146-9.

27 . "Innis himself was keenly aware of the necessity of fixed investment for
industrialization. He often stressed the link between staple exports and capital
accumulation after Confederation, as in his Problems of Staple Production in Canada
(Davenport, op .cit. 2) ; Kenneth Buckley, Capital Formation in Canada, 1896-1930,
Toronto, 1955 .

28. Alfred Chandler, Strategy and Structure, Cambridge, Mass ., 1966 and The Visible
Hand, Cambridge, Mass ; 1977 ; Mira Wilkins, The Emergence of Multinational
Enterprise: American Business Abroad from the Colonial Era to 1914, Cambridge,
Mass ., 1970 and The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise: American Business
Abroad from 1914 to 1970, Cambridge, Mass ., 1974.

29. Stephen Scheinberg, "Invitation to Empire : Tariffs and American Economic

Expansion in Canada" in Glen Porter and Robert D. Cuff, (eds .), Enterpise and
National Development: Essays in Canadian Business and Economic History,
Toronto, 1973, pp . 80-100 ; Aitken, American Capital and Canadian Resources,
Cambridge, Mass ., 1961 ; Stephen Hymer, "Direct Foreign Investment and the
National Economic Interest" in Peter Russell, (ed .), Nationalism in Canada, Toronto,
1966, pp . 191-202, and The International Operations of National Firms: A Study in
Direct Foreign Investment, Cambridge, Mass., 1976; Kari Levitt, Silent Surrender. The
Multinational Corporation in Canada, Toronto, 1970 ; Abraham Rotstein, The
Precarious Homestead, Toronto, 1973 ; Rotstein, "Canada: The New Nationalism,"
Foreign Affairs (October, 1976); Rotstein, "Is There an English-Canadian
Nationalism?" Journal of Canadian Studies (Summer, 1978).

30. This is not overwriting on my part ; vide Harry Johnson's vituperative comment on
"the shallow and frequently near-psychotic writings of some Canadians employed in
otherwise reputable economics departments, on such subjects as American
investment in Canada.. ." : "The current and prospective state of economics in
Canada" in T .N . Guinsburg and G.L . Reuber, eds., Perspectives on the Social
Sciences in Canada, Toronto, 1974 .

31 . Labour historians, notably Clare Pentland, Bryan Palmer and Greg Keeley, have had to
write industrial history themselves in order to write labour history, and with some
tendency to get the former wrong . See H. Clare Pentland, Labour and . Capital in
Canada 1630-1860, edited by Paul Phillips, Toronto, 1981 ; Bryan D . Palmer, A Culture
in Conflict : Skilled Workers and Industrial Capitalism in Hamilton, Ontario,
1860-1914; Gregory S . Keeley, Toronto Workers Respond to Industrial Capitalism
1867-1892. For a perceptive critique of Palmer and Keeley on this point, see the
review by Leo Panitch, Canadian Journal of Political Science, XIV:2 (tune, 1981),
pp. 434-7 .

30
 INNIS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY

32. Ramsay Cook, "History : the invertebrate social science", Guinsburg and Reugen,
op .cit ., p . 144.

33 . Paul Craven, An Impartial Umpire': Industrial Relations and the Canadian State,
1900-1911 ; Ph .D . thesis, University of Toronto, (1975), p. 32 ; subsequently published
in revised form under the same title : Toronto, 1980. It should be noted that Craven's
comments on industrial history are not subject to the critique made in note 31 .

34 . "Harold Innis and Classical Scholarship", p . 32

35 . Daniel Drache, "Disequilibrium economics and Canadian capitalist development :

The Innis paradigm" (mimeo, 1979) .

36. "Harold Innis and Classical Scholarship", pp . 55, 54.

37.1 have chosen to focus on the implications for dependency of Innisian theory as
adumbrated by Drache for the purposes of this paper, but that is to do less than full
justice to either Innis or Drache . In fact, a reading of Drache's paper suggests that
Innis can be read as having a theory of capitalist growth and not simply of Canadian
capitalist growth, albeit drawing primarly on the Canadian experience . Certainly a
"disequilibrium model of rigidities" implies a more general relevance with the
rigidities varying with the case. Also, Ian Parker has pointed out to me that the
neo-classical theory of growth is, at least from any Marxist perspective, itself a special
case of a general theory . In principle, Innnisian theory may be at least as much a
general theory as neo-classical theory and, since everything depends on where one
stands, as Marxist theory . Hence, Parker himself shows (see note 9) that it not only
helps our understanding of Innis to know our Marx, it also helps our understanding of
Marx to know our Innis.

38. H .A . Innis, The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History,
Revised Edition: Toronto 1956, p . 385.

39. D.G. Creighton, The Empire of the St. Lawrence, Toronto, 1956 ; 2nd ed.

40 . Creighton, "The Decline . and Fall of the Empire of the St . Lawrence" in Towards the
Discovery of Canada : Selected Essays, Toronto, 1972 .

41 . Creighton, Canada's First Century, 1867-1967, Toronto, 1970 .

42. Drache, "The Canadian bourgeoisie and its national consciousness" in Lumsden,
op . cit ., p . 10 .

43. This is the major theme of Wallace Clement, Continental Corporate Power: Economic
Linkages between Canada and the United States, Toronto, 1977 .

44. Tulchinsky goes so far as to argue that "the high drama of the annexation crisis,
which passed so quickly, masks the fact that Montreal merchants had always been
continentalists. . ."; see Gerald J .J . Tulchinsky, The River Barons : Montreal Business
and the Growth of Industry and Transportion 1837-53, Toronto, 1977, p. 237 . He also
writes : "The merchants had never been nationalists and never would be - unless it
was in their economic interest" (p. 236) but fails to draw the inference that for a
capitalist class not to be nationalist is to be colonial-minded .

31
 MEL WATKINS

45 . W.A . Mackintosh, The Economic Background of Dominion-Provincial Relations, a

study done for the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations, Book 1,
"Canada, 1867-1939", Carleton Library, Toronto, 1963 ; Creighton, British North
America at Confederation, a study done for the Royal Commission on Dominion-
Provincial Relations, Ottawa, 1940; W .T. Easterbrook, "Long-Period Comparative
Study: Some Historical Cases," Journal of Economic History, (December, 1957) .

46. Innis, A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway, 1st ed., 1923 ; 2nd ed ., Toronto, 1971 ;
The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy, 1st ed., 1940 ; 2nd ed .,
Toronto, 1954 ; "Memorandum on Transportation" in Report of the Royal
Commission on Transportation, Ottawa, 1951 .

47 . See in particular S .D . Clark, Movements of Political Protest in Canada, 1640-1840

Toronto, 1959; A .R .M. Lower, The North American Assault on the Canadian Forest,
Toronto, 1938; W.L . Morton, Manitoba, a History, Toronto, 1957 ; George Britnell, The
Wheat Economy, Toronto, 1939 ; V.C Fowke, The National Policy and the Wheat
Economy, Toronto, 1957 ; C.B . Macpherson, Democracy in Alberta : the Theory and
Practice of a Quasi-Party System, Toronto, 1953 ; J .R . Mallory, Social Credit and the
Federal Power in Canada, Toronto, 1954 ; A .G . Bailey, Culture and Nationality,
Carleton Library, Toronto, 1972 .

48 . Innis, Essays in Canadian Economic History, Toronto, 1957, p. 209 .

49. Garth Stevenson, "Continental Integration and Canadian Unity" in Andrew Axline et
al., (eds .), Continental Community? Independence and Integration in North America,
Toronto, 1974, p . 195 .

50. Writing of Canadian History, pp. 235-6.

51 . See, for example, Morton, "Quebec in Revolt," Canadian Forum (February, 1977), p .
13, and Lower, "The Problem of Quebec," Journal of Canadian Studies (July, 1977),
pp . 93-97.

52 . Innis, Political Economy in the Modern State.

53 . New Theory of Value, p. 46.

54. Writing of Canadian History, p . 261 .

55 . William Christian, "The Inquisition of Nationalism", Journal of Canadian Studies

(Winter, 1977), pp. 62-72 and Christian's "Preface" to The Idea File of Harold Adams
Innis, Toronto, 1980.

56. Daniel Drache, "The Enigma of Canadian Nationalism", Symposium on Creative

Modes of Nationalism in New Zealand, Canada and Australia, The Australian and
New Zealand Journal of Sociology, 14 :3 (Part Two), (October, 1978), pp . 310-21 .

57 . "Harold Innis and Classical Scholarship", p. 56.

58. Ibid.

59. Christian also argues, even more improbably, that George Grant is not a Canadian

32
 INNIS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY

nationalist "in any commonly understood sense" ; see William Christian, "George
Grant and the Terrifying Darkness" in Larry Schmidt, ed., George Grant in Process :
Essays and Conversations, Toronto, 1978 . It is difficult not to conclude at some point
that what is at issue is not the nationalism of Innis or Grant but the anti-nationalist
bias of Christian who respects Innis and Grant but wants to wish away their
nationalism. Because the writings of Innis and Grant are undeniably rich and
complex, Christian apparently imagines that they cannot believe in anything so
'simple-minded' (to him) as nationalism. A similar kind of (impoverished) reasoning
presumably underlies as well John Muggeridge's denial of Grant's nationalism; see
Muggeridge, "George Grant's Anguished Conservatism", also in Schmidt, ed .,
George Grant in Process, pp . 40-8.

60 . Creighton, British North America at Confederation; S.D . Clark, The Developing

Canadian Community, Toronto, 1962 ; 2nd ed. 1968.

61 . Vernon Fowke, "The National Policy - Old and New" in Easterbrook and Watkins; Aitken,
"Defensive Expansion. . ." ; Alfred Dubuc, "The Decline of Confederation and the New
Nationalism" in Peter Russell, ed., Nationalism in Canada, Toronto, 1966, pp. 112-32 .

62 . Drache, "Rediscovering Canadian Political Economy" . As well as Corry, Drache

should have recognized the contribution of Alexander Brady; see his "The State and
Economic Life in Canada" (originally published in 1950) in K.J. Rea and J.T . McLeod,
eds., Business and Government in Canada : Selected Readings, 2nd ed ., Toronto,
1976, pp . 28-42, where he writes "The role of the state in the economic life of Canada
is really the modern history of Canada" (p . 28).

63. C.B . Macpherson, "After strange gods : Canadian political science 1973" in
Guinsburg and Reuber, eds., Perspectives on the Social Sciences in Canada, p. 67 .

64. See Nelles, The Politics of Development; the collection of essays of a Marxist
tendency edited by Leo Panitch, The Canadian State : Political Economy and Political
Power, Toronto, 1977 ; John Richards and Larry Pratt, Prairie Capitalism : Power and
Influence in the New West, Toronto, 1979 . Also as evidence of the revival of this
theme, the University of Toronto Press launched a new series in the late '70s titled
"The Sate and Economic Life", co-edited by Leo Panitch and myself.

65 . On the latter, see Michael Horn, "Academics and Canadian Social and Economic
Policy in the Depression and War Years", Journal of Canadian Studies, (Winter,
1978-79), pp. 3-10.

66. For a bibliographic guide that is already dated see Clement and Drache's Practical
Guide published in 1978 . For a collection of essays on Innis that grew out of a
symposium at Simon Fraser University on the occasion of a quarter-century after his
death, see William H. Melody, Liora R. Salter and Paul Heyer, eds., Culture,
Communication and Dependency: The Tradition of H.A. Innis, Norwood, NJ ., 1981 .

67 . As well as Christian's paper on Innis' nationalism and his editing of The Idea File, see
his "Harold Innis as Political Theorist", Canadian Journal of Political Science (March,
1977), pp . 21-42 and Innis on Russia: The Russian Diary and Other Writings, edited
with a Preface by William Christian, Toronto, 1981 .

68 . W.J. Eccles, "A Belated Review of Harold Adam Innis, The Fur Trade in Canada",
Canadian Historical Review (December, 1979), pp . 419-41 and Hugh M. Grant, "One

33
 MEL WATKINS

Step Forward, Two Steps Back : Innis, Eccles, and the Canadian Fur Trade",
Canadian Historical Review (September, 1981), pp . 304-322 . The latter also includes
"A Response to Hugh M. Grant on Innis" by Eccles, pp . 323-29 which, in the
customary tradition of academic rejoinders, adds nothing but vituperation to
the discussion .

69. David McNally, "Staple Teory as Commodity Fetishism : Marx, Innis and Canadian
Political Economy", Studies in Political Economy (Autumn, 1981), pp . 35-63. I am
presently writing, at the request of the editors of SPE, a critique of this paper.

70. Haold Innis, "The Teaching of Economic History in Canada" in his Essays in Canadian Economic
History, Toronto, 1956 ; the essay was first published in 1930.

71 . Northrop Frye, "Across the River and Out of the Trees" in W.J . Keith and B .-Z. Shek, eds ., The
Arts in Canada: The Last Fifty Years, Toronto, 1980, pp. 1-14 .
Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory / Revue Canadienne de theorie
politique et sociale, Vol . 6, Nos . 1-2 (Hiver/Printemps, 1982) .

HAROLD INNIS AND CANADIAN

CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT

Daniel Drache

In one of the last pieces he wrote before his death, Innis used the evocative
term "soft capitalism" to describe the particular type of development that had
occurred in Canada.' From his exhaustive studies of the staple trades, Innis had
reached the conclusion that Canadian economic development never achieved its
full potential and thereby would not enjoy the stability and industrial maturity
that centre economies had . Innis knew that development at the periphery took a
different route from that at the centre, as his studies had repeatedly
demonstrated. His research, of pre-industrial as well as industrial staples,
produced ample evidence that staple-led growth leads to an ever-deepening arc
of dependency of the hinterland on the metropole .
It was this basic insight which, when examined institutionally and in terms of
the interplay of market forces, allowed Innis to document the complexity of
Canadian capitalist development with such perceptiveness and accuracy . He was
the first to explain theoretically why the external economy shaped, directed, and
ultimately controlled the destiny of Canada as a hinterland, preventing it from
becoming a fully integrated, autonomous, centre economy. What has become
known as 'the staple approach' is Innis' lasting contribution to the study of
Canadian political economy .
Both friendly and hostile critics have often made the point, however, that the
staple is too narrow a concept to account for the successive waves of Canadian
development .' Though the staple may account for much, it is at best only a partial
explanation . This critique of Innis contains an important truth. The staple is part
of a larger set of structures that needs greater elaboration and analysis than was
provided by Innis . Developed in this manner, the concept of the staple, or as it
will be termed here, the staple mode of development, continues to provide the
most convincing explanation of the fate of the periphery in the international
economy.
If too much emphasis has been placed on a narrow perspective of the staple,
the fault for this does not lie so much with Innis as with 'Innisology' - the
flourishing industry of interpreting Innis . Throughout a lifetime of research and
writing, Innis pursued many other themes and issues which he regarded as no
less important . He was preoccupied with the spread and consequences of
industrialism in all of its many aspects. He paid a great deal of attention to the
creation and establishment of monopolies . He studied the state, the
infrastructure of development, technology, and transportation systems, as well
as taking a special interest in the rise and decline of regional economies . Beyond
these aspects of political economy, Innis was greatly concerned with the
importance of cultural factors, such as nationalism and the impact of democracy

35
 DANIEL DRACHE

on economic development. By the end of the thirties, Innis had developed a broad
overview of Canada's commercial and industrial origins going far beyond staples
and the importance of transportation and geography . Yet twenty-five years after
his death Innis continues to be read narrowly and often selectively and the richest
part of the Innis tradition remains to be discovered.
The fact that he was concerned with so much more than the staple suggests
that the most important aspect of the Innis legacy has yet to be seen in its
theoretical complexity. His work on the staples should be considered a concrete
application of his broader theory of rigidities . Innis used this framework to
account both for the incomplete nature of Canada's industrial revolution and the
inability of Canada to pursue a path of integrated development and become a
centre economy in its own right . It is this neglected aspect of Innis which is so
valuable : his penetrating insights into the weaknesses of neo-classical
equilibrium theory, and his equally impressive achievement in elaborating a
disequilibrium model of economic development to explain the long-run trends at
the periphery, trends which anticipate and account for many of Canada's current
difficulties (de-industrialization and economic dependence) .
Seen in this perspective Innis' pioneering examination of rigidities should be
considered a natural bridge between neoclassical economic theory and Marxist
theory of dependency and capital accumulation at the periphery . When Innis
identified rigidities such as unused capacity, monopoly, and fixed overhead costs,
he laid the groundwork for a systematic and effective explanation of Canada's
unique position as a settler colony . As such, it had the social relations of advanced
capitalist but an economy which was unable to escape the original division of
labour that inhered in a staple colony . These rigidities, he believed, were finally
responsible for Canada's semi-peripheral economic status .
Because Innis developed such a thorough-going and compelling critique of the
neo-classical explanation of growth, the general thrust of his work remains
surprisingly contemporary. As the Science Council ofCanada has recently shown,
the general inefficiencies of the Canadian market economy are an immediate
product of the rigidities of export-led growth.3 As well, in reformulating Innis'
theory of rigidities in the light of contemporary reality, it becomes possible to
move the discussion from his specific concern with the burden of disequilibrium
to the broader issues of class relations, regionalism, and capital accumulation .
Thereby, we can focus more directly on the staple mode of development of
resource capitalism . The argument proceeds on two levels : the first constitutes
an excavation into the past, a restatement of Innis' general theory ; the second
may be developed from Innis' insights as they affect our understanding of class
relations, the state and the staple mode of development .4.
Disequilibrium Theory and Incomplete Development

By "soft capitalism" Innis meant those countries at the periphery whose

industrial development would at best only be partial because of the long-term
danger inherent in export-led growth . In the case of Britain and the U.S., the

36
 INNIS AND CANADIAN CAPITALISM

pattern of development, though cyclical, had resulted in an integrated process in

which periodic crises in the international economy were used to consolidate and
integrate these national economies, allowing a move to the next stage of growth
and development. At the periphery something very different occurred . Economic
growth, in responding to changes in the international economy, was not able
fully to use these downswings in the economy to reorganize and consolidate the
unevenness of development . As a result, economic development is fragmented
and consolidation only partial . Despite the fact that each period begins with a
spurt of development, it ends in incomplete and uneven development .
Schematically, these marked differences between the dynamics of a periphery
and a centre economy can be represented as follows :

1 . At the centre : growth/ development - crisis - consoli-

dation/integration - growth/development.
2 . At the periphery : growth/ development - crisis -limited
consolidation or regression/ fragmentation - incomplete
and uneven development .

The latter has been called the staple trap, or what Innis believed to be the
straightjacket of soft capitalism as it moves from disequilibrium point to
disequilibrium point. Innis repeatedly turned to this problem of the violence
inherent in the swings in staple production . He came to the conclusion that the
distortions entering into the economic process became cumulative the longer the
process was dominated by metropolitan institutions and that the price system, or
the market insititutions of capitalism, failed to correct these imbalances. 5
In attributing the permanent nature of developmental crisis to the price
system, Innis rejected the idea that export-led growth produced a viable
developmental strategy . At the periphery the presence of structural rigidities
constitutes not abnormality but the normal order of things . 6 By rigidities Innis
meant a number of things, including inelasticities in supply or demand, and
diseconomies of scale in the sphere of production and distribution (particularly
transportation) . He also used the concept to refer to pressure points, or
bottlenecks, causing temporary or permanent disruptions in the economic
process . A rigidity would occur because of imbalance or breakdown in a particular
phase or aspect of development . At its simplest, the term was used to denote a
structural obstacle to development such as unused capacity, fixed overhead costs,
monopoly, fluctuating demand and government intervention . In one of his most
important conclusions, Innis claimed that these rigidities did not dissolve but
persisted . They took new forms even when the periphery, as in the case of
Canada, became partially industrialized, acquiring limited industrial and
technological capacity, with a powerful home-controlled banking system and a
large market for consumer goods, etc . Deep-seated rigidities would effectively

37
 DANIEL DRACHE

prevent transformation of a hinterland into a centre economy .'

Innis' economic views were remarkably astute in recognizing a 'dynamics' of
staple development which would provide no relief for the periphery,from a cycle
of incomplete development . Subsequently Mel Watkins systematized the Innis
paradigm by arguing that "the staple theory becomes a theory of capital
accumulation. "8 According to neo-classical economics, says Watkins, the export of
staples creates inducements to invest in other sectors of the economy . These
linkages - expansion of the domestic market, railway building, the replacement
of foreign goods with locally produced goods, and increased processing of raw
materials-are the motor of development, the pump-priming device which in
due course would allow the periphery to escape its supply role in the world
economy. But, as Watkins so convincingly argues, even though the export of
staple generates large capital inflows and unusually high rates of capital
accumulation (higher than the rate of capital accumulation occuring in centre
economies at their stage of industrialization) incremental growth leading to
indigenous, innovative and sustained development does not occur. At the
periphery the backward, forward and final demand linkages are weak, and
minimize the spead effects necessary to transform a resource-based economy
into a fully developed industrial one . As Watkins shows it is the centre that
profits from these weak linkages since it not only controls demand but also the
supply end of the relationship through technology transfers and foreign
investment . A weak set of linkages at the periphery supports a strong economy at
the centre .

Mackintosh's Theory of the Staple

Orthodox economists never endorsed Innis' theoretical perspective, or even

the restatement by Watkins, as constituting the central problematic of Canadian
development. In the main they have accepted uncritically the formulation of
W.A. Mackintosh, an economist at Queen's University, and a contemporary of
Innis.9 Incomplete development was the central premise of Innis' work; for
Mackintosh it was little more than a transitional stage in the history of a settler
colony, and a stage which would ultimately be transcended in Canada's favour.
Mackintosh's 'staple approach' was a theory of incremental development from a
staple base. He argued, in effect, that the linkages and the spread effects from
staple production would become gradually stronger as capital accumulation from
the sale of resources to more advanced economies was reinvested in domestic
industries, and as economies of scale were achieved with the assistance of foreign
investment and the import of modern technology.
Writing in the twenties, Mackintosh based his theory of the staple on what he
thought was the apparent success ofthe National Policy. In broad outline he saw
Canadian development as parallelling the American experience . The U.S. had
left behind its colonial past and emerged as an industrial power .in its own right.

38
 INNIS AND CANADIAN CAPITALISM

Canada, in following the American model of economic expansion through

resource export and railway-building, could expect the same results . "Nothing is
more typical of colonial development", he wrote, "than the restless unceasing
search for staples which would permit the pioneer comunity to come into close
contact with the commercial world and leave behind the disabilities of a pioneer
existence ." 10 Each of the successive waves of Canadian development had
depended upon a commercial staple for export . With the settlement of the
Canadian West the world staple would prime "the pump ofCanadian industry ." 11
Hence for Mackintosh there was no reason to doubt his original central
assumption that the "prime requisite of colonial prosperity is the colonial
staple .""
In retrospect, Mackintosh's theory seems crude and simplistic in the way it
accounts for the particular mix of Canadian development . The analogy with the
U.S. was largely superficial given firstly that the U.S. had had a commercial
revolution that put the American economy directly in the hands of its business
class and secondly, that despite American reliance on British capital the latter
was largely portfolio investment (not direct investment) which left control of
American industry in American hands . Nonetheless, the importance of
Mackintosh's analysis should not be underestimated . Like other neo-classical
economists who live in a world of imperfect market forces, Mackintosh needed to
account for the phenomenon of incomplete or arrested development . The
answers he gave remain very much in force today not because they are
scientifically based but because they acquired the status of a paradigm 13 seeming
to account for the broad contours of economic history in the last half of the
nineteenth and early twentieth century . He claimed that if Canada had been
unable to tap its full industrial potential, the 'fault must be purely internal.
In fact, Mackintosh skillfully presented the case that Canada's economic
difficulties were mainly a question of geography-a large country with adifficult
climate and hence a small population. Even if Canada's resource endowment was
bountiful, he argued intractable geography caused industry to be slow in
emerging and introduced inefficiencies ofproduction. For Mackintosh, the main
problem of Canadian development was not staple production per se but stemmed
from the conflict between 'rational' economic market forces and the
'irrationality' of geography. In the most memorable sentence he ever wrote, he
claimed that "Canada is a nation created in defiance of geography .. ." 11, an
unnatural economic unit created in opposition to the north/south flow of
economic life.
Invoking geographical determinism in this fashion may be regarded as
Canada's unique contribution to neo-classical theorizing, a tradition which has
been carried on notably in Harry Johnson's writings' 5 and more recently in the
publications of the Economic Council of Canada .16 However it should be noted
that the principal weakness of geographical determinism is that it blames
geography-a non-market force-for the phenomenon of uneven development
and the inefficient allocation of resources rather than the particular behaviour of
market forces in a hinterland setting .

39
 DANIEL DRACHE

By twisting the importance of geography out of all proportion, Mackintosh

ignored a basic fact of Canadian economic history which even he himself wrote
about extensively . Geography is constantly being modified by the forces of
production and geographical barriers to economic development such as distance
and topography are mediated by advances in technology and transportation ."
The question which he never explained and which lies outside the neo-classical
paradigm is : why does Canada's supply role in the world economy not change
even when it has met the conditions for the industrial 'takeoff'? By contrast Innis
did confront this central problematic of Canadian development . He answered it
by saying, in effect, that it was the division of labour under the price system and
not geography which holds the key to understanding Canada's particular form of
development .
Turning his attention away from the staple and focusing on the spread of
relations between an imperial economy and a white settler regime, Innis
produced a theory of capitalist development to explain why the price system -
his word for the market forces of capitalist production - functions differently
for a periphery economy . In analyzing the process by which developmental
linkages turn into permanent rigidities, Innis was able to show that even though
Canada was a privileged social formation and shared common institutions and
traditions of the centre, something mediated the transfer ofcapitalism . For Innis
that something was the system of capitalism itself which reproduced these
rigidities in the economic process, thus preventing Canada from becoming a
self-generating autocentric economy characterized by what he called "integrated
development ." 18
Innis had no lack of evidence of this phenomenon in which the successful
neo-classical instruments of centre economies were'inverted' and had the
opposite effect at the periphery, becoming in due course structural obstacles and
a source of disequilibria . Railway building was a classic instance of economic
policy designed to promote economic expansion and indigenous industrialization
and had been so in both Britain and the U.S. In Canada by contrast, Innis stressed
that the era of railway building had produced a weak backward linkage, greater
reliance on imported manufactured goods, unmanageable fixed overhead costs,
diseconomies of scale that had forced government ownership of rail lines and so
had reinforced monopoly . 1 9 The tariff, similarly, did not have the effect of
protecting infant industries but, as Innis noted, repeatedly had forced American
firms to locate behind the tariffwall, thus giving foreign capitalists access to and
control over the Canadian industry .20 In terms of final demand linkages such as
technology transfers, Innis discovered that Canada's easy access to British and
American technology had not made Canada more self-reliant and competitive
with advanced countries, nor had the acquisition ofscientific knowledge lessened
Canada's traditional reliance on the export of resources and the import of
consumer and capital goods .21 In analyzing this phenomenon, Innis was brought
face to face with what he called the price system, which prevented the periphery
from being able to alter fundamentally the terms of its participation in the
international economy . His explanation of why inversion occurs and rigidities

40
 INNIS AND CANADIAN CAPITALISM

result is a powerful one because it allowed him, without abandoning neo-classical

economics completely, to explain development at the periphery in terms of a
disequilibrium economics .zz

Disequilibrium Economics

Disequilibrium economics is based upon a complex analysis which argues, on

theoretical and empirical grounds, that the price system fails as a mechanism for
adjustment for the periphery . It holds that the price system is impaired because
of the dominance of monopolies under resource capitalism at the periphery, and
because the centre economy constantly exploits the forces of production of the
periphery for its own development . This in turn leads to a rupturing of the
normal economic processes of capitalist development . It is for this reason that
the periphery is unable to smooth out price and structural rigidities by the same
means available to centre economies . A centre economy achieves equilibrium in
the sense that the price system serves not only to optimize the scarce allocation of
resources but as a mechanism of adjustment, periodically revolutionizing the
forces of production, changing the division of labour, and strengthening the
market economy through expansion. To account for development at the centre,
Innis subscribed to Adam Smith's unshakable conviction in the universal features
of the market mechanism as a force for progress .z 3 Like the founder of liberal
political economy, Innis believed that the price system was a superior mode of
production evidenced by its ability to transform the "rotting timbers of
feudalism" into a new system of production. Subsequent transformations
demonstrated again for Innis the power of market forces to harness capital,
technology and trade to overcome all obstacles in the way of commodity
production. Even the severe, recurring crises of capitalism which paralyzed the
normal balance of market forces responded to the laws of the price system
through bankruptcies, mergers, or the elimination of unproductive or marginal
units ofproduction. In the end, this ability to retrench and reorganize production
made possible new ventures and eliminated bottlenecks in supply and demand.
For Innis all this pointed to the existence of market forces which found their
equilibrium at the point of optimum use of land, labour and capital .
But, by the same token, Innis argued that the equilibrium model of the price
system only accounted for development in the advanced economies of the
international price system. When Innis says that the periphery "is the storm
centre to modern economies", 24 it is a statement referring to the long-term
trends of international capitalist development from the perspective of the
periphery . The periphery is subject to another dialectic, the dialectic of
equilibrium/disequilibrium, with the stability of the centre economies resting on
disequilibrium economies at the margin . Or as he explained, .. ..disturbances in
one area were offset by advances in the other." 25 The theoretical explanation of
why market forces were 'inverted' in this way and caused disequilibrium in the

41
 DANIEL DRACHE

functioning of the price system he developed in terms of factors of production.

At the periphery labour, capital and resources were exploited by the centre in a
trade arrangement which constituted normal market behaviour for the imperial
economy, but had the effect of depriving the periphery of capital and resources to
revolutionize its own mode of production. Because trade was controlled by
monopolies or the terms of trade arranged under a preferential tariff or
commercial policy, the market was not free but was organized to perpetuate the
existing mode of development and the original division of labour .
The classic instance of this was the system of mercantilism where, in theory
and to a large extent in practice, the terms of trade were fixed by the centre which
was thus in a position to determine the economic future and rate of development
in each of its colonies .26 Industrial capitalism, abandoning protectionism for free
trade, redrew the economic relations between the centre and the old commercial
empires, increasing the scope for the production and export of staples . Butin one
key respect the basic relationship of mercantilism passed into the new order
unchanged. The periphery continued to specialize in the sphere of exchange,
while the centre dominated the sphere of production and other sectors . Hence,
under industrial capitalism, the periphery did not have greater opportunity than
under mercantilism to transcend its commercial status as a supplier of resources
and a market for manufactured goods . Most importantly, it could not acquire the
capability to revolutionize its own mode of production .
To explain the persistence of disequilibrium at the margin, Innis isolated two
broad categories of rigidities that entered into the price system :
1 . Structural rigidities, referring to the division of labour and unused
capacities both ofwhich played a dominant role in a resource periphery and were
long-term and historical in origin."
2. Price rigidities, such as fixed overhead costs and debt repayments which
were introduced via the business cycle and became cumulative over time.28

Structural Rigidities

Of the two Innis attached special importance to structural rigidities because

they reflected the long-run trends of capitalist development, trends which in his
judgment were rarely reversed. Further, Innis took the position that the division
of labour imposedon the periphery by the imperial power did account in no small
measure for subsequent social and economic development . To illustrate this he
used the case ofCanada and the United States, both of which had been a colony of
Britain yet with very different results . To explain the principal differences
between the two formations Innis was able to show that this was due to the type
of colony each had originally been in the hierarchy of the world capitalist system,
as well as the status confirmed on it by British imperialism .29 It is in the course of
this analysis that Innis discovered the source of these historically determined

42
 INNIS AND CANADIAN CAPITALISM

structural rigidities .
The British empire had created three types of colonies each with a different
division of labour . At the top of the hierarchy was the commercial settler colony
of New England which traded with other colonies and had acquired its own
hinterland in the interior. Its staple agrarian economy supported a relatively
large settler population . British North America belonged to the second tier . It
was founded primarily as a staple exporting colony for luxury and later industrial
resources . Its staples supported a small domestic market with few inhabitants
initially and only acquired a commercial status late in the nineteenth century . At
the bottom of the imperial pyramid were plantation/slave colonies maintained
by conquest . Unlike settler colonies these had large indigenous populations
which became the source of labour in single-crop economies . In the
plantation/ slave colonies British colonial policy erected a new economic order on
the existing mode of production with the sole purpose of staples exploitation .
Settler colonies had a different status for Innis from that of colonies of
conquest . The difference rested on the fact that settler colonies shared with the
imperial centre the same mode of capitalist production and therefore entered
into the international system on a level of equality with other market economies .
As great an advantage as this was, settler colonies suffered from the disadvantage
of having a commercially oriented economy at a time when "the price system had
gradually but persistently eaten out the rotting timbers of European colonial
structures. . . . . . 3° Innis noted that New England was the only commercial colony of
the first British empire that had successfully attacked the old order and in doing
so freed itself from the "shackles of the colonial system ." The effect of the
American War of Independence was both long-term and revolutionary in that it
created the conditions for a new division of labour and opened up the American
economy to the floodgates of industrialism . Innis singled out this historical
moment as being without parallel in explaining how the American economy
transcended the original division of labour and acquired the means to become a
centre economy in its own right.
Coming to this conclusion, Innis did not evoke the doctrine of comparative
advantage or a theory of entrepreneurship a la Schumpeter to account for
American industrial development . With respect to the special circumstances of
New England's commercial development he stressed the far-ranging political
and economic consequences of a colony successfully freeing itself from the cycle
of dependency and imperial domination. He wrote: "The advantages of freedom
of trade supported by the fisheries and shipping broke down the colonial system
of France and in turn England. Shipping implied commercial strength, naval
power, and defeat of European control ." 3 i
By comparison, the case of Canada had to be a different affair. Canada's
commercial revolution of 1837 had ended in defeat, causing it to remain a staple
colony over a much longer period, subject to the more intensive exploitation of a
backward commercialism embedded in the empire of the St . Lawrence . 32
Counterposing the old to a new system of commercialism, Innis believed that he
had identified the source of Canada's comparative disadvantage . Commercialism

43
 DANIEL DRACHE

was antagonistic to industrialism because it retarded economic activity by

imposing what Innis called "restraints on trade"33 which supported an economy
based on monopoly rather than on competition and the free play of market
forces. Innis came to regard both these aspects of commercialism as responsible
for preventing the price system from transforming the forces of commercialism
into an industrial system ofproduction. On this point Innis never wavered : "The
rise of industrialism was the reverse side of the decline of the commercial system.
The emergence of free trade... reflected and enhanced the efficiency of the price
system and the growth of industrialism . The ebbof commercialism was the flow
of industrialism ."34
Canada's structural rigidities arose out of this situation. Canada remained a
backwater of commercialism after centre economies had made the transition to
an industrial footing . With the passage from early to late industrial capitalism,
the demands from the more advanced countries for industrial staples would
increase as would their penetration and control of the domestic market of this
white dominion dependency with a high per capita income . Significantly it was
this fact, Innis believed, that made Canada particularly attractive in the eyes of
metropolitan capital as a place to exploit . The industrial price system of centre
economies operated "at a high stage of efficiency in the occupation of resource
rich economies ."35 But the burdens of development were nonetheless inevitable.
They fell on the state in recently industrialized areas which also continued to act
as both banker and protector of imperial interests . Because the colonial state
continued to be dependent on and indeed 'compromised' by the imperial state,
the former was unable to function as an instrument of adjustment to reduce the
rigidities brought in the wake of uneven development . Possibly more than any
other single factor Innis viewed with alarm the institutionalization of a
commercial-based colonialism in the state apparatus and believed that this
relationship was responsible for the economic disequilibrium causing so many of
Canada's problems.
Regionalism par excellence was a case in point . Canada was an amalgam of
regional economies at different stages of development and the commercial
orientation of the Canadian state perpetuated and aggravated existing regional
rivalries . The results were plainly evident in the weakness of Canada as a social
formation . Ontario with a commercial agrarian economy had reached the status
of New England by the late nineteenth century, and via the National Policy had
acquired the rest of the country as its hinterland. The West had been created as a
permanent staple colony with all the attendant difficulties that that mode of
development brought in its wake. Although Innis did not write much about
Quebec, he considered it a staple colony by conquest, controlled by the Church
and Anglo-Canadian interests . Finally, the Maritimes had achieved a
pre-industrial footing but after the National Policy once again became a staple
economy . 36 All these competing modes of development reinforced the
dominance of commercialism at the expense of strong national institutions . As a
consequence "the more rigid channels of surviving commercialism" 37 would
perpetuate Canada's dependence on one or another metropolitan power as well

44
 INNIS AND CANADIAN CAPITALISM

as be a chronic source of regional conflict and internal division .

Price Rigidities, Unused Capacity, and the Business Cycle

Having analyzed the long-term disabilities which Canada suffered from, Innis
turned to examine the short-term operation of market forces including the
movement of prices, capital formation and the business cycle . It is this incisive
and highly original account of the business cycle that enabled him to identify the
source of short-term crippling price rigidities . More than any other part of Innis'
theorizing, it explains the special vulnerability of a resource-based economy to a
price system with a commercial bias .
Initially, Innis identified the problem of price rigidities as they related to high
transportation costs in moving bulky goods such as fur, timber and wheat over
long distances in the absence of a balanced cargo. 3 a This problem, resulting from
intense specialization and what Innis called the chronic misallocation of capital
and resources, was evident in the failure of successive waves of Canadian
development to achieve sustained growth . This was entirely different from the
experience in the American commercial colonies . In these, a "relative absence of
unused capacity meant low costs and contributed to rapid economic
development ." In Canada by contrast, "an unbalanced cargo facilitated the
addition of trading goods on the outward voyage for the development of trade on
the St . Lawrence . . .[but] added little to the cargo of the home voyage." 39 These
imbalances in the sphere of circulation (and later in the sphere of production)
had occurred in all successive stages of development and accounted for the
shortfalls in export-led growth . For Innis, unused capacity raised the important
question of why it was so difficult for an economy to find what he termed a
mechanism of adjustment to reduce the sharp fluctuations in international
demand responsible for over-expansion when the economy was buoyant and a
shortfall in revenues followed by the inevitable economic crisis when it began to
contract . This cycle of short spurts of growth followed by a severe recession had
had crippling consequences for a resource economy burdened with the escalating
costs of capital formation .
Orthodox economists such as Mackintosh argued that the way to respond to
unused capacity was to stimulate the economy by additional government
expenditures and to attract foreign capital to make new investments particularly
in the resource sector . Innis refuted this, and demonstrated that such a strategy
did not alleviate the problem of unused capacity but in fact aggravated it . Here is
his account describing how indebtedness and unused capacity are a direct result of
a strategy of incremental growth :

Low rates of interest during a period of depression and

recurring deficits stimulated renewed activity in borrowing
and in encouraging further construction . Deficits increased

45
 DANIEL DRACHE

during a period of depression and borrowings during a period

of prosperity . Throughout the period of the National Policy
government debts increase and, in turn, tariffs and capital
equipment .40

The key to this dilemma lies "in the difficulties in adjusting expenditure to
receipts . ..in a period of depression and possibly in encouraging new industry by
more aggressive protection, and in meeting the interest on loans during a period
of prosperity . "41 In Innisian terms the business cycle sought to "reduce the
weight of the burden by increasing the extent of the burden . "42 It operated from
disequilibrium point to disequilibrium point .
In any number of ways, the periphery is constantly subject to severe economic
pressures resulting from unused capacity . Because the market has a weak
mechanism of adjustment, the government is forced to intervene and stimulate
the economy by new investment, particularly in the most productive and
competitive sectors, such as resources, or by improving the accessibility and
availability of resources by expanding the capacity of the transportation system
to move bulky goods more easily and at a lower cost. Capital expenditures in
support of these resource projects are long-term in nature. They create higher
levels of indebtedness in the expectation that they will generate additional
revenue to cover the costs of this new indebtedness as well as producing linkages
in the form of additional income to labour, capital and the state. For a brief
period after the investments are made, the economy can be said to be in
equilibrium as government borrowing generates a spurt of economic growth .
However the spread effects are short-lived as conditions .i n the international
market change and the demand for Canada's resources softens . These
downswings, Innis discovered, reflect not only disturbances in the international
market dominated by a few leading staples for export, but also are a consequence
of the application of neo-classical fiscal and monetary policy designed to expand a
centre economy during a period ofeconomic difficulty. Innis identified the source
of the 'disturbance' as the new capital outlays. He showed that these new capital
outlays-an expansionist measure-have the reverse effect on a resource-based
economy and quickly become a rigidity-an obstacle to economic growth-
because in a period of recession revenues begin to decline while the backflow of
profits and debt payments remain constant, or increase at a faster rate than the
inflow of new revenues.
The immediate consequence of this shortfall in revenues is, as many
economists have noted, to slow the rate of economic growth . Innis, however,
stressed that the cumulative effect is by far the more decisive for three principal
reasons . First, the expansionist phase of the business cycle is constantly being
prematurely curtailed . Secondly, the new injections of capital repeatedly become
a source of 'disequilibrium' when capacity exceeds demand and expenditures
exceed revenues. Finally, in these circumstances the new capital expenditures
rarely attain their intended purpose of creatingeither new economies of scale or

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 INNIS AND CANADIAN CAPITALISM

other measures necessary to reorganize, consolidate, or expand the industrial

side of the economy . Faced with this recurring problem and failing to understand
its structural origins, the government is once again forced to intervene
financially and undertake new investments from its own resources as well as to
attract new foreign investment to stimulate demand and reduce excess capacity.4 3
Significantly Innis was able to show how this cycle translates into a long-term
structural problem . Because the periphery recurringly faces falling prices, soft
markets, and declining revenues, the business cycle fluctuates between new
indebtedness undertaken in the expectation of generating new industrial growth
which never materializes and the fixed capital costs of past indebtedness
reflecting the excess capacity and overdevelopment of the resource sector . Hence
in any given moment of the business cycle the principal rigidity of unused
capacity is being reproduced in full as a structural feature of the staple mode of
development .
The significance of the cycle as a 'diseconomy' of development was not lost on
Innis. He emphasized repeatedly that, as a persistant problem of Canadian
history, unused capacity ". . .had its effect in prolonging the dominance of one
staple or in hastening its decline and contributed powerfully to the disturbance of
equilibrium in Canada and Europe .""
Price rigidities would play a dominant role in Canadian development at all
points in time. In periods of rapid expansion requiring large capital investments
rigidities would be severe. They were equally present in times of crisis when
interest payments, debt charges, and other obligations had to be met .
Furthermore, price rigidities were inherent in the staple trades because
monopolies such as Hudson's Bay Co., the CPR and the Canadian banks occupied
such a pivotal role in the exploitation, transportation and sale of Canada's
resources . Under industrial capitalism, Innis believed that centre economies had
profited from these price rigidities which "enabled the older centres to benefit
from the industrial growth of new centres by disposing or dumping obsolescent
machinery e .g., agricultural implements to countries with virgin natural
resources and in this way to reduce their own costs of improved equipment ."4s
There were other examples which showed how rigidities were
institutionalized in Canada's political and social arrangements . The most
important of these was Confederation which, from Innis' perspective, was a
direct response to the continuing developmental crisis Canada faced in the
nineteenth century from capital indebtedness and pricing problems. He writes :

The emergence of Canada as modern state is inevitably a part

of the spread of industrialism and capitalism . Confederation
became an effective credit institution with the demands for
long-term securities which accompanied the rise of
industrialism especially as shown in transportation . The rise of
Canada was in a sense a result of the demand for adequate
imperial costing accounting which arose with Gladstonian
liberalism. 46

47
 DANIEL DRACHE

In the twentieth century price rigidities were again very much in evidence in the
wheat economy as well as in the disturbances accompanying the growing trade
and investment with the U.S. In assessing the persistance and chronic failure on
the part of Canadian authorities to deal with this problem, Innis believed that
Canada's problems stemmed from its position in the international economy and
the rapid exploitation of its wealth. At the centre of its difficulties were debt and
interest charges

paid to British, American and Canadian capitalists on

equipment designed to produce and transport wheat... The
effects of these rigid costs strike at the heart of Canadian
economic life. Neglect in facing this vital problem may lead to
consequences of serious import to the Empire. The
crystallization of capital in fixedcharges might be compared to
the hardening of the arteries for the empire.4'

In the Innisian framework it was the combination of price and structural

rigidities which had prevented Canada from transcending its commercial origins.
As a result, Canada had been left with a badly co-ordinated machinery to cope
with the violence accompanying resource capitalism.

No country has swung backwards and forwards in response to

such factors as improvement in technique or transportation,
exhaustion of raw materials and the advance of industrialism
with such violence as Canada . Our history presents the same
baffling complexity to the historian as does the Canadian
shield to the geologist.48

And as he further put it in one of his summary statements on this basic point :

The structure of Canada's economy was an extension of

European andBritish economies, with a consequent increase in
efficiency guaranteed by cheap water transport, imperial
preferences, and the opening of new resources . It was
handicapped by the extent of government intervention, the
rigidity of government indebtedness, railway rates, and tariffs,
and dependence on a commodity subject to wide fluctuations in
yield and price.49
 INNIS AND CANADIAN CAPITALISM

The World System : The Origin of Rigidities

Stressing the severe limitations imposed on the periphery enabled Innis to

arrive at a path-breaking theory of rigidities. As a political economist and not
simply an economic historian, Innis placed particular importance in examining
the evolution of capitalism as a world system . Although not as systematic in
generalizing the laws of capitalist development as for instance-and more
recently-Samir Amin, 10 there is a striking similarity between Innis' theory of
rigidities and Amin's theory of extroversion . Even though one must tread
cautiously and avoid superficial comparisons between developed dependency and
stark underdevelopment, Innis and Amin share a common perspective in their
respective efforts to discover the dialectic of incomplete development and the
complex means by which centre economies have been able to impose through
intensive specialization a division of labour on periphery formations . In his
writing on the social formation of peripheral capitalism, Amin shows how the
prolonged export of resources laes to extroversion of the resource industries,
while sectors slotted for industrialization for the home market suffer from low
productivity, marginalization and undercapitalization . From a Marxist
perspective Amin explains "how the rapid spread of simple commodity
production cannot reverse the extroverted character of the economy." 51 In
language which echoes Innis' reasoning, he explains how a country at the
periphery has a narrow range of productive activities and expansion of the
economy via export-led growth in primary resources means that indebtedness
grows faster than income .
Amin systematizes the dynamics of peripheral capitalism as follows : the
spread effects of investment benefit foreign capital more than domestic industry ;
the resource sector has the highest rate of profitability and therefore capital
flows into the 'p referred' export sector while light industry selling to the
domestic market suffers from low productivity, lower rates of return and
undercapitalization ; foreign investment rather than expanding the economy
disarticulates the key sectors by truncating the domestic market ; and the
backflow of profits exceeds the inflow of investment . All varieties of dependent
capitalism suffer from what he terms the double crisis : "Exports that are
destined for the center cannot grow faster than demand at the center-that is,
approximately at the rate of growth of the center" and "international
specialization. . . always constitutes a mechanism of primitive accumulation to
the disadvantage of the center." 52 Because of this crisis, Amin contends, it is
impossible for a country to catch up on its historical handicap "while sticking to
the basis of international specialization." 5 3
Innis also examined the origins of this 'comparative disadvantage' . He
discovered that it was a necessary condition of the way capitalism evolved as a
world system . His analysis is surprisingly comprehensive in detailing the
historical evolution of capitalism from its mercantile origins to late monopoly
capitalism . Committed to liberal political economy, he naturally regarded the

49
 DANIEL DRACHE

early period of industrial competitive capitalism as the golden age of the market
economy. Economic liberty went hand in hand with personal liberty and
produced what Innis regarded as the great advances in civilization, in the arts and
sciences and in government, by the destruction of the vested interests and the
mercantile monopolies of the old order ." The strength of the new order was in
Innis' view based upon a belief in economic and social progress dependent upon
the free and full functioning of market forces . However he also saw that the
system of competitive capitalism had been displaced by 'late mature capitalism'
in which monopoly rather than competition was dominant. He was disturbed by
this trend which he believed brought with it profound social and economic
consequences. By the twentieth century the industrial order of Europe and the
U.S. had been further transformed, as capitalism had evolved into a system of
imperialism based upon "a vital relationship of militarism to capitalism and the
modern state."55
To account for the rise of imperialism and the decline of competitive
capitalism, Innis focused on monopoly, militarism and the modern state as forces
threatening the stability of both late neo-technic capitalism and the viability of
peripheral regions in the world system . In his eyes, trade wars, narrow
nationalism, price fixing, financial capitalism, and international indebtedness
reflected "the drive of the price system on the economic and social structure
within the state" as well as "continual disturbances between the states . " S G
Analyzing the extent and severity of these social disturbances led Innis to study
the consequences of the decline of competition and "the rise of economic
warfare. "57
For Canada, the anarchy of a monopoly-dominated world system had serious
implications .

Canada developed at the latest stages of modern industrialism

and is among the first to feel the effects of the turn. The
importance of the state, reliance on production of raw
materials for export, particularly wheat, and the rigidities of
continental development create serious problems of internal
maladjustment as shown by quotas, bonuses, unemployment
relief, the breakdown of provincial-federal relations and the
like. 5e

Significantly Innis noted that the sheltered metropolitan areas "tend to impose
burdens on regions exposed to world fluctuations", whose effects would be
profound and immediate . "The new internationalism is upon us. No country
stands to gain or lose more than Canada." 59
Under late capitalism Canada faces three immediate dangers . The first stems
from its ambivalent status in the world economy . On the one hand, "it stands in
danger of being burned at the stake of natural resources and on the other hand of

50
 INNIS AND CANADIAN CAPITALISM

being boiled in the oil of unrestricted competition ." 60 The second arises out of
Canada's industrial position . "For a country which rides on the crest of modern
industrialism and has been concerned with the demands of an international
market, industrialism has provided an abundance ofgoods but not the first luxury
of security ."" The third danger results from Canada's dependence on the U.S.
"We have built up in Canada in competition with the United States a delicately
balanced economy which has more than once crashed through ill-designed
machinery ." 62 In the new order Canada's difficulties stem from its "proximity to
the U.S. [which] places a severe handicap on control of capital movements . The
character of our development results in rigidities such as those governing
ownership ." 63 In the circumstances, Innis had few illusions as to "the obvious
significance of American economic policies to Canada." He did not hesitate "to
point out the existence of an American empire" and to inquire whether
American policy makers were conscious of "the responsibilities which
accompany imperialism ." 6' Whether the United States agrees or not, "its
monetary and tariff policies are largely the monetary policies of the North
American continent, including Canada ." 6 s
Innis' analysis of monopoly capitalism is surprisingly contemporary in
singling out the centrality of capital movements, the problem of foreign
ownership, and the phenomenon of unused capacity to explain why Canada was
and would remain a periphery exploited by center formations - short of a
revolution as imperial capital does not permit of any other possibility . Unlike the
U .S. and Europe which have revolutionary traditions, Canada's origins were
profoundly counter-revolutionary, a fact for Innis which reinforced the
commercial orientation of the state and elites as well as explained the long
history of imperialism in Canadian affairs . As he frequently lamented, Canadians
had repeatedly failed togenerate alternatives to the debilitating consequences of
dependence in either political or economic life. Under late industrial capitalism
Canada would fare less well than it had under competitive capitalism . "The old
system had linked her to Europe by a geographic background dominated by the
St. Lawrence and provided efficiency of specialization under free trade."66 With
the decline of the St. Lawrence all ofCanada's economic life would be endangered
from a much more powerful American hegemony in the establishment of
branch-plants in Canada, the fixing of Canadian wage levels with those in
American industry, "the movement of liquid capital, ownership of government
securities and the temporary migration of tourists ...... 61 Emphasizing the link
between capital movements and rigidities, Innis showed how closer ties to the
U.S. increased "the instability of Canada's political and economic structures ." 68
Politically, imperialism leads to "a weakening of nationalism" and "the
strengthening of regionalism," 69 while economically Canada did not have the
policies to improve capital allocation, reduce capital costs or lessen the "burden
of defence." The strains from this asymmetrical relationship would intensify .
"[I]t may be expected with the more rapid growth in population in the United
States and the continued decline of natural resources, that Canada will become
increasingly dependent on the U.S. and that the problem will become more,

51
 DANIEL DRACHE

rather than less acute..."'°

Writing against the backdrop of the Depression reaffirmed for Innis all that he
had been saying about the importance of rigidities in the study of Canadian
development . "An array of conflicting forces" had produced a succession of
structural imbalances with the inevitable result that regional and national
economies found themselves unable to develop proper adjustment mechanisms
to respond to the rapid changes in economic life." The severity of the Great
Depression made evident the very real social costs of this mode ofdevelopment .
As he repeatedly stressed, those who were least able to shoulder the burden had
to pay the costs of these permanent rigidities. This included Canada's hinterland
regions, which were most exposed to price fluctuations and suffered directly
from declining incomes and unused capacity. The federal government was forced
into an imperialist role vis-a-vis the regions and hence was incapable of
mediating the disparities and responding creatively to the demands of regional
protest movements .'z Equally affected were farmers and those working in the
resource sector who through their labour and loss of income were forced to
subsidize the commercial policies of foreign and domestic interests .
This aspect of Innis' work on the social consequences of rigidities notably
compliments and extends his more narrowly economic concerns . Economic
rigidities as he discovered also are responsible for a system ofexploitation having
far-reaching implications for Canada .73 They not only work their way through
the economy but profoundly affect other areas of Canadian life as well. He was
disturbed by the fact that a society based on resource capitalism put power in the
hands of the few, relied so extensively on centralized authority, accepted rule by
administrative fiat and was constantly subject to absentee control. He blamed the
coercive and anti-democratic institutions ofCanadian life on the dominant
presence of monopolies, the practices of the commercial state, and the influence
of the branch-plants which had prospered and grown in influence often at the
expense of the Canadian population. His research on the origins and evolution of
Canadian capitalist development ultimately led him to question the role and
purpose of the modern liberal state" and its many links with corporate interests .
In his mind the power of monopolies was linked to the erosion of individual and
collective rights both within Canada and without . His preoccupation with these
central issues made Innis into a nationalist, a critic of incremental growth, an
opponent of continentalism, and an agnostic about the viability of the liberal
tradition itself.75
There can be no doubt, then, that to view Innis' principal interest as the history
of the staple or even staple-led growth does a gross injustice to his grasp of
political economy. What concerned him was to account for the structural design
of successive waves of Canadian development economically and socially, and in
shifting his attention beyond the staple he thus laid the foundation for the study
of the historical dynamics ofwhat should properly be termed resource capitalism.
To this end Innis was first and foremost an economic structuralist in his
approach, contending that internal and external market forces accounted for the
incomplete or blocked form of resource capitalism . Many have wrongly and

52
 INNIS AND CANADIAN CAPITALISM

disparagingly regarded Innis as an economic determinist . However, as a

structuralist, he rigorously held that even geography was neither fixed nor
unchanging but, like any other structure, was modified by advances in the
economy . Evidence of his geographical determinism comes from Innis'
oft-quoted assertion, taken from the conclusion of The Fur Trade in Canada, that
modern Canada in following the boundaries of the fur trade was created because
of geography. Yet a few pages later he says that with the onset of industrial
capitalism Canada's economic geography was being eroded by this new mode of
production . His words are worth recalling : "The geography unity of Canada
which resulted from the fur trade became less noticeable with the introduction of
capitalism and railroads ."' 6 As we have seen, his particular analysis of late
capitalism showed how Canada's problems, stemming from a system of staple
production, were institutionalized in such economic structures as monopolies,
the state-structure and American branch-plants, each of which contributed to or
reinforced the diseconomies inherent in a staple economy .
However, as unequivocal as Innis was about the long-run trends of capitalism
and liberalism, his theoretical understanding went no further. He saw no class,
no economic system, no ideology which, when all is said and done, was more
attractive than liberalism or preferable to the price system . Had he been able to
conceive of an alternative he might have shifted his ground both as a political
economist and in terms of his class loyalties . Even his pioneering and innovative
work on rigidities did not lead Innis finally to reject the neo-classical economic
perspective. For it must be remembered that while he saw and deplored 'dis-
equilibrium' at the periphery, he assumed, and approved of, 'equilibrium' for
the centre. In the end, his reworking of the liberal political economy tradition had
brought him far but not far enough, because the difficult question of the historical
viability of the capitalist mode of production was not on his intellectual agenda .

The Staple Mode of Development

His theoretical conceptualization of rigidities constitutes the vital and lasting

part of the Innis legacy . His study of monopoly and the pervasiveness of
commercialism suggests that these rigidities are part of a larger process which
can be called the staple mode of development. Its characteristics are as follows :"

1. The staple mode of development is defined by its commercial orientation,

where commercial relations of exchange and distribution rather than
industrial relations of production predominate. What we have as a pattern
of development is commercial dominance in an industrial guise .
2. Resource development is based on monopoly and monopolized sectors, not
competition and competitive units of production.
3. Infrastructure projects such as railways are designed to link the domestic
market to the imperial centre, with the result that the external market
dominates industry and other core areas of the economy .
4. Direct investment gives foreign capitalists perpetual control of key

53
 DANIEL DRACHE

industrial and resource sectors, while the branch-plant movement results

in dependent industrialization and comparative disadvantage in goods-
producing industries caused bytruncation and extroversion accompanying
the inflow of capital.
5. The rate of capital accumulation is persistently high, a reflection of
Canada's status as a semi-centre economy; nonetheless, like other
periphery economies Canada suffers chronic capital shortages due both to
the constant backflow ofprofits and dividends and to the capital intensive
nature of resource capitalism, dependent upon advanced technology to
exploit highly sophisticated industrial and energy staples.
6. In economic matters, the Canadian state is autonomous neither in a
relative noran absolute sense; rather, as the creation ofthe imperialstate,
it functions as the instrument offoreign capital, and by direct intervention
in the economy underwrites the strategies of accumulation and
legitimation ."
7. The traditional neo-classical instruments of growth such as the tariff,
resource exports, technology transfers and foreign investment become
structures ofdependency in a satellite economy . At the periphery, they are
responsible for perpetuating commercialism long after it has declined in
the more advanced economy.
8. The resource/financial/transportation bourgeoisie are the 'dynamic' and
dominant ruling class formation in this mode of development . 79
9. Paradoxically, staple- led growth accentuates regional disparities and
undermines balanced regional development . But, because resource
capitalism is dependent on a continental market, the continued export of
staples supports strong regional economies and even stronger regional
loyalties .
10. In an economy organized around public and private monopolies, a° it is
the subordinate classes, not capital, which are required to sell their labour
or their produce on a competitive basis; it is this condition of inequality
par excellence which the state utilizes to accelerate the rate of capital
accumulation.
11 . Incomplete development is not,a passing stage but a permanent condition
ofthe periphery in the absence of a profound realignment ofclass forces.
Even though the mix ofincomplete development can be seen to evolve, the
basicdivision oflabour and Canada's role in the international hierarchy are
not altered. More accurately, what each new stage of incomplete
development reflects are changes in internal class alliances accommodating
or responding to the strategy of capital accumulation initiated by foreign
capitaland the imperialstate and/or crises in the international economy."'

It is only when we come to this final point that the Innisian contribution ends
and the Marxist tradition in Canadian political economy begins . Unlike liberal
political economy, the Marxist perspective no longer focuses on rigidities per se

54
 INNIS AND CANADIAN CAPITALISM

but on a different problematic, one which is frequently inplicit in Innis' work:

explaining the unique set of class relations responsible for the staple mode of
development . In laying the groundwork for this, we may say of Innis what he
once wrote about the Fathers of Confederation-that he "builded other than he
knew" and, we should add, better than he himself realized.

Atkinson College
York University

Notes

An earlier draft of this paper was prepared for presentation to the H .A . Innis Symposium, Simon
Fraser University, March 30-31 1978. Special thanks is due to Mel Watkins and Sten Kjellberg for
their comments and encouragement in preparing this expanded and revised version .

1 . See his 1951 presidential address to the American Economic Association, published as "The
Decline in the Efficiency of Instruments Essential in Equilibrium", American Economic Review,
43, 16-22 .

2 . See M .H . Watkins, "A Staple Theory of Economic Growth" in W.T. Easterbrook and M.H.
Watkins, eds., Approaches to Canadian Economic History, Toronto, 1967, and Hugh G.J . Aitken,
"Myth and Measurement : The Innis Tradition in Economic History", Journal of Canadian
Studies, Vol . 12, No . 5 (Winter 1977) .

3 . Science Council of Canada Report 29, Forging the Links, Ottawa, 1979. Consult also the more
detailed study by John Britton andjames Gilmour, The Weakest Link A technological Perspective
on Canadian Industrial Underdevelopment, Background Study 43, Science Council of Canada,
Ottawa, 1978 . Both supply much detailed evidence on the rigidities of export-led growth .

4 . The special issue of Studies in Political Economy, No . 6 (autumn 1981) is devoted among other
things to a critical assessment of the thought and influence of Innis on the resurgence of Canadian
political economy. It is evident that I don't share the perspective of David McNally who among
others calls for a'pure' Marxist model as an alternative to the'flawed' Innisian tradition . I will
need a lot more persuading that the classical European model of development is going to serve as
the basis for explaining class and class conflict in Canada .

5 . Innis' explanation of the many different aspects of the price system can be found in Mary Q.
Innis . ed ., Essays in Canadian Economic History, Toronto 1956. For an overview of Innis'
perspective on economic development, see the following : "The Penetrative Power bf the Price
System, "Unused Capacity as a Factor in Canadian Economic History", "Significant Factors in
Canadian Economic Development" ; "Transportation as a Factor in Canadian Economic
Development" ; and "Liquidity Preference as a Factor in Industrial Development."

6 . Innis developed his own specialized vocabulary of political economy to analyze and discuss the
laws and relations of development. In addition to the concept of rigidity, here are some other key
words Innis employs throughout his writings and to which he often attached unorthodox
meanings : elasticity, unused capacity, incidental price system, fixed overhead costs, disturbance,
monopoly, factors of development, disequilibrium, business cycle, geographic unity, capital
movements, cyclonics, liquidity preference, vested interests, technique of production .

7. The terms "persistence" and "transformation" pervade the writings of the economic historian
W.T. Easterbrook.

55
 DANIEL DRACHE

8. M .H . Watkins, op. cit, p. 55 .

9. For a discussion of the theoretical importance of Mackintosh's and Innis' contrary views on the
staple, see my article "The Re-Discovery of Canadian Political Economy", in Wallace Clement
and Daniel Drache, A Practical Guide to Canadian Political Economy, Toronto, 1978,
Mackintosh's version of the staple theory is found in Easterbrook and Watkins, op. cit ., with the
deceptively modest tithe "Economic Factors in Canadian History". For a fuller exposition of his
views which contain much useful information on regional disparities caused by the National
Policy, see The Economic Background of Dominion-Provincial Relations, reprinted in Carleton
Library, No. 13, Toronto, 1964 .

10 . W .A. Mackintosh, "Economic Factors in Canadian History", p. 4.

11 .Ibid., p . 14 .

12 . Ibid., p. 4.

13 . For other neo-classical economists, Mackintosh is regarded as being'a man of science' while Innis
is often seen as the myth-maker. Hugh GJ . Aitken, op . cit., is a good example of the scholarly bias
directed against Innis. In point of fact it was the Mackintosh model which acquired the status of
having myth-making appeal. Innis was the more 'scientific' of the two in the best sense of the
term, as this paper attempts to demonstrate.

14. Ibid., p . 15 .

15 . Consult Harry Johnson's collection of articles, The Canadian Quandry, Toronto, 1977 .

16 . Economic Council of Canada, Looking Outward, 1975 .

17 . W .A . Mackintosh, "Economic Factors in Canadian History ."

18. The term appears in his essay "Unused Capacity" (1936), in Essays, p. 144 .

19 . Though it is infrequently consulted, Innis' Problems of Staple Production in Canada, Toronto,

1933, now out of print, contains much useful information on railways and technology .

20. See his essay "Introduction to Canadian Economic Studies" in Essays for a lengthy discussion and
examination of the branch-plant movement .

21 . See "Economic Trends in Canadian-American Relations" in Essays.

22. His philosophic views on the role and limitations of economics is found in "On the Economic
Significance of Cultural Factors" and "The Political Economy of the Modern State" in his Political
Economy in the Modern State, Toronto, 1946.

23. Innis made constant reference to Adam Smith in his writings and used Smith's analysis of the
price system to stress its "transforming" capability. See Innis' "Penetrative Powers of the Price
System" in Essays.

24. "Political Implications of Unused Capacity", Essays, p . 382 .

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 INNIS AND CANADIAN CAPITALISM

25 . "Liquidity Preference" in Political Economy in the Modern State, p. 197 .

26. Innis' view of mercantilism and late capitalism respectively are found in "The Penetrative Power
of the Price System" and "Liquidity Preference as a Factor in Industrial Development" . In these
essays, Innis examines the evolution of capitalism as a world system.

27 . See "Unused Capacity as a Factor in Canadian Economic History" and "The Political .Implications
of Unused Capacity", in Essays .

28 . For a discussion of structural rigidities, consult "Economic Trends in Canadian-American

Relations" and "Recent Developments in the Canadian Economy", in Essays .

29 . This is an important aspect of Innis' work . His views are outlined in "Penetrative Power of the
Price System" in Essays.

30. Ibid. p . 257 .

31 . Ibid. p . 256 .

32. Innis regarded the failed revolutions of 1837 as a decisive moment in Canadian political economy
and, unlike Creighton, constantly pointed out the inadequacy of the St . Lawrence commercial
system as a structural determinant . See "Significant Factors in Canadian Economic
Development" in Essays .

33 . "Penetrative Powers of the Price System", p. 256 .

34 . Ibid., p. 259.

35 . Ibid., p. 260.

36 . For a sampling of Innis' complex views on regionalism see "Decentralization and Democracy" in
Essays, particularly pp . 367-371 . He believed that regionalism had become so severe that it had
rendered obsolete Canada's political machinery and necessitated "concentration on the problem
of machinery by which interests can become more vocal and their demands be met more
efficiently." (p . 370.)

37 . "Penetrative Powers of the Price System", in Essays, p . 260.

38 . For an elaboration of Innis' views on transportation, see "Transportation as a Factor in Canadian

Economic History", in Essays.

39 . "Unused Capacity", in Essays, p . 142 .

40 . Problems in Staple Production, p . 23 .

41 . Ibid.

42. Ibid., p . 115 .

43 . "The impact on Canada of the business cycle in the highly integrated industral system of the U .S .
varies directly with the importance of American capital and of the American market and with the

57
 DANIEL DRACHE

character of the industrial structure of Canada." In "Labour in Canadian Economic History",

Essays, p. 198. More explicitly the American control of the business cycle means "continued
migration of capital in the form of branch plants from the U .S . and further exploitation of
natural resources ."Problems in Staple Production, p . 121 .

44 . "Political Implications of Unused Capacity" in Political Economy of the Modern State, p . 218.

45 . Problems in Staple Production, op. cit., p . 19.

46 . Ibid.

47 . Ibid., p. 118.

48 . Problems in Staple Production, op . cit ., p . 73 .

49. Ibid., p . 82 .

50. Samir Amin, Unequal Development; An Essay on the Social Formations of Peripheral
Capitalism, New York, 1976.

51 . Ibid., p . 202 .

52. Ibid., p . 291 .

53. Ibid.

54 . In Innis' The Political Economy of the Modern State, there are two lengthy essays in which he
identifies the problems which stem from the decline of liberty and the rise of monopoly and
imperialism . The first is "The Political Economy in the Modern State" and the second is "On the
Economic Significance of Cultural Factors".

55 . "Canadian Economy and the Depression", in Essays, p. 133 .

56 . "The Penetrative Power of the Price System", in Essays, p. 271 .

57 . Ibid., p . 270.

58. "Canadian Economy and the Depression", in Essays, p. 134.

59. Ibid., p . 135 .

60. Ibid., p . 130.

61 . Ibid., p . 135 .

62 . Ibid., p. 140.

63 . Ibid., p. 139.

64 . "Recent Trends in Canadian-American Relations", op . cit., p . 238 .

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 INNIS AND CANADIAN CAPITALISM

65 . Ibid., p. 239.

66 . "Recent Trends in Canadian-American Relations", Essays, p . 235 .

67 . Ibid., p. 238 ; the text reads "important wage levels" but it seems clear imported is intended.

68 .Ibid., p . 238 .

69 . Ibid., p . 238 .

70 . Ibid., p . 240 .

71 . Two themes which dominate Innis' writing on Canada are that "Regionalization has brought
complex problems for an economy developed in relation to the St . Lawrence" and that
"Provincialism has paralled the new industrialism." While he held it "imperative that serious
attention should be given to the problem of revising political machinery so that democracy can
work out solutions to -modern problems", he was not optimistic that Canada's political system
would be able to reform its political structures . The above quotations are from "Decentralization
and Democracy" in Essays, p . 368 and 370 .

72 . See "Decentralization and Democracy", "The Penetrative Power of the Price System", "Political
Implications of Unused Capacity" and "Labour in Canadian Economic History" . His major thesis
was "that the conflict between a price structure dominated by Great Britain and a price structure
increasingly dominated by the continent has serious implications for the Canadian economy in
the inequalities between groups and regions." To counter this trend he believed that "provinces
will require elaborate machinery to protect themselves against the exploitation of haphazard
federal policies." p . 198 and p . 371, respectively, in Essays .

73 . For an overview, see "Great Britain, The United States and Canada," in Essays.

74 . After 1940, Innis turned his attention to a number of philosophic concerns ; the results are to be
found in The Political Economy of the Modern State, op. cit . The last period of his life was
devoted to the study of the modes of communications and the ownership of the means of
communication.

75 . On the relationship between Innis' Liberalism and nationalism, see my earlier article "Harold
Innis : Canadian Nationalist", Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol . 4, No . 2, (May, 1969) .

76. The Fur Trade in Canada, p. 402 .

77 . In "Staple- ization : A Theory of Canadian Capitalist Development, I examined the phenomena

of dependent industrialization as a particular aspect of the staple mode of development, John
Saul and Craig Heron, eds., Nationalism, Imperialism and Canada, Toronto, 1977. The eleven
points set out in this article require a fuller explanation than is possible in the present
circumstances . Nonetheless, the present discussion would be incomplete without showing, albeit
cryptically, the link between Innis' theory of rigidities and the larger structure.

78 . Leo Panitch and others in The Political Economy of the Canadian State (Toronto, 1978) err badly
in a) discussing the Canadian state without reference to the imperial state and b) adopting the
metropolitan Marxist theory of the state as the theoretical backdrop to their analysis . The
contributors dismiss out of hand an instrumentalist view of the state and yet on conceptual and
empirical grounds the policies, structure and behaviour of the Canadian state for reasons given in

59
 DANIEL DRACHE

points 3, 5, 7, 10, 11, demonstrate the relevance of the instrumentalist approach. Nor do they
reconcile a Millibandian view of the state with Canadian statist tradition .

79 . Both R .T. Naylors History of Canadian Business, Vol . I and II (Toronto, 1975) and Wallace
Clement's Continental Corporate Power. Economic Elite Linkages Between Canada and the
United States, (Toronto, 1977) document this point conclusively and exhaustively .

80. The monopoly aspect of development has important ramifications for the study of working class
history in a double sense : firstly, the resource proletariat, being forced to carry the burden of the
rigidities, became the most class conscious element of the working class movement . Many labour
historians erroneously continue to regard the urban industrial proletariat as its leading element .
Secondly, under resource capitalism, the indigenous tradition of Canadian unionism has been a
unionism of struggle arising out of the objective conditions that confronted the resource,
transportation, and construction proletariat . The entry of American unions into Canada
established their hegemonic control over much of organized labour, destroying this older radical
tradition of unionism and replacing it with a corporate ideology of business unionism. The
destruction of the radical Mine Mill Union by the Steelworkers is a telling case in point . Much of
the Canadian Left has been compromised on this issue because both the social democratic and
Marxist political parties have relied on these American'internationals' for political and financial
support.

81 . In the twentieth century two types of class alliances reflect Canadian development at the national
level : a) 1890 to 1930 was the period of a national development strategy under the direction of the
commercial/ financial elite, the state, and British capital ; b) 1945 to the present has been a period
of renewed dependency under the same elite, orchestrated by the state in alliance with American
capital . At the regional level only south-central Ontario has reached the lofty heights of the
national development plateau . Significantly, Alberta and Quebec have attempted to acquire a new
status in Confederation but by very different means . Quebecers have opted for a national popular
government possibly leading to independence while Albertans believe that a national
development strategy based on alliance with American capital offers salvation from the
'exploitative' policies of Ottawa.
 Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory/Revue canadienne de theorie
politique et sociale, Vol . 6, Nos. 1-2 (Hiver/Printemps, 1982) .

DEUX PAYS POUR VIVRE: CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY AND

THE NEW CANADIAN POLITICAL ECONOMY

"L'imagination est la reine du vrai, et le possible est une des provinces du vrai ."
Charles Baudelaire, Curiosites esthetiques

"Most forward-looking people have their heads turned sideways."

H .A . Innis, The Idea File of Harold Adams Innis

Ray Morrow

Official Canada

On the basis of mass-mediated news and commentary it is tempting to believe

that these past couple of years have been among the most momentous of modern
Canadian history : the defeat of the Quebec referendum on sovereignty-associa-
tion, the repatriation of a constitution from Britain and the addition of a bill of
rights, a national energy policy oriented toward domestic control of the oil
industry, hints of a strengthening of a previously toothless investment review
agency, the creation of a royal commission on the newspaper industry and the
setting up of a major cultural policy review committee . But are these signs of a
fundamental turning point in Canada's development, a creatively adaptive
response to the increasingly evident crisis of an advanced, yet peripheral and
dependent state? Or are they symptoms of a malaise and thus in principle unable
to cope with the increasing pressures for fundamental change?
As the celebration of a constitutional agreement recedes into the immediate
past and a semblance of normalcy returns to public discussion, some of the more
disturbing features of federal policies may become more evident . For example,
despite some signs of discontent within the business community, especially south
of the border, the measures which could be linked to a new economic
self-assertion are-with the partial exception of the energy policy-extremely
timid, scarcely threatening the overall structure of economic power . At all levels
of government debts continue to accumulate and the resulting dependence on
American and European financial markets increasingly constrains domestic
economic policy . Similarly, federal budgets reveal a sense of complete
helplessness before the effects of Reagan's economic policies . And now Quebec
has been isolated by constitutional negotiations which, even if they had been
accompanied by short-term compromises between Trudeau and Levesque, would
not include a sufficient acknowledgement of the special status of Quebec to
defuse the discontent articulated by the Parti Quebecois . Let us also recall that
most of the indices of the structural decline of the Canadian economy and its

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skewed development continue to worsen and the overall structure of cultural

dependence remains intact, despite statistically insignificant signs of vitality
reported by nationalistic journalists and official publicists . Along with Greece
and Italy, Canada still stands at the bottom of the O.E .C .D . list in terms of the
level of research and development in relation to GNP .
This discrepancy between the apparent federal mastery of events and the
disturbing reality of continued drift are largely masked by the mass media's
inability to exert any real autonomy in carrying out its responsibility to critically
inform, as well as to entertain, to lead as well as to follow, to create new forms of
awareness rather than to merely reflect the inertia of events . What is largely
missing in the public, mass-mediated expressions of these symptoms of national
crisis is any sense of its longer history, its need to be explicated within the
framework of the most advanced forms of modern political and social theory, and
its more fundamental implications for a strategy for responding to the future .
Even where such matters are discussed it is usually under the influence of the
gurus of popular American futurology.
For the forms of interrogation which are attempting to grapple with the most
fundamental issues of the crisis in Canada one must look elsewhere, bypassing
the mass media and the official responses : to the margins of the academy, to the
non-sectarian groups which attempt to articulate the needs and frustrations of
marginalized and under-represented populations, to artists and writers, and to
the handful of magazines and journals which reach only select audiences . Only
here and there is it possible to find the foundations for an alternative discourse
on the crisis of Canada and its relation to the crisis of advanced capitalist and
industrial societies . But the question remains for those who have glimpsed the
symptoms yet have been largely excluded from these underground debates :
where to begin?

The Discourse of the Other Canadas

The most obvious place to turn would be the volume edited by Wallace
Clement and Daniel Drache under the heading A Practical Guide to Canadian
Political Economy.' Within its covers the reader is provided with a comprehen-
sive, thematically organized bibliography, a short list of some "Thirty Basic
Readings in Political Economy," and a long, informative introduction on
"Rediscovering Political Economy" by Drache . However, a closer examination of
Drache's perceptive and wide-ranging introduction reveals some disconcerting
conclusions : "Yet despite this enormous intellectual output in the last five years,
the new political economy has not been able to produce a clearer synthesis of the
."z
development crisis Pursuing this question further, he acknowledges that this
continuing difficulty is closely related to a "lack of a cultural self" or a
"deculturation" which "has also left its imprint on the resurgence of political
economy, both in general and in specific ways ." Many of these problems seem to

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reflect the fragmentation which results from the lack of a unifying theoretical
and political framework and is manifest in the one-sidedness that comes from
emphasizing any single analytical argument at the expense of others . More
fundamentally, however, he concludes that it reflects an ambivalent relation to
Quebec, a swing between economism in good times and nationalism in bad, an
uncritical reliance upon metropolitan Marxist models, and a tendency to pursue
economic interpretations for their own sake. ;
For these and other reasons which will become apparent in the course of this
essay, there may be a more instructive and provocative place to begin rethinking
of the nature of public life in Canada : a slender volume by Quebec sociologist
Marcel Rioux and writer/social critic Susan Crean, Deux pays pour vivre : un
plaidoyer, which is scheduled to appear in a greatly expanded English version in
the spring of 1982 . 4 Had it appeared a couple of years earlier, Deux pays pour
vivre would surely have found a place on Clement and Drache's short list were it
to have included any French-language titles . Yet this inclusion would have been
misleading to the extent this were taken to imply that its argument could be
easily assimilated into the broader tradition of Canadian political economy
without raising some fundamental questions about its limits and political
implications . Without intending to do so, Deux pays pour vivre provides
important responses to the very weaknesses identified by Drache in his own
assessment . With this in mind, the following essay seeks to undertake a critical
reading and analysis of Deux pays pour vivre from the perspective of its
significance for rethinking both Canadian political economy and the crisis of
Canadian development .
It is likely that the English version of Deux pays pour vivre will eventually
stand in the company of George Grant's Lament for a Nation as a milestone in
the discussion of the cultural crisis of Canada . Yet, like Grant's study, the
reception of Deux pays pour vivre will be uneven, confused, and plagued by
misunderstandings . This is related not only to the difficulty of serious theoretical
discussions to penetrate beyond a small, largely academic public fragmented
along regional, disciplinary, and sectarian lines, but is inherent in any text,
however introductory and popular in intent, that presupposes theoretical
traditions which cannot be fully presented and yet are not generally part of the
common knowledge of the intended reader. In its English version, therefore,
Deux pays pour vivre will suffer from its contradictory objective to provide a
popularization of the issues of cultural dependence and at the same time to
situate these within the framework of a critical theory of Canadian society . Yet
this very weakness as a medium of popularization is simultaneously a
manifestation of its movement toward originality : Deux pays pour vivre is one of
the first major efforts to apply European critical theory to the issues of Canadian
and Quebec cultural developments
In the pages that follow Rioux and Crean's study will be explored as a
document expressing and articulating the foundations for a new stage in research
and discussion on the national and cultural questions in Canada and Quebec . It
would be beyond the scope of this essay, in part because of the differences in the

63
 RAYMORROW

expanded English version, to attempt any premature assessment of this

approach as a whole or to situate it more closely in relation to Rioux's version of
critical sociology or the specific traditions from which it draws inspiration.' The
more immediate task is to facilitate an adequate comprehension of the approach
represented by the text and to encourage debate with respect to its implications
for the tradition of Canadian political economy . A book such as this does not
purport to provide final answers, but seeks rather to cultivate awareness of new
concepts and categories of discourse : in the context of social theory mastering the
medium (language) reveals the message . To this end, it is necessary to first
situate the resulting critical sociology in relation to the more recent history of the
nationalist debate, examine some of the implications of the collaboration
between Rioux and Crean, and finally turn to a reconstruction of their argument
and a tentative exploration of some of its internal tensions and implications for
rethinking Canadian political economy .

Committing Collaboration

An unusual feature of Deux pays pour vivre is that it is a rare example of

cooperation between the advocates of the anglophone Canadian and franco-
phone movements for national autonomy . Whereas this would seem to be a
natural form of alliance, one of the characteristics of Canadian politics and
culture over the past decade has been the mutual isolation and ignorance of these
two movements, a fact which has been costly for both . As Abraham Rotstein
affirmed prophetically a decade ago in response to the October Crisis :

Quebec nationalists, of whatever persuasion, must now

recognize they cannot achieve their objectives at any
reasonable cost without active support from English Canadi-
ans . Nationalists in the rest of the country must realize that the
continued repression of Quebec will only create a society which
is not worth inhabiting .
Our mutual interests must be recognized. The old empathy
and passive moral support are no longer sufficient . We must
now travel in tandem to create in English Canada active legal,
political and institutional channels that support and foster
Quebec's legitimate aspirations . It is our only hope of
mitigating the impact of the collision which looms ahead.'

The failure to have done so is in part responsible for the current situation in
which Quebec has been isolated from a constitutional agreement and frustrations
within the Parti Quebecois threaten an internal split . Reciprocally, few
non-francophone Canadians can relate the experience of Quebec to their own

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 THE PLEA FOR TWO NATIONS

situation in the larger context of the development of Canada . More generally, of

course, this outcome reflects the deliberate strategy of the federal government
and Quebec Liberals to isolate the Parti Quebecois, cutting it off from outside
allies and at the same time hoping to push it toward internal conflict and
extremist responses .
The collaboration between Rioux and Crean thus represents a deliberate
rejection of the form of political discourse generated by the federal isolation of
the Quebec independence movement . Significantly, this subtly taboo form of
theoretical "sovereignty-association" took place between representatives of the
two different generations which mark, respectively, the cultural watersheds of
Quebec and anglophone Canadian politics . What may appear to be an accidental
alliance thus turns out on closer examination to have an underlying
cross-generational logic. First, there is Marcel Rioux : friend of Trudeau and
other Liberals of the Cite Libre generation in the 1940's and 1950's, eventually
associated with the New Democratic Party and then various socialist groups after
making the transition from apolitical anthropologist to radical sociologist by the
early 1960's, and finally supporter of the Parti Quebecois from its early days .
Then Susan Crean : typical female product of upper-middle class Toronto, then
member of that generation of Ontario students initially drawn in the late 1960's
to Trudeau's vision of canada, and finally passionate advocate of Canadian
cultural independence . 8
With Rioux, Crean has found the theoretical dimension lacking or only hinted
at in her pathbreaking Who's Afraid of Canadian Culture?9 Though especially
strong in its description of the many different mechanisms of the American
domination of the different spheres of Canadian culture, this study lacked a fully
developed critical sociology of culture and thus tended to view national identity in
isolation from the broader issues of social justice and the transformation of
Canadian society . If there is a cultural and political sense in which Quebec is
ahead of the rest of Canada, it is natural that Crean . should find theoretical
inspiration in Rioux, a man with no theoretical peer among anglophone
Canadian sociologists of his generation, let alone the experience of participation
in a remarkable cultural movement . In collaboration with Rioux, therefore, there
is also a symbolic acknowledgement of the comparative impoverishment of this
generation of senior anglophone scholars and intellectuals, depleted by earlier
emigration southward and robbed of a creative context for theoretical synthesis
by maturation under the debilitating canopy of American hegemony .
What Rioux seems to have gained from Crean is an interlocutor for coming to
terms with his ambivalent relation to anglophone Canada and an ally for
bringing to both the francophone and anglophone publics an awareness of the
divide-and-rule strategy which has served a form of authoritarian federal power
and distracted attention from the more fundamental question of American
domination . Yet this approach remains a lonely one in Quebec where Deux pays
pour vivre has fallen on deaf ears . On the one hand, the theme of cultural
dependence is already old hat, having received more in-depth treatment
elsewhere . On the other hand, to couple this theme with reference to a parallel

65
 RAY MORROW

analysis of English Canada is generally greeted with indifferenceor skepticism, if

not downright ridicule . This stems primarily from a pervasive rejection of the
assumption that anglo-Canadian culture has any potential at all. And in the
present conjuncture, the reality of public debate in francophone circles is the
dominating presence of an antagonistic system offederal power, the humiliating
experience of constitutional negotiations, and the less than convincing gestures
of concern and reconciliation on the part of the Conservative and New
Democratic parties. In such an atmosphere, the more popular response is to
denounce Quebec Liberals as "traitors" and dallying with the progressive
elements of the enemy as an ill-advised waste of time. Yet this unwittingly
contributes to the federal strategy of divide-and-rule, both within Quebec and in
relation to potential allies elsewhere.

Stages of Nationalist Discourse

In entering the debate about the national questions in Canada and Quebec,
Rioux and Crean write within a tradition ofdiscussion sharply divided along the
line of the two official languages . An important difference between these two
worlds of discourse is that the francophone version stretches back for more than
two centuries, is symbolically defined by a heroic tradition of conquest and revolt,
and has fundamentally shaped the development of the human sciences and
culture in Quebec.'° By contrast, the anglophone version has a short and anemic
history, is defined by an ambivalent response to the transition from being an
English to an American "colony", and marked by a sense of futility and despair
expressed only on the margins of the academy or literary culture." Yet even in
anglophone Canada over the past decade or so the criticism of the "Americaniza-
tion" of Canada has at last become a major topic of public debate, through rarely
of action.
A striking feature of this anglophone recovery of an understanding of the
strategic importance of cultural and economic, as well as political, autonomy in
the lifeof a nation-state is that it bears only a faint resemblance to the conception
of Canadian national identity evoked by the advertisements and public relations
releases of the federal government. Those who have contributed the most
profound meditations on the crisis of Canadian nationhood have consistently
defended the privileged status of Quebec within confederation, accepted its right
to whatever form of independence it democratically chooses, and acknowledged
its inspirational role as a model for the rest of Canada. This contemporary
discourse on nationalism in anglophone Canada might be said to have moved
through three different stages of development with Rioux and Crean's Deux
pays pour vivre signalling the third. The first can be precisely dated with the
appearance of George Grant's Lament for a Nation in 1965, a book which began
the process of awakening Canadians from the slumbers of cultural dependence.

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 THE PLEA FOR TWO NATIONS

Listen to Grant's pessimistic and conservative diagnosis as formulated nearly

two decades ago :

The keystone of a Canadian nation is the French fact ; the

slightest knowledge of history makes this platitudinous .
English-speaking Canadians who desire the survival of their
nation have to co-operate with those who seek the continuance
of Franco-American civilization . 12

Or again :

The Liberals have failed in English-speaking Canada. If the

nation were to survive, it had to be anchored in both
English-speaking and French-speaking Canada, and a modus
vivendi had to be established between the two. The Liberals
failed to recognize that the real danger to nationalism lay in the
incipient continentalism of English-speaking society, rather
than in any separatism . Their economic policies homogenized
the culture of Ontario with that of Michigan and New York . 13

A second stage of discussion was brought about by the crisis on the left
produced by the recognition of the disastrous consequences of an unreflective
internationalism which had failed to take into account the specific circumstances
of Canada and the inevitable link between any socialist project and a new form of
nationalism. This was most clearly expressed in the dissident NDP "Waffle"
platform which, in hearkening back to the 1933 Regina Manifesto's call for
large-scale nationalization, acknowledged the relation of this strategy to a
formation of national purpose which had been eroded by continental
integration . Though this economic programme was challenged by those, such as
Rotstein, who questioned the capacity of the state to effectively organize a
modern industrial system, there was general agreement that overcoming cultural
dependence was a necessary condition for any steps toward regaining economic
autonomy . Furthermore, it followed from these positions that Quebec had a
comparable right to self-determination which should be acknowledged within
the federal system . 14
In what ways does Rioux's and Crean's study mark a third stage in the history of
contemporary discussions of the national questions in Canada? To anticipate the
subsequent analysis of their position, at least four aspects of their book mark
important new steps . First, more than lip-service is given to cooperation
between the representatives of the two different national projects through the
act of committing collaboration . Secondly, the justification of this position is
linked to the central issues of contemporary European social theory, rather than
elaborated primarily at the level of a political economic analysis . Though this
theoretical dimension was implicit in the theory of modern civilization at the
heart of Grant's work, it remained repressed in the nationalist debate unleashed

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under the guidance of political economists and largely carried out in mass-media
polemics . Though the categories of political economy greatly facilitated forms of
research which demonstrated many of the mechanisms of economic and cultural
dependence, they could not-with the partial exception of those who followed
Innis-adequately formulate all the bases of a critical sociology of culture .
Consequently the resulting debates often oscillated between uncritical
pro-Canadianism or dogmatic anti-Americanism, on the one hand, and
tendencies toward unmediated reductionism on the other . Accordingly, a third
advance signalled by Rioux and Crean's book is the linking up of a form of
"cultural Marxism" to the analysis of national self-determination . Finally, the
resulting political programme departs sharply from the strategy of bureaucra-
tically-organized nationalization as advocated by classic socialist parties . This is
explicit in the concept of "autogestion" which underlies their vision of a new
form of society .
To summarize, it might be said that Rioux and Crean's arguments culminate in
a threefold cultural, economic, and political radicalization of the anglophone
nationalist debate by claiming : (1) the priority of the cultural question in any
process of qualitative change which seeks to transcend the limits of industrial
societies ; (2) the necessity of a fundamental transformation of the organization
of the industrial economy, not simply the abolition of its capitalist form ; and
(3) the self-contradictory character of any political strategy based on the simple
expansion of state power or the illusory assumption of its eventual withering
away with the abolition of bourgeois class relations . Though these themes have
dominated discussions of European critical theory for some time, they have not
been systematically respecified in relation to the contemporary crisis of Canada.
And though, as we shall see, such a programme might be charged with
utopianism, it has the merit of an internal consistency and a libertarian spirit
which sets it aside from previous radical diagnoses of the crisis of the two
Canadas . In short, it does not suffer from the pessimism of a conservative
nationalism trapped in an anti-modernist flight from history, an orthodox
socialism waiting patiently for economic contradictions to bring forth the Godot
of proletarian consciousness, or a form of social democracy always just an election
ahead of its time. Whatever its immediate limitiations as a concrete political
strategy, in other words, Deux pays pour vivre challenges artists, writers, and
scholars to what Rioux refers to elsewhere as a categorical "resemantisation" of
the world and with that, a rethinking of the possibilities of Canada and Quebec .

Domination and National Autonomy

Not altogether escaping the pitfalls of eclecticism, Rioux's critical sociology

weaves together categories drawn from German critical theory (especially
Habermas and Marcuse), the French tradition of existential and humanistic

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 THE PLEA FOR TWO NATIONS

Marxism (Sartre, Lefebvre, Castoriadis, etc .) and related sociological approaches,

and selected aspects of American cultural anthropology and the youth
countercultural movements of the late 1960's . 15 If the European tradition is the
basis of the centrality of alienation and domination and hence of the critique of
advanced capitalism, ethnography and youth countercultures are the original
source of concern for the role of communities and nations in the reconstruction
of industrial societies . Whereas the European theorists have tended to take a
rather dim view of nationalism, given its abuse as a weapon against working-class
movements and a pretext for imperial wars, the situation has been
fundamentally different in colonized regions . Although this has long been
recognized in the case ofthe colonies of the Third World, a similar process of domination-
requiring a very different analysis-can also be observed within and between
advanced societies. For Rioux, therefore, the elaboration of a critical sociology of
Canadian society requires a fundamental reinterpretation of the national
question which can take into account its potentially progressive features as part
of a strategy of the critique and transformation of advanced capitalism .
The goal of linking the theory of domination with that of national
communities is announced in the introductory chapter of Deux pays pour vivre.
Following the tradition of German critical theory, the vision of general human
emancipation is taken as the normative foundation of inquiry in the human
sciences . From this perspective biographical self-reflection becomes a strategic
point of departure and, as previously alluded to, the authors provide a brief sketch
of the personal trajectories which resulted in the book in question . But what is of
interest here is the outcome of these two struggles for self-understanding : the
shared interest of Canada and Quebec is recognizing cultural and economic
dependence as the most fundamental obstacle to qualitative social change .
As Rioux and Crean indicate, such an approach is based on a number of
assumptions which must be acknowledged, even if for the most part they are not
discussed or defended in detail in the text . These include (1) the relative
unimportance of political constitutions as a means of resolving fundamental
questions ; (2) the failure of the strategy of assimiliating Quebec and the need to
recognize its autonomy ; (3) the importance of more general demands for
changing the relations between central federal power and that of regions ;
(4) the emergence in English Canada of an economic nationalism increasingly
accompanied by a cultural equivalent in certain areas of the arts and popular
culture ; (5) a general awakening of consciousness in Canada and Quebec of
American imperialism and its effects on their respective economies and cultures ;
(6) that all of these conflicts take place at a moment when industrial societies
have put into question their vision of the world and conception of
development.
At the outset, therefore, the authors set the stage for developing the central
critical theme of their approach : the rejection of any strategy of analysis which
privileges the economic or political at the expense of the cultural dimension of
social reality . As they emphasize, any approach which limits discussion to
questions of economic benefits and distribution is not only doomed to failure, but

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 RAY MORROW

inevitably culminates in the dangerous complaint that economic dependence has

prevented Canada from becoming as "advanced" as the United States, thus
implicitly taking for granted a specific model of development as necessary and
desirable . For Rioux and Crean, on the other hand, if Canada and Quebec desire
autonomy, "ce n'est pas pour continuer la societe commerciale mais pour faire
autre chose, pour batir une autre type de societe ."" From this point of view,
moreover, what often appears to be "backwardness" may often conceal hidden
advantages, if one desires a different type of society .
Furthermore, Rioux and Crean reject any political strategy which fails to
privilege national autonomy as the creative nexus arund which the struggle
against all other forms of domination must be organized. In viewing history as a
process of revolt and creative reconstruction acted out at both the individual and
collective levels, they consider the question of th relationship between the many
forms of domination (between nations, classes, sexes, age and ethnic groups,
etc .), concluding that they can be simultaneously reduced only with movement
toward a "societe autogestionnaire" which extends to both the private and public
worlds . And in societies such as Canada and Quebec, this is inevitably linked to
gaining the national autonomy which is the condition of all other forms of
emancipation. Furthermore, the process of realizing national liberation may
serve as a source of apprenticeship for recognizing and coming to terms with all
of the others .
Let there be no misunderstanding : this notion of national liberation makes no
attempt to draw directly upon the example or rhetoric of Third World liberation
movements . The strategy is rather to link the issues of national autonomy in
Canada and Quebec to the more general crisis of advanced capitalism and
industrial societies generally . Thus, while they followJohn Hutchinson in
viewing Canada as divided by three major types of conflict (bilingualism,
provincial and regional relations, and Canadian/American relations), they also
try to situate these within the horizon of the crisis of advanced societies without
any simplistic analogies based on liberation movements in underdeveloped
countries .
Moreover, as the introductory chapter makes clear, this conception of the
nationalist debate in Canada and Quebec has little to do with the classic 19th
century romantic veneration of tradition or the subsequent use of nationalism as
part of a stragegy of imperial aggrandizement. This difference is especially
difficult for the American left to grasp in relation to Canada, given the pernicious
consequences of nationalism at home and in dominant and aggressive societies
elsewhere . But in small and peripheral societies such as Canada and Quebec, with
neither militaristic traditions nor a capacity for deep-set xenophobia, the
meaning of national self-assertion is fundamentally transformed ; it becomes the
context of symbolic transfiguration within which a repressed past is recovered,
the collective will for the mastery of the contemporary crisis can be mobilized,
and the self-construction - rather than importation - of a vision of the future
can be initiated . i s In other words, what is in question here is a form of
nationalism whose cultural renaissance takes to heart Walter Benjamin's thesis

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- eloquently expressed in modern Quebec literature - that "there has never

been a document of culture which was not at one and the same time a document
of barbarism ." t9
The central chapters of Deux pays pour vivre are concerned with developing a
complex argument sustaining the specific sense in which the cultural must be
privileged theoretically and practically if a new form of society is to be realized.
This entails a series of discussions, not always adequately elaborated given the
constraints of space in the French version, which can perhaps be more readily
grasped when reconstructed in terms of three levels of argumentation : (1) a
metatheoretical thesis regarding the problems of conceptualizing the
relationship between the economic, political, and cultural aspects of a theory of
society in general ; (2) a substantive, theoretical thesis regarding the
historically-specific status of culture in advanced captialism, i.e. the notion of
cultural domination as the highest stage of imperialism ; and (3) a series of
strategic arguments, directed at the cases of Canada and Quebec, concerning the
potential contribution of certain forms of "culture populaire" as media through
which various social groups and communities may take steps toward gaining
control of their political and economic existence. Since these three levels of
agrumentation are not outlined explicitly, and the text tends to meander around
them, it is instructive to briefly review the resulting approach from this
schematic perspective .

The Constitutive Primacy of Culture

The first and most abstract level of analysis - a stance with respect to the
relationship between the economic, political, and cultural dimensions of society
-is the least explicitly developed . To a great extent the authors fall back upon
the metatheoretical assumptions of the tradition of critical sociology in which they
are working . Accordingly, it is not their task to take up issues such as whether or
not the economic is determinant "in the last instance", as Althusser and others
would have it. Yet in their discussion of the problems of defining culture, it is
clear that the cultural has a kind of analytical priority as the basis of the moment
of historical specification which is the ultimate objective of inquiry. Moreover, it
is within the domain of the cultural that the symbolic and categorical foundation
of new possibilities are elaborated . This position is linked to both Rioux's early
training in American cultural anthropology, his own fieldwork experiences in
Quebec, and similar arguments about the cultural matrix of social formations
found in the tradition of historicist Marxism .20 The strategic importance of this
metatheoretical position is that it opens the way for a more positive assessment
of the community, as opposed to any absolutization of class, as the political locus
for emancipatory movements . Consequently, culture is not something
epiphenomenal, frivolous or secondary, something reducible to a mere weapon

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within class struggle, but a constitutive dimension of the political and economic,
hence a presupposition of their qualitative transformation . 21
This valorization of the cultural has nothing to do, of course, with any
traditional idealistic conception of the pure autonomy of cultural activity or of its
capacity to wish away its embeddedness in the economic, technological, or
political conditions of society . For this reason, for example, the authors reject the
thesis of the neutrality of technology because of the constraints it may impose
upon the possible forms of social organization and culture open to a society .
Accordingly, Rioux and Crean argue that it may be desirable to select forms of
technology on the basis of other criteria than market-mediated assessments of
efficiency in order to preserve or construct preferred social and cultural forms of
life. More specifically, the authors concur with those who argue that the energy
and ecology crises are expressions of a form of industrial society which must
dominate nature, as well as create hierarchical forms of social organization and
systematically erode cultural differences . Indeed, one of the consequences of this
type of society is that it downplays the importance of the cultural_ because its
cultural presuppositions privilege the political and economic as more real, thus
undermining the capacity to envision cultural options. This position culminates
in a kind of negative definition of culture as rooted in the differences which alone
can produce concrete paths toward the universality of emancipatory praxis .
Hence, a culture ceases to exist when those who are its bearers become
submerged by the mental and affective structures of others and thus no longer
able to "reinterpreter les emprunts qu'ils font selon leur code propre et ne
peuvent plus creer de solutions originales dans la conduite de leur vie
collective ." 22 The outcome of this epistemological position is, therefore, the
rejection of any hypostatization of the imperial nation, the privileged class, or
the abstract individual as the locus of emancipation .

Cultural Domination as the Highest Stage of Imperialism

Much more explicit attention is given to the question of specifying the status
of cultural phenomena in the form of society under examination : the advanced
but dependent capitalist society . In this context, of course, Canada and Quebec are
cited as the primary illustrative examples . Accordingly, chapter two of Deuxpays
pour vivre is concerned with a brief survey of the history of economic and cultural
imperialism defined by the triangular relation of dependencies which interlock
Canada, Quebec, and the United States . 23 On the one hand, this analysis is critical
of the frequent tendency in Quebec to identify its dependence primarily in
relation to Ottawa and the rest of Canada, thus glossing over the larger context of
American hegemony . This discussion also dispels any suspicion that the authors'
emphasis on the priority of the cultural question is linked to a simplistic
understanding of the possiblity of separating cultural, political, and economic

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issues . As the analysis of the political economy of culture concludes, it is

ultimately impossible to separate the maladies of cultural and economic
dependence : "La logique de la production des biens symboliques se moule donc
sur celle de la production des automobiles." 14 Failure to grasp this point, it is
argued, has been at the root of the continuing failure of Canadian governments to
effectively deal with the crisis of the economy or culture .
The examples of Canada and Quebec thus lead Rioux and Crean to a more
general formulation of the processes of cultural domination analysed . This is
expressed in the thesis of cultural hegemony as the highest stage of imperialism.
Whereas past forms of imperialism emphasized political and economic power,
its contemporary form is crowned by ever more subtle cultural processes :

La domination culturelle n'est possible que si existent les

hegemonies politique, economique et technologique . L'hege-
monie culturelle que la puissance imperiale americaine vise
viendrait la forme supreme de l'imperialisme puisque les
representations et les valeurs des societes dominees s'erodent
et sont remplacees par celles de la puissance dominante. Les
domines enviennent a vouloir et a desirer pour eux ce que
charroient les industries culturelles de la metropole et ce que
qu'elles privilegient comme souhaitable et desirable . C'est la
forme la plus insidieuse d'imperialisme puisqu'il n'y a pas
d'occupation militaire ni de brimades economiques et
politiques mais des images, des sons, des mots, des formes qui
representent une societe d'abondance et de reves .zs

Unlike political and economic domination, which are more visible and closely
linked to the potential use of force, the processes of cultural domination are
veiled behind ideological interpretations of the neutrality of technique, the free
movement of information, and the objectivity and rationality of professionalized
communicators . In these circumstances, subjects voluntarily comply with
relations of domination and even come to actively identify with the perspective
of the metropolitan centre, as has been well-documented in the case of Canada .
Here, of course, the authors follow the several approaches to cultural
reproduction in advanced capitalism, referring somewhat eclectically to such
diverse analysts as Habermas, Mattelart, Schiller, Baudrillard, and Bourdieu . An
interesting impliciation of Rioux and Crean's discussion, which they do not
sufficiently stress, is the unique context of Canada and Quebec as examples of
some of the most subtle and complex forms of inter-cultural domination .
 RAY MORROW

Culture as the Weakest Link: A Populist Counter-Evolutionary Strategy?

But having outlined the grimly deterministic spectre of cultural reproduction,

Rioux and Crean then proceed to couple it - unlike most authors in this area -
with an attempt to formulate a strategy ofescape from the symbolic chains of the
consciousness industry and total administration . Somewhat apologetically, to be
sure, they conclude that domination can be fought primarily - at least initially
-by cultural means; moreover, most efforts proceeding directly from economic
to political issues are doomed to repeat the errors of the existing form of
industrial society :

Nous croyons, a tort ou a raison, que pour faire autre chose

du point de vue economique, il faut d'abord que change le
systeme de valeurs et de representations qui, lui seul, peut
donner naissance a d'autres projets de bonne vie et de bonne
society, cc qui, a notre sens, est eminemment culturel .26

At first glance, this position might appear to be consistent with an essentially

Gramscian conception of a counter-hegemonic strategy of cultural mobilization.
Though there is indeed considerable continuity between aspects of Gramsci's
conception of historicist Marxism and Rioux's critical sociology, the latter
implicitly re-invokes the historicist principle of specification and is forced to
reach rather different strategic conclusions about the form of crisis in advanced
capitalist societies such as Canada . The decisive differences here are the
recognition of the obsolescence of the classic conception of revolutionary
struggle (still entertained in a modified form by Gramsci in a fascist Italy) in the
context of an affluent liberal democratic society, and a rejection of any exclusively
proletarian or narrowly working-class basis for the development of cultural
alternatives. Accordingly, the position ofRioux and Crean diverges sharply from
many of those who, following the Birmingham School's reading ofAlthusser and
Gramsci, are tempted to revive a rather orthodox version of Marxism in the
avant-garde guise of a variant of cultural Marxism. 2'
What then is this alternative strategy? At the risk of the distortions inherent
in any schema, Rioux and Crean's positon could be characterized as (1) counter-
hegemonic but also countercultural ; (2) reflexively nationalist and counter-
evolutionary ; and (3) populist as opposed to proletarian or elitist . Each of these
obviously requires clarification .
The argument of Deuxpays pour vivre is "countercultural" in the sense and to
the degree that its counter-hegemonic plea presupposes a theory of cultural
crisis . From this point of view the concept of crisis should not be restricted to its
manifestations in the contexts of energy, ecology, economics, or politics . To doso
is to run the risk of formulating the problem ofopposition to the dominant order

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 THE PLEA FOR TWO NATIONS

in terms of concepts and categories which are grounded in its vision of the world.
In contrast - and this is the counter-cultural thrust of their argument -
industrial civilization is in the midst of a process of cultural mutation which has
called into question the conception of economic development running from
Adam Smith through Marx and their contemporary representatives . Whether
expressed in Habermas' notion of "legitimation crisis" or Bell's reference to the
"cultural contradictions of capitalism," it is clear - the authors conclude - that
"la crise qui atteint nos societes est avant tout une crise de la civilisation et non
pas celle des debouches commerciaux ."zs
Secondly, the resulting strategy is "reflexively nationalist" in relation to
peripheral and dependent societies because national aspirations are not an
exclusive goal, but are linked with a critique of all other forms of domination . It is
also "counter-evolutionary" in the sense that the demystification of any unilinear
logic of industrial development, whether in the form of any "convergence
theory" or conception of "lead society", paves the way for the recognition of the
possiblity of divergent strategies of development in advanced Societies . 29If
neither the Soviet Union nor the United States represents some hidden logic of
history or rationality, then their satellites are no longer bound inexorably to
imitation and inferiority . On the contrary, they have an implicit responsibility for
innovation, for pointing the way to possiblities not open to imperial centres
paralyzed by the inertia of power. In this respect, the situations in Poland and
Quebec are essentially parallel .
Finally, the conception of transition proposed is "populist" rather than
proletarian or elitist in the sense that it assumes that the ultimate locus of the
creative imagination required for an epochal breakthrough is preserved and
rekindled in groups and communities whose everyday life experience has not
been fully incorporated into the ethos of the dominant civilization.3° On this
account, any abstract identification of the proletariat or state with
"progressive" tendencies falls prey to the limits of innovation within the logic of
the existing order. An important example of the latter problem can be seen in the
paradoxical role of the state in promoting cultural autonomy in a dependent
society . As the practices of cultural development in Ottawa and Quebec City
demonstrate, there is an inherent tendency to treat cultural development as a
simple extension of the logic of economic development ; consequently, the citizen
is again transformed into a passive consumer by specialized agents of cultural
production . These processes are evident in all forms of elitist - official or
academic - cultural production and distribution .
Similarly, the working-class does not offer an unproblematic point of
departure for cultural resistance and innovation because of its long and largely
successful incorporation through the activities of the state and mass cultural
industries . Indeed, it was precisely through the process of cultural integration
that the proletariat failed to preserve its autonomy and lost its privileged
historical position and mission ; at the same time, however, "la prise en main de
sa destinee commence donc par celle de sa culture ." 31 But in the contemporary
situation of Canada and Quebec this cannot be readily identified with any specific

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 RAY MORROW

group-such as the working-class or specific unions-because of the extent to

which these have been incorporated into "mass culture."
The strategic possiblities for emancipatory practices are located instead in
what the authors refer to as "culture populaire", a term which translates
somewhat misleadingly into "popular culture", at least to the extent this is
associated with "mass" cultural activities in general. Consequently, it is much
closer to the use of the notion of popular culture by those concerned with early
modern European history and hence with essentially pre-mass-mediated and
pre-incorporated forms ofworking-class leisure and private life. So for Rioux and
Crean the concept of "culture populaire" retains a strong positive and normative
connotation (given its association with potential for cultural innovation) and a
restrictive empirical as a means to indicate those forms of cultural activity and
expression which retain local and regional roots, hence considerable
autonomy as the repository for the imaginative recovery of the collective will of
groups and communities . This "culture populaire", however, is simultaneously
menaced from the elite culture above (official and academic) and the mass culture
proceeding from distant centres:

La these que nous voudrions defendre c'est que 1'apport de la

culture populaire est toujours allee en s'amenuisant au
detriment de la culture dite d'elite et de la culture de masse,
toutes deux aux mains degroupes dominants au sein de chaque
pays et a 1'echelon international . 31

Obviously this populist theme and the related typology of forms of culture
poses some problems which are not adequately resolved in the next of Deuxpays
pour vivre. It should be noted, however, that these questions are being explored
in more detail by Rioux and others in Quebec under the auspicies of a major
research project. 33

From Theory to Political Practice: The Eternal Triangle

This simultaneous refusal of the liberal-pragmatic, pessimistic-conservative,

and neo-Marxist strategic options, thus opens up the more specific issue of the
implications of Rioux and Crean's conception of critical sociology for
contemporary Canadian politics. It would lead far beyond the bounds of this
essay, however, to do more than iterate the general strategy of the "plea for two
nations" and to note a couple of omissions in their analysis which could lead to
unnecessary misunderstandings .

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 THE PLEA FOR TWO NATIONS

As previously mentioned, priority is given to a preliminary re-negotiation of

the relationship between Canada and Quebec as a necessary prerequisite for
freeing both to construct policies oriented toward greater self-determination. 34
The underlying assumption here tends to converge with that of left-nationalism
generally : that the political process of attempting to gain greater control of a
society's economy and culture is the most powerful means available for creating
awareness of the range of forms of domination . From this follows the support
(not uncritical) of the Parti Quebecois, despite its practice of a rather
conventional form of bureaucratic social democracy . This support, however, is
based on the assumption that this movement is the carrier of authentic utopian
aspirations which transcend both the specific class background of participants
and the specific policies forced upon a party in power by the federal
government, the general economic crisis, the potential blackmail of capital, and a
precarious alliance with unions torn between irresponsibility masked as class
militancy and co-operation in a long-term strategy of economic re-organization .
Rioux's response to this situation follows from the general position of his
critical sociology in that an ironically Weberian distinction is preserved between
the ethics of responsiblity for the social democratic politics of the economically
possible and the extra-parliamentary ethics of commitment to anticipatory
cultural movements . This allows the degree of reconcilation between theory and
practice possible under difficult conditions . From this perspective, the practical
failure of the Parti Quebecois would not refute the justification of support
because there is no convincing basis for the assumption that there was a
dramatically different alternative. A multidimensional conception of change
implies that the process of transition operates at many different levels requiring
different time cycles for their realization. Electoral politics is only one of these
domains, as are class and other forms of mobilization, cultural movements or
one's personal life. None of these is absolutely privileged and setbacks in one may
be compensated for by advances in others . Such a flexible reconcilation of theory
and practice allows avoidance of both Adorno's metaphysical pessimism and the
naive optimism of a political economy waiting for the revolutionary millenium .
A first neglected point i,n Rioux and Crean's analysis which could lead to
misunderstanding is a failure to draw out the consequences of the asymmetry of
the actual and potential role of the national questions in the province of Quebec
as opposed to elsewhere in Canada . It is questionable whether there are
comparable bases for the forms of "culture populaire" which have played such an
important part in defining the cultural autonomy of Quebec and its relation to a
mass movement . There are thus reasons to believe that any cultural
developments in anglophone Canada will be accompanied by a sharp split
between indigenous cultural creation appealing to a largely elite audience and the
mass audience of imported American culture . To this extent, there is little basis
for any short-term reconciliation between cultural anticipation and social
democracy of the type now found, even if on a fragile basis, in the Parti
Quebecois.
Another potentially misleading omission is the absence of a "plea" for a third

77
 RAY MORROW

"pays pour vivre," i.e. a process ofdevelopment in the United States which would
complement the aspirations of Canada and Quebec. Equally as pressing as the
need for mutual understanding within Canada is the imperative of
communicating to sympathetic Americans what is or might be happening north
of the 49th parallel . On the one hand, there are voices in America which
increasingly articulate a conception of the crisis of advanced capitalism close to
that of the critical sociology ofRioux and Crean. Some of these have even drawn
similar conclusions in calling for the development of regional "nations" to
counter the excessive scale and centralization of American society. As William
Appleton Williams has recently pointed out, one of the congenital flaws of the
American left has been a blindness, originating in a shared indebtedness to the
heritage of Napoleon, Lincoln, and Marx, to the problem of the scale of political
communities :

In a fundamental sense, therefore, twentieth-century radicals

followed Marx in becoming victims of his fascinating
combination of capitalist assumptions andsocialist utopianism .. .
(which) led him to believe that a change of class at the center of
the metropolis would change the inherent nature of the
system.
Unhappily, it was wrong and wrong again . For if capitalism
leads to increasing demographic imbalance, the super-
centralization of power, and the destruction of community,
then surely a rigorous radicalism is defined by regionalism in
the international arena...It is easy, and convenient, to dismiss
such alternatives as nostalgic nonsense. But they are in truth
the guts of a very tough late twentieth-century radicalism .
American radicals must face and answer the naughty question :
Do they want to manage an essentially unchanged corporate
capitalist political economy as little more than especially
sensitive and responsible administrators, or do they want to
change the world? If the latter, then I suggest that changing
the world hinges on breaking the existing system into
human-sized components of space, time, place and scale. 3 s

Moreover, by omitting the question of internal American developments, it is

implied that the "American empire" is a monolithic entity and that Canada and
Quebec could successfully negotiate their fate in relation to it. Yet it is obvious
that any effort to renegotiate such relations presupposes sympathetic and
informed groups which are now - outside of a few cases of cooperation on
ecological issues - clearly absent . Even in progressive, cosmopolitan circles
there is an abysmal ignorance in America of the Canadian question, a fact which
does not bode well for the future. To an extent, Quebec has already committed a

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 THE PLEA FOR TWO NATIONS

similar mistake by ignoring the rest of Canada (Rioux is an exception here),

leaving the population at the mercy of the mass media and politicians . Does not a
dependent culture have a responsibility to bring its message to those groups in the
dominant culture which are the potential agents of change? Is not this
ambivalence and temerity itself a manifestation of a colonialized culture? In this
context the export of creative indigenous cultural productions which are rooted
in Canadian experience and not Hollywood imitations becomes (again) more
than a question of dollars and cents, for it is the only means to create the respect
and understanding necessary for negotiating a new relationship .

Political Economy and Critical Theory

The preceding sympathetic reconstruction of Rioux and Crean's critical

sociology of culture has set aside many of the more detailed issues which might be
of concern in a more comprehensive analysis and critique . The objective has
been, rather, to present a "stylized" version of their approach which highlights
its implications for Canadian political economy . To make these more explicit, it
is instructive to outline an agenda of questions (and challenges) which such a
confrontation implies . To be sure, the resulting discussion is selective because
limited to problems which arise directly from the formulation of critical
sociology utilized ; but the advantage is that it narrows an otherwise vast topic,
directs attention to a number of fundamental issues, and allows a focus on an
exmple of critical sociology formulated specifically as a response to the crisis of
Canada and Quebec.
The more general context of debate here is the future of the human and social
sciences in Canada . For some time now there has been extensive discussion
within universities of the relations between the development of a "national"
tradition of scholarship, the preservation of certain "universal" standards
associated with the ideal of a scientific community, and the process of borrowing
from other societies, most typically Anglo-American or European . 36 In the case
at hand, however, this question is narrowed to those forms of inquiry which,
unlike the dominant paradigms of empirical social science, address directly issues
concerning the national components of research traditions and their capacity for
informing or guiding fundamental - perhaps even radical - social change.
With respect to the internal differences which divide those who propose what
are in some sense "radical" and "critical" alternatives, the crucial point of
contention has been the strategy for appropriating the Marxian tradition, both as
a programme of research and as a guide to political change. The resolution of this
question defines, in turn, a specific relationship with traditional social scientific
theories, methods, and modes of application.
As argued at the onset, Rioux and Crean's critical sociology cannot be readily

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 RAY MORROW

classified within the typology proposed by Drache for understanding the

development of the political economy tradition in Canada, the primary discursive
framework within which the Marxian tradition has - come to influence
interpretations of society and history . Aspects of their approach would allow, to
be sure, its classification under the heading of the "new political economy"
especially those strands with roots in the traditions of the "hinterlanders" and
the "post-Innisians ." But as the preceding reconstruction has made clear, there
are aspects of their critical sociology which call into question its identification,
without further ado, with any grouping including people such as Ryerson, Nelles,
Watkins, Clement, Drache, and Panitch . Though building upon the work of such
authors indirectly, Rioux and Crean's project is animated by different cognitive
interests and arrives at some divergent political and strategic conclusions . The
simplest solution to this anomaly, therefore, would be to add an eighth phase of
development under the heading of "critical sociology and critical theory :" 37
Yet this new category adds as many problems as it solves ; it does not follow
immanently from the new political economy and cannot be compared to it
without addressing some important theoretical and methodological assump-
tions . 3 a Especially important here is the relative heterogeneity of the approaches
contrasted and the degree to which they may lie on different theoretical levels
because guided by different cognitive interests . If the former presents the
potential - problem of overgeneralization, the latter creates the risk of
constructing a pseudo-debate .
To avoid overgeneralization, the following discussion focuses on the "new"
political economy as designated by Drache . This will be taken idealtypically to
refer to an approach to the reinterpretation of Canadian economic history guided
by a theory of development derived in part from an indigenously constructed
dependency model (staples theory) coupled with, in diverse fashions, some more
or less conventional neo-Marxian conception of class conflict. Internal debates
turn precisely on the question of the relationship between the dependency and
internal class relation models, creating a latent tension between the older
tradition of economic history and the introduction of contemporary models of
neo-Marxist political economy based primarily on the European experience . 39
These explanatory debates do not stand in isolation as manifestations of some
kind of value-free science, however, because they are integrally associated with a
set of ideological and strategic assumptions rooted in the analysis of the class
nature of political conflicts . Again, there are important differences surrounding
such questions as the exact status and potential of nationalism in the struggle
against inequality, the potential of the state to respond to parliamentary
oppositional movements, the class character of farmers and petty commodity
producers, etc. Yet there is also a significant degree of consensus about the
strategic role of the working class as the objective basis for overcoming the
existing system of domination . The result is an approach within which a form of
specialized inquiry (political economy) is coupled more or less uncritically with
an ideological framework (conception of science, culture, politics, history) to
which it has a taken-for-granted relationship.

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 THE PLEA FOR TWO NATIONS

Defining the approach of critical theory and sociology is simplified, largely

because of its underdevelopment with respect to Canadian issues . And by giving
Rioux and Crean's analysis pride of place, the stage has already been set for
outlining an agenda of implicit questions for political economy. Suffice it to note
that the crucial point of difference is the metatheoretical and sociological
framework within which the data of political economic and other forms of social
scientific research are reinterpreted . The resulting strategy of inquiry is thus
marked by a different knowledge-guiding interest than that which informs the
research practices of those concerned with the theory of Canadian economic
development . In this respect Rioux and Crean implicitly follow the model of
"critical" theory in their concern with the conditions of possibility of qualitative
change, as opposed to the priority of an empirical-analytical analysis of the
determinants of the existing form of society . This disjuncture is based on the
assumption that the analysis of economic relations no longer (if it ever did)
provides an adequate account of how a new form of society might be constructed .
The consequence is that the meaning and significance of political economic
findings are transformed by their incorporation into a more general theory of
society and cultural critique .
To avoid a pseudo-debate, it is important to stress that the relationship
between political economy and critical theory is best referred to as a dialogue
rather than as a question of theory competition in the strict sense in which one
must be false if the other be true . But this also presupposes differentiating
between political economy as a specialized discipline and its loosely associated
aspiration to be the basis for a general theory of politics, culture, and the human
sciences . At the empirical level, political economy and critical sociology are in
principle complementary, even if the latter draws upon aspects of more
traditional historical, sociological, and social psychological research to qualify,
challenge, or reinterpret many of the analytical explanations of political
economy . For critical sociology the exact significance of economic phenomena
(itself a problematic manner of slicing social reality) is an empirical question
which can only be determined from within the framework of a given
sociocultural totality .
Political economy and critical theory are, on the other hand, largely competing
and antagonistic at the metatheoretical and strategic level because of divergent
conceptions of the relation between theory, practice, and radical change in
advanced capitalist societies . This stance is closely linked to critical theory's
claim, expressed in various ways, that the world-historical mission of the
proletariat, as originally envisioned by Marx, has failed and that invoking its
spectre increasingly distracts from conceptualizing the new historical
possibilities. (The Third World obviously requires a rather different analysis .)
Moreover, this position emerged from within the tradition of Marxism itself.
Whether it be the Frankfurt School or its inheritors, or the ex-Trotskyites who
are so numerous among the critical sociologists of France, or the theoretical
offspring of the Anglo-American New Left, this response has proceeded by way
of an immanent critique of Marxism .

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 RAY MORROW

One of the earliest and most poignant expressions of this was Karl Korsch's
1931 essay on the "Crisis of Marxism" which begins with the acknowledgement
that "Marxism as a movement and as a theory is in a state of crisis . This is no
longer a crisis within Marxism, but a crisis of Marxism itself "4° Those who
followed to the bitter end the underlying principles of historical specificity and
the unity of theory and praxis were forced to recognize a fundamental
transformation of the place of the economic process within advanced capitalism
and the enhanced significance of the state and the new forms of cultural
reproduction . In the Canadian context the initial failure of traditional Marxist
analysis was therefore not only that it was "metropolitan"; it was also dogmatic,
hence unable to revitalize its own theoretical categories. Not surprisingly, there
has often been much more to learn from Marxism's best critics : "bourgeois"
theorists animated by a desire to come to terms with the crisis of modern
civilization . For this reason, the major original contributions to Canadian
political economy were those of Innis and his followers who elaborated a theory
of economic development on the basis of an empiricist concern with historical
specificity . This would have been impossible within the Marxism of the day and
Innis'strategy was in many respects comparable to that of Max Weber in
Wilhelmian Germany a generation before : they both used economic history
against Marxism, provoking awareness of the need for its renewal . In the
process, of course, they were forced to become much more than economic
historians by acknowledging the need for a complementary theory of society and
culture. And as a consequence, there is a sense in which the students of Innis (as
those of Weber) were forced to return to Marx as part of the process of going
beyond both.
In the course of this return to Marx, however, the indigenous tradition of
Canadian political economy has experienced difficulties related to a tendency
toward excessive empiricism, an absence of metatheoretical reflection, working
within an impoverished and dependent cultural tradition, and a suspicious
attitude toward European social theory . One of the greatest sources of appeal of a
more systematic neo-Marxist form of political economy is that it offers, in its
revitalized and highly sophisticated manifestions, an almost ready-made
resolution of these past difficulties . In the process the peculiarites of Canada can
be acknowledged in a manner previously impossible for Marxist theorists and
many of the pretensions of staples theory can be demolished (whether validly or
not) because of its lack of a more comprehensive theoretical programme . And it
is precisely for not moving far enough in this direction that Panitch has recently
chided the new political economy :

A more precise source of the weakness of the new political

economy than nationalism, however, may be said to be its
insufficiently dialectical approach to social phenomena ...The
failure to take this approach, which stems from a failure to
take Marxism seriously enough, rather than from any

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 THE PLEA FOR TWO NATIONS

necessary 'contamination' which results from incorporating

certain expressions of nationalism (or insights of Innis) into a
Marxian framework, may be said to lie at the core of the new
political economy's weaknesses . 4 '

Even if this be accepted in general terms, paths begin to part over the question
of precisely what it means to be "sufficiently dialectical" and to "take Marxism
seriously enough ." This is the most fundamental issue, not the danger of
importing "metropolitan Marxism" as Drache warns . For this reason Panitch is
again on solid ground when he suggests that nationalism has been a source of
weakness not for political reasons, but because of "a certain insularity of focus
that tends to discourage ( and not count as part of Canadian political economy)
contributions to general theoretical debates or to comparative research . "42
Though this very insularity was a primary source of its capacity to theoretically
articulate the unique features of Canadian economic development, beyond a
certain point it must re-examine its assumptions in relation to these larger
debates if it is to enter a new stage of creative research, especially in relation to
the contemporary crisis . The real question is which debates and which forms of
comparative research are to be taken to inspire reflections on the
reinterpretation of Canadian social, political, and economic theory .
So-called "metropolitan Marxism" is itself a highly heterogenous
phenomenon with a long history and divergent tributaries of development . For
this reason it is important to stress the strategic difference between the
sophisticated form of neo-Marxist political economy advocated by Panitch and
the critical sociology of culture proposed by Rioux and Crean. These represent
two fundamentally different strategies for drawing upon European discussions
as a basis for rethinking the problematic of Canadian dependence and
development . Whereas the first appeals to a restoration of Marx's programme
via a theory of monopoly capitalism, the latter draws inspiration from a
counter-response based on the assumption of the failure of that original project .
At the same time this post-Marxist discourse claims to have neither abandoned
the search for a critical theory of society nor for a strategy of political and cultural
renewal .

An Agenda of Questions for the New Political Economy

The following agenda of questions alludes to the larger European context of

division, even as it directs attention to its specific manifestations within Canada .
Partly because of the previous monopoly of discussion by the new political
economy, the exposition is weighted toward a series of challenges posed by
critical theory which have been rarely voiced, even in muted form . These

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 RAY MORROW

questions are not, however, directed at the strictly empirical issues which divide
political economists, might become the basis for forms of empirical critical
sociology, and can only be resolved within the parameters of a cumulative
research tradition. The points of contention touch rather upon problems of
generalizing those findings, relating them to those of other disciplines, and
translating them into political and cultural strategies . Since the indigenous .
variant of Canadian political economy is silent on many of these types of issues,
discussion is also weighted toward the temptation of following the rejuvenated
models of neo-Marxist political economy as the strategy for moving from
economic history to a theory of society and politics. How these and related types
of questions are resolved will determine, for betteror worse, the future of critical
social science in Canada . Defined thematically, these should include : (1)
metatheoretical assumptions about the nature of social inquiry; (2) conceptions
of cultural analysis and critique ; (3) social psychological presuppositions about
the agents of change ; (4) political strategies of change ; and (5) the form of
utopian imagination underlying the project of cultural transformation . The
significance of the differences within each of these can be grasped by a brief
review of the contrasting tendencies expressed in the new political economy and
Rioux and Crean's critical sociology.

(1) MetatheoreticalAssumptions : What Kind of Critical Social Science?

Why is it that the Canadian political economy tradition is characterized by an
almost complete avoidance of the metatheoretical debates which .have
transformed our understanding of the human sciences over the past decade or
so? 4 3 After all, Toronto has been the site of the publication of one of the most
important journals in the philosophy of the social sciences and a centre for the
study of European and Anglo-American social theory for nearly a decade . Yet one
looks in vain for either any reference to these discussions by political economists
or any interventions which seek to contribute to them. (Reciprocally, those
interested in the theory of the human sciences have also largely ignored Canadian
political economy .) At best, those who identify more strongly with a general
neo-Marxist form of political economy can passively fall back upon the rich
Anglo-American and European literature which has rehabilitated this approach
within the academy . But again, one finds few sustained, metatheoretically
sophisticated debates concerning the problems of translation implied by a
historically specific Canadian political economy ." All in all, therefore, the
Canadian political economy tradition has completely failed to specify and secure
its scientific status or relation to other disciplines, irrespective of its immense
contributions to a theory of Canadian economic development . What this failure
seems to betray is a lack of reflexivity linked to sub-disciplinary isolation, a lack of
philosophical sophistication, and embeddedness in pre-existing ideological
formations which have only occasionally been called into question. Even where
there are the beginnings of such an interrogation, as in the case of Innis'
fragmentary observations on the crisis of civilization and the role of value in

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social science, they have not been systematically followed up or linked with
contemporary debates . 45
In contrast, Rioux and Crean ride on the wake of the elaborate and
wide-ranging discussions in the philosophy of social sciences associated with
Jurgen Habermas and others in West Germany , Goldmann, Lefebvre, Sartre,
Castoriadis, Morin, Bourdieu, etc . i n France, and Anglo-American contributions
influenced by these. Of particular importance is that these European discussions
originated as internal and immanent critiques of classical Marxism confronted
with the twin challenge of the crisis of advanced capitalism and empirical social
science. Whereas these tendencies have influenced much research in Quebec, they
have been largely ignored by the tradition of anglophone political economy, even
if there have been a number of interpretive commentaries by other Canadian
scholars .
A practical consequence of the approach of Rioux and Crean is that they can
operate with an implicit conception of the complementarity of their use of
political economy and their own critical sociology. 46 For instance, they rely upon
the results of political economy for understanding the context of economic and
cultural domination which structures the relations between Quebec, anglophone
Canada, and the United States . Yet this conception of complementarity is
coupled with grave reservations about the capacity of political economic research
can it react to this challenge? Other than through vague references to "idealism"
or "anarchism", the absence of a well-defined metatheoretical discourse renders
Canadian political economy almost helpless to repond to a critical sociology of
culture, even where this may be called for . And without the development of such
a metatheoretical competence a fruitful and constructive, hence mutually
beneficial, dialogue will not be possible .

(2) Forms of Cultural Analysis : Cultural Reproduction or Cultural Anticipation?

With reference to Canadian political economy, it could be argued that there is
already a relatively rich tradition of research in the areas of culture, nationalism,
and ideology . But this claim can be sustained only by overlooking at least three
problematic characteristics of this work : an inordinate emphasis on classical
forms of political ideology at the expense of cultural phenomena generally,
especially as expressed in everyday life ; a lack of theoretical and methodological
sophistication in analyzing ideological and cultural phenomena beyond the sheer
description of contents or their reduction to economic variables ; and a chronic
inability to appropriate some of the most innovative and suggestive
contributions to cultural analysis within the Canadian tradition, i .e . McLuhan,
Frye, and Innis ." In these circumstances, is Canadian political economy in a
strong position to remedy these difficulties by importing some variety of
European cultural Marxism to fill the gap without running the risk of a
superficial and inadequately mediated application of "metropolitan" Marxism?
This situation suggests a couple of important questions : why this general
neglect and impoverishment of cultural studies in the first place, and what is the
most appropriate way to overcome this deficiency in the long run? As for the first

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point, the most obvious response is to refer to the process of repressing Canadian
identity linked to the "Americanization" of the economy, culture, and human
sciences . Without denying the strategic significance of these factors, it is also
plausible to add that political economy, to the extent that it necessarily privileges
an economic interpretation of cultural reality, is inherently limited in its capacity
to account for such phenomena . For this reason, of course, the tradition of the
critical sociology of culture has relied upon a multiplicity of disciplinary
resources : varieties of cultural Marxism, interpretive sociology and cultural
history, ethnography, and the methods of the humanities generally . This implies,
in relation to the second question, that the weakness of cultural studies in Canada
cannot be remedied primarily from within the existing tradition of political
economy . Though there are and will continue to be important forms of the
political economy of culture and communications which draw more or less
directly upon economic concepts, it is also clear that these forms of research can
scarcely exhaust the issues of cultural analysis . Most importantly, both the limits
and full significance of this research can be realized only within the framework of
a more comprehensive cultural theory . Otherwise the political economy of
culture risks enclosure within a specific specialist mode on inquiry, i .e . an
economic interpretation of cultural reality, which is a necessary, but not sufficient
foundation for a sociology of culture, the identification of possible emancipatory
practices, and a strategy for encouraging anticipatory cultural movements . 48
Rioux and Crean's critical sociology is exemplary of what this might and
should entail and reflects a series of specific decisions about the most appropriate
strategy for using "cultural Marxism" as a resource for cultural research in Canada .
The result is intimately linked to both their metatheoretical point of departure
concerning the nature of a critical social science and to Rioux's reflections upon
the experience of cultural movements in Quebec . Such considerations have led
them away from a concern with static models of cultural production of the type
most closely associated with Althusserian Marxism or the formal models of
causal determination characteristic of vulgar Marxism or conventional empirical
sociology . As a consequence, their approach has many affinities with that of
English cultural Marxists such as Raymond Williams and E.P . Thompson . But
this should not obscure important differences deriving from a perception of the
very different class formations, a context of dependent development, and very
different historical traditions .
This is not to say that the development of a critical cultural sociology in Canada
has developed beyond an elementary stage, or even that Rioux and Crean have
set out a systematic programme for this purpose . What can be argued, however,
is that unlike the tradition of Canadian political economy, they have pointed the
way to a strategy for appropriating European models consistent with the
autonomous Canadian tradition of research. Many specific issues remain open
(i .e . how to engage in a critical appropriation of the work of the Birmingham
School) and it would require a separate essay to consider the limits and absences
characteristic of Rioux's approach to the sociology of culture generally.

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(3) Social Psychological Presuppositions: Mediating Objects or Potential

Subjects?
Canadian political economy has not been concerned with social psychological
issues at such . 49 Yet it must be asked : what is its underlying conception of the
historical subjects, the agents of change? Is this neglect a product of disciplinary
specialization or does it reflect the assumption that such matters are essentially
secondary, epiphenomenal and thus not a priority of research? In any case, since
such issues cannot be completely ignored, political economy has tended to work
with a notion of human motivation based on a relatively simple conception of
economic interest which is taken to be most naturally expressed in class-based
collective action . Converted into a procedure for historical research, however,
this assumption has proved fruitful to the extent that it has served to unveil the
class bases and dependent context of Canadian development masked by previous
generations of historiographers and social scientists . On the other hand, the
limitations of such a crude materialist social psychology become immediately
apparent in any effort to theoretically conceptualize the range of ways in which
people live and act : the origins of dynamics of social movements, various aspects
of religious and cultural phenomena, and the prospects for any fundamental
transformation of the capitalist mode of production -to name only a few issues . If
this is so, how can political economy propose to move from its findings about
Canadian economic development to a theory and strategy of change directed
toward the future?
The neglect and superficial treatment of social psychological issues closely
parallels the problems of cultural analysis within the tradition of political
economy generally. Both pertain to the strategic question of the movement
between objective structures and the actions of subjects . Though the early Marx
provided some brilliant insights into these issues, they came to be
methodologically severed from the specialized form of economic analysis which
was the concern of his attempt to isolate the laws of motion of an autonomous
process of production . The reincorporation of cultural and social psychological
questions into a conception of society for which the logic of capital is
all-determining, however, necessarily requires a focus on how symbolic and
individual realities are functionally adapted to the imperatives of cultural and
social reproduction . The more recent move away from a mechanistic,
reductionistic account of this process toward a structural model granting a degree
of autonomy to superstructural phenomena does not change the essential
objectives of such forms of inquiry. And though these types of research have an
obvious social'scientific legitimacy, it is important to note that the sociological
contributions have been .much richer, historically and ethnographically
differentiated, and methodologically rigorous than those stemming more
directly from neo-Marxist models .s° Yet outside the area of family and feminist
research, such social psychological issues have been of peripheral interest to the
new Canadian political economy . The reason may be, in part, that the further a
form of analysis is from influencing actual processes of change, the less
concerned it is with the introduction of the mediating categories useful for, and

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demanded by, the subjects transforming their lived experience .

Again, however, the critical sociology of Rioux and Crean provides some
important suggestions regarding social psychological questions, though this
remains an inadequately developed aspect of their exposition. 5 ' The central
concept here is a conception of alienation and domination against which
individual subjects have struggled historically as part of a general process of
emancipation . But unlike most neo-Marxists, they refuse to reduce alienation to
an economic category and limit social psychological research to problems of
structural determination . 51 By viewing alienation in relation to a more general
theory of domination, it is possible for a critical sociology to develop a critique of
industrial society generally, not exclusively its capitalist forms . And by situating
the problematic of social psychology in relation to the development of
emancipatory practices, rather than limiting it to explaining the determination
of individual behaviour by macro-structures, it seeks to escape the conservative
implications of any static model of social reproduction, whether of Althusserian
or Parsonian inspiration, which seeks to reduce social psychological inquiry to
the perfunctory status of describing the transmission belts from macro- to
micro-, from structure to subject . Marx, of course, countered such static
implications with a conception of the revolutionary reversal of alienation which
abstractly evoked the possibility of transformation through the action of a
creative, collective subject . With the decline of the revolutionary mythos in this
century, however, Marxian social psychology reverted to a formal determinism
and increasingly lost interest in the question of the sources of the cultural
innovation which are to bring forth a new world and a new human subject. Not
surprisingly, such questions were left primarily to "bourgeois" cultural
movements inspired by the aesthetics of surrealism or existentialist philosophy
and personalist theology. More recently, similar concerns have been expressed by
various countercultural critiques of contemporary social character and efforts to
reconceptualize the problem of human needs . 53 Practically, however, the task of
conceptualizing the political basis of incremental revolutionary change has fallen
to the inheritors of the anarchist and council communist traditions, the theorists
of "autogestion ."

(4) Strategies of Change : Working-Class Mobilization or "Autogestion"

Movements?
Strategies for initiating and guiding change follow directly from social
psychological presuppositions, i .e . an understanding of the conditions under
which individuals come to form or reform groups to transform the institutional
and cultural foundations of their existence. Again, this is not a question which
Canadian political economy has addressed directly, though it has been touched
upon by some of the writings on social movements . Yet the disturbing question
cannot be avoided : is there a danger that an analysis of economic development
has been linked with a strategy of radical change without having adequately
examined the relationship between the two? May it be that the new political
economy has been characterized by a split between theory and practice because

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the questions posed by historical research have only an oblique relation to the
range of answers needed to construct a theory of advanced capitalism in Canada
and linking it to an emancipatory politics? 54
Though Drache has charged that one of the chronic features of the Canadian
political economy tradition has been a tendency to make economic interpretation
an end in itself, it is evident that more recently this latent positivism and
academicism has not been carried over into the public political stance of those
associated with this form of research . The new political economy has been
generally linked with a leftist politics which ranges from the left-wing of the
NDP, the more radical socialist-nationalist stance once associated with the
Waffle group within the NDP, to the various radical socialist positions which
converge at a certain point with the more or less "revolutionary" sectarian
groups . Despite all of these overt political differences, however, the continuity
between these approaches is derived from a shared reliance on political economy
as a research method and a linked tendency to hypostatize the concepts of "class"
and "labour" inherited from historical materialism . This is manifest in the
assumption that the most fundamental category of political change is the
response of the working-class to its exploitation and an objective deprivation of
needs which can only be fulfilled through economic growth and gaining control
of the state apparatus as a means of socializing the mode of production . In
practice, however, a significant split is evident between the political strategy of
those who lean increasingly toward a production-centred model of capital-logic
and those who have been concerned with demonstrating the strategic
importance of dependency theory.
The most internally consistent position is held by those who have attempted
to subordinate dependency theory within the more general framework of the
contradictory development of the production process and class conflict on
inter-regional and international levels . Though this position can be reconciled
with a tactical support for left-nationalist politics, the question of national or
regional autonomy is interpreted in essentially instrumental terms . By
definition, the logic of capitalism requires that the possibility of fundamental
transformation is grounded in the process of working-class mobilization and is
thus irreconcilable with the various reformist, populist and popular movements
expressing largely middle-class or petit bourgeois forms of dissent . As a
consequence, there is a certain formal reconciliation of research and practice
because the former is concerned with analyzing the changes in the production
process from the point of view of isolating the objective bases of contradiction
and the strategic points for initiating support of progressive political activities .
The political strategies linked to forms of dependency theory, on the other
hand, are characterized by a number of unresolved internal tensions. This is
expressed in the anomaly that the new political economy has been most
informative about the political consequences of the contemporary crisis in such
deviant areas as urban politics, ecology movements, women's issues, Quebec and
Canadian nationalism-none of which can be adequately treated exclusively
within the theoretical framework of class conflict and economic infrastructures .

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Paradoxically, there is a large and theoreticaly unexplicated discrepancy between

the model of the political economy of change which informs historical research
and what are in fact identified in advanced capitalism as the actual sources of
innovation and contestation . In much of the Quebec socialist-independentist
literature this anomaly is reflected in the curious reference to "les classes
ouvrieres et populaires" or even "le mouvement ouvrier et populaire ."ss
However useful this reconciliation may be for tactical purposes, it is difficult to
comprehend the nature of the theory of social class which underlies such an
approach . It is difficult to escape the impression that this may involve a form of
theoretical wishful-thinking whereby political economy tries to remain open to
these new sources of change by grafting them onto the classic model of the
"interest" of the working-class . Most of this type of analysis in Quebec represents
a rather uncritical effort to transpose a Gramscian conception of counter-hege-
monic mobilization to the contemporary Canadian situation . Drache has
proposed a similar analysis, but has made no attempt to conceal the fundamental
difficulties :

A nationalist struggle implies the need for alliances and such

alliances are the essence of any political struggle . It is
irresponsible for the Left to cherish the illusion that there is a
'pure' manifestation of class conflict between the workers and
the bourgeoisie . No class, it must be remembered, is a
monolithic bloc without contradictory and opposing factions .
Much more useful is Gramsci's notion of the 'process of
popular mobilization' that is 'characterized inevitably by the
foundation of "blocs" . If Gramsci is right, the Left must begin
to rethink its traditional ideas about what a working class
politics means in the Canadian context . As a beginning it needs
to develop a new approach which enables it to analyse
nationalist issues in relationship to the specific class interests
of both the working class in and outside the NDP and other
embattled elements at this time in Canada's history.s6

Though these suggestions are well taken as guidelines for certain types of
empirical research and as a rejoinder to any proletarian puritanism, they still
remain rooted in political economic categories and cannot formulate any
objective reasons why such a left-nationalist popular coalition could or should
develop . Whereas it was plausible for Gramsci to speak of "the working class" as
an active, organized agent of change, what does that mean today? The precarious
links within organized labour? And if labour itself is not unified, how is it to be
linked to non-working class demands? What about all the latent "class" interests
which find no active expression at all because the affected individuals have no
basis for organizational self-defense? And ifthe activities of all these groups are

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to be reduced to their diverse class interests (presumably excluding those groups

which do not seem capable of acting upon them), how are these cleavages within
the "working class" to be reconciled with those of "other embattled elements"?
This, apparently, would be one of the important functions of a movement against
dependency, but is this possiblity really linked to economic conditions directly?
The desire for national autonomy, like that for workers' control, cannot be
understood as a demand that follows from any materialistic social psychology of
interest : those in greatest need tend to be least aware. In other words, such
aspirations imply a fundamental cultural transformation, a utopian dimension
ofgroup activity, and a process ofcollective learning whose "necessity" cannot be
derived from the facts of economic development . If the evolutionary logic of
capitalist development is abandoned - and here neo-Marxist political economy
is perfectly consistent-the "revisionist" consequences cannot be halted halfway
through the process of rethinking working class politics .
One of the most provocative consequences of Rioux andCrean's "autogestion"
strategy is that it breaks decisively with the assumption that the crisis of
advanced capitalism can be resolved exclusively within the framework of
economic categories. 51 From this perspective, the more fundamental contexts of
domination are the forms of culture, production, and consumption generated by
enslavement to an industrial process guided by its internal priorities rather than
those of the members of society . Accordingly, any socialist strategy grounded in
the appeal of simple enrichment is inherently incapable of significant movement
toward the transcendence of alienation and inequality, even assuming that it can
compete with the productivity of capitalism in the first place.51 An "autogestion"
approach, in contrast, is not in the first instance justified by any claim to greater
productive efficiency ; instead, it is legitimated as a means for allowing cultures
and communities to redefine the priorities of human association in relation to
other values than those imposed by the demands of the productive apparatus
itself . This implies a recognition of the multiple sources of alienation and
domination and consequently a pluralization of the potential forms of collective
organization which might become vehicles for emancipatory practices and a
basis for the spontaneous articulation of previously repressed human needs and
concerns.
There is, of course, an obvious objection to the advocacy of a proliferation of
emancipatory demands and projects : how are these to become cumulative, how
can they be politically aggregated in a way that guarantees a rational
determination of societal priorities, inhibits co-optation and fragmentation, and
guides a strategy oriented toward the transformation of the mode ofproduction?
The logical persuasiveness of the classic conception of the mission of the
counter-hegemonic proletariat and its vanguard leadership was that all of these
problems were "objectively" resolved. And the persistence of adherence to this
solution, despite a century of well-documented failure, attests to both its intrinsic
coherency and the absence of any conceptually tidy alternative, aside from
abandoning the project of qualitative transformation altogether. The response of
the theory of "autogestion," however, does suggest a new point of departure :

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abandonment of the myths of abundance and transparence, a generalization of

politics in an experimental society, and a subordination of economic relations to
social ones.

(5) Economic Necessity or the "Imaginaire Sociale"?

Finally, it might be asked, what is the vision of cultural transformation which
inspires the new Canadian political economy? In moments of romantic
anticipation, which aspects ofcontemporary culture are taken to be expressive of
such possibilities? Are its categories inherently linked to the unfolding of the
logic of industrialization, or does it contain any conceptual basis for
distinguishing between growth and happiness, affluence and the good society?59
Or are such questions largely irrelevant given the essential realism of political
economy which implies that the outcome of history will be a simple product of
objective forces, rendering our scribblings null and void?
If it rejects or ignores such questions, political economy is forced to join with
some uncomfortable company . From the perspective of liberal pragmatism, for
instance, which takes for granted a given form of capitalism as "reality", any
effort to defy the reality principles which underlie the immutable logic of
rationalization is doomed to Darwinian elimination . More sympathetically, a
conservativism such as that of George Grant seeks to preserve cultural
differences against the onslaught of technology, but sees no escape from the iron
cage of rationalization given the functional imperatives of any movement
seeking national autonomy .b0 Finally, from the position of a neo-Marxist
conception of social reproduction widely accepted by Canadian political
economists, it could be argued that the possibility for any fundamental change
must be located in the evolution of the structural conditions of the economy
which are, in the last instance, the determinants of possible transformations .
How might Rioux and Crean respond to each of these types of criticism? In
order to comprehend the logic underlying their position, it is instructive to try to
draw out the form ofresponse which might follow from an understanding of the
utopian dimension of their conception of critical sociology . First, their defense
against liberal pragmatism would be the most straightforward. From the
perspective of a dynamic conception of social reality, the actual can only be
comprehend in relation to implicitly possible future conditions of society . On this
point they could even cite students of contemporary modal logic who
acknowledge that "possible worlds are a hidden and implicit aspect of all
model-building and all theorizing. A theory that covers the actual world end only
the actual world, is not a theory but a description ." 61 This is admitted by
macro-sociological theories of development and evolution, but for the most part
these remain within the framework of a linear conceptionof rationalization and
progress . As previously suggested, the position of Rioux and Crean is
counter-evolutionary in that it argues for the possibility - at this stage of
historical development -of smaller nations choosing novel strategies of
development.bz
To the second type of objection, that of Grant's conception of the

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incompatibility of technology and community, Rioux and Crean could reply that
the possibility of cultural mutation (especially for a new conception of nature),
including the development of a "societe autogestionnaire," provides the
potential conditions for transcending technological domination . This argument
overlaps, of course, with that directed against liberal pragmatism and its similar
hypostatization of technological determination.
The response to the third position, that of a neo-Marxist political economy,
serves to summarize the previous agenda of questions . By hypostatizing a
particular method, political economy runs the risk of a formalistic conception of
practice because the identitarian logic underlying its conception of society denies
the multidimensional and open-ended structure of social reality . On the one
hand, this can even reach back into the realm of the economic, resulting in the
conclusion that there is a single model which can adequately encompass the
economic process .
On the other hand, and more pertinent to the questions under examination, it
cannot adequately pose the problem of the formation of a new form of politics
and culture, except by reducing them to the logic of the economic process . In
culture this culminates in the temptation to see the system of cultural
reproduction as essentially imaginary, precluding engagement with the latent
truth contents of bourgeois traditions . 6 3 In the case of politics it implies the
reduction of differences of interest to the domination of capital, thus obfuscating
the enduring political dimensions of any possible political order.
With respect to the issue of socialist politics, Rioux and Crean cite Pierre
Rosanvallon's charge that Marx was ultimately a continuator of Adam Smith and
thus remained a prisoner of liberal ideology and its abstract utopia of
transparent, atomized individuals . 64 The result was a confusion of the
disappearance of the bourgeois state with that of politics as such, and a failure to
grasp the importance of preserving the autonomy of civil society and its political
dimensions as opposed to the state . Only by recognizing these dilemmas does
11 autogestion" become a priority and with it the potential transcendence of the
polarization between Marx and Bakunin .
On the other hand, with respect to the cultural question Rioux and Crean are
unrepentantly utopian and ally themselves more strongly with the creators than
with the analysts of culture : "il faut mieux vivre vos reves que de rever votre
vie."GS This follows from the thesis that the potential for qualitative change must
be already rooted in existing institutions and culture, rather than something
which can be assumed to arise automatically in the course of the "revolution" or
be "scientifically" constructed and imposed after the destruction of bourgeois
institituions .
Another way to illustrate the implications of this utopian dimension of
transition is to cite a similar formulation by Zygmunt Bauman. As he argues, the
futile search for an analysis which demonstrates the "necessity" of socialism not
only distracts from understanding the nature of change, but expresses and
reproduces the very alienation to be overcome by superficially linking happiness,
economic gain, and revolt . The rationale for this search to "prove" the

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"inevitability" of socialism, hence its latent positivism, stems from the

assumption that this is a requirement for motivating participation in the "daring
adventure of emancipation" :

But can it really? It seems unlikely that the kind of

emancipation and freedom the modern socialist thinkers
dream of can be won with arms forged in the smith of
alienation . It is, on the contrary, the relinquishment of the
power internalized urge to employ such arms which is the
preliminary and paramount condition for this emancipation . If
the advent of socialism involves the creation of a new culture,
the cultural image under which the transition takes place is not
an irrelevant issue; in fact, it may well be the decisive
factor ...The proponents of the socialism of 'inevitability' will
smile contemptuously at the memory of hopes that 'the
strengthening of the state will bring nearer its demise', or that
rampant terror will enhance human liberties ; but they fail to
see the ominous logical affinity between such hopes and their
own. The idea that people will free themselves while acting as
convinced agents of inevitability can only deepen and reinforce
the mental grip of unfreedom...If socialism is to be seen, as it
claims, as a further inquiry into yet unexplored regions of
human freedom, it can be brought about only in a free and
unconstrained dialogue between all the actors of the historical
process .bb

The Mutual Challenge

In drawing upon the critical sociology of culture sketched in Rioux and Crean's
Deux pays pour vivre as a resource for challenging aspects of the new Canadian
political economy, the objective has not been to distract from its major
contributions to Canadian scholarship and its ongoing importance for
understanding Canadian society . But this strategy has served to point to
increasing signs of the limits of this tradition : its internal divisions, its
unarticulated assumptions, and its need for new directions . Undoubtedly, many
of the questions posed have slighted existing responses and demanded a
clarification of problems which lie, strictly speaking, outside the bounds of
political economy as such. To the extent that this has been the case, political
economy can only benefit from setting the record straight and establishing more
clearly its own relation to other traditions and disciplines . On the other hand,
many of the weaknesses, limitations, and ambiguities of critical sociology and
critical theory have been glossed over, along with the divergent formulations

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within that tradition . Above all, no attempt has been made to consider why such
forms of inquiry have largely failed to concern themselves with Canada at all and
what their implications for various types of empirical research might be . But
again, critical sociology can only gain from further interrogation from within and
without . What is regrettable (and symptomatic of the depth of the cultural crisis
in Canada) is how seldom the question of the complementarity and tension
between these two traditions has been raised; both have been impoverished as a
consequence .
Theoretical division, the decline of the university as a source of cultural
innovation, and all the other difficulties of constructing an alternative tradition
of critical discourse take on a new urgency in a strategic context completely
unforeseen by 19th-century revolutionary theorists : the rise of electronically and
mass-mediated culture as the primary mode of communication. Writing in the
twilight of what was believed to be a revolutionary mass waiting for the spark of
mobilization, Walter Benjamin could still express one of the last hopes of the
revolutionary tradition : that the electronic media and the mechanical
reproduction of culture offered a break-through for agitational propaganda. But
as McLuhan has showed us against his intentions, the advent of a wired
civilization has largely served to secure the veil of cultural domination even
tighter . In attempting to respond to this situation more than three decades ago,
Harold Innis and Theodor Adorno ended up as strange bedfellows in invoking,
unbeknownst to one another, the priority of preserving the philosophical
imagination . For this reason Innis charged that the conservatism of education
institutions resides primarily in their tendency to "avoid the major philosophical
problems of Western civilization ." Moreover, the electronic media, rather than
ushering in a new age of public awareness and the popularization of knowledge,
have exaceberated the loss of theoretical capacity grounded ultimately in the
interaction between oral and written discourse :

The tendency toward conservatism has been accentuated by

the mechanization of communication in print, radio, and film .
They have tended to emphasize the factual and the concrete .
Abstract ideas are less susceptible to treatment by mechanical
devices . . . Large ideas can only be conceived after intensive study
over a long period and through the direct and powerful device
of the spoken word in small groups . 61

Because the traditions of scholarship are also a product of the specific

conditions of North American civilization, even radical research has not been
exempt from the process of formal rationalization against which it has so
valiantly protested . 68 However much the cultural industry may engender
awareness of unmet needs, desires and aspirations, these cannot be channeled
directly into a process of collective transformation by the austere empirical

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findings of an angry economic science or the anachronistic folklore of a

revolutionary proletariat . Those who would and could transform the world under
the conditions of advanced capitalism come from too many different walks of life,
have suffered from too many different forms of domination, and have too great
an awareness of the contradictory features of any project of qualitative change to
be subsumable within a totalizing movement . Whereas a decade ago it could still
be proclaimed that "if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the
problem," that has now been implicitly transformed into its opposite : "if 'you
think you are part of the solution, you are probably a part of the problem ." If one
side of this response is cynicism and retreat, the other is an insatiable hunger for
concepts, which can articulate the new framework of questions within which talk
of solutions might once again seem something more than sectarian chatter . In
this context, therefore, nothing could be more radical than to plead for the
cultivation of a new form of critical thinking not only as the basis for a new vision
of the future, but as a source of resistance to the temptations of power, the
rewards of accomodative thinking, and the seductions of repressive de-
sublimation . In this long winter of cultural hibernation in Canada and Quebec,
hope for survival requires a quiet confidence which can be nurtured only through
the passions aroused by abstract ideas, written texts, and the spoken word in
small groups . So Rioux and Crean conclude not with - le grand refus" of Marcuse,
but with "un grand defi" :

Ne serait-il pas temps pour qu'au Canada, cessant pour une fois
d'imiter 1'empire, le peuple reprenne gout a la politique qui ne
consiste pas seulement a vouloir s'emparer du pouvoir mais a
debattre en long et en large des finalites de la cite? 69

Yet this vindication of theoretical imagination should not be taken to imply

that political practice and empirical research have simply lagged behind theory,
as if they could have kept pace or that theory is somehow better off as a
consequence . Such an interpretation would be false not only because it sees
political failure as the work of individuals, or glosses over the difficulties of
building up an empirical research tradition, or forgets the realities of isolation,
fragmentation and dependence in Canadian scholarship ; it also ignores the
potential of theoretical reflection for irresponsiblity and poetic promiscuity,
beholden only to a narcissistic conception of wisdom . The divorce and mutual
distrust between critical theory and political economy should be taken, therefore, .
as mirroring the objective breach between theory and practice, hence a sign of
domination and a call for mutual learning . Otherwise both run the risk of falling
prey to the tyranny of epistemological divide and rule, by allowing talismatic
labels of "materialism" and "idealism" to magically name the source of all our
conceptual ills and thereby deprive us of the critical imagination required for
recovery . To the extent there is hope for theoretical reconciliation or qualitative

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change, "the task is to subsume the descriptive into the critical, making the turn
to the concrete the dominant moment of social theory ." 10

Montreal

Notes

1. Wallace Clement and Daniel Drache, eds. A Practical Guide to Canadian Political Economy,
Toronto: Lorimer, 1978 . Cf . also Daniel Drache, ed . Debates and Controversies, Toronto:
Lorimer, 1979 .

2. Ibid., p. 43 .

3. Ibid., p . 45 .

4. Marcel Rioux and Susan Crean, Deux pay pour vivre Montreal : Editions cooperatives Albert
Saint-Martin, 1980 . The English version will be published by James Lorimer, Toronto.

5. The concept of "critical theory" is employed as a contrast term to neo-Marxism or Marxist

political economy; with respect to substantive issues it will also be used synonymously with the
term critical sociology . For a representative example of the contemporary applications of critical
theory in this generic sense, cf . Norman Birnbaum, ed. Beyond the Crisis New York : Oxford,
1977 . Sometimes the notion of "critical sociology" has been employed rather indiscriminately,
blurring the important differences between critical theory and neo-Marist approaches as, for
example, in J.W. Freiburg, ed. Critical Sociology, New York : Irvington, 1979 .

6. A largely anecdotal and biographical recounting of Rioux's intellectual development can be found
in Jules Duchastel, Marcel Rioux: Entre Putopie et la raison, Montreal : Nouvelle Optique, 1981 .
Among Rioux's writings his Essai de sociologie critique, Montreal : Hurtubise HMH, 1978, is
most pertinent as a general account of his conception of critical sociology .

7. Abraham Rotstein, The Precarious Homestead, Toronto: new press, 1973, pp. 121-2.

8. For a fascinating historical reconstruction of the Canadian version of the late 1960's generation,
see Myrna Kostash, Long Way from Home, Toronto: Lorimer, 1980.

Susan Crean, Who's Afraid of Canadian Culture? Don Mills, Ont. : General Publ., 1976 .

10. A general survey of this tradition is given by Denis Moniere in Le Developpement des ideologies
au Quebec, Montreal : Quebec/Amerique, 1977 ; for insightful theoretical discussions focusing
specifically on the national question, Nicole Laurin-Frenette's Production de 1'etat et former de la
nation, Montreal : Nouvelle Optique, 1978, should be consulted along with Robert Vandycke, "La
question national : ou en est la pensee marxiste?" Recherches sociographiques, vol . 21, no . 1-2,
1980, pp. 97-129 .

11 . There is not as yet any comparable theoretical treatment of the more recent developments of the
national question in Canada, but Clement and Drache provide a helpful listing of pertinent
materials in A Practical Guide, pp . 146-52 .

12 . George Grant, Lament for a Nation, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1965, p. 20.

97
 RAY MORROW

13. Ibid., p. 40.

14. Rotstein, pp. 69-81 .

15 . See Rioux, Essai de sociologie critique and Duchastel, Marcel Rioux .

16. Rioux and Crean, pp. 20-21 .

17 . Ib)d., p . N .

18. As evidence of this it should be noted that survey analysis has revealed that "Quebecers who
support independence are not more bigoted or authoritarian . On the contrary, they tend to be
more approving of minority language rights than English Canadians, and they tend to be more
libertarian in their attitudes toward civil rights than other Quebecers," Michael D. Ornstein, et al.
"Public Opinion and the Canadian Political Crisis," The Canadian Review of Sociology and
Anthropology, vol . 15, no. 2, 1978, p. 203 .

19. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, trans . H. Zohn, New York : Schocken, p. 256.

20. In this connection Rioux cites approvingly the work of Zygmunt Bauman, Jacques Attali and
Marshall Sahlins .

21 . For an . elaborate defense of the view on the Quebec left which Rioux is opposing here, see Gilles
Bourque, L'Etat capitaliste et la question nationale, Montreal : Les Presses de l'Universit6 de
Montreal, 1977 .

22 . Rioux and Crean, p . 58 .

23 : In the French version the discussion of the political economy of culture and communications is
perfunctory and has largely an illustrative function. For more recent detailed discussions of these
issues with reference to Canada, see Thomas L. McPhail, Electronic Colonialism, Beverly Hills :
Sage, 1981, and Dallas W. Smythe, Dependency Road, Norwood, NJ . : Ablex, 1981 . Smythe's
study marks a new stage in the development of the political economy of Canadian
communications and poses a number of theoretical issues which would require separate
treatment to do justice.

24 . Rioux and Crean, p . 43 .

25 . Ibid., p . 67 .

26. Ibid., p . 75 .

27 . For an often penetrating critique of the influence of Althusser on British cultural theory-which
does not, however, provide an altogether suitable alternative-see Simon Clarke, et al. One
Dimensional Marxism, London : Allison and Busby, 1980 .

28. Rioux and Crean, p . 87 . For this reason modern countercultural movements are viewed as
expressing in part authentic utopian aspirations . This theme is developed in greater detail by a
former student and a colleague of Rioux : Diane Moukhtar and Luc Racine, "Nouvelle culture,
utopie et non-pourvoir," in N . Assimpoulos, et al. eds. La Transformation du pouvoirau Quebec,
Montreal : Ed. cooperatives Albert Saint-Martin, 1980.

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 THE PLEA FOR TWO NATIONS

29 . In part this refers to the right of survival of a number of internally colonialized peoples as
celebrated, for instance, in Michele Lalonde and Denis Moniere in their recent Cause Commune:
manifeste pour une internationale des petites cultures, Montreal : L'Hexagone, 1981 . More
generally, however, this plea converges with a rich tradition of decentralise social theory long
cultivated by people such as George Woodcock, Ivan Illich, Paul Goodman, Murray Bookchin, and
Jane Jacobs . In fact, Jacobs has recently provided a sober and independent defense of the Quebec
autonomy movement : The Question of Separatism, New York : Vintage, 1981 .

30 . Though Rioux's use of the concept of "culture populaire" has affinities with the notion of
"populism" used in reference to Western agrarian social movements, the two should not be
confused. His concept retains reference to the process of marginalization, but generalizes the
potential sources . To a great extent he follows Marcuse here.

31 . Rioux and Crean, p . 90 .

32. Ibid., p . 63 .

33. This research is being conducted under the auspices of the "Institut Quebecois de recherche sur la
culture" headed by Fernand Dumont . In addition to the various related monograph series,
mention should also be made of an associated new journal, Questions de culture (1981-).

34. More recently, Rioux has joined the fray against Trudeau in a satirical political tract titled Pour
rendre publiquement conge de quelques salauds, Montr6al :1'Hexagone,1981 . The specific
political and cultural implications of Rioux's position is evident in his role as one of the founders
of the "autogestion"-oriented journal Possibles (1976-) .

35 . William Appleman Williams, "Radicals and Regionalism;" Democracy, vol . 1, no . 4, October

1981, pp . 90-2. Or as Frederic Jameson has recently admitted, following here the example of Tom
Nairn on Britain rather than the case closer to home which he has often visited, the nationalist
question stands as "Marxism's great historical failure" : "it is increasingly clear in today's world (if
it had ever been in doubt) that a Left which cannot grasp the immense Utopian appeal of
nationalism (any more than it can grasp that of religion or fascism) can scarcely hope to
'reappropriate' such collective energies and must effectively doom itself to political impotence."
The Political Unconscious, Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1981, p . 298 .

36. For one of the more perceptive and theoretically well-informed statements of these issues, see
Nathan Keyfitz, "Sociology and the Canadian society," in T.N . Guinsburg and G .L . Reuber, eds .
Perspectives on the Social Sciences in Canada, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974, pp.
10-41 . See also, Paul Lamy, "The Globalization of American Sociology : Excellence or
Imperialism," in J. Paul Grayson, ed . Class, State, Ideology and Change, Toronto : Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, 1980, pp . 351-60.

37 . Representatives of critical theory and sociology have been discussed in Canadian journals, most
notably in the Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, and to a lesser extent in
Philosophy of the Social Sciences. The overall isolation of Canadian critical sociology is one of the
reasons why Rioux and Crean's book deserves particular attention. The consequence of this
situation has become especially evident in the textbook literature oriented toward "Marxist"
approaches and "political economy." Such terms are used indiscriminately and little effort is made
to introduce the important differentiations necessary for a selective and critical introduction. This
problem relates, of course, to the difficulties in the technical literature . Symptomatically,
none of these texts draw upon critical theory and sociology, a fact which points to the remarkable
isolation of Canadian neo-Marxist sociology in particular. The only exception is directed by
necessity to the American market : Ben Agger, Western Marxism, Santa Monica, Ca . : Goodyear,

99
 RAY MORROW

1979.

38. The theme of the relationship between political economy and critical theory has been articulated
most explicitly within the Frankfurt School tradition . For a detailed account of the
emergence of this problem in the early Frankfurt School, see Giocomo Marramao, "Political
Economy and Critical Theory," Telos, no . 24, Summer 1975, pp. 56-80. More general historical
accounts are available in David Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, Berkley and Los Angeles :
University of California Press, 1980, and the introduction to Paul Connerton, ed . Critical
Sociology, Harmondsworth, Eng . : Penguin, 1976. The general topic has also been treated in a
rather different, but illuminating way by Alvin Gouldner in his The Two Marxisms, New York :
Seabury, 1980.

39 . The principle underlying all the models of new-Marxist political economy is to explain the
continuing failure of revolutionary transformation. Different regulative concepts are taken to be
decisive . As Stanley Aronowitz has suggested, three basic theories have been used to account for
the apparent failure of capitalism to collapse : the realization crisis emphasized in Lenin's theory
of imperialism, dependency theory which explains the integration of the Third World into the
world capitalist system, and the model of capital-logic :

The third position, capital-logic, tries to overcome the apparent failure of

the third world revolution in a different way . A theory of late capitalism as
a specific historical stage, it incorporates the theory of imperialism into an
entirely new paradigm : it is the logic of accumulation itself, literally at its
origins in the labor process, that the whole development of capitalism,
including the problem of the proletariat as historical agency or subject, may
be understood . Unlike Lenin and dependency theory, which subsume the
labor process into the process of circulation of capital, capital-logic remains
oriented to production relations, both with respect to its value from and its
technical character . "The End of Political Economy," Social Text, no . 2,
Summer, 1979, p. 8.

The central issue in the more recent Canadian discussions has been how to combine the
indigenous version of dependency theory with variants of the production-centred capital-logic
approach which goes far beyond cruder notions of class conflict. For one of the few occasions
where this debate has become more explicit, see Ray Schmidt, "Canadian Political Economy : A
Critique," Studies in Political Economy, no. 6, Autumn 1981, pp . 65-92 .

40. Karl Korsch, Die materialistische Geschichtsauffassung and andere Schriften ed . Erich Gerlach,
Frankfurt am Main : Europaische Verlagsanstalt, 1974, p. 167 .

41 . Leo Panitch, "Dependency and Class in Canadian Political Economy," Studies in Political
Economy, no. 6, Autumn 1981, p . 28.

42 . Ibid.

43 . Among the important contributors to the debate on the foundations of the human sciences one
would have to include Jiirgen Habermas, Gerard Radnitzky, Richard Bernstein, Anthony
Giddens, Roy Bhaskar, Joachim Israel, Jon Elster, and Johann Galtung, to name only a few . See
also the magistral survey by Paul Ricoeur, Main Trends in Philosophy, New York and London :
Holmes & Meier, 1979.

44. A potential exception here is the question of the relationship between the theorizing of Innis and
Marx . Ian Parker's efforts at reconciliation have been heatedly attacked by David McNally in
"Staple Theory as Commodity Fetishism: Marx, Innis and Canadian Political Economy ;" Studies

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 THE PLEA FOR TWO NATIONS

in PoliticalEconomy, no. 6, Autumn 1981, pp . 35-63. It is clearthis debate should be continued as

it goes to the heart of the relationship between staples theory and other forms of analysis,
especially neo-Marxist capital-logic . At this point the staples version of dependency theory is on
the defensive and highly vulnerable because it has notelaborated its metatheoretical assumptions
and has failed to develop a comprehensive critique of neo-Marxist theory . Also, important issues
of political strategy are at stake here .

45 . Some of these themes have been touched upon in Robin Neill, A New Theory of Value: The
Canadian Economics of H.A . Innis, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972 . Those who have
begun to pose such questions are largely outside of or on the margins of political economy as is
evident in a recent Innis symposium: WilliamH. Melody,et al., eds. Culture, Communication and
Dependency, Norwood, NJ . : Ablex, 1981 .

46. As Rioux has described this relationship :

Les divergences entre les marxistes economistes et les marxistes

culturels-pour employer une expression commode-semblent a la fois
moindres, a certains 6gards, et plus graves a d'autres points de vue. . .c'est au
sujet du passage d'un type de societe a 1'autre que les deux groupes peuvent
s'opposer mais il semble que leurs points de vue et leurs demarches
peuvent etre complementaires et devraient entre. Essai de sociologie
critique, p. 164.

Aronowitz expresses this in a somewhat less conciliatory manner :

. ..the counter-logic of the erotic, play, and the constituting subject may not
be reduced either to the mode of production of material life or the mode of
social reproduction (family, school, or religion in their capacity as
ideological apparatuses of the state) . Political economy ends when theory
seeks to specify the conditions of transcendence. Marxism as critique
consists in showing the science of political economy is descriptive of the
commodity fetish . The apogee of critical science resides in specifying the
non-subsumable. "The End of Political Economy," p. 51 .

47 . The limitations of the existing tradition of cultural analysis are evident in the items cited by
Clement and Drache (pp. 146-52) on culture and nationalism. There is no sign of the range of
theoretical issues of the type surveyed, for example, by Jorge Larrain, The Concept of Ideology,
London : Hutchinson, 1979. An importantexception here is John Fekete's The Critical Twilight:
Explorations in the Ideology of Anglo-American Literary Theory from Eliot to McLuhan,
London : Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977 . That such a transformation is underway, however, is
evident in recent work on the history of workingclass culture, the Concordia radiodrama project,
and some research underway at Trent University, the communications departments at Simon
Fraser and McGill, and the sociology and social and political thought programmes at York . See
also,Liora Salter, ed . Communication Studies in Canada/Etudes Canadiennes en Communication,
Toronto: Butterworths, 1981 .

48. Aronowitz expresses this crucial point as follows :

Even if capital-logic is an adequate explanation of the origin of the

ubiquity of cultural domination in general and mass culture in particular, it
cannot account for their autonomy . For having been produced as the aspect
of capital's new conditions of reproduction, mass culture reproduces itself
on the basis of its own logic, whose economic dimension, while not
insignificant, cannot encapsulate its influence, which exceeds its intended
 RAY MORROW

function . Mass culture, as the penultimate substitute for community,

conceals that fundamental social impulse, but its spurious gratifications
reveal it as well . . . If the counter-logic is nor theorized as utopia, the
proletarian public sphere, popular culture that is rooted in everyday
resistance, and the possibilities for transcending capital itself are
theoretically foreclosed. "End of Political Economy ;" p . 50

49. A social psychologist, Peter Archibald, in Social Psychology as Political Economy, Toronto :
McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1978, has made a useful contribution to drawing out this dimension of
political economy. His account suffers, however, from a superficial rejection of the possibilities of
social phenomenology and symbolic interactionism to contribute to these matters . The most
serious consequence of this social psychological blindspor is in the area of the theory of social
movements . Though the re-introduction of class analysis has corrected important deficiencies of
much conventional historical research, it has not led to any serious reconsideration of the
deficiencies of classic Marxist analysis and culminates in the most superficial of generalities as, for
example, in Gary B. Rush, "Political Economy and Social Movements : Notes Towards Theory
and Analysis," in John Allan Fry, ed . Economy, Class and Social Reality, Scarborough :
Butterworth, 1979, pp . 435-59 . This is also evident in R .J . Brym and R .J . Sacouman, eds .
Underdevelopment and Social Movements in Atlantic Canada, Toronto : Hogtown Press, 1979,
though the historical richness of the materials compensates in part . The tendency for many
political economists to simply denounce populist and nationalist movements as petit bourgeois
and reformist betrays a dogmatic tendency which blinds analysis to the dynamic elements of
contemporary politics. For a characteristic example of this kind of reductionism, see James
Overton, "Towards a Critical Analysis of Neo-Nationalism in Newfoundland," in Brym and
Sacouman, pp . 219-49. And no one on the left in Canada or elsewhere has dared to provide an
adequate rejoinder to Mancur Olson Jr . in his Logic of Collective Action, New York : Schocken,
1965. His analysis of the discrepancy between the individual and collective rationality and how it
undermines the utopian thrust of social movements remains an indispensable point of departure
for any strategy of radical change . The theory of "autogestion" seems to provide an implicit
response derived from the failure of traditional forms of party organization and mobilization .

50 . This holds primarily for the theory of the subject as outlined in various sections of Louis
Althusser, Positions, Paris : Editions Sociales, 1976. Empirical applications have assumed the
form of an essentially reductive form of historical discourse analysis based on linguistic models .
See here Regine Robin, et al. Histoire et linquistique, Paris : Armand Colin, 1973. A less static
strategy of analysis, which attempts to reconcile semiology, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and the
theory of the subject, has animated recent British discussions as, for example, in Rosalind Coward
and John Ellis, Language and Materialism, London : Routledge and Kegan Paul . But as for a
dynamic social psychology suitable for purposes of historical and enthnographic research,
Bourdieu's "theory of practice" and key concept of "habitus" appear more fruitful . See Pierre
Bourdieu, Outlines of a Theory of Practice, trans . R . Nice, Cambridge : Cambridge University
Press, 1977, and Le Sens pratique, Paris : Minuit, 1980 .

51 . For a valuable complementary study which draws upon Gregory Bateson's communication theory
for a social psychology of domination and dependency, see Tony Wilden, The Imaginary
Canadian, Vancouver : Pulp Press, 1980 . Though the militancy of his use of the language of
colonialism may make many readers wince, Wilden's often startling revelations about Canadian
identity and history point to a form of cultural suppression of possibilities which is difficult to
deny . A more nuanced vocabulary for expressing this form of "advanced" cultural domination
remains to be elaborated .

52 . It is not possible here to consider in more derail Rioux's use of the concept of alienation, but see
his Essai de sociologie critique, pp . 85-95 . What is called for, of course, is a broader critical social
psychology whose outlines are now emerging . For earlier analyses of the crisis of academic social

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 THE PLEA FOR TWO NATIONS

psychology, seeJoachim Israel,"Stipulations and Constructions in the Social Sciences," in j. Israel

and H. Tajfel, eds. The Context of Social Psychology, London and New York : Academic Resss,
1972, pp . 123-211 and Nigel Armistead, ed . Reconstructing Social Psychology, Harmondsworth,
Eng. : Penguin 1974 . Regrettably, the promise of ethnomethodology and phenomenology to this
project has still not been realized in the form anticipated in Peter Dreitzel, ed . Recent Sociology
No . 2, New York : Macmillan, 1970. But under the heading of "socialization" theory, this topic
continues to inspire research in West Germany, cf . Dieter Guelen, Dar vergesellschaftete Subjekt,
Frankfurt am Main : Suhrkamp, 1977 . See also Philip Wexler, "Toward a Critical Social
Psychology," Psychology and Social Theory, no . 1, Spring/Summer, 1981, pp . 52-68.

53. For a provocative example of the former, seeJames Ogilvy, Many Dimensional Man, New York :
Harper Colophon, 1979, and of the latter, William Leiss, The Limits to Satisfaction, Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1976 .

54. A good example of this, because theoretically well-informed, is James Sacouman's assumption
that a Maritimes-rooted political economy has agreater chance of developing an effective
political strategy because of the previous weakness of "third road" populist andsocial democratic
efforts. What is hard to follow is why a region previously resistant to protest should as a
consequence be ripe forworking-class mobilization in response to "concrete, theoretically
informed research that is effectively communicated and organized," "The'Peripheral'Maritimes
and Canada-Wide Marxist Political Economy," Studies in Political Economy, no . 6, Autumn 1981,
p. 146. Signs of historical working-class resistance and state coercion should not be mistaken for
an emergent counter-hegemonic movement ; nor is it clear why the pattern will not follow the
populist and social democratic path found elsewhere in Canada. This is not meant to discourage
such political economic research, but to sober itspolitical "pretentions" andcall forother forms of
inquiry as well .

55 . This type of "wishy-washy" class analysis is characteristic of both the "Comite des Cent" and the
"Regroupement pour le Socialisme" as defined by Marc Ferland and Yves Vaillancourt,
Socialisme et independance au Quebec: pistes sur le mouvement ouvrier et populaire, Montreal :
Ed. Socialisme et Independance/Ed . coop6rative Albert St-Martin, 1981 . Such "class analysis" is
then coupled with an astounding naivete (if not deceit) about the elementary constraints of
economic scarcity and the existing system of power and production . In the name of such "un vaste
mouvement populaire pluri-class iste" all of the public and para-public unions are told by their
"maitre penseurs" that they have an obligation to maintain their already excessive wage gains
(relative to the private sector), even if it (as seems possible) bankrupts theprovince, worsens the
situation for the impotent groups, makes the envisioned coalition impossible, destroys the PQ,
and restores with even greater power the rule of the Quebec Liberal Party. See, for example, the
reasoning ofJean-Marc Piotte and Theirry Hentsch, "Le malaise du syndicalisme quebecoise," Le
Devoir, 18 janvier 1982, p. 11 . Where criticism of the PQ is most just, however, is in pointing out
that it has attempted to adjust to the fiscal crisis by following the lines of least resistance (budget
cuts in the areas where there is the least capacity for adefensive response), rather than spreading
theburden equitably throughout society. Remarkably, the PQ's leftist critics seem unable to grasp
that a new strategy of industrial development requires capital which must come either from
internal savings and investment or more borrowing. Given the fiscal crisis, therefore, the PQ is
powerless to carry out its programme and part of the socialist left has tried to make the absurd
claim that it has an alternativeotherthan a "Cuban-style" revolution that would last about as long
as it takes to shut off an oil line. For a sober assessment of thecrisis of public finances anda call for
a freeze on public sector wages, see Pierre Fortin, "Les finances publiques: un coup de barre
radical s'impose," Le Devoir, 14 janvier 1982, p. 19.

56. Daniel Drache, "Ten Good Years: The Beginnings of Hinterland Resistance;" in Drache, ed .
Debates and Controversies, p . 56 .

10 3
 RAY MORROW

57 . For a broad, historical introduction to the topic of "autogestion" see Alain Guillerm and Yvon
Bourdet, Cleft pour Pautogestion, Paris: Seghers, 1975 ; and for an influential general formulation
see Pierre Rosanvallon, I'ilge de Pautogestion, Paris: Seuil, 1976 .

58. This is one of the most fundamental contradictions of the recent Manifesto of the "Comite des
Cent" in Quebec . Though its call for de-centralization, worker's participation, and a fully
democratic form of party organization echoes the influence of "autogestion" discussions in the
francophone milieu, it is coupled with a classic appeal based on the supposed economic benefits of
independence and socialism . By not fully acknowledging the tensions between industrialization
and alternative forms of work organization, this document promises too much and provides no
guidelines for resolving the dilemma. Moreover, its call for opting out of the North American
economy betrays thecomplete poverty of its conception of transition. Great silence surrounds the
question of where the capital fordevelopment is to come from and how to persuade the "working
and popular classes" to accept an interim decline in their standard of living through voluntary
savings.

59. Such questions have not, for the most part, been posed by the new political economy, even if there
are expressions on the periphery, as in Abraham Rotstein, ed. Beyond Industrial Growth,
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976 . In lamenting the consequences of astaples economy,
dependency theorists have tended to fall back on a celebration of industrialization without
adequately posing the question of alternative forms of economic development. Neo-Marxist
capital-logic approaches propose an alternative form of industrialization, but do not really
examine its fundamental assumptions which are, to be sure, still rooted in the logic of a
growth-oriented society . There is, however, a more sociologically-oriented form of political
economy which can be reconciled with a critique industrialization as, for example, in Patricia
Marchak, In Whose Interests, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1979.

60. Grant's formulation bears repeating :

. . .indigenous cultures are dying everywhere in the modern world.

French-Canadian nationalism is a last-ditch stand. The French on this
continent will at least disappear from history with more than the smirks
and whimpers of their English-speaking compatriots-with their flags
flying and, indeed, with some of their guns blazing. The reality of their
cultures, and their desire not to be swamped, cannot save them from the
inexorable facts in the continental case . Solutions vary to the problem of
how an autonomous culture can be maintained in Quebec. But all the
answers face the same dilemma: Those who want to maintain separateness
also want the advantages of the age of progress . These two ends are not
compatible, for the pursuit of one negates the pursuit of the other.
Nationalism can only be asserted successfully by an indentification with
technological advance; but technological advance entails thedisappearance
of those indigenous differences that give substance to nationalism. Lament
for a Nation, p. 76.

61 . Jon Elster, Logic and Society, New York : Wiley, 1978,p. 7.

62 . Such a view of change challenges both certain tendencies toward an unfolding, linear model of
development in Marx and the even more evolution istic conceptions characteristic of most
sociological theories . As Anthony Giddens has recently argued, here supplementing Rioux and
Crean's general position, a more adequate approach to contemporary social change would have to
give more prominence to :

(1) Relations of autonomy and dependence among societies or regions of

10 4
 THE PLEA FOR TWO NATIONS

social systems. . . (2) The uneven development of different sectors or

regions of social systems. .. (3) Critical phases of radical social change, in
which the existing alignment of major institutions in a society becomes
transformed, whether or not this involves processes of political
revolution. . . and (4) A 'leapfrog' idea of change, according to which the
'advanced' in one setof circumstances may inhibit further change at a later
date ; whileon the other hand that which is 'retarded' at one point in time
may later become a propitious basis for rapid advancement. Central
Problems in Social Theory Berkeley and Los Angeles : University of
California Press, 1979, pp . 225-9 .

Canada and Quebec provide interesting illustrations of each of these processes and Rioux and
Crean's plea falls directly within thepurview of thefinal point: "For leapfrog processes of change
involve the awareness that some events in the past need not be repeated in the future : that
avoidable possible worlds are the other face of future states of society to be striven for." Ibid.,
p. 230.

63 . This holds primarily for neo-Marxist, especially Althusserian, versions of political economy.
Non-structuralist versions tend toward a more Gramscian conception without, however, the
autonomous, counterhegemonic proletarian culture which he could take for granted. Staples and
dependency theory has not really worked out a coherent alternative aside from a pragmatic
recognition of the need to rehabilitate nationalism as a mobilizing force in a dependenteconomy.

64 . Pierre Rosanvallon, Le Capitalisme utopique, Paris : Seuil, 1979 .

65 . Ibid., p. 108.

66 . Zygmunt Bauman, Socialism: The Active Utopia, London : George Allen and Unwin, 1976, pp .
139-40. Rioux and Crean's use of the concept "imaginaire sociale" actually derives from Cornelius
Castoriadis, L'Institution imaginaire de la society, Paris: Seuil, 1975 . Also in this context cf . Fred
R. Dallmayr, Twilight of Subjectivity, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press .

67. Harold A. Innis, The Bias of Communication, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1964, pp.
204 and 211.

68. In this respect the situation in Europe is only moderately better . As Habermas has noted in an
interview, he considers himselfas one of the "last of theMohicans" in having had the opportunity
to combine philosophy and social science . Symbolically enough, the chair in philosophy and
sociology created for Horkheimer was abolished in 1971 with Habermas' departure from
Frankfurt. When pressed to cite a concrete example of philosophers still able to combine social
scientific standards and a "public, politically effective ;" role, he names Charles Taylor as a type
found even in the Anglo-Saxon domain, "even Oxford ." What Habermas fails to mention,
however, is that Taylor is in intellectual and political exile, having failed to gain significant
appreciation or influence at home in Canada. SeeJurgen Habermas, Kleine Politische Schriften
(I-IV), Frankfurt am Main : Suhrkamp, 1981, p. 487.

69 . Rioux and Crean, p. 116-7.

70 . Aronowitz, p. 52 .
CanadianJournal of Political and Social Theory / Revue Canadienne de theorie
politique et sociale, Vol. 6, Nos . 1-2 (Hiver/Printemps, 1982) .

QUEBEC MANIFESTOS

As a form of political and cultural expression, the manifesto has long been
supplanted by the memos, reports, working papers, application forms, and news
releases of administered politics. But the intersection of political crisis and a
tradition within which artists and intellectuals continue to aspire to be more than
functionaries or marketing experts may now and again call back this archaic,
early democratic genre of communication . The manifesto thus becomes once
again an expressive, emotive vehicle of mobilization and resistance which seeks
to articulate the desperations and hopes of a group, a movement in the process of
gestation. Here we see the constitution of subjectivity in process, mocking with
rage the objective constraints of existing structures, anticipating possibilities
while denouncing that which is. Here we see the primordial force of ideology
critique and utopian restoration congealed in a particular place and time, a
handful of individuals speaking for those who would otherwise not speak oi be
heard.
The documents at hand manifest two very different moods, two contrasting
modes of expression. In the one, the Black Rock Manifesto, art speaks over
politics, but speaks for life through politics . It evokes the forgotten ghettos of
anglophone and allophone poverty and cultural degradation as a world more real
and more human than the wealth and cultural pretensions of Westmount ; it
speaks for those who would stay in Quebec, accepting the responsibility and the
challenge of creating and transforming their world, rather than succumb to the
temptation to flee westward or retreat inwardly to the south; it voices the
creative potential and frustrations of non-francophones whose needs and
aspirations have been suppressed by isolation on the cultural islands of Montreal,
subdued within francophone and American hegemony and clinging desperately
to the shreds of a political claim to be Canadian .
In the second document, we see a political manifesto in the classic mould. The
work of a committee, it lacks the stylistic verve and steady dramatic rhythms of
the masterpieces of the genre. Content dominates over rhetoric and form in an
attempt to hammer out a consensual basis around which to organize a new
movement for socialism and independence for all Quebecers. The primary
political significance of this document is that it seeks to gather together a
movement from two directions, filling an emerging gap on the left. On its left, it
signifies an appeal to those who have been previously drawn to sectarian
groupuscules, to those who remained suspicious of independence and a national
project, those who remained ambivalent about "popular" movements as opposed
to working-class organizations . On its right, the timing of its publication is
linked to the long-anticipated split between the socialist left and the troubled

106
 QUEBEC MANIFESTOS

social democracy of the Parti Quebecois . So the primary thrust of the manifesto
is to lure away those disillusioned with the "etapisme" of sovereignty-associa-
tion and the seeming abandonment of the social project with budget cuts, efforts
to prop up the indigenous bourgeoisie, and circumspection toward Canadian and
international capital . This appeal is reflected above all in the reiteration of the
promise of true independence, democratic forms of organization built from the
base upwards, non-bureaucratic forms of planning, independence from unions,
new forms of work organization, and a multi-class front which respects civil
rights, minorities, native Indians, and women .
As a somber reminder of the underbody of economic woe carried by the large
minority which bears the brunt of economic adjustments in advanced capitalism,
and as a formal declaration of a series of values to be privileged and goals to be
realized, this document deserves respect and attention . It gives testimony to an
important maturation of certain types of radical socialist thinking, a
conscientious response to some painfully learned lessons, and an honest
commitment to the formation of a movement which seeks to break the deadlock
within which a form of nationalist social democracy is being crushed between the
imperatives of accumulation and legitimation .
But the silences remain disturbing . As a document of compromise, reconciling
those in flight from the disappointments of social democracy and the tyranny of
authoritarian militancy, it suppresses its internal contradictions . Its lamentation
of poverty and injustice forgets that the majority of the population, despite
increasing securities and anxieties, lives more than adequately and is more
concerned about protecting those gains than radical change . Moreover, its
productivist vision of progress would have us believe that economic growth,
abolition of the capitalist mode of production, and independence would cure all
the evils of politics, work, and life . There is more than a hint here of a rhetorical
something for everyone, a latter-day call for "land, peace and bread ."
Even more important, its conception of transition remains ambiguous .
Though there are echoes of Mitterand-style socialism, there is no direct
acknowledgment of the very different situation in France where the state
effectively controls an economy dominated by indigenous entrepreneurs and
financial markets, and the planning apparatus is already one of the most
developed in the capitalist world . This difference is implicit, however, in the call
for economic autarky, withdrawal from the North American economy, come
what may. But how is this credible? How can this strategy be reconciled with all
the other demands and promises of the manifesto : respect for democracy,
minorities, civil rights, and most decisively, making good the economic promises
on which everything else depends?
These silences also suggest why the Parti Quebecois has been the most
threatening force in contemporary Canadian politics : it became a credible
alternative . Despite its compromises and gradualist strategy, the PQ developed a
programme which could realistically propose a re-organization of the federal
system, a redirection of economic development, a preservation of a cultural
heritage, and an encouragement of parallel movements more radical than itself

10 7
 QUEBEC MANIFESTOS

in preparation for longer term initiatives . To break the federal monopoly of

innovation could have turned the tide of modern Canadian politics, not only
because of Quebec autonomy but as a consequence of breaking the hold of the
Liberal Party and providing an inspirational model for the rest of Canada.
The hidden agenda of this manifesto is that it fails to acknowledge the fragility
of its point of departure : the assumption that the failure of the PQ would
eventually rebound to create a quasi-revolutionary crisis by unveiling the flaws of
gradualism and pushing the working and popular classes toward a truly socialist
independence movement. But is this plausible? No, the lessons of the past are
clear : the result would be the fragmentation of interest groups, the disintegration
of the national movement, and a surge for the return of economic stability and
security with the division of spoils even more than before a function of the
respective power of the groups in conflict .
As for the rest of Canada, such a scenario would begreeted with a sigh ofrelief.
The failure of the PQ could be celebrated as a sign of the victory of federalism and
the restoration of Canadian unity. The residues of militancy, confrontations,
strikes, agitation, and individual acts of degradation, violence and terrorism
associated with the rump of a socialist-independentist left could be taken as final
proof that Trudeau was right after all, and that behind the veneer of the PQ was
the FLQ lurking, waiting for its day of reckoning. And if all this were to come to
pass, it would prove that a man had single-handedly, along with the help of a few
francophone allies changed the direction of Canadian federalism and Canadian
history. This defeat of the PQ would be comparable to "la Conquete" relived,
non-violently, in slow-motion, on T.V. To be sure, the French fact would remain
and literary culture flourish, but the resulting anger, bitterness, cynicism and loss
of self-respect would make a joke of Canadian unity andcheck new possibilities in
midstream . It would, in short, preserve that two-century long compact between
the anglophone and francophone elites which first stabilized Canada in the
interest of the Commonwealth Empire and now does so for the American .

Ray Morrow
Montreal
Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory / Revue Canadienne de theorie
politique et sociale, Vol. 6, Nos . 1-2 (Hiver/Printemps, 1982) .

pour un
QUEBEC
SOCIALISTE

Manifeste du Mouvement
pour un Quebec socialiste,
independant, democratique
et pour 1'egalite entre
les hommes et les femmes.

LE COMITE DES CENT

QUEBEC TODAY
In this beginning of the 1980's, the great majority of the men and women who
live and work in Quebec cannot help but ask themselves about their
conditions of existence, and those of other peoples, in a world in crisis where
everything seems to be going awry.

Anxiety increases everywhere. The arms race menaces more than ever our
collective survival. Harshly exploited for centuries, a growing number of Third
World peoples are reduced to misery and angrily watch their children die of
hunger by the millions . The right of peoples to control their own fate, their
natural resources, and their economic and political development is denied .
Human rights lose ground before the rise of dictatorships most everywhere in

109
 POUR UN QUEBEC SOCIALISTS

the world. Waste and the deterioration of the environment grow . The
inequalities between peoples and between classes expand . The future appears
bleak.

Yet hope persists. Enslaved by capitalism, millions of men and women resist,
gather together, mobilize, awaken popular consciousness, combat privilege and
struggle for peace, justice, equality and solidarity. Millions of men and women are
also working for a true socialist democracy in societies of the Soviet-type. African
peoples continue liberation struggles against racism, colonialism and
imperialism . The native peoples of North America demand their rights . The
peoples of Central and Latin America shake the yoke of the multinationals and
the oligarchies. In France the struggle for socialism assumes new dimensions.
Great transformations are underway : Nicaragua, Salvador, Zimbabwe, Namibia,
Poland. ..

In this tormented world, what is happening to Quebec? In this troubled epoch,

where are the Quebec people going?

The immense hopes raised by the "Quiet Revolution", by the modernization of

our society and its opening up to the world, have been silenced, abandoned and
betrayed by the movements and parties that pretended to embody them. Nothing
has been resolved. Our survival as a people continues to be in danger . We have
achieved neither equality nor independence . We are not masters of our own
household . On the contrary, our economic, political and cultural dependence is
being perpetuated . Social inequalities not only remain, but consolidate
themselves . Exploiters proliferate . Profiteers increase their profits . The
conditions of existence of the population deteriorate. To the extent that the just
society has fallen into oblivion, favorable attitudes toward workers erode ... How
could it have been otherwise? Have not these parties and movements always
refused to call into question the true causes of the dependence, exploitation and
domination to which we are subjected? When all is said and done, have they not
served the interests of the minority rather than those of the majority? Today as
before the Quebec people finds itself disillusioned .

Nevertheless a collective awareness of the necessity of a radical change (rupture)

and of the urgency of a new political path is in the process of emerging within the
working and popular classes of Quebec.

The men and women who work in the exploitation of resources, in the mines,
forests, agriculture, fisheries, construction, manufacturing industries, transport,
commerce, finance, research, cultural affairs, communications, medical and social
services, education and all other services ; all these men and women deprived of
all collective control over their working and their living environments, reduced
by the system to unemployment, social welfare, or retirement full of insecurity,
all these, allied to housewives, small independent producers, male and female
 POUR UN QUEBEC SOCIALISTS

students, together form the social basis for a new political force to be constructed
for the profound transformation of Quebecois society .

It is to these men and women of the working and popular classes of Quebec that
this manifesto addresses itself. For it is with these men and women that lies all
hope. No will to act, no real change can come from anywhere else. ,

Living in Quebec Today

We live in an industrialized country that is potentially very rich. Astride the

mouth of one of the principal maritime communication systems in the world,
pivot between the continents of North America and Europe, Quebec benefits
from an interesting geographical position .

With its fertile agricultural lands, immense forests, a sub-soil abounding in

asbestos, iron, zinc, titanium, copper and all sorts of minerals, its rivers
dispensing hydro-electric energy, Quebec possesses considerable natural
resources .

With its communication networks, its industries, its institutions and its service
infrastructures built by men and women workers, Quebec possesses undeniable
material resources.

Still more important, the dynamism and creativity of its people could allow it
true development .

And yet. ..

In this land, said to be rich and free, in this society purportedly modern and just,
the working and popular classes that make up the great majority of the
population live daily in concrete conditions of domination, exploitation, and
oppression.

Men and women workers bear the toll of rising unemployment and no job
security . Factory shut-downs, lay-offs, and job cut-backs in the public service
multiply. 300,000 people are unemployed. 9% of the working population in
Montreal, Quebec, and Sherbrooke! 12% on the North Shore and in
Saguenay-Lac-St Jean! 13% in the Outaouais! 14176 in Abitibi-T6miscamingue!
More than 16% in the Lower St. Lawrence and the Gaspe!

Jobs are not only harder to find, but work is more and more precarious :
Occasional work, part-time work, free-lance work, work on call, work at home,
work that places men and women workers at the mercy of their bosses. In 1981,
50% of the jobs created in Quebec are part-time!
 POUR UN QUEBEC SOCIALISTS

Less interesting and lower-income jobs for francophones, immigrants or

native peoples ; while anglophones, representing 14% of the population occupy
31% of administrative positions and scarcely 10% of jobs in production!

Jobs that are more and more controlled and supervised. One foreman for three
or four employees in many enterprises and services, uniforms and ID cards are
obligatory, control systems are an integral part of the machinery! Even in the
medical services there are arbitrary productivity norms!

Jobs that endanger our health and our life . Nearly 300,000 work accidents a
year! Every year one out of three workers in the forestry and metal-products
manufacturing sectors! In 1977, one death and 40 cases of permanent disability
out of 1,000 workers in the mining sector!

Working conditions that do not improve except at the price of lengthy and
difficult strikes . Salaries that for a long time now can no longer keep up with the
dizzying rise in the cost of living. Non-stop work, evening work, night work.
Breaks that are too short, vacations that are inadequate. Work areas that are
cramped, noisy machinery, cold, over-heated, dangerous products, depletion and
premature aging...

Unskilled jobs increasingly fragmented, dehumanising and monotonous. An

automatization of production is taking place on our backs . A division between the
conception and execution of work condemns us to boredom. Not only do our
bosses tell us what to do but how to do it, in the minutest details!

This constant deterioration in working conditions spills over in a global manner

onto the quality of life in general, in such a way that the vast majority of
Quebecois waste their lives in order to make a living .

These are the conditions that are given to men and women workers in Quebec
today.

In this land that is, so they tell us, privileged, in this society purportedly better
than all others, the women, the children, the young and the old people of the
working and popular classes confront conditions of existence that are often
painful, at times degrading, always difficult .

Women ... in their daily lives, victims of the sexual division of labor, of sexism, of
sexual harassment, dominated by a medical apparatus that tends to dispossess
them of their bodies, deprived of their right to freely-chosen maternity, confined
to traditional roles of wife and mother, assuming daily and without pay the
education of children, familial tasks, housework, all of which lead them too often
into the anguishing paths of solitude and dependence. Of the 135,000 Quebec
women living alone with their children, two-thirds dwell in poverty . More and
 POUR UN QUEBEC SOCIALISTE

more women enter the job market only to find themselves faced with
discrimination and job-ghettos, confronted by inequalities in access to work, in
working conditions, in salaries. 66% of women's work is in offices, in commerce
and in services! Secretaries, waitresses, sales-women, hostesses, nurses, teachers,
garment workers . The average income of women on the job market is equivalent
to 58% of the average income for men!

And it is expected that they be silent?

Children ... victims of housing conditions, of health, nutrition, environment,

education so unequal that 50 times more whooping-cough, three times more
pneumonia and tonsilitis, seven times more ear infections are found in popular
neighbourhoods than in privileged neighbourhoods! The infant mortality rate in
east Montreal is three times higher than in the west end. Children are deprivedof
daycare . .. barely a few thousand openings are available when the demand is 10
times greater ; centres badly equipped, begrudgingly subsidized, strangled by
exorbitant rents. Our children are too numerous in discovering life through the
eyes of Goldorak, too numerous in discovering the world in schools often
organized like prisons!

And it is expected that they be happy?

Youth.. . entangled at a very young age in a selective school system in which

inequality of opportunity is still loaded against francophones, the poor regions,
the working and popular classes : making up the majority of elementary school
students, the children of these classes comprise only one third of the manpower
at the university level . Furthermore, a great number of them end up in the
vocational sector, the first step towards a labour market and the unemployment
that strikes the young before all other social categories! Faced with an illusory
possibility of access to higher positions and incomes through the barely open
doors of the universities and the certitude of becoming a cog in industry through
the predetermined path of vocational training courses, how many of the young
"choose" to drop out of school in order too often to loose themselves in
delinquency? There are, for instance, almost 5,000 minors, young men and
women prostituting themselves in Montreal! Competition, individualism,
submission is what they are taught. To make as much money as possible and
accumulate material possessions, these are the goals that are offered them! Every
man for himself is the proposition held up to them!

And they are not supposed to be disillusioned?

The aged. .. excluded from work and so condemned to poverty and solitude,
impoverished, rejected from social life, deprived of the services and care that is
their due from a society to which they have devoted a lifetime's work. Of the
500,000 senior citizens of Quebec, 6317o live below the poverty line! In Montreal,
 POUR UN Q UI~BEC SOCIALISTE

where three-fifths of Quebec's aged are to be found, 25176 live in neglected

housing or in cramped rooms often without stoves, fridges, baths, private toilets,
hot water or telephones!

And these are supposed to be "the golden years"?

In this land that is said to be open to the world, in this society that is ostensibly
welcoming and tolerant, are not handicapped people the victims of enormous
discrimination in work, in transportation, in social life?

Male and female immigrants. .. are they not confined to employment ghettos
(textiles and garments, hotels and restaurants, home maintenance, domestic
work, work at home) where working conditions are particularly bad and where
the right to free unionization is either denied or made impossible? Are they not
confronted with linguistic problems, discrimination and increasing racism, and
the ignorance of their social rights, governed by laws and rulings like the Federal
Immigration Law C-24 that limits the exercise of their democratic rights? Are
these men and women workers not faced with living and working conditions that
are increasingly precarious?

Native peoples .. . have they not been decimated in the reserves? Have not their
rights to an immense territory been extinguished? Must they not put up with an
education that does not respect their values and needs, discrimination in
employment, an unemployment rate that is four times higher than ours, an
average income that is 20% lower, an infant mortality rate that is 2'/z times
higher, dependence on social welfare that affects over half their population? And
what is to be said about their housing conditions? Barely one-third of their homes
are equipped with running water, inside toilets and bathtubs! Almost 20% still
do not have electricity!

Just because our children are not dying of hunger, and we are not the victims of
terrifying droughts, catastrophic floods, disastrous earthquakes, must we close
our eyes and not see the deterioration in housing and environmental conditions,
the decrease of services especially in medical and social services, the decay of
urban life, the growth of insecurity, the increase in indebtedness, the
impoverishment of cultural life that result in an actual decline in the quality of
life for a growing part of the working and popular classes?

Just because we enjoy a relative, but real, prosperity if compared to the dramatic
conditions of existence of Third World peoples, must we close our ears and not
hear the rumbling of poveFty that is establishing itself in our society? Over
300,000 people are "officially" unemployed, 500,000 others subjected to the
social welfare regime! In all, one million poor people in Quebec, out of which
600,000 can barely satisfy their basic needs!
 POUR UN QUEBEC SOCIALISTE

The heart of exploitation in capitalism is found in the private appropriation

of the value created by work. It is in this appropriation that capital grounds its
domination . Through the grands bourgeois that own and control the means of
production and exchange, the administrators and executives of the industrial and
financial monopolies, the high officialdom of the State, the capitalist system
determines the conditions of existence of the working and popular classes .

Our society is dominated by these few thousand individuals, millionaires or

billionaires, Quebecois, Canadian, American or other, anglophone or
francophone, the Rockefellers, the Bronfmans, the Desmarais . Business being
business, they do not always see eye-to-eye, and sometimes endeavour to snatch
from one another control over an enterprise or lay hands on a market, but at the
slightest threat to their interests and common privileges, they swiftly reunite in
ties that are multiple and solid .

Issuing for the most part from a limited number of great families, educated at the
same private schools, members of the same select clubs that admit only their
allies in their company, these lawyers, judges, top civil servants and politicians
share the same contempt of the needs of the people, a common thirst for power,
and they are all important cogs of capitalist accumulation. They most loudly
proclaim their faith in private property, free enterprise, and the virtues of
competition, but all the while, they never cease to seek to stifle their smaller
competitors, to consolidate their monopolies and fix market prices . They
demand that men and women workers respect the laws under all circumstances
but never hesitate themselves to transgress, distort and flout the laws.

Administrators of the banks and of financial institutions, they control the money,
credit, interest rates, using the savings and riches of the community in order to
increase centralization and the accumulation of capital .

Big stock-holders and directors of multinationals, they hold in their hands the
lives and destinies of entire populations . They provoke crises in the supply of
energy or raw materials from which they obviously derive great benefits. They
speculate on the exchange rate of monies and the values of stocks. They put
themselves above nations and laws. Within the framework of the international
division of labour they transfer capital and businesses at the expense of the
evolution of salaries, the costs of energy and raw materials, and the social and
political situation ...

Owners and managers of companies regrouped in multiple associations,

chambers of commerce, industrialand other types ofcouncils, they never ceaseto intervene
to impose their point of view on society as a whole. They own the largest part of
the information media, and of the means of production and diffusion of culture.
Through advertising, companies encourage over-consumption and waste,
individualism and consumerism . They are principally responsible for the
 POUR UN QUEBEC SOCIALISTE

pollution of the air and waters and for the depletion of the earth and resources .
Through the mechanism of the State, they maintain an organization of
manpower, work, health, education, culture and knowledge, subjected to the
imperatives ofproduction. Capitalism provokes and sustains division at the very
heart of the working and popular classes, alternately playing one group against
another : workers against the unemployed, men against women, manual
labourers against intellectuals, francophones against ethnic minorities, the men
and women workers of the private sector against those of the public sector, the
regions against Montreal...divide and rule!

And the capitalist class rules! It decides the quality, the quantity, the diversity, the
cost of the entire range of products available to the population . One goal drives it:
making profits, the most profits in the shortest time. All of production and all
of economic life are organized round this one and only goal: profit. Can it be
surprising then that existing relations, not only between countries and between
regions, but also between groups and individuals, are relations of competition,
inequality, and exploitation? Nor can one be surprised either by the absurdity of a
society in which everything including men and women becomes a commodity,
and which demands of children, adults, families, increasingly uniform and
standardized behaviour?

Our entire social life is conditioned by relations of exploitation, oppression,

and domination, imposed upon the millions of men and women of the
working and popular classes by the capitalist class, the minority that has been
in power since the industrial revolution, when it learned to appropriate the
collective wealth and the means of production, diverting them for its own profit
and making them the bastion of its privileges.

The State, far from being neutral, maintains, neutralizes and reproduces these
relations, constituting simultaneously the political framework of society, the
instrument of domination of the capitalist class ; as well as a field of interaction
and struggle between classes .

Yet the working and popular classes refuse to allow the State to be a mere
"administrative council" of capitalism . They continually exercise pressures and
often succeed in extracting concessions that improve their social condition .

Be it against the State or against industry, the men and women workers must
struggle tirelessly to have their rights respected. This struggle between social
classes had profoundly marked all ofQuebec's history for 150 years . From the
1833 carpenters' and joiners' strike for a reduction of the working day, right up to
the foresters' strike against contract work in 1981, through the 1937 Sorel
strikes, the asbestos strike in '49, that of Murdochville in'57, of the teachers in
'67, and the Common Front in'72, how many great corvees, how many boycotts,
how many United Aircraft occupations, how many picket-lines and demonstra-
 POUR UN QUEBEC SOCIALISTS

tions were required in order to abolish child labour, to reduce schedules and
intolerable speed-ups, to obtain more decent salaries and more dignified living
and working conditions, to win the right to association and negotiation, the right
to claims for occupational injuries, pensions ...?

Innumerable struggles, not only in the workplace but also in other areas, in
neighborhoods, villages, cities and regions,...against national oppression, for the
liberation of women, against expropriations, for the right to unemployment
insurance and social welfare, for the respect and growth of democratic liberties
and rights ... for free medical services, for public education, for adequate housing
at reasonable prices...

Long and difficult struggles punctuated by violenceon the part of the bosses and
the police, injunctions, intimidation, expulsions, firings, fines, imprisonment,
humiliations ...struggles that had to be renewed generation after generation
because nothing is ever truly secured by those who have nothing but their
solidarity with which to defend themselves and to improve their lot .

We Live in a Dependent Society

To live in Quebec today means living within a part of the Canadian whole with
everything that this represents in terms of inequalities in development and
integration in the American imperialist system.

To live in Quebec also means submitting to national oppression that the

Canadian grande bourgeoisie, through the federal State, exercises over the
people of Quebec . By imposing its language, its culture and its policies of
development, the Canadian bourgeoisie exercises a range of discrimination that
affects the Quebecois on an economic level as much as on a cultural and political
one . Unemployment, poverty, inequalities are so many forms of national
oppression that afflict the working and popular classes in their daily lives.

To live in Quebec means finally to submit collectively to a situation of

dependence that is considerable and multifaceted : economic, commercial,
financial, technological, military, political, cultural and ideological. To such a
degree that the most important positions of power and the principal levers of
command are to be found outside Quebec .

Certainly there exists a group of Quebecois capitalists that rely on the provincial
State to grab a piece of the cake. And they have been relatively successful as is
shown by the development of such financial institutions and businesses as Trust
General, Provigo, Quebecor, Normick Perron and Bombardier.. . But in spite of
the fact that the majority of the medium and large Quebecois businesses have
benefited from the support of the Quebecois State for their development, all of
which only accelerated under the PQ which has placed public capital at their
 POUR UN QUEBEC SOCIALISTS

service and reinforced them through State firms such as the Caisse de depot et
placement, the SGF, and Hydro-Quebec, Quebecois capitalists remain confined
to activities left to them by Canadian and foreign capitalists in sectors that are
minimally productive and markets that are local and regional . Our economy and
our commerce remain dominated by Canadian and foreign capitalists . Sixty per
cent of Quebec's international exports are controlled by 20-odd large American
and European multinational corporations!

Even more than the Quebecois capitalists, the true masters of Quebec are the
Canadian capitalists and big firms of the Canadian State such as Noranda Mines,
Petro Canada, Northern Telecom, Consolidated Bathhurst, Dominion Textile,
Canada Packers, Abitibi-Price, John Labatt, Stelco, Bell Canada, Canadian Pacific,
Canadian National, Sun Life, the Royal Bank, Bank of Montreal... but also the
foreign capitalists, in particular the Americans, who control Alcan, General
Motors, Imperial Oil, Kraft Foods, Celanese, IBM, ITT, Pratt & Whitney,
Reynolds, Iron Ore, Wabush Mines, Johns-Manville and how many others!

For Quebec the consequences of the dependence are tragic : an unbalanced

economy, a slow-down in manufacturing, specialized international commerce,
underdeveloped technology, and stagnant regional development.. . Quebec is
more than ever a vast reservoir of manpower and natural resources at the
disposal of, firstly, the American capitalist class, secondly, the Canadian one, and,
thirdly, the Quebecois if anything remains . So it is no wonder that Quebec
capitalism, unable to develop short of further integration into the Canadian and
American economies, should be opposed to true Quebec independence.

The American imperialist system conditions the policies of the central

Canadian State and of the Quebecois State . No government has ever truly
questioned this multifaceted dependence: neither the federal Liberal
government that keeps Canada in military, political and economic alliances that
serve American imperialism, nor the Parti Quebecois one of whose first political
gestures, it should be recalled, was to go to New York's Economic Club to
reassure Uncle Sam!

Since the very first hours of Confederation, the history of the Canadian State has
been characterized by subservience to the interests of American capital even if
under the cover of policies that have been called 'national' .

The history of the Canadian State, over and above the national oppression to
which it subjects the Quebecois people, is that of the oppression of the native
peoples and ethnic discrimination against all men and women immigrant
workers .

And these relations of oppression and dependence, that have developed. in the
 POUR UN QUI~BEC SOCIALISTE

framework ofthe Canadian federal State and North-American capitalist society,

show no signs of disappearing, on the contrary ...

The Micmacs of Restigouche know it, invaded and bludgeoned by Surete du

Quebec squads in the name of salmon protection . And the Haitian taxi-drivers of
Montreal know it too in seeing, more and more, manifestations of racism spread
around them!

The people of Matapedia and of eastern Quebec know it as they continuously

rebel against the under-development and stagnation to which their regions have
been reduced! And the people of the Outaouais, anxiously succumbing to an
economic and cultural invasion that threatens their identity, know it too!

The men and women workers of the North Shore know it as they powerlessly
watch the American multinational corporations shut down: ITT subsidized by
tens of millions of dollars, and Iron Ore that has nevertheless made fabulous
profits! And the miners of Thetford and those of Abitibi know it too as witnesses
to today's as well as yesterday's scandalous rape of our natural wealth,
transported to the US only to be transformed into the finished products that will
then be sold back to us at high prices .

And the Montreal dockers have suffered the consequences of the displacement of
harbor facilities towards the Great Lakes since the construction of the St.
Lawrence Seaway ; men and women workers of General Motors saw the
Canada-US auto pact give industrial superiority to Ontario and have had to strike
for the right to work in French; women textile workers whose jobs are sacrificed
to the new international division of labor; men and women workers in the film
industry, in music and publishing who are still protesting the PQ government's
inaction in the face of the growing invasion of foreign cultural products in our
market ; do not all these men and women workers know that the effects of
national oppression are still being felt in Quebec today?

It is no accident that the struggles of the working and popular classes have
always been linked to struggles against national oppression such that they
mutually re-enforce one another. It is first these classes that were subjected to
the effects of national oppression and it is particularly through their resistance
that the Quebec nation has been constituted .

But, in the absence of a political direction through which our national liberation
could have progressed by relying on a social project fitted to working class and
popular aspirations, this resistance has always been used to advance the ends of
the political classes that have dominated the Quebec State throughout all its
history.

Faced, as we are today, with a federal State which renews its attacks and which
 POUR UN QUEBEC SOCIALISTE

increasingly menaces our self-determination and collective future, and with the
Parti Quebecois that presents no other perspective but that of administering the
economic and political crisis, it becomes ever more imperative for the living
forces of the nation, the working and popular classes, to take the fight for
national liberation into their own hands, and bring it to its conclusion .

We Live in a Pseudo-Democratic Society (Une Society Faussement

Democratique)

Living in Quebec today means living in a society that is increasingly authoritarian

and where power is concentrated in the hands of a minority .

To be sure, we have the right to elect members of the National Assembly,

mayors, municipal councillors, and directors of school commissions . This is an
important aspect of democracy historically the end-result of the people's long
battle against despotism. Nevertheless this democracy is limited because it does
not permit us to have real control over every dimension of our collective life.
Who decides about the needs of the population,. the distribution of resources
among economic sectors and regions, priorities in development, energy policies,
production goals, the distribution of goods and revenues, imports and exports ;
the way in which work, education, health, housing, transport, and cultural
activities are organized? Who decides about the price and the quality of food,
clothing, housing, automobiles, and all other consumer products? Who has the
power to open or close the mines, factories, commercial enterprises, hospitals,
schools, and recreation centers?

Each day millions of decisions are taken that will concretely affect the way in
which the Quebecois people live, work, eat, dress, educate or amuse themselves
and this people has but little control over all these decisions that nonetheless
determine its conditions of existence and its future . Outside of popular and
union organizations-whose autonomy is continually threatened and attacked by
the media and the State in their efforts to create disunity-where can the
working and popular classes exercise their democratic powers? What does
democracy mean for those on unemployment and social welfare, for the native
peoples and the ethnic minorities, the men and women students, the housewives
and the aged? What control have we got over our lives, our environment, our
neighborhoods, our villages and our cities?

Certainly by gathering together and waging struggles, by making use of

pressure and by exercising relations of force (un rapport de force) in our places of
work and habitation, we can influence the authorities and sometimes even get
them to act in favour of our collective interests, but we do not control the
decision-making power . We have acquired rights and liberties that are enviable
to other peoples, but are not these liberties and rights continually threatened,

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questioned, scoffed at and restricted? What happened to our rights and liberties
when the Canadian army trooped in for a "visit" in October 1970? What can be
the meaning of the right to work for the hundreds of thousands of people out of
work? What can be the meaning of the right to circulate freely for the thousands
of aged people who lack the means to keep up with the rising costs of public
transport? What can be the meaning of the right to education for young people
from poor neighborhoods? What does the right of association mean when
unions must fight foryears to obtain recognition? What does the right to limited
strikes mean when they are banned by injunctions and constantly mocked by
anti-union legislation? What does freedom of expression mean when the means
ofcommunication are not available to us? What does the right to health mean for
a worker who does not have the right to stop working if he considers his life or
his well-being endangered?

We live in a society that is dominated by a minority-the capitalist class,

which by owning the means ofproduction and exchange and dominating the
state apparatus and the political parties, exercises real control over our
economic, political and social life.

Leaning on politicians, high officials, lawyers, judges, who share the same
interests, the capitalist class uses instruments of "persuasion" of the information
media and instruments of repression like the police corps and the coercive
apparatus of "justice" in order to exercise its authority and power. Let us simply
remember the rain of injunctions, fines and prison terms that fell upon the
MUCTC and Common Front strikers while, in contrast, the goon who fired at
point-blank range at the Robin Hood millers was scandalously acquitted! Let us
remember, too, the $10 million in fines plus interest imposed on the Reynolds
union in Baie Comeau, though the seven oil companies responsible for extortion
to the tune of $12 billion, according to an inquiry by the auditor-general's office,
have not even been taken to court!

Whether it be in the State, whose presence is growing in our lives, in the public
services as they become more and more bureaucratized, or in companies where
the authoritarianism of the bosses reigns almost without limit, a complex
hierarchy of power has been established: from the foreman to the manager, from
the departmental assistant-director to the deputy minister, a multitude of small
bosses agitate, fight for privileges and daily rest the weight of their authority
upon our lives.

But the real center of power is situated way beyond this pyramid, and far beyond
the parliaments in which "our" representatives figure : within the limited circle
of the administrative councils of the multinationals, the large financial
institutions, in the upper spheres of the State and the Council of Ministers, they
are but a few hundred who determine our present and mortgage our future!
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We live in a society in crisis

Living in Quebec today means living in a society that is plunging into a profound
economic, social and political crisis .

Daily we hear speak of the devaluation of the money, the rise in prices and
interest rates, the decline of investment and production, the increase in the cost
of energy and raw materials, the stagnation of productivity, the saturation of
markets, the exacerbation of commercial and technological competition between
capitalist powers, the persistent and simultaneous growth of inflation and
unemployment, the reduction of buying power and real salaries, the
deterioration of public services and the quality of life, the increase in
bankruptcies and factory closings ... so many aspects and signs of a crisis that does
not let up and only deepens .

What is hidden beneath it all and what our governments are careful to keep
from explaining to us, is that we are being subjected to the impact not of a
temporary recession, or a foul-up in the economy, but of capitalism itself
which can only survive by means of crises . Not a single generation of Quebec
men and women workers has not lived through one!

Imprisoned by an absurd logic which imposes upon it, for its maintenance and
development, the genesis of a constant growth in profits, the capitalist system as
we know it has been in a profound state of crisis for 10 years now . As a way out it
now attempts to proceed toward a global re-organization of the international
economic order, the modes of production and exchange, the markets and
monetary system, the organization and division of labor, the role of States....

And Quebec, fragile and dependent, is also affected by the crisis of world
capitalism. All the more so because the crisis has developed here in the context of
a political crisis, the questioning of national oppression and of the centralizing
authoritarianism of the federal State, which seems at present stalemated. By
itself, the extraordinary rise in poverty that victimizes one out of six people in
our society is an indication of the extent to which the working and popular classes
are threatened in their conditions of existence by this crisis. And what can besaid
about the economic death of the North Shore that only yesterday was being
presented as the symbol of our collective prosperity?

Faced with the crisis that does not cease to deepen, the government of the Parti
Quebecois, like the federal government and all other capitalist governments,
only initiates economic and social measures that intensify exploitation. The PQ
"solution", the one that emerges from "Batir le Quebec" and Parizeau's budgets,
puts the entire weight of the crisis upon the working and popular classes : the
reduction of real salaries, job cuts, the important decreases in medical and social

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services, rises in electricity costs and in public transport .. . and this, at the same
time as it substantially reduces taxes imposed on business profits and subsidizes
them as never before .

In this way one is witness to the redirection of an important part of the collective
wealth, allocated to the profits of private interests at the expense of public
services .

Inspired by the multinationals, elaborated at economic summits and by major

international organisms such as the World Bank, the OECD and the
International Monetary Fund, the capitalist response to the crisis here, as
elsewhere, goes directly against the interests of the working and popular
classes.
And here, as elsewhere, these classes still have only and always no other
recourse but to resist and fight, be it only in order to limit the more nefarious
consequences of this crisis in attempting to preserve their rights and the
improvements in living and working conditions dearly acquired . In addition, a
social crisis, linked to the political and economic crisis, is slowly developing that
tomorrow could well reach a point of no return.
Relations between the classes are more and more tense. Aggravated by the crisis,
the entirety of social problems resulting from relations of exploitation,
oppression and domination, explode in the face of the capitalist class that sees
itself increasingly confronted with the combativeness and solidarity of the
working and popular classes .

This is testified in the demands and struggles of the trade-unions for the right to
work, against the closing of factories and job-cuts in the public service, for health
and safety at work, the dequalification of labor and the negative effects of
automation, precarious employment, unemployment . . . ; the demands and
struggles of the people in the areas of housing, health, urban planning, the
environment, public transport, social rights ... the demands and struggles, of the
regions, in Saint-Scholastique, in the Gaspe, in the Matapedia valley .. . the
demands and struggles of the aged, of immigrant men and women workers, and
of the native people.

Equally testifying to it are the extraordinary struggles and demands ofwomen for
equality in access to employment and in working conditions, for the recognition
of the social value of housework, for the establishment of a network of popular
daycare centres, against sexism and sexual violence, for the right to free and
costless abortion...the struggles and demands in the cultural field, in music, in the
new theatre, in film, in community media...the struggles and demands of the
ecological movement...the movement in support of peoples struggling against
exploitation and domination .

To be sure, these demands and struggles more often than not remain confined to

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the defence of the immediate interests of the men and women workers, and do
not manage to extend toward and articulate a project for a radically different
society . And despite certain initiatives at the municipal level or, for example,
occasional debates on the national question, the working and popular classes do
not have the means for autonomous political expression, and remain dependent
on capitalist political parties that continually corrupt and distort their collective
aspirations for a better life .

But the fact remains that these demands and struggles constitute the foundations
of a real resistance to national oppression and are the expression of a will to
break away (volonte de rupture) from capitalist society .

Through their demands and struggles, the men and women of the working
and popular classes are slowly outlining the elements of a project for a
radically new society and are more and more asserting the necessity for an
in-depth transformation of Quebec society in the direction of their interests
and their collective aspirations .

Borne by this growing consciousness, change is under way . And to the extent that
the working and popular classes will provide themselves with their own social
project (projet de society) and the political instrument for its realization, nothing
shall be able to stop it.

A SOCIETY IN NEED OF PROFOUND CHANGE

Where are our collective aspirations taking us if not to the establishment of a

radically different society, in which our life would be better, more creative, freer,
more worthy of being lived?

Where are our demands and our struggles leading us if not to build a society in
which production and work as well as social, cultural and political life would no
longer be organized around the profits and interests of a minority class, but
around the needs and aspirations of the whole of the population instead?

Where do we want to end up if not at a new society in which relations of

exploitation, oppression and domination would be replaced by relations of
equality, liberty and solidarity?

In order to achieve these goals the working and popular classes must begin work
on an in-depth transformation of contemporary Quebec by undertaking a
collective appropriation of control over their work, their lives, and over the
whole of society .

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To this end we must collectively appropriate the means of production and of

exchange of goods and services, by democratizing property, its organization and
operation. It is necessary to radically transform the State not only by achieving
independence but by inventing new means of control for the working and
popular classes over the parliamentary system, the bureaucracy and the legal
system . We must destroy the sexual division of capitalist labor and establish
authentic egalitarian and solidary relations between men and women. We must
proceed toward a major decentralization of the economic and political power,
promote popular autonomous organizations, animate a true democracy at the
grass roots.

The in-depth transformation of Quebec in the light of the aspirations and

interests of the working and popular classes involves the construction of a
popular power (pouvoirpopulaire) that can only be achieved on the inseparable
foundations of socialism, independence, democracy and equality between men
and women .

This represents, as we should be aware, a difficult undertaking since it implies

putting into question national and international capitalist powers that have no
interest in change and that do not hesitate to intervene in the lives of peoples in
order to maintain their domination .

This represents a large-scale undertaking which simultaneously presupposes

economic, social, cultural and political mutations whose difficulties and depth
must not be underestimated .

This represents a complex and long-term political project that calls to be

specified, clarified, elaborated and transcribed into a program of struggles and
stages to follow in accord with the conjuncture and evolution of the social forces
that will bear it. This political project does not belong and would never belong
either to an avant-garde or to a group of experts . The construction of popular
power can only be the work of the people themselves.

For a socialist Quebec

A society such as we want-egalitarian, free and solidary-cannot emerge short

of the Quebecois people's radical break with capitalism and thus the
exploitation and dependence it engenders .

Only such a break can permit the creation of conditions favorable to the freeing
of the working and popular classes.

We must overturn the capitalist class' economic dictatorship and political

domination by proceeding toward socialization of the means ofproduction and
exchange in such a way as to eliminate the private power of decision that

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permits this minority to exercise despotic "rights of management", to set the

prices of consumer goods, to direct the organization of the economy and of work,
to impose unemployment ...all to maximize their profits .

We must put an end to dependence by proceding toward a collective

appropriation of the foreign companies that have established themselves in
Quebec-at a pace and modalities to be collectively determined-and by
henceforth disallowing all foreign control over our resources and our means of
production and exchange.

The Quebecois people will not be the first to want to sweep away the structures of
exploitation and dependence and to want to overthrow the capitalist system. In
undertaking this difficult combat, it owes to itself to take stock of the experience
gained elsewhere and to learn from the successes as well as the errors.

While the socialization of resources and of the means of production and

exchange is an essential condition for the realization of the popular power, it still
does not guarantee it. There is no recipe, there is no fatherland of socialism, no
guiding country nor model society . We must seek our own way of liberation
through the conditions that are our own .

By placing the accent on the construction of a real popular power out of the
collective appropriation of the means of production and exchange, our socialist
project refuses to consider the State the only agent for the transformation of
society .

And if we place the objective of socialization rather than that of state control
(etatisation) to the fore, it is to forcefully underline that for a socialist society it is
necessary to bring together the conditions allowing that all economic decisions
be the object of public debates and democratic choices . For it is neither a
minority of capitalists hiding behind the market's pseudo-laws nor a minority of
technocrats and ministers hiding behind the mysterious veils of their expertise,
but the whole of the working people that, through the collective elaboration of
democratic mechanisms, must decide the needs to be satisfied, the goals of
production, imports and exports, the allocation of resources among sectors and
regions, the distribution ofproduction between consumer goods and services, the
quantity and quality of these goods and services, the distribution of wealth, the
choices in the domains of energy, the orientations of development-in short, the
whole of those decisions that above all others determine living and working
conditions.

In arriving at the elaboration of a plan for overall development, this

democratization of economic power must be exercised on the national as well as
the local and regional levels and must leave ample room for the autonomy of the
various collectivities .

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Economic power must be collective not only on the level of major

orientations, but also in the very direction of enterprises and services . Their
administration must be simultaneously placed in the hands of the men and
women workers, of the representatives of the democratic institutions of society,
and of the representatives of the collectivities concerned, as determined by the
nature and function of the enterprises and services in question.

In addition, the socialization of the economy cannot be achieved by planning

alone, no matter how democratic . It must be concretized in a radical
transformation of the organization and division of labour . The men and women
workers must have actual control over their work and the manner in which it
is organized ; among other things, this implies a reduction of the size of
enterprises, control over technological changes and the integration of the
conception and execution of work such that men and women workers not only
can provide themselves with clean and safe working conditions but also
transform the content of their work as well .

For, ultimately, we must put an end to this real dispossession of the world to
which men and women workers are subjected through the impoverishment and
growing subordination of their activities. We must strive to abolish the division
between manual and intellectual labor, as well as all the discriminations and
privileges that derive therefrom.

On the other hand, the abolition of unemployment and the recognition of the
right to work are made possible only through the actual socialization of the
economy and the planning of development.

By putting an end to the private appropriation of the wealth that work produces
and by establishing a mode of remuneration based on participation in social
labour, we are giving ourselves the means to eliminate poverty, to considerably
reduce inequalities, and to guarantee to everyone a decent income that satisfies
socially defined needs .

No longer seized by a privileged minority, the social surplus becomes available

for the improvement of our collective equipment and services and thus our living
conditions .

In addition, the building of a true popular power demands an in-depth

socialization of public services, at all levels, in all sectors, and for all groups.

We must transform social services in such a way that they are no longer subject to
the demands of industrial production, but rather directly anchored in the
aspirations and the needs of the collectivities through theextensive autonomy of
popular groups and organizations . We must undertake to democratize and
re-organize services in such a way that the population can approriate them and

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orient them to their real needs .

Thus in health care, as well as in education, the autonomy of individuals and

collectives must be promoted through the increased diffusion of knowledge. In
addition to offering the best curative care, the health system must be based on the
promotion of health and prevention, and must strive to check illnesses of social
origin. Education, in the framework of a public, secular, and francophone system,
respectful of the right to difference of the minorities, greatly decentralized and
subject to popular control, must be oriented toward the permanent education of
the population. It must in particular serve everyone, in accordance with their
choice and the needs of the society, providing vocational and balanced
(polyvalente) training that can give the men and women workers real control
and a true capacity for intervention in the conceptualization and organization of
their work and social life as a whole.

What we must seek through the socialization and the democratization of the
economy and services, as well as through the planning of development and the
transformation of the organization of labor, is not a new way to structure and
administer the same old production-oriented (productiviste) society that sees in
individuals nothing but their "labour power" and their capacity to produce
"profits", but on the contrary a transformation of this capitalist vision of the
world and a real change in the modes of living and working .

Building a socialist Quebec means to reunite the conditions that make for a
different and better life: for children and young people at last recognized as
persons in themselves with needs for supervision, education and leisure that the
society must strive to meet; with the right to speak, to organize themselves, and
to act so as to transform society in the light of their aspirations...for men and
women, finally liberated from the sexual division of labor and henceforth able to
establish authentically egalitarian and solidary relations ...for the aged, finally
re-integrated in social life, liberated from of ficialized impoverishment, and
henceforth disposing of a real capability to add to the collectivity with their
knowledge and expertise.

For an Independent Quebec

Our project, because it is that of the working and popular classes, affirms the
indivisible relationship between socialism and independence . One could not
fight for a socialist democracy without taking up the national question in all its
historic significance, without assuming the project of national liberation.

The creation of a new and fully independent Quebecois State is an

indispensable condition for not only overthrowing the domination of the
capitalist classes and achieving a true sovereignty of the people, but also for

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putting an end to national oppression .

We must put an end to the present situation : to the provincial State, toothless cog
of the central Canadian State and defender of "local" capitalist interests ; to the
federal State that embodies the class power of the bourgeoisie as a whole,
reproduces the national oppression of the Quebecois people and the native
peoples, and that serves as the transmission belt of American imperialism .

We must radically reconsider the whole of the political, economic and military
alliances to which we are integrated, and which not only maintain Quebec in a
state of profound dependence but make it an accomplice in American
imperialism's enslavement of numerous peoples .

We must acquire the independence that allows the working and popular classes
to collectively and democratically appropriate economic as well as political
power . In this respect our project is clearly distinct from the Pequiste perspective
of "sovereignty-association" . The PQ does not question either the capitalist
system, or the exploitation and dependence it engenders . Wishing to protect the
American and Canadian capitalists' interests and develop Quebecois capitalism,
it ends up, under the pretext of modernism, becoming the promoter of the
safe-keeping of the principal federal institutions in the framework of a "new"
association and the maintenance of all the political, economic and military
alliances that bind us to the American imperialist system. Moreover, it
recommends integration of the Quebecois economy with the North-American
economy, and submission to the present international division of labor. But
political and economic independence cannot be separated this way, and it is
certain that the construction of a popular sovereignty (pouvoir populaire) cannot
follow such a dead-end street .

On the other hand, we must elaborate and collectively put into effect a strategy of
development based on the satisfaction of our real needs and the realization of
our democratic aspirations . This presupposes both a restructuring of our
economy with the objective of reliance at first on ourselves alone, and a
restructuring of our international exchanges which should henceforth evolve
from our development objectives.

This means not only maintaining but developing economic, financial,

commercial, technological and cultural relations with other peoples, and in a
radically different way : in due respect of the independence of peoples, mutual
avoidance of the creation ofrelations of dependence, in the adherence to a policy
of international co-operation at the service ofdevelopment in equality and
solidarity .

In addition, we must put an end to all political, economic and military alliances
and treaties that involve us in complicity with American imperialism . By

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contrast, our project demands that we establish relations of friendship and

solidarity with peoples struggling against all types of exploitation, oppression
and domination ; we must as well fight the thermonuclear menace and make
ourselves active emissaries of peace among peoples .

Moreover, in the same spirit of independence and internationalism, we must cast

off our dependence on the dominant cultural industries both by supporting the
production and diffusion of the culture of the people of Quebec and by permitting
true access to the culture of other peoples, of minorities, and of the native
peoples .

Building an independent Quebec, from our point of view, also means to

undertake the establishment of new relations with the ethnic minorities:
eliminating all forms of discrimination and racism perpetrated against them;
recognizing both their right to difference and their right to integration by
favoring the study, knowledge, use and expression of their own languages and
cultures within the framework of a policy in keeping with the principle that
French is the language of use in Quebec ; according to men and women
immigrants the same rights as to Quebec men and women workers ; favouring in
our immigration policies the re-unification of families and welcome to political
refugees .

Equally this means putting an end to the oppression of the native peoples, and
recognizing their national rights to self-determination and independence ; all the
while inviting them to join as equal members in our social project and
negotiating with them on the basis of their demands : the delimitations of their
territory, the preservation of their culture and way of life, the autonomy of their
social, economic and political organizations .

Independence as we conceive it stands for a good deal more than a new juridical
form of the State. It is the watchword for a whole people; not only for putting
an end to dependence and national oppression, but also for collectively and
democratically appropriating control over that people's conditions of existence
and its future.

For a Democratic Quebec

Through the realization of socialism and independence is raised the necessity of

democratizing all the powers in society . Only a socialist and independent
society can achieve true socialization and authentic popular sovereignty .
These three terms are irrevocably linked.

To construct popular power, we must put an end to the private appropriation of

decisional powers in politics just as much as in the economy, and eliminate
authoritarianism and relations of domination in society .

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We must bring together the conditions that will allow the majority-the
working and popular classes-to exercise effective power in the elaboration of
collective decisions as well as upon their application in working places,
neighborhoods, villages and cities, in the regions and on the national level.

On the level of its organization and its operation, the Quebecois State must be
radically transformed through the democratization of the legislative, executive,
administrative, judicial and police apparatus, so as to guarantee the effective
realization of the wishes (volontes) of the people.

The power of the State must be decentralized, debureaucratized, and

dehierarchized so as to interdict the appropriation of power by a minority . Far
from being based on a monopoly by a single party, or on the fusion of the State
with a party, the organization of political power must express a new dynamic
based simultaneously on the recognition of the freedom of political organization,
on the recognition of the role and autonomy of popular and worker
organizations, on the development of fundamental solidarities and the
decentralization of power towards the local and regional collectivities, as well as
on the birth of multiple locations of political expression and intervention
appropriate for working and popular classes .

Certainly political power, be it on the local, regional or national level, must

dispose of a true capacity to co-ordinate and effect collective decisions . It must
also possess sufficient force to resist internal or external pressures in
opposition to democratic decisions . And this power must exercise itself
within a dynamic of participation, exchange and interaction in such a way as
to prevent dominating and repressive bureaucratic apparatuses from being
able to take root.

Our democraticproject recognizes that the rights and liberties ofthe individual
are inalienable and guarantees their permanent respect through specific and
independent institutional mechanisms.

Our democratic project equally recognizes the rights and liberties of the
collectivities and that these must be fully recognized: the rights and liberties of
association, union, expression, demonstration, the right to negotiation and the
continuous right to strike. It recognizes the rights of individuals and groups with
common interests and objectives to form autonomous organizations and to
establish relations of force (rapport de force) in defence of their rights . It
recognizes the fundamental right of individuals and collectivities to be real
agents of political power; that is, to democratically direct all aspects of their work
and lives .

Instead of opposing individual to collective rights, and thus seek to eliminate one
in the name of the other, our project on the contrary favors their reciprocal
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expansion and reinforcement.

Building a democratic Quebec is to provide the means to establish new relations

between individuals and collectivities .

Certainly tensions and conflicts of interest will continue to exist between the
individual and the collective, between the national, regional and local collectives
as well as between different groups. The elimination of dependence, the
abolition of social classes, the disappearance of inequalities between men and
women, the socialization of the economy, the democratization of powers will not
be achieved overnight, and even once achieved they will not eliminate all
contradictions .

Nevertheless, all these transformations will create a new dynamic in social

relations that will allow tensions and conflicts to be recognized and to be
democratically resolved in the framework of the organisms that society will
have created in accordance with the interests and aspirations of the working and
popular majority, and in a common spirit of solidarity.

For Equality Between Men and Women

just as fundamentally as socialism, independence, and democracy, the

establishment of egalitarian relations between men and women on the social as
well as economic, cultural, political, and juridical levels is an essential basis for
the construction of a veritable popular power in Quebec. This represents one of
the objectives that is at the very heart of our political project.

We must put an end to the sexual division of labor and sexual discrimination
be it in culture, advertising, information media, the school, the family or work,
and to establish special measures to systematically check the historical and
structural discrimination of which women are the victims .

We must eliminate all forms of the domination of women, the constraints,

harassments, humiliations, and the violence that the present society exercises
against them.

This presupposes in particular the recognition of parental responsibilities and

familial tasks as being social responsibilities, such as to establish conditions to
allow these responsibilities and tasks to be shared between men and women in an
egalitarian fashion as well as a greater socialization of the tasks of reconstitution
and reproduction, notably by means of a network of daycare services that is
universal, free of charge, and controlled by the users and men and women
workers . Equally this supposes that the costs brought about by the fact of having
children be shared by the collectivity as a whole .

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 POUR UN QUEBEC SOCIALISTE

Moreover, this supposes that maternity, the function specific to women, be

finally socially recognized, that all maternities can be freely consented to, and
that consequently all women have the possibilities and means either to interupt a
pregnancy or bring it to an end without harm to either their health or other rights .

Finally this supposes a radical transformation of the organization of work which

eliminates all discrimination both in working conditions and in pay between men
and women, favors the development of egalitarianism for women as well as for
men in all sectors of employment, the taking into account of pregnancy, birth and
nursing as much through the flexibility of schedules and the granting of leaves as
in the nature of the work, and moreover an egalitarian sharing of familial
responsibilities and tasks .

To build equality between men and women is to put together the conditions such
that socialism, independence, and democracy are realized not halfway, but fully
and for all men and women .

Towards popular power

By collectively appropriating the means of production and exchange, socializing

enterprises and services, transforming the organization of work, democratizing
economic and political power, achieving independence, and transforming
relations between men and women, the working and popular classes will build a
new society that will answer to their needs and their collective aspirations .

How will these transformations be expressed with respect to one another? At

what pace will we proceed with the required socialization? What stages will we
have to go through in the realization of independence? What democratic
mechanisms will we have to establish? What kind of relations will there be
between the State and the political organizations, the social movements, the
rank-and-file collectives? How will the political power be expressed with respect
to economic power?

So many questions to debate, so many problems to resolve, so many political

choices to effectuate, for us to undertake today to raise in the very heart of the
working and popular classes .

In order to conduct this collective reflection, to elaborate their project of society,

construct their power, the working and popular classes must undertake to forge
an instrument for themselves .

It is for this end that we must now get down to work.

 POUR UN QUEBEC SOCIALISTE

III

A MOVEMENT TO CONSTRUCT

Undertaking to transform in-depth Quebecois society in accordance with their

interests and their collective hopes, the working and popular classes must
henceforth count only on their own power (force) .

The time has come to put an end to our class dependence in the face of those
political parties-Liberal, pequiste, or other-who have largely demonstrated,
in varying degrees, that they are the political expressions and the servants of the
interests of the capitalist minority that exploits and dominates us.

The time has come to stop being in tow to these political administrators of
capitalism, and to no longer leave the defense of our interests to those parties,
that, from election to election, if not from generation to generation, do not cease
betraying our collective aspirations.

These parties will never tackle the real causes of exploitation and domination.
They will never really question the inequalities between men and women, nor
dependence, nor unemployment, nor poverty . Only the working and popular
classes have the interest and the political will to do so, because they experience
the necessity in their lives and in their work.

The construction of a radically new society necessitates the establishment of

an autonomous political movement of the working and popular classes . This
represents an essential condition and an indispensable step.

Already with our trade-union and popular organizations we have given ourselves
the collective instruments that have permitted us to appropriate for ourselves
through autonomous measures, the defence and the transformation of our living
and working conditions . We must today appropriate for ourselves "politics" ("la
politique') by giving ourselves our own instrument of political struggle.

Our political project supposes such radical changes in social relations, and meets
head-on such powerful interests, that we cannot hope to realize it without
disposing of a collective instrument with which to confront the considerable
resistances that we will encounter . It is easy to imagine that the capitalist class,
having access to political, economic and military power, will not witness the
questioning of its privileges and the explosion of its domination without reacting.

How are we to achieve victory without having a political lever that will carry our
project and that will gain such support from the people that the capitalist
domination can be broken?

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 POUR UN QUEBEC SOCIALISTS

The project of a socialist, independent, democratic Quebec in which there will be

equality between men and women, can only be realized within the framework of
a political movement that is wholly and profoundly controlled by the social
classes that bear the hope for it .

Let Us Construct Our Movement

The Socialist Movement that we today undertake to construct, as well its

strategy of implantation and development, are determined by the political
project that we put forth.

Our project implies radical transformations in the political, economic, social and
cultural organizations of Quebec society. It affirms the necessity for the working
and popular classes to conquer not only the State power, but all sites of power,
and to appropriate, transform and democratize them in such a way that socialism
is one that is lived by the men and women workers in their daily lives, and the
sovereignty acquired be that of the collectivities-autonomous and solidary-
over their development and their future.

This represents a profound change that cannot be realized by the simple election
of deputies . Certainly, given the present political void and the urgency of change,
the temptation to constitute a party to hurl ourselves in the conquest of State
power could be great and legitimate...but this is a temptation to be wary of, one
that in the present situation could at best lead to ephemeral and fragile successes.
It is not sufficient to simply decree that Quebec is henceforth socialist,
independent and democratic, for it to become so!

The changes to which we aspire will not take place overnight . We must first
bring together a constellation of political conditions : transcend divisions and
realize the political unity of the working and popular classes; deeply implant
our project in all the regions and spheres of life and work; arouse and develop
a will to struggle and change, construct a relationship of strength, develop
international solidarities ; in short, put into operation a social dynamic capable
of carrying out our political project.

We must bring about a true political and unitary mutation in the midst of the
working and popular classes. It is through the construction, as of today, in our
working and living environments, of a large movement for socialism,
independence, democracy and equality between men and women, that we will get
there.

And if it is reasonable to believe that in its development this movement will in its
time undertake the conquest of Statepower, we must today start at the beginning
and act in such a way as to make this seizure of power not only possible but
significant with respect to our fundamental objectives .

13 5
 POUR UN QUEBEC SOCIALISTE

To the power of capital, the working and popular classes oppose their unity and
their solidarity. The coming into being of a movement that will realize in its
internal operation the main orientation of our political project will be the
expression of it.

A site for regroupment not centralization

The Socialist Movement will be a site of regroupment, not of centralization.

It will aim at regrouping, as broadly as possible, all those men and women who
adhere to its orientations as expressed by this manifesto, and who want to take
concrete action in the areas ofwork and life, in order to establish at the base the
foundations for a socialist, independent, democratic Quebec where there will
exist equality between men and women.

To become a member, it is necessary to subscribe to the manifesto, to engage

oneself in the organizational tasks that evolve from it, to accept the statutes and
rules, and pay the dues that have been established. Those belonging to another
political organization will not be able to join .

In its procedures of implantation, our movement will seek to be as representative

as possible in its male/female, geographic and social distribution .

It will be of a national character, rooted in all the regions of Quebec, and all
sectors of activity . In a first step, it will be formed around provisional regional
committees that will be set up soon after the publication of this manifesto .

It will be constructed on the basis of a democratic and decentralized structure,

allowing simultaneously its members' control over the orientations, the
actions, the leadership decisions, and the democratic expressions of the
different regions and various fields of struggle.

Until the convocation of a first congress at the latest one year after the
publication of the manifesto, the Movement will function under provisional
statutes and will be co-ordinated by a committee of eleven persons elected from
the project's initiating group, and by a provisional national council composed of
a co-ordinating committee and of delegates from regional committees .

A site of egalitarian relations between men and women

The Socialist Movement will be a site of egalitarian relations between men and
women.

Not only will it leave a clear field to the expression and development of the
specific struggles of women, and support them through the creation of a

13 6
 POUR UN QUEBEC SOCIALISTS

permanent committee concerned with the living and working conditions of

women, but it will grant constant priority to the establishing of egalitarian
relations at all levels of organization and at every stage of its implantation as
much in its recruitment efforts as in its decision-making and concrete activities .

Taking into particular account the parental and familial responsibilities of its
men and women militants, the Socialist Movement will aim at establishing
concrete conditions that permit full, entire and egalitarian participation of men
and women .

A site of convergence not domination

The Socialist Movement will be a site of convergence of solidarities and

struggles, not a site of domination . It will be fully autonomous with respect to
trade-union and popular organizations, and will only accept individual
memberships. It will be respectful of the very nature and specific autonomy of
trade-union and popular organizations, rejecting absolutely political
conceptions that aim at subordinating social movements, the notion of
"transmission belt", attempts at monopolizing the political field . By contrast it
will clearly affirm that an essential condition for the in-depth transformation of
Quebec society is precisely the existence and development of trade-union and
popular organizations that are autonomous and dynamic.

Seeking the political unity of the working and popular classes, the Socialist
Movement will certainly strive to attract the adhesion of members of union and
popular organizations, though in the strict respect of democratic mandates and
outside all strategies of manipulation.

Autonomous and respectful of autonomies, the Socialist Movement will be a site

of convergence so that the demands and struggles of the working and popular
classes open onto a larger political framework .

A site of debate not dogmatism

The Socialist Movement will be a site of democratic discussion and debate, not of
dogmatism.

It will persue a collective reflection so as to elaborate, in the light of its

development and its struggles, a project of society, a program of struggle and a
program of transition to socialism that will give rise to the adhesion of the
working and popular classes of Quebec because these will be the expression of
their interests and their aspirations. It will give itself the appropriate means to
become a true site for political education (formation politique) .

An instrument of struggle and intervention

13 7
 POUR UN QUEBEC SOCIALISTE

But even more the Socialist Movement will be an instrument of struggle and
political intervention .

Through it the working and popular classes will be able to provide themselves
with all the necessary means to denounce all forms of exploitation, oppression
and domination. It will be their instrument for making known their point of
view, and for defending their collective interests in all major debates . It will be
their tool for getting down to work, as of today, on the egalitarian, free and
solidary Quebec of tomorrow.

As female and male activists for a socialist, independent, democratic Quebec in

which there will be equality between men and women, we are today making an
appeal through this manifesto to all those men and women ofthe working and
popular classes who share our aspirations and will for change : let us together
construct the Socialist Movement!

Conscious of the amplitude and the difficulties of the political combat that we are
undertaking, it is with confidence and determination that we launch this call. For
we are profoundly convinced that this combat will tomorrow be that of the
Quebec people as a whole.

Quebec
October, 1981
Canadian Journal ofPolitical and Social Theory / Revue Canadienne de theorie
politique et sociale, Vol . 6, Nos. 1-2 (River/Printemps, 1982) .

BLACK ROCK MANIFESTO

The BlackRock memorial stone in the traditionally Anglo working class district
of Pointe Saint-Charles in Montreal, honoring the 6,000 immigrants that diedof
typhoid fever in 1847.

Not a Bleeding Heart of Christ or the head of holy fool John the Baptist but a
huge black rock like a bad tooth pulled out of the river and placed on the common
grave by the working men that built the Victoria Bridge .

They built the bridge, they didn't name it or the city they worked in, living on
streets like Duke, Prince, King, Queen, streets that are now parking lots in what
was once called Griffintown after John Griffin, Montreal's first slum landlord
and like all immigrants they were scared and hoped and prayed that God or luck
or the boss would give them a break but like all immigrants they learnt that the
only thing to do right or wrong was to kick shit and keep on kicking it until
something broke.

And they fought the landlords, the bosses, the politicians, the rich millionnaire
gangsters posing as gentry on the mountain and then too, the French habitants,
starved off their land and moving into Anglo Montreal neighborhoods, taking
away Anglo jobs, lowering the wages and level of misery forcing the Anglo
workers into a fatal unspoken agreement with the Westmount ruling class that
in exchange for acting as sort of unofficial garrison troops, the Anglos would
receive preferential treatment in the British-owned companies just like the
Protestant Orangemen in Northern Ireland.

Yeah keep those peppers down on the farm and Rule Britainnia with
Griffintown following Westmount into wars that had nothing to do with them,
dying for the fuckin British Empire in defence of the divine rights of British
Petroleum and then getting hot at the French cause they had enough sense to stay
out of that very bad joke called World War One, which started in 1914 and has
not stopped since with the good guys becoming the bad guys and the bad guys
getting worse .

And Premier Duplessis, the nigger king in smiling photos with the big fat
landlord and the big fat cop waving hello to the big fat priest passing by in his
long black Lincoln while the blokes and pepper fought in the back alleys of Pointe
Saint-Charles, drowning each other below the poverty line with Westmount
having its own trouble keeping pushyJewish parvenus out of their private clubs
while an all American boomtime was transforming the whole continent into one
big supermarket in accordance with the laws and morals of Mickey Mouse and Joe
McCarthy .

139
 BLACK ROCK MANIFESTO

The good life in Fat City with the academics talking about death of ideology and
father does know best after all as long as you can keep the Bomb out of your
nightmares and meanwhile down home on Rockefeller's Plantation the peppers
are watching The Sixty Four Thousand Dollar Question on channel 2 with
Duplessis dead as a statue and Rocket Richard retired to Vitalis haircream and
the Church like an old movie that everyone has seen too many times and the
question being, when do we get our share, calice? And fuck the queen anyhow
and the kings, bishops, knights and rooks and anybody else that stands in the way
of our right to a trailer and a ski-doo .

Boom Boom Boom, FLQ and ski-doo with the UnionJacks disappearing from the
city flagpoles as the French workers began placing their full weight behind their
new militant unions with the French intellectuals deciding that Oui, maybe it was
o.k. to talk joual, tabarnac, and the rich Anglos shitting in their tweeds as new
nigger king Jean Lesage emerged with the new bilingual policy of the Quiet
Revolution which quietly left the working class Anglos behind in their unilingual
ghettos to ponder the past glories of the British Empire that was now leaving
them to a stiff upper-lip fate in a strange new Quebec that was fighting against its
third class status as a colony within a colony .

And then the growth of Uncle Rene and the Parti Quebecois in the Seventies
triggering off a mass exodus down the 401 of McGill students who didn't need
much of an excuse to head out west to where the money is turning green and
leaving behind the old, the middle aged middle incomers with tenure and the
unemployable poor that have no choice but to stay in the Montrealof the Eighties
in a Quebec that doesn't officially recognize that there ever was an Anglo
working class in this city.

And that's all history and who gives a fuck cause the chances are the Bomb will
blow us all to bits anyway, winner, loser, left and right and route la patante but
anyhow, the Black Rock is still there kind of pushed to the side and stuck in the
middle of a narrow traffic islet dividing a two-lane highway leading onto the
Victoria Bridge, sitting there like an obscure traffic marker, useless and forgotten
by a community that stems from the 6,000 people buried under it, a community
that is trapped and feels they have nothing to do but die .

.. .OR CHANGE...

Anyone walking down Wellington Street on a Friday night can see that there are
energies and talents in the Anglo community that haven't been tapped, energy
that results in a mutant hero like Buzz Beurling rather than a Norman Bethune
because there are no proper outlets just a long series of short circuits that result in
the energy eating itself up with the greatest of our poets dying young and proud

140
 BLACK ROCK MANIFESTO

in jails or drinking themselves to death in the uptown bars around Atwater Park.

And dying is easier but some of us shitdisturbers born down there in the Pointe
Saint-Charles-Verdun ghetto have decided to form something called the Black
Rock Group, basing ourselves on the last hope that what's left of the Anglo
community can be salvaged and made useful to itself despite itself and hoping we
can help place more weight behind the progressive forces trying to form a
Quebec that is a colony to no one and belonging to nobody but the people
themselves, of themselves and by themselves.

A QUEBEC THAT LETS US LOVE

A QUEBEC THAT WON'T TURN US SOUR
A QUEBEC THAT DOESN'T KILL ITS POETS

And at least, if nothing else, we'd like to announce that the war is over ... and
nobody won .

When I begin to write something that is perhaps what one might loosely deem
to be a manifesto-an intention of purpose-a collection ofthoughts and things
that reflect my class, I have the inclination to surround it with credible ways of
thinking-those ways which I have inherited from my middle class education .
But I am not Eliot's Prufrock ; I have never been or shall I say, we have never been
"ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas". We are not your "Hollow
Men"-we have been on the front line pissing in our handkerchiefs, holding the
Germans back. We have bathed Dieppe in our blood and have come home
without jobs. This is not really a complaint . We have learned not to complain . At
least, our fathers complained very little . As soon as I completed grade eleven, I
was already further ahead than anyone in our family . I was the way out-the
Dauphin.

Verdun is simple. We volunteer for everything. Its main arteries that pumped
blood into two World Wars are still there. The blood goes now into early
pregnancies and the welfare office . We are the Brooklyn of Montreal. We are
that place which crawled from the slime of the Black Rock like some crazy
Darwinian beast towards the "Northern", towards the C.P .R. We have filled the
factories . The Sun Life would have moved a long time ago without us. We are the
result of the baby boom which simply means that our fathers were not boomed
away in the last War . They had the good fortune ofhaving large fins on their cars
and young sons who had to go to University .

My father had four teeth knocked out when he was a kid hopping an oil truck in
the winter down near Delormier Street. He had both knees broken in the War
and was captured because somebody forgot to tell him that there were fourteen
thousand Germans in the town. He has trouble sleeping at night . Nothing
changes . Verdun is the same. The English don't punch out the zoot-suiters on
 BLACK ROCK MANIFESTO

the boardwalk anymore, but still it's the same.

Rosemont's the same. Working class neighbourhoods are supposed to produce

hockey players, not poets or playwrights . Even if there is not a war, we are
supposed to high-stick someone anyway . My mother with her coveted Bingo
chips and minimum wage. Nothing is supposed to come from us. Certainly not
art . We must know what "Moby Dick" means. We must sit in faculty clubs or else
flirt with the French culture. At first, it was my intention to talk to you as a
friend-as my father might talk to you over a beer, but it occurs to me that you
will not understand . It occurs to me that you will classify, categorize, look for a
footnote. I giveup. This is no longer a statement-this is a threat. Our class shall
no longer be your convenience : We, the sons and daughters of those who died on
strange beaches so Redpath Crescent would survive, will have our say. I am sorry
it is not only the French who threaten you . We shall reverse the disease. We will
create in these troubled times. Our class has taught us to tell the truth or we
would get a punch in the mouth. Something you would not understand. My
grandfather remembered and I remember. He didn't get a double hernia trying
to throw a French cop off the Victoria Bridge for nothing. The Black Rock is not
the myth of Sisyphus. We have pushed it up the hill and into your factories. It is
washedwith blood and now it shall be washed with the creative energies of a new
generation.

We shall walk backwards and applaud no longer . We shall celebrate ourselves .

We will create a forum for our thoughts . We will have it out with you .

Perhaps I can explain it to you a little clearer. Remember in the Sixties when
Stan Mikita was in the Forum giving the "high sign" to the entire crowd-well
that "high sign" is our sign. We have our colour T.V.'s and sometimes we are
quiet. We are "les autres" and don't know why . But we shall create. We shall sing
the song of our class and when we tell you to "fuck off", at least it will not be
footnoted . It will not be interpreted . It is not lower class language. It is that thing
we have learned to say to those in power-to those who refuse to understand.
The referee has made a bad call. Stan knows it and we know it.

Danny Adams Kevin Callahan

David Fennario Jimmy Sorley
John Salmela Keith Wilcox
Sheila Salmela John Bradley
Raymond Filip Nelson Calder
Martin Bowman Kevin German
Georges Beriault Linda Arkinson

Verdun, November 1981

142
Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory / Revue Canadienne de theorie
politique et sociale, Vol. 6, Nos . 1-2 (Hiver/Printemps, 1982) .

PIERRE TRUDEAU ON
THE LANGUAGE OF VALUES AND
THE VALUE OF LANGUAGES

Edward Andrew

No one dies for mere values.

M. Heidegger
We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held.
W. Wordsworth
Wordsworth's equation of freedom with individual and national identity
defined in terms of language and religion, appears both foreign to our
understanding of freedom and yet hauntingly familiar. English-speaking
Canadians outside Quebec tend to take language for granted. But to take language
for granted is to place Canada in jeopardy, for it is to assume that English is to be
the dominant language of North America.
As a French Canadian, Pierre Trudeau is concerned with the conservation of
the French language within a country and a continent where its status is insecure. I
As a liberal, his political commitment is predicated on a conception of liberty and
he has publicly stated that conception of freedom with force and clarity . His
Catholicism is not part of Trudeau's public life. His faith and morals are reserved
for his personal life. The faith in morals of a "civil society" with no commonly
recognized public purpose, becomevalues, or objects of personal estimation. And
an intellectual educated in the contemporary social sciences, Trudeau articulates
the relationship between freedom and language in terms of "values" .
It shall be argued in this paper that to employ the category of values to
language pre-judges and circumscribes certain aspects of linguistic concerns in
Canada. To put it baldly, to call language a 'value' is to categorize it as a luxury,
rather than a necessity. Yet to call it "la nourriture culturelle", as Ren6 Levesque
does,' is to consider it to be indispensable to the existence ofa people, a defining
characteristic rather than an instrument of human beings. In this light the eating
of food, as something essential to our being, is not usually considered a value. To
be sure, Trudeau sometimes recognizes language to be a necessity rather than a
luxury, but in the sense of a necessary vehicle or an essential instrument to
convey or express "values" (or the luxury goods in the world market of moral and
cultural options). And, for Trudeau it is precisely these values, rather than the
language bearing them, which define human beings.
Values and Human Freedom : The Valued and the Evaluators

In Trudeau's articles and speeches, before and after he entered political life,

143
 EDWARD ANDREW

one continually encounters the word valeurs or 'values' . This much-used word
appears familiar, but familiarity does not breed thoughtful reflection about its
derivation and usage. Thus, prior to analyzing Trudeau's political philosophy, his
understanding of human nature and its relation to language, it is necessary to
unfold what is enclosed in the use of the word 'values' .3
The currency of the word 'values' derives from Max Weber's assumption,
based on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, that there are no moral facts .
'Values' are to be distinguished from facts, or the domain of scientific reason.
Since reason is impotent to prescribe or guide human conduct, moral and
political goals are autonomous or self-legislated . 'Values' are the product of will
rather than reason ; they are willed into being. 'Values' have no independent
being disclosed by reason. What is emphasized in the usage of 'values' is our
choosing rather than what is chosen : that the values be ours, freely adopted by us,
rather than that they be rational . Reason cannot prescribe values which one is
compelled to adopt by virtue of one's nature or through conformity to some
natural or God-given standard. Our values are what we will or freely choose, not
what we are commanded, obliged or called upon to do. Our nature is our history;
we are not creatures but creators, creators of our moral as well as our technical
world . Our freedom consists in the voluntary adoption or rejecton of existing
values and their continual re-creation in repetitive, selective and transformative
actions. The place of reason is to serve freedom, to avoid inconsistency and
impossibility, and to find the appropriate means to secure the end willed, or the
value chosen . Values, then, are the principles, sentiments, habits, interests and
aspirations that are manifested and defined by moral choices or practical
commitments which constitute our character or personality structure.
Yet our values, it might be said, are not of our own choosing . They are
imparted to us by a particular religious tradition, class -background and cultural
inheritance . But adherence to inherited values, (which include the heresies,
revisions, and creations within the preservation of our heritage), are not
reducible to that which has been given us. We are forced to choose, whether or
not we want responsibility or autonomy. But to hold blindly to our prejudices or
pre-judgments is to choose, however it seems to violate our essence asjudges,
choosers or evaluators . Yet no commitment is so binding, no alternative is so
appealing, no action is so compelling that we can evade our freedom . So it is in
the recognition of personality as free that we can appropriately speak of values.
Thus values are the creation of the free subject who projects a world of meaning
and significance into a course of actions that are not inherently or demonstrably
choiceworthy . In this sense, values are subjective, not grounded . They rest in
freedom, on nothing .
To speak of religion as a value is not to assert that God is present in the world
and that His will commands our assent. Rather is it to assert that we exist as the
measure of all value and some conception of God is useful to the living of a vital
and moral life. Similarly, to speak of nationalism or culture as values is not to
assert that the nation has given birth to what we are (the word nation has the
same root as nature, natal and nativity) or that a cult has sustained that birth and

144
 TR UDEA UAND THE LANGUAGE QUESTION

encouraged growth (as in a bacterial culture) . As values, they depend upon us for
their status . They do not have an independent reality-as do facts . Thus to assign
nationalism and culture the status of values is to assert that we do not depend upon
the nation or the cult for our birth and growth but rather that we freely dispose of
them and honour them as instruments of our freedom. We stand in a relation to the
so-called higher values as beings with the power and authority to estimate their
worth to us . We implicitly exalt the position of the valuer above the valued. To call
something a higher value is to deprecate it, to lower it in status by subjecting it to
our appraisal . As a value, culture is not the measure of man but man, whether or
not exposed to, and nurtured by, the cult, assigns a quality to culture . Only for
men and women who have cast themselves as the measure of all things, as the
sovereign subject, do values achieve a position higher than Man .
But, if man is the measure of all things, what is the standard to measure human
conduct? If all lengths are to be gauged by 'the standard metre in Paris', what is
the length of this standard of measurement? To answer a metre is meaningless,
as it assumes some standard beyond what is accepted to be the standard of
measurement . We stipulate standards of measurement-freely . Values are free,
arbitrary or willed stipulations to gauge conduct? The sub-stance (what is
standing under) of these stipulations is man as sub-ject (what is cast under), as
the ground of values .

The Free Subject as Natural Individualist :

Language and Community as Instruments

Trudeau writes :

Je crains qu'a crop se preoccuper de 1'avenir de la langue, un

certain courant de pensee n'ait oublie celui de 1'homme qui la
parle . Si les travailleurs tiennent a leur valeurs culturelles et a
leur langue, ils tiennent fortement a vivre convenablement . . 4

Who then is the man lurking beneath the tongue but somehow connected to
it? A preliminary answer seems to be given - the worker, or to be more precise,
the worker as consumer. Yet how is human nature, thus understood, clearly
related to language?
In Les cheminements de la politique, Trudeau presents an account of human
nature by examining the basis of political authority . He rejects the idea of a social
contract, although that doctrine correctly emphasizes the will or consent of the
governed as the source of legitimate government . Trudeau insists that a
contractual basis of society is inadequate because men are born into a particular
society independently of their will and consent. Men are naturally social beings
and subject to some form of political authority, although "les hommes restent
toujours libres de decider quelle forme d'autorite ils se donneront, et qui

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 EDWARD ANDREW

I'exercera."-In short, Trudeau advocates the doctrine of the liberal

contractarians within the framework of the Catholic natural law tradition .
Aristotle presents the basis of Trudeau's political theory : "Le principal but de
la societe est que ses membres puissent, tant collectivement que chacun en
particulier, vivre une vie pleine."6 However, in elaborating Aristotle's view of
the innate sociality of men, Trudeau substantially revises Aristotle, particularly
with reference to the enjoyment of collective life.' "Or nous vivons en societe
precisement afin de pouvoir attaquer collectivement les problemes que nous ne
pouvons pas resoudre individuellement ." 8 That is, participation in collective life
is an external necessity rather than a positive aspiration ; unfortunately,
individual enterprise cannot provide the transportation systems, safety and
health measures that individuals demand . Collective life is thus seen by Trudeau
as technically necessary for the achievement of individual ends or individualist
values .

Apres tout, si les hommes vivent en societe, c'est comme disait

Aristote afin qu'ils puissent vivre une vie pleine. Les societes
humaines existent precisement afin que, par 1'entraide, la
collaboration et la division du travail, les hommes vivant
ensemble puissent se realiser plus pleinement que s'ils vivaient
separement. Si les hommes ne pouvaient orienter leurs efforts
collectifs a cette fin, il feraient mieux d'aller vivre tout seuls
dans les bois et sur les collines .9

Trudeau presents a Rousseauian individualism in Aristotelian clothing,

although his Rousseauianism involves a more favourable assessment of the
benefits of technique and collective labour than can be found in JeanJacques'
Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts. For Aristotle did not think that social life
goes against the grain of men's nature. Nor did he think that human sociality was
merely a means to an end, namely necessary to the achievement of private,
consumer interests . Aristotle states, in the sentences prior to that cited and then
paraphrased by Trudeau :

.. .man is an animal impelled by his nature to live in a polis. A

natural impulse is thus one reason why men desire to live a
social life even when they stand in no need of mutual succour,
but they are also drawn. together by a common interest, in
proportion as each attains a share in good life.i o

What is striking in Trudeau's representation of Aristotle's understanding of

men's social and political nature is what is conspicuously absent, namely, an

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 TR UDEA U AND THE LANGUAGE QUESTION

account of language . In Aristotle's well-known argument, the basis of his

contention that human destiny consists in participating in a political community
is that man is unique amongst the animals in being gifted with language ." Man
alone is a political animal because he is able to reveal his nature, and the nature of
other things, in speech . He is able to convey his interests and his ideas of justice
and to resolve conflicting interests and opinions through persuasive speech .
Language is not merely useful in conveying information, serving vital wants and
obviating pressing fears, but is also a form of display or playful revelation and a
form of communion, establishing and preserving a sense of kinship essential to
the political community . Contrary to liberal theorists, Aristotle insists that a
political society cannot be merely a network of instrumental relationships, of
mutual exchanges and pacts for common security ." The gift of logos is what
makes possible apolitical community, and the exercise of that gift is the purpose
of human life .
For Trudeau, it is not language that distinguishes man from other social
animals . Following Rousseau, Trudeau asserts that it is free choice . 13 Rousseau is
clear that language is not natural to man ; it is the product of some historical
accident, such as an earthquake which created an island from the mainland and
forces natural individualists into contact with one another ." This bizarre account
illustrates Rousseau's view that human nature is fundamentally pre-social and
pre-linguistic . Language merely utters pre-verbal and personal experiences ; it
expresses the impressions of things upon the senses and the passionate response
to them . Participation in a political community is neither for Rousseau nor
Trudeau an outgrowth of what is unique to man, of the natural faculty of speech,
but a means to the achievement of personal (and fundamentally pre-social and
pre-linguistic goals .' 5

The Shift from Logos to Ratio

Trudeau seems to adhere to the Latinization of the Aristotelian understanding

of man as the being endowed with speech into man as the rational animal . 16 The
basis for this shift appears to be two-fold : first, that man's rational nature cannot
be encompassed within a specific linguistic community and secondly, that reason
is preeminently to serve human "animality", creature comforts, the material or
economic requirements of man the consumer .
As to the universality of man, the rational animal, Trudeau approvingly cites
Renan :

L'homme n'appartient ni a sa langue, ni a sa race ; il

n'appartient qu'a lui-meme, car c'est un etre libre, c'est-a-dire
un etre moral.l 7

14 7
 EDWARD ANDREW

Furthermore, he asserts :

L'ere des frontieres linguistiques est finie, au moins en ce qui

concerne la science et la culture ... 11

In the realm of science, language merely denotes certain objective or

universally intersubjective processes (and the languages of mathematics and
symbolic logic are universally comprehensible means of organizing scientific
experience) . But the realm of culture is more problematic since there is no
universally recognized language which surpasses the frontiers of linguistic
communities . Writes Trudeau :

...il importe maintenant d'examiner le cas plus difficile des

valeurs culturelles qui se rattachent directement a la notion
d'ethnie ; ou plus precisement, des valeurs qui;,au Canada et au
Quebec, sont vehiculees par la langue fran~aise.l9

There would seem to be some inconsistency in asserting that culture transcends

language barriers and also that cultural values are somehow bound up with
ethnicity and language. However the inconsistency is less striking when we
consider that language is merely a vehicle or means of conveying meanings or
'values' . Although 'values' must be conveyed or communicated, they are not
conditioned by the means or vehicle of communication . The medium is not the
message. Language is an instrument, albeit a most important one, for conveying
values which are not limited or conditioned by the instrument. A tool is external
to, or not an integral part of, its user. Thus, if 'values' are as universal as the
objects of scientific investigation, the many languages of the world can conveyor
express these 'values' without altering them in the means of communication or
expression . If the era of linguistic frontiers has gone, then the 'meanings', 'ideas'
or 'values' represented in language, or to which language refers, are as external to
language as scientific objects are to mathematical concepts .
What I wish to emphasize in this shift from logos to ratio is that language has
become external to man, as an instrument, a means of conveying information or
meanings rather than informing the meaning conveyed, a means of expressing
personal experience rather than impressing itself upon experience . In loosening
the bonds between the speaker and speech, the shift from logos to ratio also
loosens the ties between speech and what is spoken of. The ideal or real objects
(meanings or things) represented in language are detached from the linguistic
community using and being used by the language. The meaning of concepts (like
the material qualities of things) are assumed to be independent of common,
poetic or philosophic usage. Ideas reside outside rather than inside speech until a

148
 TR UDEA UAND THE LANGUAGE QUESTION

universal language or 'logic' is created to represent adequately the objects of

reason to reason as subject . Language is a displaceable mediation (medium of
communication and means of thinking), a stop-gap until reason embraces itself
in the cybernetic automation of logos servicing the pre-linguistic purposes of
'man' . The crucial point in the shift from logos to ratio is that it presupposes that
speech refers beyond itself to speakers as reasonable subjects and to what is
spoken of as objects of reason and that neither subject nor object is informed by
language.
Linguistic frontiers have doubtless eroded for man, the rational and
tool-making animal . If Marx and Engels were wrong to assert that industrial
workers have no country, their error was based on the correct estimate that the
world of science and technique, in which workers are professionally engaged, is
increasingly universal and free of the heterogeneity of pre-industrial modes of
production (which depend on differential soil fertility, climate, irrigation
facilities, natural resources, trading and communication opportunities) . Today
one would expose oneself to ridicule if one were to refer to a national science (in
the way one speaks of a national culture) . Even to speak of a specific manner of
harnessing the power of natural or international science as a national technology
or ethnic technique would be considered parochial.
Trudeau has few peers in his warm disposition to the cosmopolitan mission of
modern science, in his appraisal of the richer and more fruitful lives provided by
industrial technology to increasing numbers of people, and in his hopes for
enhanced freedom or mastery in the cybernetic revolution . Yet the universality
of modern technology, the best-loved child of science and commerce, threatens to
homogenize man's estate and to depersonalize man within that estate . As
Trudeau put it :

La technologie qui cree 1'abondance et le bonheur materiel

presuppose une masse indifferenciee de consommateurs, et
tend ainsi a minimiser les valeurs par lesquelles la personne
humaine acquiert et retient son identite propre, valeurs que je
groupe ici sous la vague vocable "culturel" . L'ordre politique
etabli par 1'Etat doit lutter contre cette depersonnalisation en
poursuivant des objectifs culturels . 20

Cultural 'values' thus enter into a dialectic, or a fruitful tension of attraction and
repulsion, with technological 'values' . It is not just a question of French and
English Canadians being drawn, moaning with pleasure and with pain, into the
orbit of multinational corporations . Rather it is more a question of how
Canadians can remain Canadian, and Quebecois, Quebecois, when subject to
international capital, particularly when the instrument of communication in
North American is the English language . 2 ' Is international technique to be an
instrument of Canadians or are Canadians to be instruments of international

149
 EDWARD ANDREW

technology? For one to conceive of technique being used by, rather than using,
man, one must conceive of certain ends, or purposes which are not the means to,
or the products of, economic or technological objectives . Trudeau calls these ends
or purposes 'cultural values' ; they constitute the identity of the free subject who
uses language and technique as instruments of identifiable purposes . The
identity of the free tool-user does not derive from the tool used, although there is
the permanent possibility of a surrender of freedom in the identification of the
user with the tool, or in the submergence of personality under the impact of
dominant technological forces .
It is within the context of these considerations that Trudeau can consistently
maintain that language serves to preserve cultural values while asserting that
linguistic barriers to a cosmopolitan culture are, and should be, disappearing . The
world of 'material' and 'spiritual' goods are only appropriated in freedom, or are
only appropriate to a free subject, when they can be used by a person for his own
(i .e . cultural) ends . To lack a culture of one's own is to lack an identity that can
take a stand in relation to the dissolving agents of global technique . An uprooted
individual is not able to choose freely in the world market of science and culture .

Language as an Instrument of National Culture or Languages as Nations

In a speech to an Ukrainian-Canadian congress in 1971, Trudeau provided an

account of the place of language in human affairs .

Languages have two functions . They act both as a vehicle of

communication, and as a preservation of culture . Governments
can support languages in either or both of these roles, but it is
only in the communication role that the term 'official' is
employed ."

Trudeau explained that his government's Official Languages Act designates

English and French as the languages to be used in communication with
government but does not necessarily sponsor English or French above other
languages in promoting Canada's cultural mosaic. He distinguished a technical,
administrative function of language as a means or vehicle of communication and
its cultural function as the caretaker or guardian of values .

The other use of language, as an ingredient of cultural

preservation, as the vehicle for the dissemination and
inheritance of literary and artistic treasures, requires no oficial
recognition . Language in this sense is contributor of those
values which guarantee to Canada its diversity, its richness, its

15 0
 TR UDEA UAND THE LANGUAGE QUESTION

strength. Language so described becomes synonomous with

culture . Though language for that purpose need not be official,
it nvertheless deserves the support of government.z3

In this quotation, we see the affirmation of an essential relationship between

language and culture, but the nature of the relationship is presented unclearly.
Language is "an ingredient of cultural preservation", (the apples, the flour or the
salt in an apple pie?), "a contributor" to cultural values (as a catalyst accelerating
but external to the chemicals interacting or as one of the elements in the
compound?), and itself "synonomous with culture" . Clearly if language is
identical in meaning with culture, it cannot merely be either a vehicle, an
ingredient, a contributor or a means of preserving culture . Consistency requires
that we consider Trudeau's statement ofthe identity oflanguage and culture to be
rhetorical emphasis and that he wishes to emphasize that language is an
important ingredient of cultural preservation or a central contributor to cultural
values .
Common sense also speaks against the equation of language and culture . The
Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism sensibly points out that
various groups of Canadians enjoy an identifiable culture different from other
groups who share a common language . For example, most Canadian Jews born in
this country do not speak Yiddish but have maintained a cultural identity despite
having to find a home in another tongue .z4 Speaking a common language is thus
not only not a sufficient condition ofcultural distinctiveness but also is not even a
necessary condition of preserving a cultural identity.However, the point here is
that for Trudeau, cultural identity, like economic power, is prior to language use ;
language is not a precondition, but merely an expression or an instrument of, a
culture (which appears as a-linguistic as money) .

You don't protect a language essentially by laws or even by a

constitution. You can prop it up artificially that way but if you
want to have a language preserved and have it flourish, it will
be by making that language, in a sense, the expression of a
dynamic, lively, important, cultured, wealthy, powerful group.
I don't think you do this by laws. You can't legislate a language
into importance . You can, once again, make sure that the
people who speak a language become a very important
contribution to the society in which they live and therefore that
language will take prominence.z5

If language is not identical with culture and is not a necessary condition for the
preservation of cultural values, could we say that language is one of the many
'values' that comprise culture or a way of life? Trudeau appears to speak of
 EDWARD ANDREW

language as a 'value' .

Or il faut bien le reconnaitre, le fran~ais d'ici ne sera valable que

dans la mesure ou il sera parle par un people qui se tiendra a
I'avant-garde duprogres . Ce qui fait la vitalite et la valeur d'une
langue, c'est la qualite de la collectivity qui la parle.zs

To be sure, when Trudeau refers to language as a 'value', hedoes not mean it to

be understood as an 'ultimate value' . Its 'value' is conditional upon other 'values'
expressed by the speakers of the language. But if our earlier discussion of the
meaning of 'values' is correct, all 'values' (and not just the value of language) are
conditional upon the disposition of the free subject . That is, 'values' are
instruments in the progress of human freedom and are conditional to the extent
of their contribution to this end. In designating certain things or relationships as
'values', we honour the human subject who realizes his or her freedom, through
these things or relationships . What is notable in Trudeau's formulation is not
that language, as a value, is conditional upon ulterior purposes (freedom,
progress) but that the human subject who freely disposes of its 'values' is a
collectivity, or a people, and not an individual.
It may seem strange toportray a people or a nation as a collective subject since
collectivities do not think, feel, judge and act as do individuals, and since Trudeau
understands collectivities to be individuals jointly engaged in the common
pursuit of individual interests . However, what is crucial to our analysis is to see
that the collective subject, like the individual subject, maintains an external
relationship to the object valued. The language which is valued by the people
speaking it is not intrinsically or definitionally related to the people or nation as a
collective subject. The collectivity, like the individual, is not defined in terms of
language. Trudeau usually defines a nation or a people in terms of ethnicity,
rightly observing that such a conception of a national collectivity is theoretically
unsound and practically intolerant. But if Quebec nationalists were to hold by a
racial or ethnic definition of a nation, they would object to all immigration into
Quebec rather than to the tendency of immigrants into Quebec to
adopt the English rather than the French language. Trudeau's conception of the
nation is not just a straw-horse to be knocked down but inheres in the notion ofa
pure subject (individual or collective) prior to all particularisms, who then
clothes himself or itself with concrete characteristics called 'values' . Indeed,
Trudeau does not always seem to take a negative view of the nation.

La nation est porteuse de valeurs certaines : un heritage

culturel, des traditions communes, une conscience commun-
autaire, une continuite historique, une ensemble des moeurs,
toutes choses qui contribuent-au stage present de 1'evolution
de 1'humanite-au developpement de la personnalite.z'

15 2
 TR UDEA UAND THE LANGUAGE QUESTION

Here we see Trudeau reaffirm that the collectivity exists for the purpose of
individual development and that the nation is not understood in terms of
language but in terms of cultural 'values' . The nation seems to be endowed with
personality or subjectivity ; it is the porter or caretaker who conveys or preserves
goods or values . But porters or caretakers do not enjoy a lofty status ; they deal
with goods belonging to others, and serve the individuals entitled to their
services . The collective subject is a servant of individuals .
Yet if we understand nationality in linguistic terms, we can see why the nation
might be considered to be a subject rather than a predicate of individuals . For, as
Marx and Wittgenstein emphasized, there are no private languages . Thus, to the
extent that thinking requires language, our personal experiences are brought to
self-awareness by means of what is common to a linguistic community. Language
not only serves to express or convey one's experiences to others but also, and
more fundamentally, to impress itself on, and order, experience . A child learns
about the world by seeing the way words are used . The meaning of words is not
unique to himself unless the child remains autistic and incapable of registering
his thoughts in a regulated framework and of communicating them to others .
Thus our thoughts are never simply our own ; they are a product of social or
linguistic interaction .
It is truer to say that thinking individuals are the product of a linguistic
community than it is to say that a nation is the product of the thoughts or'values'
of natural individualists or'unsocialized' individuals . As Aristotle said, the
community is prior to the individual. This does not mean that the end of human
life is to subordinate individuals to the collectivity but that the pre-condition of a
'human' life for individuals-the exercise of logos in practical and theoretical
matters-is participation in a linguistic community . As indicated above, Trudeau
cites Aristotle's dictum that individual fulfillment is the end or purpose of
collective life . He parts from Aristotle in failing to recognize language as
inseparable from man, as the very element within which one can question or
doubt who or what man is . Language is no more a value, or a vehicle to convey
values, than is man . 28 For language itself is man. As such, man is not a pure
subject but is subjected to, or conditioned by, the language with which he is at
home .

Language, Languages and Meaning

The purpose of this paper has been to clarify the dimensions of Pierre
Trudeau's approach to language . His approach is grounded in a rejection of an
Aristotelian understanding of human nature, of the innate sociability of men and
of language as that power which unifies and orders a political community. This
rejection is the precondition of the thoughtful application of the vocabulary of
values to linguistic questions . Consistent with the grammar of values in the
analysis of moral and political questions, Trudeau identifies individuals and

15 3
 EDWARD ANDREW

collectivities not in terms of language but in terms of the values adopted by the
free subject, who somehow subsists under the particularisms or accidents of class,
culture and nationality. Language is understood as an instrument or vehicle of
human freedom, not as the very being of humanity. As a 'value' or a vehicle to
convey 'values', language is external to the definition of a man or of a specific
group of men: the nation is conceived in terms independent of a linguistic
community.
It is for this reason that the vocabulary of values may be inappropriate to
linguistic concerns in Canada . For a fundamental conflict in Canada is between
French-Canadians and English-Canadians, not between individuals who happen
to speak French and those who happen to speak English . It is not a question of
the values of those who speak the tongue that Shakespeare or Racine spake: it is a
question of the very being of French and English Canadians .
If one understands language merely as a vehicle to convey values, one would be
at a loss to account for the public misperception that the Official Languages Act
forces Canadians to speak both French and English . The error that the Act is a
threat to freedom and personal identity is suggestive of the truth that individuals
see their identity and their freedom to consist in the security of their mother
tongue . What English-speaking Canadians should come to realize is that
French-Canadians experience a similar sentiment . They do not want to bear
what many consider to be the burdens of bilingualism ; they do not want to feel
compelled to speak English in order to get on in the public and private
corporations .29 Those who have been inappropriately called "the white niggers
of America" do not simply want more of an anglophone pie, for the language one
speaks is not as external to one's civic status as is one's blackness or whiteness .
whiteness .
The Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism stated: "As a means
of communication, language is the natural vehicle for a host of other elements of
culture." 3° An even stronger link between language and culture is suggested in
the statement that language is "an essential expression ofculture." 31 However, as
a means of communication or of expression, language is secondary to what is
prior in importance or closer to man, the culture which is conveyed or expressed.
Such a view, which is similar to that of the prime minister, might be called a
liberal or anti-nationalist understanding of language.
The Royal Commission cites, but does not espouse, the following opinion of
R.L. Watts :

It is through language that man not only communicates but

achieves communion with others . It is language which, by its
structure, shapes the very way in which men order their
thoughts coherently . It is language which makes possible social
organization. 32
 TR UDEA UAND THE LANGUAGE QUESTION

This view, which might be called a nationalist or communitarian understanding

of language, is that which has been implicitly advanced throughout this paper as
an alternative to Trudeau's instrumentalist conception. The Royal Commission
advances a third alternative, which might be called a moderate or liberal
nationalist view; namely, that it is language which unites a culture, but it is
culture or "a way of being, thinking or feeling" which defines a man. 33
If, as the nationalist view of language claims, it is the structure of a language
that shapes the way men think, one might infer that it is impossible to translate
one language into another . If so, the position is absurd, particularly for one who
attempts to analyse the ideas of a bilingual, such as Trudeau . (However, the
structure of French and English grammar or usage is not so different that one
encounters the problems of translating between two languages of independent
origins and differing grammatical structures. And doubtless, with the. techniques
of modern linguistics and sufficient sensitivity to understand the nuances of the
languages involved, any sentence of any language can be translated into another.)
However the question is not so much whether one can translate the ideas
formulated in one language into another but whether the ideas formulated in one
language are shaped or conditioned by the language in use .
Can one assert that all words have a strict denotation, that is, something
external to speech to which one can point? Or do a good many words also have, or
only have, a variety of connotations, or meanings internal to speech, meanings
determinable only through relation to the usage of other words? Les mots can be
denotative nouns (noms, names) or less denotative verbs (verbes, words) .
Hobbesian nominalism, with its instrumentalist view of language, may do less
justice to the activity or potency of words (verbes). What a word means (veut
dire) may be what one wants to say, but what is meant by a word wanting to say
something?
Perhaps one might say that words refer beyond themselves, not simply to
things, as Hobbes had it, but to universal ideas or meanings, as Plato thought .
That is, the abode of Platonic forms is not in the tongue but in some intelligible
realm to which all reasonable beings have access, regardless of the specific tongue
expressing what these universal forms or meanings impress upon it. However
much Trudeau's cosmopolitanism or anti-nationalism, together with his view of
language as a vehicle of communication and means of expression, suggests a
Platonic view of the relation between words and ideas, Platonism is
fundamentally incompatible with the doctrine of 'values' . For Plato, man is not
the free sovereign subject, the creator of the moral world, the measure of all
things .
We have indicated how Trudeau's shift from logos to ratio, from the speaking
to the rational animal, involves a positioning of meanings outside speech. The
rational animal refers beyond linguistic representations or signs to the things
and meanings signified in speech. Thus what is represented in language is
detached from the usage of specific linguistic communities . But what constitutes
the rupture with Platonism is the new function of reason which serves the
animality of the rational animal in a human-that is, free andcreative-manner .

155
 EDWARD ANDREW

Reason, like language, becomes an instrument of human freedom or value

creation .
To insist that language is part of the being of man, and is not just a'value' or a
vehicule to convey values, is not necessarily to submerge individuality under
nationality . For Aristotle, upon whose understanding of human nature this
analysis has been based, asserted, as Trudeau pointed out, that the purpose of
political life is to foster individual development . However, in the Aristotelian
understanding, individuality is to be conceived more fruitfully as a product of
society than can society be understood as the product of unsocialized individuals.
We have pointed out that Trudeau presents a one-sided interpretation of
Aristotle, because Aristotle thought the nurture of community and language
were ends in themselves as well as means to individual fulfillment . But to
maintain that attention to, and care of, language is an end in itself does not entail
that language is not also a means to individual purposes.
If a linguistic community is, as Premier Levesque has it, the spiritual food of
humankind, one must insist that man is not only what he eats, but what he makes
of his spiritual nourishment ; eating is both an end in itself and a means to further
ends. Thus we conclude that language is both an instrument of our freedom and
our being, and our very being and freedom ; it is a means individuals use to convey
information or to express personal experience and, at the same time, language
orders individuals' experience, bringing it to con-sciousness, or common
awareness . Language is the con-ning of. scientia, or so nationalist con-men would
have it. Care for language is care for what is common .
Whatever the effect ofTrudeau's political career, whether the federal state can
be re-constituted to meet the interests, aspirations and sentiments of the two
nations, or whether Quebec becomes politically independent of the rest of
Canada, French and English Canadians can be indebted to the prime minister for
making intelligence respectable in public life and for drawing attention to
linguistic concerns as a central feature of political conflict . If this analysis has
attempted to indicate the inadequacy ofTrudeau's account of language, it has also
attempted to show the force and coherence of that account . Indeed, any
thoughtful review of the merits of federal institutions and the liberal philosophy
informing them must take the ideas of Pierre Trudeau into account . Because he
has articulated his liberalism with intelligence and because he has provoked
thoughtful opposition to his political position, Trudeau has added dignity to
Canadian politics by opening us up to fundamental questioning of our political
commitments and personal identity. For to question, in and out of whatever
language, is a high and uncommon road, a destiny without a destination.

Department of Political Economy

University of Toronto
 i

TR UDEA UAND THE LANGUAGE QUESTION

Notes

1 . R . Whitaker has sensitively uncovered some elements of romaticism within the complex
character of the prime minister . See "Reason, Passion and Interest : Pierre Trudeau's Eternal
Liberal Triangle", Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, 4 :1 (Winter 1980), 5-32 .

2 . R . Levesque, La Passion du Quebec, Montreal, tditions Quebec/Amerique, 1978, p . 31-2 .

3 . What follows is an elaboration of certain aspects of Trudeau's thought which was ably examined
over a decade ago by A . Carrier, "L'ideologie politique de la revue Cite Lihre", Canadian Journal of
Political Science, l (1968) 416. Since no reference is made to Trudeau in this section clarifying the
usage of 'values', readers wishing to ascertain the compatibility of the liberal grammar of values
with Trudeau's personalist Catholicism would do well to consult this fine article by Carrier.

4 . P.E . Trudeau, Le Federalisme et la society canadienne-franfaise, Paris, Robert Laffont, 1968,

p . 13 .

5 . Les cheminements de la politique, Montreal, tditions du jour, 1970, p . 29 .

6 . ibid ., p .51 .

7. W . Mathie has contrasted the thought of Trudeau and Aristotle in 'Political Community and the
Canadian Experience : Reflections on Nationalism, Federalism and Unity', Canadian Journal of
Political Science, 12 (1979) 15-19. However the differences between Aristotle and Trudeau on the
place of speech in human society is not analyzed by Mathie .

8. op . cit ., p . 54.

9. ibid, p. 55 .

10. The Politics of Aristotle, tr. E . Barker, New York, Galaxy, 1962, 12786.

11 . ibid, 1253a .

12. The Politics of Aristotle, 1280a-b.

13. Les cheminements, p. 31 ; c .f. p. 34-5, 40-1, 65-7, 113 .

14. J .J. Rousseau, The First and Second Discourses, ed. R.D . Masters, New York, St . Martins, 1964, p.
147-8 ; Essai sur Porigine des langues, Bordeaux, G . Ducros, 1971, p. 113 .

15 . Rousseau, in 6mile (Bk 4 and 5), portrays the motive for civic responsiblity as erotic; only when
Emile desires Sophie does he search for a homeland to raise a family and establish roots . His
commitment to the principles of The Social Contract is conditional upon his desire to sow his seed
in fertile ground.

16 . See P .E . Trudeau, Conversations with Canadians, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1972, p .
27 ; and 'La nouvelle trahison des clercs' and'Federalisme, nationalisme et raison' in Le
fedyralisme et la society canadienne-franfaise . To be sure, the shift from 'logos' to'ratio' is not as
abrupt as the words 'language' to 'reason' would suggest. The Greek word 'logos' was used in
various ways, apparently without even Wittgenstein's family resemblances amongst the usages ;

15 7
 EDWARD ANDREW

'logos' meant thought or reason, as well as speech, language, word, proportion or ratio,
estimation, collection, computation or account, explanation, grounds of a theory or course of
action, the matter spoken of, etc.

17. Le federalisme, p. 168.

18. ibid, p. 184.

19. ibid, p. 36. The English translation renders "se rattachent" by "related" which does not capture
the essential belonging together of language and cultural values . Federalism and the French
Canadians, Toronto, MacMillan, 1968, p. 29. '

20 . Le federalisme, p. 36.

21 . 1 am told that English is the language of the boardrooms andof senior management of theChase
Manhattan Bank in Paris. However widespread theuseof English in multinational corporations
in Europe, it is clear that English is for the most part the language of capital in Quebec . The
"working language" is not the language of most workers. Thus linguistic and economic concerns,
the "national question" and the "social question", are intertwined; linguistic conflict is to a
greater or lesser extent class stuggle . With the increasing concentration and socialization of
production, language, as an instrument of communication, becomes ever more "a productive
force." Access to this productive force is an element of class'struggle, particularly when the
"traditional petit-bourgeoisie" or independent proprietors have been incorporated in large
organizations.

22 . Conversations with Canadians, p. 33 .

23 . ibid., p. 36.

24. One might say that religion more than language accounts for the cultural identity of Jews,
Mennonites, Doukabours, etc. But it would be inappropriate to consider a religion a'value', or as a
vehicule of cultural 'values' since religious observants do not consider religion exhaustively or
primarily in terms of the secular functions of maintaining an identity and enlarging one's
freedom. The vocabulary of values adopts a point of view foreign to those believing themselves
called by God to realize His will . Similarly, thevocabulary of'values' is inappropriate to language .
Language, like religion, is not merely an instrument or a vehicule ; it is not the product of human
will and artifice ; it is notconditionalupon the disposition, choice or evaluation of the free subject .
We are used by language in our use of it.

25 . Conversations with Canadians, p. 39.

26 . Le federalisme, p. 38.

27 . ibid., p.186.

28. D. Cameron's Nationalism, Self-Determination andthe Quebec Question, Toronto, MacMillan,

1974, is a thoughtful analysis of Quebec nationalism is spite of the fact that he employs the
language of values without subjecting it to the careful historical scrutiny which he bestows on
other central words in our political vocabulary .

29. See L. Dion, "Quebec and the Future of Canada", in D.C . Thomson, ed ., Quebec Society and
Politics : Views from the Inside, Toronto, McLelland and Stewart, 1973, p. 251-62 .

15 8
 TR UDEA UAND THE LANGUAGE QUESTION

30. The Royal Commission on Bilingualism andBiculturalism, Ottawa, Queen's Printer, 1967, Bk 1,
xxxiv.

31 . ibid .

32 . ibid ., xxix.

33 . ibid ., xxxi.

Announcement of

THE LOYOLA LECTURES

IN
POLITICAL ANALYSIS
March 22 - April 2, 1982
Loyola University of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois
Loyola University of Chicago announces the eighth presentation of its
continuing program, The Loyola Lectures in Political Analysis .
During the two week period of March 22 to April 2, 1982, Professor
Richard S . Hartigan, Professor of Political Science at Loyola University
of Chicago, and Director of the Loyola Lectures in Political Analysis will
present a series of six public lectures entitled "The Future Remembered :
Biology, Politics and Man ." These lectures will deal with the impact of
the developments in socio-biology on the study of politics .
For f urther information, please contact Professor Thomas S . Engman,
Loyola University of Chicago, 820 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago,
Illinois 60611 (312) 670-3111 .

159
Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory / Revue Canadienne de theorie
politique et sociale, Vol . 6, Nos . 1-2 (River/Printemps, 1982) .

RATIONALISM AND FAITH:

KOLAKOWSKI'S MARX
William Leiss

Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism . Vol . I: The Founders . pp. xiii,
434 . Vol . II: The Golden Age . pp. viii, 542 . Vol. III : The Breakdown . pp. xii, 548.
Translated from the Polish by P.S. Falla. Oxford University Press, 1978.

Among the many perverse features of human action, one of the most
remarkable is its sublime self-confidence in manipulating things unseen. Vast
material wealth moves and fluctuates without being touched in the daily routines
of stock exchange and banking transactions . Modern science applauds the
progressive refinement ofthe physicists' instruments that reveal the existence of
particles with infinitesimally small mass and lifespan . Experts in the affairs of
souls, gods and devils manage fantastic property holdings and in places operate
gallows and firing squads around the clock. Others await their turn to reorganize
social relations according to the dictates of the "not-yet-present" and the "what
could be." And all of them regard themselves quite correctly as eminently
practical men and women.
Modern society has realized the synthesis that eluded all earlier times, the
union of rationalism and faith. It is a potent brew.
Marxian socialism turned out to be one of the most influential variations of
this union . Its message was grounded in a proposition of stunning simplicity and
elegance, namely, thatwhat must be (the unavoidable outcome of historical laws)
and what should be (the most desirable and appropriate framework for human
relations) are identical : the triumph of socialism and communism as the
universal social form . The proposition is the core of Marx's thinking, the
unifying ingredient that provides an overall coherence for Marxism as a
"system" of thought . It is one of the great strengths of Leszek Kolakowski's Main
Currents of Marxism to see it as the focal point for a study of Marxism : "The
present conspectus of the history of Marxism will be focused on the question
which appears at all times to have occupied a central place in Marx's independent
thinking : viz. how is it possible to avoid the dilemma of utopianism versus
historical fatalism?" (I, 6)
The idea of a thoroughgoing unity between what is necessary and what is good
is a cornerstone of religious thought . Modern philosophers (notably Kant)
dissolved this unity, and struggled with the resultant dualism of a worldfractured
into the realms of natural necessity and ethical freedom . As a secular philosophy
of history Marxism re-asserted their unity on the level of collective social action.
The commonplace that Marxism is a secular version of religious faith,' however,
usually does not distinguish with sufficient precision between two quite different

160
 RATIONALISM AND FAITH

aspects of Marxism considered as soteriology. One is the (false) unity between

the necessary and the good in Marx's own thought . The other is the essential
difference between Marx's philosophy of history, considered as a product of
rational inquiry (and thus subject to requirements of adequate reasoning and
evidence), and Marxism as a dogma in the service of social movements and state
power .
The false unity between the necessary and the good in Marx's thought results
from his attempt to overlay a rationalist historical sociology onto a philosophical
scheme, rooted in Hegelian dialectics, that aims at the dissolution of the split
between essence and existence . As the notorious passage from the 1844
Manuscripts says, communism as "completed naturalism" overcomes the
estrangement of mankind, not only from its own nature (its species-being), but
from nature itself . What is presented here is essentially a conceptual issue of
some considerable complexity, requiring sustained philosophical reflection-
namely, what is this estrangement, and can it be cured? Furthermore, is it
something that we can even conceive of "curing" through rearrangements in the
structure of social relations?
Marx does not stop to examine such issues, but instead proceeds to announce
that there is an agent of social change (the proletariat) to accomplish the
overcoming of estrangement . What the 1843-44 writings develop, of course, is
the concept of the proletariat, as it (the concept) "emerges" from the dialectic of
private property . To this point Marx remains faithful to the tradition of
rationalist social theory (for example, Plato and Rousseau), where hypothetical
social conditions are arrived at deductively from speculative premises . The next
step marks his break with the tradition . In Kolakowski's words : "Having arrived
at his theory of the proletariat's historic mission on the basis of philosophical
deduction, he later sought empirical evidence for it ." (I, 373) The subsequent
historical sociology, based on the theory of classes, was to provide the grounds for
asserting that the good (the overcoming of estrangement) was also, by a happy
coincidence, the outcome of the historically necessary evolution of social forms .
What linked the two was the proletariat itself.
In fact this was sheer fantasy, and subsequently the link was ruptured. The
philosophical scheme nurtured a commitment, still a vital part of contemporary
social critique, to the reduction (if not the elimination) of estrangement and
reification as a goal of social change ; the more prominent this theme was in any
particular case, however, the less successful was any connection to a detailed
sociological analysis (for example, Marcuse's works) . On the other hand, modern
historical sociology is deeply indebted to Marx's thought ; yet the more detailed is
the understanding of class structures, the more tenuous becomes the link to any
coherent account of class consciousness .
It is only with respect to a desire to uphold this false unity of the necessary and
the good, and not with respect to the philosophical or sociological themes taken
independently, that Marx's thought itself represents a secular faith.
The philosophically grounded conception of "true human production" in the
early Marx, for example, leads us to believe that a market society such as ours
 WILLIAM LEISS

systematically blocks the development of creative human powers; distorts the

expression of fundamental needs; deprives persons of any control over their own
labour activity and its products; and encourages an "instrumentalist" attitude in
relations between persons that undermines the social (non-economic) bonds of
family and community life. These are all propositions that are subject to rational
analysis, discussion and proselytizing .' In other words, they form (potentially) a
coherent position on which one can base a set of rational goals for social change.
(It must be said again that this position remains remarkably underdeveloped
both in general and in details ; but it is capable of further development.) The
associated contention-that modern society's evolution produces of itself a
group that is the overwhelming majority whose being is the concrete
embodiment of this position-has never been accorded the dignity of a
consistent argument .
In fact the assertion of an internal contradiction in Marx's thought between
historical materialism and proletarian revolutionary consciousness is an old one.
It was stated forcefully, for example, by the Russian Marxist Peter Struve in an
1899 essay, "Marx's Theory of Social Development." In Struve's view "it could
not be expected that a class condemned to increasing degradation of mind and
body would be able to bring about the greatest revolution in history, including not
only economic changes but the efflorescence of art and civilization." Historical
materialism, on the contrary, reveals the continuous interaction of socio-
economic change with changes in legal, moral, aesthetic, and other forms. As
capitalism developed, so did the resistance to its injustice and degradation ; this
resistance became embodied in the institutional structures-unions, social
welfare policies, public education, and so forth-that represent a growing
"socialist" element within the evolution of capitalism (Kolakowski, II, 366-7) .
On the other hand, the historical sociology stemming from Marx's work
represents a powerful tool of rational social inquiry when separated from the
eschatalogical vision of proletarian revolution . The study of social class
formation shattered traditional paradigms of, for example, political history;
helped to destroy the "naturalistic" illusions inherent in the economic ideologies
of market society ; and offered-in its best expressions-a sophisticated view of
the differential impact of large-scale historical changes on particular social
groups and their self-understanding . Divorced from the eschatological
revolutionary vision, it also helps us comprehend the new constellations ofsocial
interests, relations between privileged elites and other groups, and the functional
interplay of economic and political power that characterize the so-called
"socialist" societies . What it emphatically does not do, however, is lend credence
to the eschatological vision.
Marxist thought itself, then, represents a secular variant of religious faith
insofar as it insists on the unity of the necessary and the good. Insofar as it does
so, it reproduces, in the contradiction between historical determinism and
proletarian consciousness, the eternal conundrum represented best in
Christianity's "freedom of the will."
There is a quite different sense in which Marxism fell victim to a kind of

162
 RATIONALISM AND FAITH

historical determinism that makes plausible an analogy with religion. This

occurred to some extent as soon as Marxism became an "official" ideology of
social movements and solidified when it became the official dogma of a political
regime. For in this setting its rational content is inevitably subordinated to its
instrumental function in the service of political power. For example :

Zhdanov in his address to the philosophers in 1947 inveighed

against the disciples of Einstein who declared that the
universe was finite .. . In general, since Einstein made temporal
relations and movement dependent on the 'observer,' i .e. on
the human subject, he must be a subjectivist and thus an
idealist. The philosophers who took part in these debates ... did
not confine their criticism to Einstein but attacked the whole of
'bourgeois science,' their favourite targets being Eddington,
Jeans, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, and all known methodologists
of the physical sciences. (III, 132)

The historical legacy on which this way of treating ideas is based is not hard to
discern: "The Second Council of Constantinople in 553 recognized the key issue
in the christological controversy when it anathematized anyone 'who says that
God the Logos who performed the miracles is one, and that the Christ who
suffered is another .' "3
In this regard the historical analogy is illuminating. Both Christianity and
Marxism infiltrated shaky empires, steeling the resolve ofoppositional groups in
their struggles against decadent ruling classes . Both ideologies ultimately were
founded on an antagonism, not only towards particular regimes, but also towards
political power per se. Thus the groups motivated by these ideologies were
unprepared for the exercise of political power, with the result that they were
ruined by their own successes. Lacking any conception of legitimate authority of
their own, both were forced to pretend that they could make do "temporarily"
(i .e., until political authority itself was abolished, which was to be done
post-haste) with the institutional structures conveniently left at their disposal in
the old regimes' collapse . These structures wreaked their revenge on the
conquering ideologies by converting thought into dogma, ideas, into instruments
of repression.
The outstanding virtue of Leszek Kolakowski's Main Currents ofMarxism is
to impose an ineluctable duty on all serious participants in discussions of its
subject-matter : the duty to confront the intellectual content of Marxism in terms
of both its deepest originating impulses and its historical fate.
The first of these two tasks is undertaken in volume one, where what is at stake
is identifying the key presuppositions in one of the great nineteenth-century
"systems" of thought, and then subjecting them to rigorous criticism . Volumes
two and three are occupied with the second task, which properly falls under the

163
 the
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LEISS
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WILLIAM

rubric ;
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argues,
begin
 RATIONALISM AND FAITH

lumping together of Soviet and Western Marxism. There is not transition at all
here ; the third volume moves without interruption from Stalin and Trotsky to
Gramsci, Lukacs, Korsch and other "Western Marxists ."
Ironically the historical situation here enters Kolakowski's own work and in
fact dominates it ; philosophical reflection on Marxism's historical fate itself falls
victim to an interpretive framework that is conditioned by historical
circumstances . The author attempts to be disarmingly candid in this preface to
volume three, warning his readers that he is "not able to treat the subject with the
desirable detachment ." This is something of an understatement. The entire tone
of the discussion changes drastically in the passage from the first two volumes to
the third, from patient exposition and severe but temperate criticism to curt
dismissal and harsh - sometimes shrill - condemnation . I hasten to add that
there is much in this period that merits condemnation ; but the evenhanded
treatment of the first two volumes ill prepares us for the lack of restraint and
discriminating judgment in the third.
For example, the specific criticisms levelled at Adorno are well formulated and
to the point . However, the discussion is framed by the following remarks : "There
can be few works of philosophy that give such an overpowering impression of
sterility as Negative Dialectics. . . . The pretentious obscurity of style and the
contempt that it shows for the reader might be endurable if the book were not
also totally devoid of literary form" (III, 366, 357) . Similarly, there is much in
Marcuse's work - especially his disdain of reasoned defense for radical
perspectives and his theoretical affirmation of vague revolutionary slogans -
that merits severe and even harsh criticism . Kolakowski is not content to rest his
case with his detailed and pointed critique, however ; and he wishes us to believe
that "Marcuse's demands go much further than Soviet totalitarian communism
has ever done, either in theory or in practice" (III, 419) . It is possible to interpret
what Marcuse wrote in this way ; but a critic who fastens onto the least charitable
interpretation of his sources will fail to earn his own readers' sympathy.
Kolakowski's understanding of twentieth-century Western Marxism is clearly
shaped by his lived experience of Marxism as dogma in the service of repressive
political power.' How could it not be? It may be impossible for one with this
experience to understand it either in its own terms, as a response to the
imperialism, economic crisis, and rise of fascism earlier in this century, which
was the lived experience of those theorists - or in terms of its impact on
intellectual developments in North America and Western Europe in the 1960s .
I wish to contrast Kolakowski's experience with my own, which was a part of
the "second phase" of Western Marxism in the 1960s . Anyone associated with
universities in the 1950s will remember the unofficial ban on Marxist thought
then in force (I do not claim that this was in any way equivalent to police-state
repression), which in practice inhibited even non-Marxist forms of social
critique . I recall an episode at graduate school in the early 1960s : Having written
a careful analysis of some seventeenth-century English pamphlet literature for a
graduate course,I incautiously mentioned a few general observations at the end,
including an offhand use of the phrase "capitalist society ." My professor, a

16 5
 WILLIAM LEISS

well-meaning soul concerned for my prospective academic career, who as a young

man had tasted the spicier ideological fare of the late 1930s, remarked: "We don't
write that way anymore."
He was wrong. In the ensuing period many of the existing constraints on
intellectual discourse were eroded, and the legacy ofWestern Marxism (together
with its major surviving expositors) played an important part in the process .
There were the usual rhetorical excesses, to be sure, but these have largely
disappeared . What remains today is a much richer dialogue, in which those who
have been influenced by Marxism have a recognized place in both academic and
more general public forums . My teacher would, I trust, no longer be surprised to
see casual references to "capitalist society" in writings by those considered to be
in the "mainstream" of social commentary.
Events have ruptured - permanently, I suspect - the unity of historical
sociology and utopian vision that provided the basic impetus for Marx's thought .
That historical sociology, shorn of all but the most tenuous associations with the
eschatological vision of proletarian revolution, has found a permanent home in
the intellectual culture of the semi-capitalist societies, whose future evolution, so
far as we can now see, will bear little resemblance to Marx's crudely-sketched
scheme. That scheme, however, lives on in the cruel masquerade conducted by
the official ideologies of the "socialist" and "communist" states . In becoming the
public language of authoritarian regimes, it has surrendered whatever moral
authority it once possessed as a guiding image in the struggle for a better society .

Department of Communication
Simon Fraser University

Notes

1 . For a brief summary of representative examples seeJ . Habermas Theory and Practice, tr. Jeremy
Shapiro, Boston : Beacon Press, 1973, pp . 199-201 .

2 . In discussing Ernst Bloch, Kolakowski remarks that "Bloch helped in one way to throw light on
Marxism by revealing its neo-Plaronic roots,. . . He emphasized the soteriological strain which was
blurred in Marx and could therefore be neglected and overlooked, but which set the whole
Marxian idea in motion : namely, the belief in the future identification of man's authentic essence
with empirical existence, .. . . (III, 448) . My formulation in the text above suggests that there are a
set of propositions critical of market society which can be stated in secular terms and be the
subject of rational discourse-even though the underlying "inspiration" for them may be located
in the tradition of neo-Platonism and religious mysticism . I hasten to add that, more than a
century after their formation, as secular propositions they remain seriously underdeveloped .

3 . Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, 2 vols., University of Chicago Press, 1971, 1, 244 .

4. "At public meetings, and even in private conversations, citizens were obliged to repeat in ritual
fashion grotesque falsehoods about themselves, the world, and the Soviet Union, and at the same
time to keep silent about things they knew very well, not only because they were terrorized but

16 6
 RATIONALISM AND FAITH

because the incessant repetition of falsehoods which they knew to be such made them accomplices
in the campaign of lies inculcated by the party and state . It was not the regime's intention that
people should literally believe the absurdities that were put about : if any were so naive as to do so
and forget reality completely, they would be in a state of innocence vis-a-vis their own consciences
and would be prone to accept Communist ideology as valid in its own right. Perfect obedience
required, however, that they should realize that the current ideology meant nothing in itself: any
aspect of it could be altered or annulled by the supreme leader at any moment as he might see fit,
and it would be everyone's duty to pretend that nothing had changed and that the ideology had
been the same from everlasting" (III, 96) .

PRAXIS
Contents of #5 : "Art and Ideology," Pt. I (now available)
Materialist Literary Theory in France, 1965-1975 by Claude Bouche
"Marks of Weakness" : Ideology, Science and Textual Criticism by James H.
Kavanagh
Literature as an Ideological Form : Some Marxist Propositions by Pierre
Macherey and Etienne Balibar
Artistic Practice by Enrique Gonzalez Rojo
The School of Althusser and Aesthetic Thought (commentary) by Stefan
Morawski
Ideology, Production, Text : Pierre Macherey's Materialist Criticism by Francis
Barker
SHORT REVIEWS
Althusser : Self-Criticism as Non-Criticism by Mark Poster
Constructing a Critical Ideology by James H. Kavanagh
Class Struggle in Literary Form and Deformation by Bill Langen
On Language Requirements by Tom Conley
Linguistics and Ideology by Robert DAmico
A Sociology of Texts by Robert Sayre

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167
Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory / Revue Canadienne de theorie
politique et sociale, Vol . 6, Nos . 1-2 (River/Printemps, 1982) .

NARRATIVE AS A SOCIALLY
LIBERATING ACT

Patrick Taylor

Frederic Jameson, The Political Unconscious : Narrative as a Socially Symbolic

Act, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981, pp-305.

The Political Unconscious is Jameson's most comprehensive and insightful

work to date-yet it has many of the negative traits of his earlier books. Though
it is a masterful treatment of dialectical criticism in both its theoretical and
practical dimensions, it is also tortuously excessive and eclectic . In theoretical
terms it tries to come to grips with the leading schools in modern literary
criticism in order to transform and totalize them according to Jameson's own
Marxist framework: Structuralism becomes hermeneutics and hermeneutics the
unmasking of ideology with the differences between schools sometimes
vanishing altogether . Ranging in Jameson's practice of criticism from the
analysis of myth to the interpretation of romanticism, realism and modernism,
the purpose of the book is to show how the repressed "political unconscious"
lying behind such works of narrative can be recovered . The task of interpretation
is to rewrite the text in terms of class struggle, the fundamental Marxist code, so
that it becomes socially meaningful . Yet this code itself is open. This is the
paradoxical core of Jameson's work: the fundamental story is incomplete and
unfinished; the totality is "infinitely totalizable" (p. 53) ; the recovery of latent
meaning is forever an alienated project. And this is the nature of history, the
ever-present absence in history, in the light of which the ultimate task of the
critic is to show how a literary text either hides or reveals this absence.
The vast scope of The Political Unconscious invites many different readings
and entries into the text. One could concentrate on whatJameson has to say about
interpretive practice, or one could simply focus on his extended discussions of
writers like Balzac, Gissing and Conrad. Jameson's use of structuralism certainly
challenges one to think out the latter's implications and limits, while his Marxist
language opens the vast problem of Marxism and culture, particularly the
problem of finding a non-reductive Marxist literary criticism . Such important
but singular dimensions, however, cannot measure up toJameson's total project.
The "imperative to totalize" (p. 53), Jameson's implicit Pascal ian wager,
challenges the reader to appropriate his notion of historical narrative .'
I will take up this challenge by focussing on the distinction between the
wish-fulfilling "illusions" of romance Jameson goes so far as to call romance
"degraded narrative" (p . 255)-and the "truth" of historical narrative .'
Jameson's "metacode" is a historical rewriting of the romantic search for a "lost
Eden" (p. 110), rendering it in terms of the history of man's social and political

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 JAMESON'S NARRATIVE

relationship to the world in the fullness of its ambiguity . So too, it turns out, are
the objects of his study, the works of Balzac, Gissing, and most important of all,
Conrad .
Bearing this in mind, we can bracket the historical dimension in order to
uncover the essential latent meaning behind romance. To borrow Ricoeur's
expression, we can begin with a Marxist hermeneutic of demystification. 3 It is at
this level that Jameson's debt both to Marxism and to structuralism is most
evident . He distinguishes three overlapping and intertwining horizons of
Marxist interpretation which are necessary for the understanding of a literary
text : The text must be rewritten in terms of a Marxist metacode consisting of
political history, social relations and the sequence of modes of production .
Jameson uses Levi-Strauss in order to introduce his analysis of a given text as a
politically significant symbolic act . According to Levi-Strauss, the structure of
myth must be grasped in terms of a wish-fulfillment, or in Jameson's words, "an
imaginary resolution of a real contradiction" (p . 77) . This is the cornerstone on
which Jameson builds his whole theory of what, following Lacan, he calls the
Imaginary : the aesthetic act invents imaginary solutions to unresolvable but real
social and political contradictions . Such solutions are more than mere reflections
for they are acts whose purpose it is to symbolically transcend contradiction . This
utopian dimension is ideological, however, because it is bound by these social
contradictions, unable to realize their transformation .
Like myth, the romance narrative offers a salvational vision, the structure of
which Jameson unveils as ideological closure using Greimas' semiotic rectangle.
The rectangle consists of (1) a relation of contradictories : a simple term (white)
and its binary opposition (non-white) ; (2) a relation of contraries : the simple
term (white) and a contrary term (black) ; (3) the other terms generated by these
two relations : a contradictory (black - non-black) and a subcontrary (non-black -
non-white) ; (4) relations of implication : if white, then non-black ; if black, then
non-white . Out of this rectangle, Greimas generates four more categories : the
complex term (white + black) and the neutral term (non-black + non-white)
which are in a relation of contradiction ; two other terms (white + non-black, and
black + non-white) which are contraries . This can be sketched as follows : 4

complex term (meaning)

white,, ` black (contraries)

(implication) non-blac
v
neutral term (non-meaning)

169
 PATRICK TAYLOR

The complex term represents the meaning which brings together the human
world in a significant whole (as white and black) . It is the mythical unity which
orders chaos.
While for Greimas the semiotic rectangle is the basic structure of all meaning,
Jameson makes it the basic structure of all closed meaning, of ideology. It is a
model of closure that maps out the limits of a historically specific social and
political consciousness . By using it the critic is able to determine the basic terms
of the particular political fantasy embedded in a literary text. The relation of
contraries becomes for Jameson a basic social contradiction, while the complex
term is the political fantasy resolving it. In Balzac's La Vielle Fille, there is, argues
Jameson, a contradiction between Balzac's leanings towards the ancien regime
and his recognition of the powerlessness of this tradition in the face of the rising
bourgeoisie . The narrative must resolve the social contradiction between the
powerless ancien regime and the powerful bourgeoisie . The first step in the
resolution is reached when Napoleonic prowess is separated from bourgeois
commercial activity. The ancien regime couldsave itself from the bourgeoisie if it
were to recover for itself a form of Napoleonic energy . Thus the solution to the
contradiction would be the unity of the two contraries, ancien regime and
Napoleonic energy. This ideal or complex term, argues Jameson, is symbolically
achieved with the appearance of the aristocartic and powerful officer, Comte de
Troisville. His arrival at Mademoiselle Cormon's house is all the more indicative
of the utopian solution because the town-house itself is the synthesis of the old
(the courtyards and domestic household economy) and the new (the commercial
and urban context in which it is set).
This political analysis directs us to the second horizon of Marxist
interpretation. Embedded in the text is a discussion of class relations : feudal
lordship versus the bourgeoisie . Shifting the analysis from Balzac to Gissing
Jameson discusses the wider system of class discourse itself, this time examining
relations between bourgeoisie and proletariat . At this level, the symbolic text is
grasped as a particular strategic move in a broad ideological confrontation. What
is important is not just the ideology of a particular text, but its relation to a class
discourse made of "ideologemes ." Jameson defines the ideologeme as "the
smallest intelligible unit in the essentially antagonistic discourses of social
classes" (p. 76) . Like an individual text, the ideologeme is an imaginative
narrative unity, a symbolical act resolving the social contradictions in a concrete
historical situation . However, it is a collective praxis transcending any given
individual text. Jameson uses as an example of an ideologeme the theory of
ressentiment. Loosely distinguishing between the middle and the lower class, he
presents nineteenth-century ressentiment as the anti-mob, bourgeois sentiment
"Stay in your place!" The class contradiction is resolved in fantasy narratives
upholding the naturalness or justice of social distinction . Gissing's Demos
portrays the impossibility of the proletariat, irredeemable body as it is,
controlling the means of production.
Marxist comprehension requires thatone further horizon be brought into play
in the interpretation of the individual text. The literary work and its ideologemes

17 0
 JAMESON'S NARRATIVE

must be placed in the context of the sequence of modes of production. The

transition from the feudal to the capitalist mode of production is a fundamental
tension in Balzac's text . In Gissing, social relations are grounded in the capitalist
mode of production, and implicitly, its possible replacement by a communist
mode .
As in the political and social horizons, Jameson uses the model of contradiction
and its imaginary resolution to discuss the structure of culture at this level.
Greimas' essential contradiction is recast in terms of contradictory modes of
production . (Jameson follows Poulantzas in using the idea of overlapping modes
of production in order to avoid a reductive stage theory of culture .) The
contradiction between modes of production is resolved in terms of the form of
cultural production . This is because form (e .g ., the romance genre) itself
transmits an ideological message. The critic must analyse the text until he reveals
the conflicting modes of production underlying it, and the way in which they are
embedded in the form of the text . The romance work, for example, carries within
itself the tension between two coexisting modes of production (usually found in
the transition to capitalism) . It resolves this in terms of a closed form projecting
a utopian social resolution of contradiction .
While both Balzac and Gissing have been treated so far in terms of romance, it
is Conrad whom Jameson uses to most clearly bring out the link between
romance and mode of production . The second half of LordJim, argues Jameson, is
a romance in which the fundamental contradiction is that between the religious
passivity of precapitalist society and the frenetic activity of capitalism . Lord Jim
is the romantic hero, the fantasy that unites the contraries of value and activity .
The problem not only with LordJim but also with many of the works of Balzac
and Gissing is that they cannot as a whole be reduced to the romance genre .
There is another Jim in Conrad's book who, far from being the "lord" uniting the
contraries of value and activity in a utopian manner, is an existential hero
condemned to freedom : Jim's "act itself suddenly yawns and discloses at its heart
a void which is at one with the temporary extinction of the subject" (p . 260) . Jim
is the modernist who experiences in anguish his transcendence of space and time
and simultaneously the necessity of ordering the discontinuity of time and
absurdity of nature . But the truth of the narrative goes further, argues Jameson,
beyond the individual experience of historicity towards the totality of history.
Jim's discovery of Sartrean freedom has a demoralizing effect on the ideological
myths allowing "the heroic bureaucracy of imperial capitalism" to assert its unity
and legitimacy (p . 265) . Thus the importance of Lord Jim does not rest in the
ideological unity of value and activity, but in the critique of ideology . Jim's
experience of history is a communication of man's freedom to endlessly
transcend real contradictions rather than to simply try to romantically resolve
them .
According to Jameson, Balzac and Gissing also confront romance with history,
each in their own way . In Gissing's later works, the ethic of bourgeois
rerrentiment is unmasked as a mere ideologeme . Bourgeois desire is presented as
petty, worthless, commodity desire, something that the reader begins to dislike
 PATRICK TAYLOR

in himself. This ressentiment directed at oneself, however, dialectically

tansforms ressentiment as bad faith (flight from self) into authenticiy
(confrontation with one's relationship to history) . Gissing's narratives generate
"an omnipresent class consciousness in which it is intolerable for the bourgeois
reader to dwell any length of time" (p. 205) . In Balzac, a different movement
leads to a similar position . The Comte de Troisville never does manage to fulfil
Balzac's ideal resolution of aristocratic legitimacy and Napoleonic energy.
Mademoiselle Cormon does not find her ideal man: he is married. The ideal
resolution in Balzac is carefully contrasted with the lived reality that renders the
romance impossible.
In order for criticism to be adequate to its object, it must come to grips with
this historical repudiation of fantasy. Jameson sees Lacan's distinction between
the Imaginary and the Symbolic as one step in this direction. The Imaginary, the
realm of infantile wish-fullfilment in which desire is ignorant of reality, finds its
completion in historical narrative . The story of the Comte de Troisville is an
Imaginary text rewritten to fit the demands of the reality principle and the
censorship of the superego. In order to satisfy itself, Desire must systematically
confront the objections of the Real. When it recognizes "the unanswerable
resistance of the real" (p. 183), it has reached the level of the symbolic text.
Balzac's "incorrigible fantasy demands ultimately raise History itself over
against him, as absent cause, as that on which desire must come togrief' (p. 183).
Everything inJameson's work hinges on his use of this Althusserian notion of
history as "absent cause." For Jameson, the movement from the Imaginary to the
Symbolic or historical level can be formulated in terms of what happens when
"plot falls into history" (p. 130) i.e., when romance structure or deep text is
transformed through time into manifest text. According to Gremias, one can
look at the way in which different semiotic structures formally combine using a
static model called the combinatoire . Appropriating this term, Jameson applies it
to the analysis of the dynamic relation between deep stucture, manifest text and
history. The deviation of the individual text from the deeper narrative structure
directs us to the historical situation in which the imaginary wish is repressed and
transformed . Deep plot is rewritten across the three horizons of politics
(ideology), class struggle (ideologeme) and mode of production (ideology of
form) . The levels of the text are transformed, including its genre, as content
becomes form.' Rather than ignore the diachronic dimension as Greimas does,
the critic must locate plot in terms of history to render the transformation
meaningful.
Jameson uses the term "homology" to apply to the reductive rewriting of a
surface text (including its diachronic transformations) in terms of a deeper level
or code. Greimas' model of the semiotic rectangle is homological in this sense,
but so too would be any closed code such as is found in certain forms of Marxism
(Jameson uses the example of Goldmann) . If the three historical horizons are
merely taken to be three dimensions of a fundamental Marxist metacode which
can be applied to all superstructural activity, then Marxism is no more than
homological reduction . Such a code would only be relevant to the realm of

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 JAMESON'S NARRATIVE

ideological closure. However, it would itself be trapped in this realm since its
own code (or metacode) would be a closed narrative structure, a romantic story
with a utopian vision of historical transcendence . The three historical horizons
must therefore be seen precisely as horizons, as openings on to history, rather
than as finite determinations of history .
In contrast to homological interpretation, a mythical approach to the
movement of plot in history would concentrate not on determinate changes, but
on identity over time . It presupposes an unbroken continuity in social relations
and narrative forms from primitive to modern times. Frye's "positive
hermeneutic" filters out historical difference to trace the continuity of an
original myth through the levels of romance, tragedy, comedy, realism and other
genres . His metacode, therefore, essentially reads all texts in terms of myth or its
narrative transformation in romance. Whereas the Marxist metacode focussed
on difference in order to arrive at the essential plot of history, Frye's method,
however, focusses on identity, but arrives at perpetual change . Frye analyses each
new remythicization of an original myth in what Jameson calls "figural" terms.
The community celebrates its unity in terms of religious figures symbolizing the
ultimate utopian classless society . These figures are constantly refigured in time
as man experiences the impossibility of one utopia and seeks a new mythical
possibility .
Jameson's critique of Frye lacks the precision of his critique of reductive
Marxism, no doubt precisely because of his desire to avoid any type of closed
structure such as the latter. He does, however, argue that Frye (and likewise
Ricoeur) fails to deal with the ideological dimensions of utopia, that is, with what
might be called false consciousness. He also points out that Frye incorrectly
projects the categories of religion (the actor) on to those of myth. According to
Jameson, characters in romances are merely passive "mortal spectators" who
reap "the rewards of cosmic victory without ever having quite been aware of
what was at stake in the first place" (p. 113). The implications of this critique are
that myth must be demystified and man restored to his capacity to change
history .
The historical approach must resolve the antinomy between myth and
homology without collapsing into one or the other. The task of a properly
Marxist hermeneutic is to reveal the condition of man in history, and the
problems of ideological mystification-without creating a new myth. Pulling
together such unlikely company as Lukacs, Althusser and Sartre, Jameson
attempts to come to grips with the foundations of such an approach .
Althusser distinguishes between what he calls "expressive causality" such as
found in Hegelian Marxism, and his own "structural causality ." Expressive
causality interprets one phenomenon or text in terms of a mastercode i.e., in
homological terms . Lukacs' reduction of realism to material conditions is one
example. In contrast, structural causality relies on a non-reductive notion of
mode of production that includes the semi-autonomous spheres of culture,
ideology, the juridical, the political and the economic . The cause of any
phenomenon cannot be reduced to any other phenomenon (or level) but rather is

17 3
 PATRICK TAYLOR

the result of the entire structure of relationships . This structure is an "absent

cause" since it is nowhere present as an element .
Jameson recognizes both the limits of this formulation, and its possibilities .
He notes that Sartre criticizes Althusser for privileging the atemporal
synchronic moment of the concept thus restoring a form of presence over
absence.6 However, one can go beyond what Althusser is apparently saying to
establish a continuity between him and Hegel. The notion of "semi-autonomy ;"
by its implication of identity and difference, is compatible with Hegel's dialectic .
Both Hegel and Althusser are in fact criticizing identity theory . "The true is the
whole" is not a positive closed truth for Hegel, but a method for unmasking the
false (i.e. the ideological) . Likewise, Lukacs' notion of totality should not be read as
a vision of the end of history, but as a methodological standard, a critical or
negative ideal, on the basis of which ideological closure can be revealed . The
negative status of this ideal ensures that it cannot be closed: the totality is
infinitely totalizable . However, as in the Kantian ideal, the negative implies a
positive, practical dimension, an imperative to totalize infinitely . At once
affirmed and denied, the notion of totality rejoins Althusser's History and
Lacan's Real as absent cause .
Totality is another name for narrative unity. History is only accessible in
narrative form, but because it is infinitely totalizable it cannot be reduced to any
given narrative. Narrative must present history as absent cause, not as absence,
not as presence. Any symbolic act entertains an active relationship with the Real.
The content of the Real is structured into form as it transforms form. However,
it is only the historical text which has a form and content equal to this idea, for
the romance text hides the process in the closure of ideology . Any narrator, be he
writer, critic or historian, is bound by this imperative to totalize infinitely.
It is to Conrad's Nostromo that Jameson turns for his ultimate vision of
history. "By a wondrous dialectical transfer," a history which cannot be narrated
is inscribed in the form of the text itself (p.280). By a wondrous dialectical
transfer, the semiotic rectangle opens onto history itself. The ideal act, (the
complex term) which will found an "ideal" capitalist society out of "fallen" Latin
American history (two contradictory modes of production) is not a utopian
resolution : Nostromo will "insist to the end on everything problematic about the
act that makes for genuine historical change" (p . 277) . Yet out of the
non-narratable collective process in which the individual acts of Decoud and
Nostromo (the capitalist and the populist) are alienated and appropriated,
capitalism arrives :
So this great historical novel finally achieves its end by
unraveling its own means of expression, "rendering" History
by its thoroughgoing demonstration of the impossibility of
narrating this unthinkable dimension of collective reality,
systematically undermining the individual categories of
storytelling in order to project, beyond the stories it must
continue to tell, the concept of a process beyond storytelling
(p. 279).

174
 JAMESON'S NARRATIVE

Historical criticism finds its completion in the historical act in Conrad . But is
Jameson's form adequate to this content? His integration oftheory with literary
interpretation, as well as the dialectical turns, oppositions, resolutions and
transformations of meaning in his text all point to the fundamental "openness"
of his narrative. We must question, however, his sometimes excessive use of
apparently closed structural and conceptual formulations . Is the identification
and inventorying of ideologemes (p. 88) any more than pseudo-science? His
focus on "collective" History makes one suspect a lingering, unresolved
resentment against the bourgeois subject . Jameson constantly returns to
Nietzsche only to reject "the constitutional ethical habit of the individual
subject-the Eternal Recurrence" (pp . 234, 115) . But is the Eternal Recurrence
anything if not man transcending the individual finite subject, yet simultaneously
bound by space and time? Is it not Nietzsche's allegory of infinite totalization?

Social and Political Thought

York University

Notes

1 . According to Jameson, "the Pascalian wager of Marxism" lies in the bet that in a genuine
community "the fundamental revelation of the nothingness of existence" will have lost its sting,
though not its ontological truth . This ambivalent transposition of eternal life onto finite social
relations hidesJameson's real affinity with Pascal (and, as we shall see, Sartre and Conrad) . "Life
is meaningless," says Jameson, but "History is meaningful" (p. 261) . This is the movement from
original sin to grace .

2. Jameson has been influenced by Sartre's literary criticism which revolves around a similar
distinction . See, for example, Jameson's discusion of the difference between the "recit" and the
"genuine novel," or the art form at one with its public and that which challenges society, in
"Three Methods in Sartre's Literary Criticism," Modern French Criticism : From Proust and
Valery to Structuralism, ed . John K . Simon, Chicago and London : University of Chicago Press,
1972, p . 200 and pp . 222-223 .

3 . Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, trans . Denis Savage, New Haven and
London : Yale University Press, 1970, p . 27 .

4. A .J . Greimas and F. Rastier, "The Interaction of Semiotic Constraints," Yale French Studies, No.
41 (1968), particularly pp. 87-90 .

5 . See also Marxism and Form : Twentieth Century Dialectical Theories of Literature, Princeton :
Princeton University Press, 1971, p. 328.

6. According to Althusser, "the whole dialectic of transition [from the Imaginary to the Symbolic
Order] in all its essential details is stamped by the seal of Human Order, of the Symbolic, for
which linguistics provides us with the formal laws, i.e ., the formal concept ." As lack, Desire is
nevertheless "determined" by this knowable scientific Order . In "Freud and Lacan;" New Left
Review, No . 55 (1969), pp . 61-62 .
Canadian Journal ofPolitical and Social Theory / Revue Canadienne de theorie
politique et sociale, Vol . 6, Nos. 1-2 (Hiver/Printemps, 1982) .

IT IS NOW-ALWAYS 1984

Michael Dorland

Paul-Andre Dagon, Contribution a la critique de l'ideologie americaine, La

Nature de la Chose, Montreal, 1981, pp. 130.

The implacable criticism of everything that exists would, Marx vowed,

produce for the world a consciousness that was missing from its ownership of the
dream of a thing that has already long been .' In this light, Marxism is less the
science of history, the method of historical materialism, the technique of
revolution or any other of its signifiers than it is a science of bitching .
Like all sciences, bitching opens onto a continent of knowledge. Like all
continents, this one possesses not only a topography but also its explorers and
discoverers . Like all continents, it is multiple and temporal, with its old worlds
and its new. And as Hegel predicted, the new world would see the reign of the
extreme unleashing of fabulations of all kinds .' Has critical criticism, never
implacable enough, thus succumbed to delirium in the face of everything that
exists?
As a delirium whose supposed object is historical, Marxism has been
accordingly tongue-tied by its inability to properly address the history of itself
(assuming that there is such a thing as Marxism unless it be the Marxian dream
that never gets realized) . This handicap has been a considerable limitation in
discounting suspicions that Marxism may itself be an ideology, and one should
disiinguish between suspicions inherent to Marxism (ontic phenomena that
produce a universe best characterized as "concentrationnaire") 3 and those
extrinsic to it (mainly the suspicion of being what I have elsewhere called a
power system) 4.
For the purposes of this review, one can focus on some of these suspicions
inherent to Marxism . Outside the charmed circle of militancy, it was M.
Merleau-Ponty who first touched upon the dialectic of Marxism and terror,
though the times were still terroristic enough to force him to entitle this
relationship, with all the innocent irony of the ideological, "humanism" and
terror.5 Not for nothing, then, does terror (as the critique of terrorism) 6 deeply
inform Paul-Andre Dagon's Contribution d la critique de l'ideologie americaine.
Terror is of the world; as part of "everything that exists" terror is the world
and speaks the language (and logic) of that world . Terrorism (or the science of
bitching, critical criticism raised to the power of criticism by the weapon) thus
becomes a discourse that is interchangeable with the world as it articulates itself.
Terrorism is a discourse that is eminently recuperable by the world since it
speaks the same language. Terrorism, finally, speaks the worldly language of

17 6
 NOW - ALWAYS 1984

recuperation (through interlocutors like the police etc . on the one hand,
"revolutionaries" on the other) since its object is the reproduction of the terror of
this world ; ie, power over others in the dialectic of "L'Etat c'est les autres ."
In opposition to this, Dagon (as the interpreter of the text of the revolution as
the end of pre-history) articulates the new world: "la tendence la plus radicale du
'mouvement reel', celle qui ne veut pas 'le pouvoir' mais 'le monde' " (p. 36) . The
movement of the real that destroys the existing order, no longer on the basis of
the old marxo-lenino-stalino- etc . order, but on the basis of the new world . The
new is thus new in being both i) as old as the world (p. 40) and ii) the dream of a
thing that has already long been . The new world is the New World ; it is and its
name is echt America .
And so it becomes directly pertinent that Dagon is Quebecois, writing from
within the context that is the continuity of Quebec (New France) in the
new-old/old-new world and interrogating a so-called revolutionary ideology that
has been part of the Quebec spectacle since 1970, or more exactly that arose in the
wake of the 1968 moment of the new world revolution .
And just as May '68 "happened" in France, and was later hailed by Marxist
theoreticians as an event of epochal revolutionary significance,' so too
Quebec-weak link in the imperialist chain of "fortress America" (p .
31)-"experienced" its Oktyabr in the FLQ crisis of autumn 1970 . Something
akin to a "revolutionary" seizure of power - at least a "provisional"
government-flashed across the TV screens, and was happening/ happened/
might have happened/never happened in time and place here within the
pasteurized hinterlands of capitalist domination . History, offering a fragmentary
glimpse of its Significance, flashed the diamond ring on its little finger, and the
skies were torn asunder by the dawn of revelation . 8
(The importance of this, especially in a society of the spectacle, that is, one
from which History has been eliminated electronically, and therefore upon the
consciousness of Quebecers [or Canadians who are even more ideologically
dominated] saturated with the image of the American contemplation of its own
self-consciousness, is immense. In a psychological framework as mythologically-
over-determined as Marxism which believes itself to be a reading of history, such
an impact could have staggering consequences . The American left could keep
"its" Watts or Weathermen, terrorist operations easily contained by the traffic
police : in Quebec, whiteniggerdom but with a memory of its own imperialism,
History is on the march!)
Some years have passed, from the "spectacular" act of 1970, to Rene
Levesque's arrival to power, to the present "general crisis" . It is now-always
1984 9 , says Dagon, the writer of text, arriving post- or ante-festum on the
scene, and surveying the nature of things with the biliousness that comes from a
surfeit of History . So a decade of practice (in its local, groupuscular, syndicalist
and secret police forms 1 °) is there to be copiously crapped upon. Critical criticism
is loosed : there is an unleashing of fabulations of all kinds . But, as Marx said with
cheerful resignation when he abandoned The German Ideology to the mice, at
least the main objective of some clarification has been achieved. Writes Dagon :

17 7
 MICHAEL DORLAND

Au lieu de courir apres toutes les modes r6volutionnantes ...

Marx et Engels se sont attaches a lutter de toutes leurs forces
contre le "communisme vulgaire" ; de meme, il faut aujourd'hui
se battre contre le marxisme et 1'egalitarisme vulgaires. Tout
comme le marxisme vulgaire (qui nest rien d'autre qu'une
survivance du communisme vulgaire via 1'ecole kautskyste-
lesniniaise) a 6te la planche du salut du capitalisme,
1'6galitarisme vulgaire s'apprete a prendre la releve du
"friendly fascism" pour assurer la continuite du regne de la
s6paration ou le desespoir de chacun est la cle de 1'oppression
de tous.I 1

Why-one must ask since Dagon only dances in the shadow of the
question-is there such a preoccupation in Marxism with vulgarity? What is this
suspicion of lowly origin that predominates in so much Marxist theory? Could it
not be the terror of a theory that is afraid to reflect (think) itself for fear ofseeing
there something frightening? Or has the time still not yet come for Marxism to
bear the burden of its own failures, beginning with its inability to read History
(or Lenin or Capital)? At least Dagon (p. 34) comes close to being able to admit
that 'objectively' and historically old-world Marxism is terrorism .
And once that terrible step 'beyond good and evil' is taken, Dagon has the
courage to make the attempt to carry on:

"La force motrice de 1'histoire moderne, c'est la revolte du

prol6tariat", c'est ainsi que Raya Dunayevskaya entendait
11r6sumer" Marx....on voit facilement le clin d'oeil de la verite, a
savoir que le force motrice de 1'histoire bourgeoise, c'est le
proletariat et sa revolte. La bourgeoisie n'est pas seulement "la
classe revolutionnaire par excellence" qui "ne peut exister sans
revolutionner constamment les instruments de production",
mais bien plut6t la seule classe revolutionnaire, c'est-a-dire
la seule classe qui pent prendre le pouvoir a 1'occasion d'une
revolution ET LE GARDER,1'exercer en tans que classe
(1'ambition de la bourgeoisie est d'ailleurs d'etre "la seule
classe" ...la survie de son pouvoir est toujours plus essentiel-
lement liee a sa capacite de se representer comme classe
unique, "planetaire'", solidaire ...).1 z

Faced with the "planetary" domination of this one self-conscious class

Le lot des travailleurs revolutionnaires n'est pas tant de n'avoir

17 8
 NOW - ALWAYS 1984

"ni dieu ni maitre", que de n'avoir aucun recours, aucun abri,

aucun refuge ; ni "leur classe" (qui, voute au role de "force
motrice", ne saurait se "constituer en classe") ni-encore
moins-1'eventuel exercice d'un eventuel" pouvoir de classe du
proletariat" ...ni rien d'autre, sauf "la critique impitoyable de
tout ce qui existe". En meme temps qu' "avec le capitalisme
s'acheve la prehistoire de la societe humaine", notre epoque, a
defaut d'autre chose, aura au moins vu s'achever le temps de la
prehistorie de la revolution ...faite par des revolutionnaires .... 13

Yet in the utter darkness of the old world, the illumination cast by the new is
incandescent, not only in shining light into the shadows but more so because of
the nature of its own reflection. Thus

le proletariat d'Amerique du Nord, du fait meme qu'il est

employe, c'est-a-dire exploite, aux points les plus cruciaux de
]'accumulation du capital, de la marchandise et du spectacle, est
la cle de voute de la liberation mondiale .. .parce que. . .son
programme revolutionnaire ne peut que porter sur la totalite
de la vie."

Located in the new world, the North-American proletariat (or as Dagon says
more directly "the salaried slaves") is the New World and the new world-
revolution, poised on the edge of the dream that has already long been and is
about to become Historical Truth . In other words, a logos of recuperation
(anti-terror, anti-world) whereby the new world articulates the annihilation of
the old:

. . .une nouvelle Internationale de la revolte se dresse qui,

achevant de balbutier dans le langage qui lui avait eteconfisque
par le vieux monde, ecrit maintenant sa propre theorie et sa
propre histoire...qui sera..."le coup du monde" . 1 s

Thus, from 1970-'1984', the ellipse from Revelation to Affirmation . For

Dagon's contribution is affirmative ; the myth is reaffirmed and it is Year Zero .
The historio-theology of critical criticism triumphs over the delirium of
everything that exists . History is, and all is well.
Yet in a science of bitching, there is no affirmation, only critique,'6 the
sacrifice, as Nietzsche noted, of everything to and/or including "future
blessedness and justice . "17 But in the presence of the nothing is preserved a relic
of Marxism's philosophical geneology : the eternal dawn of speculation

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 MICHAEL DORLAND

shimmering with questions.

Despite its taint of affirmation, Dagon's pamphlet is one of a growing breed .1 $
It is no more than it claims to be: a contribution to the critique of American
ideology; that is, both the dominant ideology in its death pains, and the ideology
of a North-American Marxism in its birth pangs. But the latter, odd-looking
bastard though it may be, is at least alive, or says it is. '
What if this were so then, and the imperial bastions were at last on the vergeof
crumbling even if only in the realm of theory? What if the dream of a thing that
has already long been is nigh, here in the New World, in the uncertainty between
sleep and wakefulness of what Nietzsche called dreamy times? Would it be the
echt American Dream or the extreme unleasing of fabulations of all kinds?
Would one then be able to say "Hic Rhodus, hicsalta", or would one prefer the
more vulgar Ramones' (new) version of that (old) tune : "Do you do you do you
wanna dance?"
Montreal

Notes

1. Marx, letter to Ruge, September 1843, quoted in Dagon, p. 1.

2. Reason in History, quoted in Dagon, frontispiece. See also Tom Darby, "Nihilism, Politics and
Technology ;" CJPST, V. 3, Fall, 1981, p. 57.

3. See George Lichtheim, "Sartre, Marxism and History;" in Collected Essays, New York, 1973, pp.
382 ff.

4. In Discourse of the Old Mole, unpublished MSS., Ch. X.

5. Humanisme et terreur, Paris, 1947 .

6. Dagon, p. 15 : "La d6nonciation et la critique du terrorisme, ainsi que la lutte contre sa "logique"
constituent une element essentiel de ('offensive que les travailleurs revolutionnaires de notre
epoque doivent mener. . . . .

7. Perry Anderson, Considerations on Western Marxism, London, 1979, p. 95 : "For the first time in
nearly 50 years, a massive revolutionary upsurge occurred within advanced capitalism . . . ."

8. Cf. two remarks made by Hegel that seem to the point here : his celebrated "Never since the sun
had stood in the firmament. . ." contrasted to his own, far drier "By the little whichcan thus satisfy
the needs of the human spirit we can measure the extent of its loss", in Preface to The
Phenomenology of Mind, New York, 1967, p. 73 .

9. Dagon, p. 99 .

10. Dagon who appears to have studied, not terribly well, at the Raoul Vaneigem school of
name-calling, expends tremendous energy in the main body of his text (pp. 1-92) hurling insults
at individuals andorganizations. The insults are generally of an ad hominem or scaralogical kind .
 NOW - ALWAYS 1984

Fortunately, in the notes (pp. 95-120), this lets up enough for Dagon to demonstrate that he has
indeed thought a bit about some of the points he is attempting to make ; to such a degree, in fact,
that something-resembling beauty even emerges, as in his aesthetic of suicide, pp . 95-96. One of
the reasons for this dichotomy can be laid at the feet of the intensely provincial character of
Quebec society as a whole.

11 . Dagon, pp . 91-92.

12 . ibid., pp . 90-91, Dagon's emphasis .

13 . ibid., p. 91 .

14. ibid., p. 69, emphasis added.

15 . ibid., pp . 78-79.

16. On some of the origins of the terror of affirmation, see Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination,
Boston, 1973, p. 56 . Almost everything remains to be said on the rich topic of being and time in
Marxism, and Walter Benjamin said most of it in his description of Messianic time as "the
straight gate through which the Messiah might enter." In "Theses on the Philosophy of History",
XVIII B, Illuminations, New York, 1969, p. 264.

17 . Beyond Good and Evil, Chicago, 1955, p. 61, emphasis added.

18 . See, for purposes of invidious comparison, the manifesto, "Pour un Quebec socialiste", Montreal,
in this issue of CJPST.
 Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory / Revue Canadienne de theorie
politique et sociale, Vol . 6, Nos . 1-2 (Hiver/Printemps, 1982) .

DE SADE AND THE DEAD-END

OF RATIONALISM

Andrew Wernick

O thou my friend! The prosperity of Crime is like unto the

lightning, whose traitorous brilliancies embellish the
atmosphere but for an instant, in order to hurl into death's very
depths the luckless one they have dazzled .
Marquis de Sade, Preface to Justine

Re-evaluating de Sade

In an extraordinary reversal, de Sade, whose writings have been excoriated for

two centuries as "dirty, dangerous, violent", has been gradually disinterred by
radical intellectuals and made the subject of increasingly sympathetic
re-evaluation. Indeed, since the lifting of the ban on his work in the'50s and'60s,
the Divine Marquess has not only become established as a polite topic of
intellectual conversation, but he has been virtually rehabilitated as an ideological
figure.' The climate of discussion has changed so much in the past twenty years
that David Cook is moved to suggest in his recent essay that the old problem of
how to justify publication (must we burn Sade?) has been superceded by a new
one of how to resist trendiness (must we read him?).' The question is more than
rhetorical, for it is impossible to reflect critically on the intrinsic meaning and
value of de Sade's work and thought without simultaneously, and first, reflecting
on the changed meaning it has begun to acquire in the contemporary cultural
context .
Rather than confront the problem head on, Cook offers a corrective strategy
which aims to clear the ground for critical appropriation by detaching de Sade
from contemporary myth (he was not proto-Freud) so that he can be properly
grounded in the ideological worldwhence he sprang. Despite the care with which
this is done, however, Cook's re-interpretation works within the general
framework of rehabilitation, and to this extent merely exemplifies the trendiness
problem he has raised. Since Sade wrote to rationalize (in every sense) the
instinctual vicissitude to which he gave his name, what is signified by the current
intellectual interest and sympathy for this project? What are we to make of the
paradoxical process whereby the author of such ostensibly inhuman books as
Justine and Philosophy in the Bedroom has been semi-recuperated by some of
the finest modern minds into the tradition of emancipatory thought?
In part, it must be said, the current revival is a transitory event : the product of a
search for literary arguments to justify the lifting of a puritanical censorship of

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 DEAD END OF RATIONALISM

his works . But although this was certainly the immediate context for the flurry of
de Sade scholarship in the '50s and '60s-particularly in France-it does not
explain the persistence of interest into the present, nor does it take into account
the underlying process of valorization also at work.
Within radical humanist circles (leaving aside the ideologically ambiguous
case of Nietzche) the modern receptivity towards de Sade can be traced to two
distinct moments of reinterpretation . The first, expressly undertaken in the
excursus on Juliette in Dialectic of Enlightenment, retained but pivoted on the
traditional grounds of anti-Sade critique.3 Like those who banned his books,
Horkheimer and Adorno had no doubt that de Sade was a moral monster.
However, they moderated the critique by rejecting the ascetic and liberal-human
ist values that have always subtended conventional expressions ofoutrage. Thus,
they insist that the objection to de Sade's cruel and mechanized eroticism not be
confused with the rejection of sexual freedom and enjoyment as such; and,
further, that the anti-human dimension of his thought should be read not as the
antithesis but as the very fulfillment ofEnlightened ethics . In the eyes ofCritical
Theory, de Sade disclosed the erotic telos of dominated reason : Belsen in the
bedroom . At this pedagogical level, and despite himself, de Sade has positive
value as an honest and illuminating spokesman for Enlightenment rationality :
closer in truth-value if not in piety to the liberal-rationalist tradition that
hypocritically silenced him and whose authentic representative he nevertheless
really was. It should be noted that the Frankfurt School's ironic employment ofde
Sade as an ally in their civilizational critique belongs to a more general
fascination evinced by radical thinkers for the black tradition of bourgeois
thought . Blunt voices of repressive realism like Machiavelli, Hobbes and Ricardo
have certainly been accorded greater respect by many socialists and anarchists
than more humane-and mystified-ideologues like Locke, Kant and Mill:
presumably because the former speak the truths of a social order founded on
domination and scarcity which the latter, hoping for an easy passage to a better
world, play down as real obstacles to progress.
The Frankfurtian interpretation paved the way for a positive appropriation of
de Sade by dialecticizing the critique without actually crossing that line . For actual
absorption into the emancipatory tradition to be possible, a more directly
sympathetic line of interpretation had to be established. This was the work of a
second current, originating in the late 19th-century avant-garde and extending
into both existentialist and structuralist corners of the modern French
intelligentsia which read de Sade as a tragic, romantic figure: the parable of an
insurgent imagination incarcerated by a repressive social rationality . From such a
perspective, what is noteworthy about de Sade is less the deformed character of
his fantasy life than the fact that he insisted on the right to fantasize in the first
place. Indeed, the human value of his fantasies becomes a purely secondary issue
in so far as it is precisely fantasy (and not necessarily its enactment) that is at
stake. De Sade, whose writings champion murder for thrills, was himself no
murderer. Conversely, the symbolic play of his unconscious was no respecter of
persons . Abstract libertarianism, always more sensitive than censors to the

183
 ANDREW WERNICK

difference between language and reality, opens here onto a genuine insight .
However, revolutionary modernists from Baudelaire to Barthes go much further
insisting, as a practical goal and not only as a matter ofepistemological principle,
that the disassociation between sign and referent be regarded as absolute-the
better to shatter the actual relation and transform them both. Such a project
evidently requires an anarchist poetic to break the thrall of words and codes and
open up a space for free symbolization . From this perspective, it has been
possible to assimilate de Sade not merely as real-life victim of cultural repression
but as a fully-fledged revolutionary artist. For surrealism, in particular, the
will-to-power of Sade's imagination automatically converted him into a
progressive . In effect, a second line in the valorization process was thereby
crossed : psychosis transvalued as iconoclasm.
Cook, in commendably ecumenicist spirit, pitches his own evaluation and
interpretation of de Sade somewhere between the Frankfurtian moment of
critique and the symbolist moment of appropriation . Thus, while he accepts the
vision of de Sade as imagination locked up by reason in the tower of Liberte, he
denies Sade's pedigree as a neo-Freudian libertarian and insists that he be
"returned to the Enlightenment" . Only by locating him in that tradition, argues
Cook, can we derive a clear understanding of the ideological deformations to
which his "dominated imagination" was necessarily subject . De Sade exhibited,
without transcending them, all the cultural limitations of his times. His
libertines' fantasies unfold within the strict limits of a Hobbesian universe, and
his anti-Christian metaphysic of human emptiness (desire as lack, the other as
empty receptacle) merely secularize the ontological tenets of the Christian
adversary . Overall, de Sade is to be read as a kind of satirist, pushing the
contemporary ideological universe, in all its contradictoriness, to a logical and
absurd conclusion-in part as self-justification, but also as a deliberate assault on
the hypocrisies of Church and State in the degenerate, pre-revolutionary France
of Louis XV and-XVI.
It is hard to disagree with these theses, and Cook's paper offers both an
interesting extension of the Frankfurtian critique and a valuable corrective
against any reduction of de Sade's thought to mere literature. Batches may be
correct to see in de Sade's writings a quasi-reflexive meta-discourse on the formal
relation of desire to language, but Cook is surely also right to object that such
treatment bowdlerizes their meaning. To grasp the real ideological substance of
the Sadian message we must indeed "render the text dangerous". But I do not
think that Cook has rendered the Sadian text dangerous enough. If Sade is to be
critically appropriated by the emancipatory tradition at all, it is not sufficient to
emphasize his external points of reference. We must also come to terms with the
meaning andcontent of his inner imaginings in all their brutality and violence . In
fact, the disturbing question is why that violence has not proved an
insurmountable obstacle to his reception into an ostensibly humanist
tradition-a process that Critical Theorists in the'30s and'40s, obsessed as they
were with the onset of terroristic total administration, could only have
understood on the literal plane as dominated reason gone mad.

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 DEAD END OF RATIONALISM

The Sadian Eros

For all his insistence on disengaging the referential substance of the text, Cook
tends like Barthes to metamorphosize Sade into (political) metaphor . But why
avoid the obvious? On the most direct level, as act and expression, Sade's writings
were sexual. Their main aim was to describe, justify and celebrate a way of sexual
life Sade terms libertinage. The explicit contestation of sexual and moral taboos
that even the representation of such a programme entailed demands and deserves
a response .
This is no easy matter since de Sade's libertinage, like the renunciatory ethics
to which it is angrily counter-posed, conceals the difference between liberated
and non-liberated forms of sexual freedom . Contemporary critique must
preserve the full force of the distinction, however, and not, as is the current
temptation, lapse into the liberal relativism of anything goes (particularly on
paper). Cook's argument that Sade's criticism was restrained by his "dominated"
imagination understates the problem which verged on the fascistic . The mere, if
important, fact that de Sade affirmed the worth of human sexuality does not
make his actual sexual programme any less antithetical to the vision of a liberated
eros.
To mention only the most obvious points : First, Sadian sexuality is autistic ;
there is no sexual interaction or intersubjectivity of any kind, orgasm is a solitary
experience, and the physical dimension of sex is reduced to fluid exchanges
between orifices . Secondly, the Sadian sexual drive aims to dominate what it
desires. This has nothing to do with formal passivity or aggression in the sexual
act : the sexual objects vanquished by the libertine may be required to flagellate or
penetrate from a theatrical position of power, but the actors are still slaves .
Thirdly, not possesion of the object but its violation and destruction provide the
pinnacle of ecstasy. If willing objects provide the highest pleasure it is because
domination is the more profound in their case: compliance affords no protection
against torture, since pain and misery in the victim perse provide pleasure to the
libertine . Fourthly, the master/slave asymmetry is mapped not only by
convention but also as the expression of a special animus in the distinction
between male and female. De Sade was profoundly and pathologically
mysogenist. Philosophy in the Bedroom culminates in the orgiasts congratula-
ting themselves on the just vengeance they have just wreaked on the initiate's
moralistic and interfering mother : with her husband's compliance, the woman is
raped, after a frenzy of indignities, by a syphilitic dragged in off the streets, and
then stitched together to prevent the disease's escape . The only good women are
those likeJuliette, smart enough to make it in the male libertine's world as sexual
entrepreneurs or as partners in patriarchal crime. Sade's libertines also prefer
anal to vaginal intercourse . While this reflects, in some measure, the low
contemporary level of birth-control technology, and thus a rational shift in sexual
aim, it also reflects a revulsion against the female organ as such. Moreover, as
Barthes observes, the consistent choice of this mode where the sexual object is

185
 ANDREW WERNICK

female also affirms and extends the (male) power of the libertine . Anal entry
doubles the cultural possibilities and effectively neuters femininity by reducing
women to the functional equivalent of males.
While we can appreciate, in retrospect, that the dialectic according to which
the "anti-puritanical irruption of Desire in an unreconstructed hierarchical and
instrumentalist world was bound to be distorted and one-sided, and in these
qualified terms endorse the positive dimension of its protest against "Sunday
wife" morality, there is no reason to flinch from criticizing Sade's infantilism,
cruelty and heterophobia. Indeed, in his extreme authenticity, in his will to reveal
the sexual fantasies that lay under the mendacious surfaces of the ancien regime,
he revealed, unself-consciously, the contemporary psychological connections
between patriarchy, egotism, power, instrumental reason and destructive fury:
his ratification of this complex as "natural" (in the Hobbesian not Rousseauian
sense) merely ontologized a cultural moment that emancipatory reason longs to
surpass .
It must be emphasized, finally, that Sade's espousal of "crime" was no mere
effect of libido overflowing the bounds of established order : rule-breaking in and
of itselfprovided erotic stimulus. Such extreme antinomianism renders insoluble
the conflict between the reality principle of social order and the anarchy of
pleasure. As an abstract negation of all socially instituted impulse controls, de
Sade leaves the Western morality debate suspended in its stupid oscillation
between "freedom" and "order" . De Sade was driven by reason and instinct to
transgress : the emancipatory project seeks to transcend.

The Black Tradition

On one level, as I have suggested, modern receptivity toward de Sade,

inaugurated by Horkheimer and Adorno's somewhat mischievous conjugation of
Kantian moralism with Juliette, flows from critical reason's ambiguous respect
for the black, anti-liberal counter-tradition on the fringes of classical bourgeois
thought. Whether forced back on itself in civilizational despair or driven in the
context of actual political struggle to be tough-minded and "practical", critical
reason has always tended to posit illusion rather than bad intentions as its
principal ideological antagonist . However, the "dark side" from Machiavelli to
Mandeville and beyond evidently exerts an appeal in its own right, and there is
more than a fine line to be drawn between respect for candour and an
identification with the "evil" that a perverse candour may contestatively
embrace.
Where the temptation to cross the threshold has proved particularly
irrestistible, especially for anarchists, has been in the case of hard polemics
against Christianity and its secular residues . Prime examples are provided by the
radical revival of Nietzsche-and "behind" him, de Sade. Marxism itself, born as a

18 6
 DEAD END OF RATIONALISM

humanist critique of its own Judaeo-Christian roots, has always retained a certain
ambivalence towards religion . The most violent and thoroughgoing anti-
Christian positions (from de Sade to Breton) have in fact arisen and taken root
outside the predominantly collectivist and communitarian ethos of the Left, in
the Bohemian, anarcho-individualist world on its artistic periphery . It is just
here that "left" and "right" critiques of bourgeois society have tended to merge
and become confused .
For both Sade and Nietzsche (and indeed for Hobbes also) the absolute,
counterposed to the God of Christianity and the Man/Society/Community etc. of
religious humanism, is Nature-red in tooth and claw . This nature (unlike that
of Aristotle, Rousseau and Hegel) is far from benign . It is almost deliberately
cast in the Christian image of sin . But whereas Christianity (and transformism in
general) envisages the possibility of redeeming nature (particularly, fallen
human nature), anti-Christian naturalists (like Sade and Nietzsche) ontologize
it in all its arbitrariness and imperfection as the starting-point for a
demystification of conventional morality .
Emancipation also demands this unmasking, and on the purely critical level is
attracted even to those whose programme (with which it disagrees) is to return
the species, disabused of pious illusions, to a primordial Hobbesian condition .
There is evidently, however, a problem : The Nietzschean locomotive moves
relentlessly towards "rank values" and eugenics, and the Sadian towards
masturbatory fantasies of victims tortured exquisitely to death . Where do we get
off? What are we getting off on?
The questions are linked since the nature that grounds the logic is the same as
the nature which emotionally drives it along : for Sade and Nietzsche, the nature
that matters is the force of human instinct . A dialectical counter-critique of Sade
and Nietzsche begins, then, with a critique of their writings' deformed
instinctual character. This requires more than an examination of the way in
which their imaginations were totally trapped in the dichotomies of
master/slave and male/female . The fixation on little-boy infantilism is
undeniable, but there is also a sustained fury and hatred which is instinctually
irreducible to it . Sade, faithful to his own impulses, named this additional aim
"crime"-an ever-escalating will to annihilation which Beauvoir ascribes to his
autism and Klossowski to his Hobbesian vision of "nature as destructive
principle" . Nietzsche, with greater historical reflexivity, situated his own
mission of aggression (philosophize with a hammer) in the contradictory space
between Dionysus whose spirit he wished to revive, and modern nihilism, which
had (as asceticism and res.rentiment) undermined the vital strength of the
species and had now to be assisted in the necessary process of its own
self-destruction . For de Sade, as for Nietzsche, the rage to destroy was
sublimated into an ideological project : the cultural liquidation of Christian
morality and all its metaphysical idols . But de Sade's imagery in the service of
this project was the more direct as his actual urge to destroy was the less under
control : with him, what Nietzsche called nihilism was represented literally as
dismemberment. Herein, I believe, lies the disagreeable secret of Sade's current

18 7
 ANDREW WERNICK

intellectual appeal . The road that has led, with the post-structuralists, from
anarchism and semiology to the rediscovery of Nietzsche, proceeds to a friendly
encounter with the less-nuanced deconstruction of the Divine Marquess.

The Current Appeal of de Sade

Of course, the intellectual resonance of de Sade is not (consciously) at a level of

the first order. Whatever the vicissitudes of their instincts, post- structuralists are
not turned on by torture. Sade's appeal to writers like Barthes lies rather at a
second-order levei where the Sadian narrative figures as a plane ofexpression for
a more abstract message: the message constituted by the structure of the text.
The modern discovery that realism is a literary code and not an authentic
duplication of reality theoretically sanctions this well-nigh universal
de-emphasis of the referent . For Barthes, it is not just that Sade's writings as
writings are to be carefully disengaged from their immediate authorial context,
but even their historical significance as a cultural event flows less from the sexual
values they directly express than from the new relation between imagination,
desire and language the structure of the writing exhibits and installs.4
The shift in focus brought about by the semiological mutation of critical
analysis is startling . Whereas Frankfurt thinkers, engaged in ideology-critique,
were struck by Sade's mechanistic rationalism (hypotheosized in juliette's
notorious sex machine), Barthes is fascinated by Sade's baroque formalism
(orgies as rangements and tableaux, passions classified and sub-classified, meals
as ceremonies punctilliously prescribed etc) . Barthes' dissection of the form and
substance of the cultural code which mediates enunciation of the Sadian sexual
sign is quite brilliant-and yet his formalism (like Sade's) ultimately inhibits
attention to the explicit ideological meaning that sign bears . The inhibition can
be considered symptomatic, especially when placed alongside Barthes' equally
symptomatic occlusion of any consideration of the teleogical dynamic that
powers Sade's stories simultaneously towards destruction, dissolution and
orgasm.Justine, at the climax of degredation, is struck by lightning; the final days
at Silling culminate in mass mutilation and massacre of the playmates . The
linguistic transcription which depicts Sade's work as a destruction/reconstruc-
tion of sexual coding limits the reflexivity with which the perverse appeal of his
role as transgressor can be grasped. Le crime is not merely (for us) a figure for the
shattering of language ; in any case the cultural significance of linguistic
deconstruction itself needs to be decoded (and not merely as the otherness of
liberation) .
Rather than papering over this problem by seeking out the positive,
reconstructive moment in de Sade, we should perhaps reverse the operation in
order to uncover the sadistic dimension of the rationalism with which his

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 DEAD END OF RATIONALISM

writings seem to resonate . Post-structuralism, as expressed variously in the

thought of Derrida, Barthes, Baudrillard and Foucault, represents the moment in
which critical reason, having despaired of discovering logic in history,
intentionality in praxis and apodicticity in language (objectivity's final refuge)
moves at last to reject the ratio of signification itself . The outcome, as a mode of
criticism, displays a wild parallel : just as post-structuralism deconstructs the idea
of selfhood and disarticulates texts, so too de Sade, in fantasy, destroyed actual
selves and dismembeed real bodies . In the mirror of Nietzsche, whose revival
prepared the ground for that of de Sade, reason become criticism of reason could
enjoy the image of the destructive rage that gives that nihilism its critical
momentum. As reconstituted in the current intellectual imaginaire, the figure of
de Sade functions as an unrecognized simulacrum of what reason, without
cognitive ground or satisfaction, has finally become . In search of knowledge and
finding only an unstable and referrable prison-house of language, the moment of
illumination at which mind aims has been displaced by an urge to destroy
categories and in that anti-Cartesian and anti-anthropological emptiness achieves
(with de Sade) a painful and never actually consumated moment of black
pleasure .
Must we then read de Sade? Perhaps so, if we seek a little intellectual
self-knowledge. But if we seek heroes from the sexual demi-monde of bourgeois
literature surely Genet and Wilde would be healthier candidates . The instinctual
basis of de Sade's intellectual project, like that of the modernist criticism that
currently finds him congenial, is a complete, if understandable, dead-end .
Emancipatory reason, the crushed flower of enlightenment, seeks its own
instinctual basis in a quite different eros : one that is fully liberated,
self-affirmative and strong enough to be suffused, intellectually speaking, with
an ecumenicist pathos that can even learn from de Sade .

Department of Sociology
Trent University

Notes

1. D.A .F. de Sade, Collected works, in 3 vols., Grove Press, N.Y., 1966-7 .

2. David Cook, "The Dark Side of Enlightenment", CJPST, Vol. V No. 3, PP. 3-14.

3. M. Horkheimer and T.W . Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, Herder and Herder,

N.Y ., 1972 .

4. Roland Barthes, Sade, Fourier, Loyola, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1971 .

 F. Goya
Capricho no . 43
190
Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory / Revue Canadienne de theorie
politique et rociale, Vol . 6, Nos . 1-2 (Hiver/Printemps, 1982) .

THE SLEEP OF REASON .. .

MR. WERNICK'S DEAD-END

"The sleep of reason begats monsters .

Deserted by reason the imagination begats
impossible monsters. United with reason
she is the mother of all arts and the source of
all wonders ."
F .Goya
Capricho no.43

David Cook

Let us begin with Mr. Wernick's admirable division of the Marquis into parts .
The first division is Horkheimer and Adorno's reading of Juliette as the "erotic
telos of dominated reason ."' The second, attributable to post-war French
existentialism and structuralism, views Sade as "a tragic romantic figure: the
parable of an insurgent imagination incarcerated by a repressive social
rationality ." I am placed somewhere in the middle and am granted agreement in
linking Sade to the tradition from Hobbes . Otherwise I share with the others the
crime of "rehabilitation" explicitly in my case of metamorphosizing Sade into a
"(political) metaphor" .
Mr. Wernick, on the other hand, in I am sure commendable catholic spirit,
pitches his Sade "in his will to reveal the sexual fantasies that lay under the
mendacious surface of the ancien regime, he revealed, unself-consciously, the
contemporary psychological connections between patriarchy, egotism, powers,
instrumental reason and destructive fury: his ratification of this complex as
'rational' (in the Hobbesian not Rousseauian sense) merely ontologised a
cultural moment that emancipatory reason longs to surpass ." The Marquis has
been made whole again. Yet setting aside this Marquis who dons many masks
there is in Wernick's analyses the claim that the true Marquis de Sade is found in
what's before one's eyes, in sadism itself. It is the "instinctual character" of Sade's
life and writings which links him in Wernick's analysis to Nietzsche, and what's
worst, the contemporary dead end of post-structuralist thought which suffers
from the "vicissitudes of their instincts". In this rejection of post-structualism we
are agreed but, of course for different reasons . In part Wernick's rush to put all of
us in the second order has overlooked the profound difference within the order of
the existentialist writers from the contemporary attractions in France who
themselves are far from agreed . Courting the risk of again politicizing Sade I
think we should return to Maurice Blanchot s claim that "Sade discerned clearly
that, at the time he was writing, power was a social category, that it was part and
 DAVID COOK

parcel of the organization of society such as it existed both before and after the
Revolution ."' Wernick's own deconstruction of Sadean critiques to the
instinctual level, despite its interest, must lead him away from the question of
power to a depoliticized Sade: a return despite protestations to psychologism .
Wernick's analyses rest on the fundamental moment of interpretation in the
description of crime . Crime represents both the negation of law in its natural and
social contract forms, but also the progressive end-point of the Sadian plots. Each
of Sade's major works follows the path of escalating crime set against the
constant of sexual orgasm. Wernick in contrast returns crime to Sade's "own
impulses", his own autism (which is undeniable in the sense of Sade's own life in
prison though not of his thought), thereby seeing crime as an "additional aim".
Crime is thus made superfluous as it is returned into the individual in a Freudian
sublimation of the sexual impulse . We are then back to Freud and the literal Sade.
However much one wished to emphasize the sexual dimension in Sade there is
a constant disappearing act going on. Wernick himself points out that the sexual
act is merely an exchange which adds nothing . to the actors, but serves as a
prelude to crime. Crime here is precisely the vehicle that reaches outside,
transcends negatively if you will, the negative shells that engage in fluid
mechanics . To rejoin Blanchot, crime is a social act which I have claimed
evidences, not the autism of denying social reality, but rather its confrontation in
challenging the political and social ideologies. It is inextractable from the reality
of the Enlightment.
As a consequence the interpretation of the final crimes of Juliette and the
atrocities at Silling should not be passed over en route to papering over the
post-structuralists . The President de Curval, one of the libertines inhabiting
Silling in The 120 Days of Sodom, sets the dimension of crime, the Sadian
Imetamorphises', in this frequently quoted passage from the eighth day :

Ah, how many times, by God, have I not longed to be able to

assail the sun, snatch it out of the universe, make a general
darkness, or use that star to burn the world! Oh, that would be a
crime, oh yes, and not a little misdemeanor such as are all the
ones we perform who are limited in a whole year's time to
metamorphosing a dozen creatures into lumps of clay.3

We are reaching with Curval the limits of Sade's thought in what I referred to
earlier as the dark side of the enlightment ; here presented in the absurd image of
the binary choice of a black hole or of a super nova begat as Goya suggests by an
'impossible monster' . The imagination 'deserted by reason' exorcizes the
Christian and bourgeois myths through their realizations . In either case 'nothing'
is left.
A similar progression is found in the storm scene which ends Juliette . The
striking of the virtuous Justine is not, as Foucault comments, "Nature become
criminal subjectivity" 4 but rather man became God, the most impossible criminal
of all the monsters . Again the systematic outcome of the extension of crime from

19 2
 SLEEP OF REASON

the castle to the city in the penultimate scene and finally to the heavens . It
represents Clairwill's desire to "set the planet ablaze"' which is fulfilled in
commanding, through the exercise of the libertines' will the death ofJustine and
ultimately theirown mutual destruction. Again the perverse logic ofthe claim of
the Enlightment philosopher-king ending in the violence of the libertine-God .
The last section of Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization, which I have
referred to above, draws the conclusion that this violence holds out "the
possibility of transcending (the Western world's) reason ..., and of recovering
tragic experience beyond the promises of dialectic ."6 This conclusion flows from
the comparison he draws between Sade and Goya and in particular the last scene
of Juliette referred to above, and the Caprichos . With Sade, as I have argued, there
is no exit through violence . The forceable negation of the subjects which are
already empty ends in a reciprocal nothingness . In the case of Goya, Foucaults
ultimate abandonment of Capricho no.43 to "that triple night into which Orestes
sank " neglects the fact that with Aeschylus the violence of the Furies finally
recedes. Although both Sade and Goya were consumed by the problems of power
and violence their work directs us to the union of reason and the imagination .
Goya claimed that Capricho no.43 was the first'universal idiom' that was to lead
to the 'source of all wonders .' These wonders were to be denied to them both. It
takes little imagination to see in the Capricho the awakening of reason
-Minerva's owl-pen ready tobe instructed by Hegel once again in the subjection
of the imagination .

Department of Political Economy

Erindale College
University of Toronto

Notes

1 . Unattributed references are to Andrew Wernick's "De Sade and the Dead End of Modern
Reason" appearing at the same time as this response . Wernick's article is itself in response to
"The Dark Side of Enlightenment" CJPST Vol . V:3, pp . 3-14.

2. "Sade" by Maurice Blanchot reprinted in The Marquis de Sade:: Three Complete Novels, Grove
Press, New York, 1960, p . 42 .

3 . The Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sadism, Grove Press, New York, 1967, p . 364.

4 . Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization, Vintage Books, New York, 1973, p. 284 .

5. The Marquis de Sade, Juliette, Grove Press, New York, 1976, p. 958 .

6 . Michel Foucault, op. cit., p. 285 .

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Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory / Revue Canadienne de theorie
politique et sociale, Vol. 6, Nos . 1-2 (River/Printemps, 1982) .

ITSELF A'STRANGE LOOP' :

A COMMENT ON ELI MANDEL'S
"NORTHROP FRYE
AND CULTURAL FREUDIANISM"

Frank Davey

I will begin by repeating a relatively minor observation from Eli Mandel's

paper: "...the most cogent means of describing Canadian culture through its
literary expression has been ... the so-called thematic criticism ofFrye."' We note
that this statement does not say that Frye's is the most powerful means of
describing Canada's literature . We also note here an assumption that there could
be ways other than thematic criticism to describe a culture through its literary
expression . Even more, we may notice questions hidden in the text: Is culture
best described through its literary expression? Is the description of culture a
proper function of literary criticism? Is not the description of culture through its
literary expression one of the possible definitions of thematic criticism? Would
not any criticism which attempted the description of culture through its
literature be, of necessity, a thematic criticism?
"Strange Loops" is a provocative paper, which raises numerous issues about
the nature of writing, the nature of criticism, the cultural divisions (if any) in
Canada, the role of geography (if any) in literary theory or cultural division, and,
fifthly, the strange leap that occurs between Frye's universal theory of literature
and the limited perspective of literary nationalism . It would be much simpler to
respond to a piece of thematic criticism than to a paper such as this. For, in
raising these issues, Mandel repeatedly offers puzzles rather than answers, and
while one may affirm or deny answers one necessarily puzzles over puzzles .
I recently attended a York University conference on writing by women, and
between sessions was asked two questions by both anglophone and francophone
Quebec writers . The first was why did nearly all the English-Canadian critics at
the conference address themselves only to themes and images, in contrast to the
Quebecois critics who addressed themselves mainly to language and form; the
second was why are the works of English-Canadian feminists by and large so
uninteresting as structures of language. The two questions were clearly related
and pointed to conflicts of vision. Does one write in the service of ideas or
language? Is language of less significance than the ideologies it may carry? Is it,
like the text of a dream, of less intrinsic interest than are the extra-linquistic
matters it may reveal? Or should it be, as one critic at the conference described
the work of Nicole Brossard, neither a receptacle of ideas nor an expresson of
emotional condition, but simply a text brought into being to evoke a reading, a
response.
One value of a paper like "Strange Loops" is that it reveals its puzzles where
we may have thought we had been given answers . A recurrent problem for
writers and teachers is that too many people have read books like Margaret

19 5
 FRANK DAVEY

Atwood's Survival or John Moss's Patterns of Isolation and believed them to be

about writing . How salutary it would be to have cultural criticism clearly
distinguished from the literary, so that sociology or cultural psychoanalysis could
not be confused with literary understanding (or be confused by the writer with
linguistic creation)!
Writing of Daphne Marlatt, a poet only briefly mentioned here,John Bentley
Mays termed hers a "poetics of dwelling ... a pacing off of the bounds of our
habitation."' We are told of Maggie's wish inJack Hodgins' The Invention ofthe
World "to be at home in the world," of the Rudy Wiebe narrator who declares
himself " 'an element in what is happening at this very moment,' " 3 of the
prairie town of Kroetsch's Seed Catalogue that "grows of nothing."' We are told
also that the past may be deconstructed, and the present or home invented. The
contrast between these approaches and the Canada-besieged vision of Atwood,
or the Canada as a "conservative town"5 which Mandel attributes to Frye, is, I
suggest, not merely one between the particular and the general, the active and the
passive, the temporal and the atemporal, but between sharply affirmative and
defensive attitudes to life. It is the contrast between what Paul Bove terms the
"quest to escape nature and time" 6 and the celebration of nature and time.
I cannot see this opposition as one between British and American elements in
Canadian culture - an opposition Mandel correctly attributes to John
Sutherland and which he himself also appears to believe in. I see the use of such
terms as British and American here as simplistic and, in less scrupulous hands,
potentially mischievous . These terms have long been coloured in Canada by
irrational associations; worse, they disguise broad philosophical issues as narrow
political ones. The actual argument is a very old one between humanism and
anti-humanism, between realism and nominalism . As such, it pre-dates the
discovery of the Americas, and divides the U.S. as much as Canada . In that
country Sutherland's dichotomy is expressed as Philip Rahv's palefaces vs.
redskins, Roy Harvey Pearce's nay-sayers vs. yea-sayers. The question Canada
has faced is not that of choosing an imperial influence ; it is a fundamental
question with which Aquinas, Abelard and Bacon have contended : should
mankind view its civilization as the fruit of its own heroic struggle against a
hostile nature - Birney's "spark beleagured by darkness"' - or as a miracle of
cosmic process, of a fertile planet, a life-affirming universe?
These matters lead directly to what I find most surprising about Mandel's
paper : the central role it assigns to Frye. In my own commentaries on thematic
criticism, I had concluded that its pessimistic ordefensive posture was part of the
humanistic despair of postwar Western Europe and North America articulated
most clearly by Sartre ; while the affirmative counter-current, the immediate
source of the linguistic regionalism of which Mandel speaks here, I had believed
to have stemmed fromJaspers and Heidegger . Perhaps I am now betraying my
British Columbia perspective. Mandel suggests that I, among others, in assessing
"Frye's method" have overlooked certain "major peculiarities,"' but it may be
only the case that, as a non-Ontarian, I overlooked Frye. It has always seemed to
me that the abuses ofthematic criticism have been committed by others, and that
the neglect, until recently, of alternative critical approaches could only be the
responsiblity of those who committed it. Frye himself has not written a

196
 ON ELI MANDEL

book-length study of Canadian literature ; what shape such a book might take we
can do no more than guess.
During a panel discussion at the Simon Fraser University conference lastJuly,
"The Coast is Only a Line" (note the structuralist displacement of geography
here), Eli Mandel declared what he calls in this paper Northrop Frye's
"interpretation of Canada as ... a Laurentian Empire"9 to be a mistaken equation
of Ontario with the rest of Canada. Certainly as a British Columbian I can agree
with this. In this context we see that, of the four writers he proposes today as
regionalists of language, particularism, and discontinuous form, three are from
western Canada and the fourth is itinerant . The four major works of cultural
criticism which he cites are Frye,Jones, Atwood, and Moss, all ofwhom write out
of central Canada. A geographical distinction appears to lurk within his analysis .
Yet, in his discussion of regionalism as a linguistic rather than geographic
concept, he clearly offers the possibility that geography can be removed from
literary description, with not only the imposition of Ontario on Canada being
thereby denied but also that of "Western" on such writers as Kroetsch, Hodgins,
or Wiebe. I can add that his definition of regionalism would admit Ontario
writers like Michael Ondaatje and bpNichol. I also suggest that there can be local
variants of thematic criticism, as Laurence Ricou's Vertical Man / Horizontal
World, or W.H. New's Articulating West, which, without projecting an Ontario
vision on Canada, still demonstrate a preference for ideas over writing .
Geographic sections ofCanada can, it seems, be accommodated separately on the
couch of cultural Freudianism . Does Mandel himself go so far in denying
geography? His is an enigmatic paper, itself a "strange loop," which describes
two extreme critical positions without overtly choosing, a paper which is notably
Frygian in avoiding obvious value-judgment . Which way does Eli Mandel lean?
The most telling clue, it seems to me (despite his declared "strong personal
attraction to Bloom's theory of influence"'0), is the Clark Blaise quotation on
which he ends. Perhaps we should ask him to begin again.

York University

Notes

1 . Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, V :3 (Fall 1981), 34.

2. "Ariadne : Prolegomenon to the Poetry of Daphne Marlatt ;" Open Letter, Third Series, no . (Fall
3
1975), 33 .
3 . Mandel, 41 .
4 . Mandel, 40.
5 . Mandel, 35 .
6. Mandel, 37.
7. "Vancouver Lights ;" Selected Poems, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1966, p. 76 .
8. Mandel, 34.
9. Mandel, 35 .
10 . Mandel, 36.

197
 Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory / Revue Canadienne de theorie
politique et sociale, Vol . 6, Nos. 1-2 (Hiver/Printemps, 1982) .

DROWNING IN THE METAPHYSICS

OF SPACE

Daniel Drache

Eli Mandel rightly notes the powerful, and I would add, pernicious influence of
environmentalism on literary criticism . The question this raises is why is the
land as physical space and the landscape as metaphor portrayed in the Canadian
imagination as a source of terror and alienation, unyielding to man's efforts to
live with nature? When treated thus environmentalism is nothing less than an
uncritical endorsement (and, for many, a celebration) of geographical
determinism-man's submission to the unchanging and unchangeable
structures of geography . That many of our critics remain fixated and enthralled
by the narrow strictures of territory is a strange loop indeed, and something that
deserves comment .
I begin with some questions that need answers . Why do our writers and critics
continue to drown in the metaphysic of space? Why do they accept geo-
determinism as a mode of critical thought and analysis? More fundamentally,
why do they adopt this ideological mask which can never explain the profound
social and economic inequalities of Canadian life? Why do they continue to
believe that geographic isolation rather than the mode of production is
responsible for regional identities? Finally, why are they so concerned with
geography and not with history which, after all, is about memory and voice, what
happened and why?
As a category of thought geographic determinism tells us a lot about ourselves
and our capacity for self-deception . Atwood in Survival discusses the four basic
victim positions . In the first, the victim denies being a victim. In the next, the
victim acknowledges victimization but justifies or rationalizes this condition by
appeals to authority, nature, external circumstances, etc. Much of what passes for
environmentalism is, I submit, an interpretation of the world according to the
victim mentality of position two .
Eli among others would no doubt object to this line of attack with the
counter-argument citing the positive, creative, non-victim use of geography as
found in the regional novel. But my point is somewhat different. Our fixation
with land, space, territory, geography arises in the absence of a popular,
accessible, critical discourse capable of explaining Canada as a social and cultural
entity. In my perspective, environmentalism is really not about geography but
about 'totems', 'myths', 'superstitions' which explain nothing and offer false
answers to complex issues . That is why cultural theories which rely on the
primacy ofgeography to explain the development of Canada or to account for our
regional character are an ideological mask. A mask, as we know, functions as a
repressive structure and blocks the emergence of an authentic discourse, one
which is capable of liberating the imagination or providing answers where

198
 METAPHYSICS OF SPACE

previously none were thought to exist.

Finally, I have purposively refrained from discussing a non-literary loop-the
explanatory power of appeals to 'good' or 'bad' geography . Would anyone dare
analyze Third World literature in terms of geographical handicap, climate,
nature? But the obvious point for a political economist to make is that this
perspective on Canadian culture tells us more about the bias of intellectuals and
their preference for simple answers than it does about the fundamental issues of
memory, voice, class, and nation at this time in our history .

Glendon College
York University

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Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory / Revue Canadienne de theorie
politique et sociale, Vol. 6, Nos . 1-2 (Hiver/Printemps, 1982) .

DARBY REPLIES TO SHELL

AND KROKER*

Tom Darby

"Do you understand Dionysus or Christ?" With these words Professor Kroker
ends the discussion of my article, Nihilism, Politics and Technology . But surely
from what Professor Shell has said about the article there is little doubt as to who
she thinks I understand. Shell thinks I speak as a Christian of the Voegelinian
perspective . Kroker thinks that there is at least a half chance that I speak as an
atheist nihilist. Although I appreciate their comments, I disagree with much they
have to say and find these conclusions amusingly odd, especially when considered
together. Before we look at them together, let's - look at them separately.
While Profesor Shell does not seem to take much issue with my overall
interpretation, she does raise objections. I will speak to the objections and then
return to her interpretation.
Shell says that I do not appreciate the benefits of individual satisfaction
afforded by technology. The benefits of technology, at least on the level of
individual satisfaction, I consider too obvious to state. I am not writing about
technology as would a liberal who wishes to praise it nor as a luddite who would
bury it. My level of discourse is elsewhere . It should be evident that individual
satisfaction, because it is the end product of the dialectic of recognition, is
presupposed in the system. After all, part of the system is the civil society . It is
that part which sees to individual needs. Pertaining to the quote from the
Phenomenology that she says I "quoted somewhat out of context," here too it
should be understood that the individual is preserved, not swallowed up by the
system. Hegel say that subject equals substance and I argue that we have this in
the form of a homeostasis of desire and need .
The last objection is the most interesting and important. She claims that the
position I am left with at the endof the article calls either for a leap of faith or an
exercise of the will to power. A leap of faith- to where? Into the arms ofChrist, I
presume . If I advocated such I would not have ended the article with the
quote from Zarathustra but with the Nicene creed. But maybe I am advocating
the human shaping of human nature through an exercise of the will to power. If
this were the case, I would not have talked of human nature in terms of the
metaxy . Why do I talk of this doctrine that places man half-way between the
beast and the gods? I talk ofit because this is what Hegel historizes on the level of
both epistemology and philosophical anthropology. It is Plato who discovered
the metaxy not Voegelin . Perhaps her reply should be re-titled "Confessions of

*Editor's Note: See CanadianJournal ofPolitical and Social Theory, Vol V, no. 3
(1981) . T. Darby, Nihilism, Politics and Technology; S. Shell, The Confessions of
Voegelin; A. Kroker, Life Against History, pp. 57-98 .

200
 DARBY REPLIES

Plato." Hegel claims that this in-betweeness can be surpassed . This is what he
means on page71 of the Baillie translation of the Phenomenology ofSpirit when
he talks about the new goal being not a love for wisdom but the possession of it.
Perhaps we should call her reply "Confessions of Hegel." But yes, it is Voegelin
who calls Hegel a sorcerer who has attempted to perform magic. I differ with
Voegelin in this respect : Hegel is a man like the rest ofus, who, in a curious way,
does perform magic . Voegelin has not looked at the man Hegel, neither has he
looked at what it means for men to perform magic, nor has he looked at the
relationship of magic to technique . I do agree with Shell that to interpret human
nature in terms of the metaxy requires faith . At least today, such an
interpretation would. But if there is an acknowledgement here on my part, and
after all, acknowledgement is what confession requires, then it has to do with the
question of what happens to human nature when it is not thought of in these
terms. What happens is somewhat like our jumping over man in the manner of
Nietzsche's dwarf. I clearly state what I am acknowledging in the article : "a need
to take seriously both technology and nihilism." In other words I am not talking
of a need or even possibility of returning to recycled dead values, but of a
beginning by addressing ourselves to these two concerns . Even in our
post-modern age I am advocating philosophy as a possibility. But for a possibility
is all that we can hope; again, as with Nietzsche's dwarf, after our leap there is no
guarantee that wewill again descend once more upon the tight-rope bisecting the
abyss below us and the sky above us.
This leads to Professor Kroker's commentary. He begins by quoting Foucault's
comments on Hyppolite's Hegel and claims that I, unlike the latter, did not make
an experiment of Hegel and did not let Philosophy take the ultimate risk. By this
I take him to mean that, despite what I have to say about Hegel's philosophy, I
remain an adherent of the philosophy of the Concept ; that Hegel, in effect, is
standing there motionless when I am done. Let's look at the whole quote from
the Archaeology of Knowledge.

For Hyppolite, the relationship with Hegel was the scene of

an experiment, of a confrontation in which it was never certain
that philosophy would come out on top. He never saw the
Hegelian system as a reassuring universe, he saw it in the field
in which philosophy took the ultimate risk.
From this stem, I believe, the alterations he worked, not
within Hegelian philosophy, but upon it, andupon philosophy
as Hegel conceived it; from this also, a complete inversion of
themes . Instead of concerning philosophy as a totality
ultimately capable of dispersing and regrouping itself in the
movement of the concept, Jean Hyppolite transformed it into
an endless task, against the background of an endless horizon .
(p. 236)

20 1
 TOM DARBY

On the whole I do not disagree with what Foucault claims for Hyppolite, but
since the discussion is about what I was doing and not about what he was doing, I
suggest as a way of elucidating my own project we look at this in light of what
Hyppolite was doing in relation to Kojeve .
If I had to pick a study of Hegel that is faithful to the letter of the text of the
Phenomenology of Spirit, it would be Hyppolite's. If I had to pick one that is
faithful to the spirit, yet goes beyond it, it would be Kojeve's. Hyppolite stops
short where Kojeve goes on. In Genesis and Structure, Hyppolite leaves us with
the query : "Is Feuerbach's interpretation-which absorbs God into man instead
of absorbing man into God-the consequences of Hegel's philosophy of
religion? (p. 541) The subject of Hegel's mysticism Hyppolite will take only so
far . At best he is ambiguous . (p. 594) As is well known, Kojeve does not exhibit
this kind of reserve . There is no ambiguity in Kojeve . While philosophy for
Hyppolite took "the ultimate risk," Kojeve took a greater risk and took a risk that
did not turn out well for philosophy. It is Kojeve's Hegel who allows us to see
perhaps more clearly the result of conceiving time as history and this is the
concern of my article. But did I take the ultimate risk despite the, possibility of a
bad outcome for philosophy? Although the proof is in the examination of what I
have written, I will again point the reader to my concluding quote from
Nietzsche. The quote, has to do with the changing of human nature and the will
to power and immediately follows my statements about the metaxy . I am saying
that if this is the case, if the nature of humanness has been transformed, then we
are left with will to power and not with philosophy. The outcome has not been so
good for philosophy, but even in spite of this, I never deny the possibility of it. In
fact, as I have already said in conjunction with Shell's comments above, I
acknowledge its possibility.
Now I will turn to a few small matters in Kroker's comments, matters that
merely need clearing up, and then return to my final point which is connected
with the above .
Professor Kroker says that my interpretation leads toward androgyny .
Although I am not exactly sure what he means by this, but since I do not talk
about it here but somewhere else, I can only assume he refers to what I have said
elsewhere . I do talk specifically about androgyny but I do so in my forthcoming
book, The Feast : Meditations of Politics and Time . There I argue that
androgyny is but one of a cluster of symbols that resolve the tension of
various dialectical polarities, one being sex. On a mundane level this has to
do with a variation of the master/slave dialectic and on another level with the
presence of two dialectics in Hegel, one anthropocentric, the other theocentric.
Kroker argues that there are two major omissions : that I should have talked
about work and that I should have talked more about nihilism . Responding to the
first, I would say that the dialectic from which work is an exudate is the dialectic
of desire. From this we not only get the dialectic of work but the dialectic of
recognition . Marxists tend to forget this. I would argue that by talking about
desire we thereby presuppose the dialectic of work and recognition and, although
I could have gone to Marx to illustrate it, we do not need him to explain it.

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 DARBY REPLIES

Regarding his second point, I would say that a discussion of nihilism beyond what
is to be found in section III of the article, is to go beyond Hegel and therefore
beyond the subject matter . The title of the paper originally included the sub-title :
"An Excursus into our Hegelian Legacy ." A further investigation of nihilism is
now being undertaken in my current project, The Feast : Meditations on Nihilism
and Technology. Here a more 'mature' nihilism tumbles out of our previous
subject matter, but cannot be discussed further in this context . We have to go
beyond Hegel to Nietzsche for that .
The phrase the "non-time between the crucifixion and resurrection" is mine,
not Kojeve's . It was inspired by some things Hegel had to say in Die System der
Sittlichkeit .
Now I will conclude with a brief response to the upshot of their commentaries
taken together . If we take "understanding" in the broadest sense to mean "to
stand under or among," then I would say that I, together with all of us, understand
both Christ and Dionysus . They are the shadows that loom both behind and
before us, the former is our past and latter is our future . Thus perhaps it is best in
our "New World" to say that "understanding," as it pertains here, is to stand
between them . It is from the position of this tension that we must interpret our
world . It is a tension wrought of remembering the words in Hebrews that "faith
is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" while
hearing clearly Hegel's and Nietzsche's word that God has died . It is to stand
between the Passion and the willing will of the Dynamo .

Department of Political Science

Carleton University
Canadian Journal ofPolitical and Social Theory / Revue Canadienne de theorie
politique et sociale, Vol. 6, Nos . 1-2 (Hives/Printemps, 1982) .

PROBING THE BLINDSPOT:

THE AUDIENCE COMMODITY

Sut Jhally

The "blindspot" debate, conducted between Dallas Smythe, Bill Livant and
Graham Murdock in the pages of this journal, raised some vital issues concerning
the Marxist analysis of the communications industry . I In this comment I wish to
address three central issues of the discussion : the audience as a commodity; the
labour of the audience ; and the audience commodity as the key to the internal
unity of the media. I will argue that Smythe's suggestion of the audience as a
commodity can only be defended by a further theoretical elaboration of the key
themes, that the notion of audience labour in marketing and consumption cannot
be substantiated within a Marxist framework, and that Livant's claim for the
internal unity of the media is not consistent with a study that places the analysis
of commodity relations at its centre.
Smythe, aware that his central claim that the chief product of mass media are
audiences produced as commodities will prove contentious, poses and answers a
series of questions which he claims "an historical materialist approach would
seem to indicate ."' Unfortunately, he asks the wrong questions and does not
provide himself with an opportunity to theoretically specify the basis of his
claims . All he comes up with are a number of observations that support his
general contention. A set of different questions would have allowed the
opportunity to substantiate and specifically probe the blindspot he has
perceptively located. These questions are: (1) Does . the audience commodity
have a use-value, (2) does it have an objective existence, (3) does it have an
exchange-value, (4) is it produced by value-adding labour, and (5) is it owned by
specific capitalists? These are, I believe, the main parameters of the Marxist
definition of a commodity and it is only if all these are satisfied that we can
include the term in the wider Marxist analysis of media.
(1) Does the audience commodity have a use-value? Use-value is a relative
term. Different consumers will have different use-values for the same
commodity. For advertisers of consumer products the use-value of the audience
commodity is the movement of commodities-in-general . Also, different
audiences will "move" a divergent set of commodities . For advertisers such as the
army, use-value is connected to recruitement. For corporate (image-based) ad-
vertising, use-value is connected to ideological factors concerning legitimacy.
(2) & (3) Does the audience commodity have an objective existence and does
it have an exchange-value? Livant, arguing to put the audience commodity on an
objective footing, writes that if Smythe's point of switching analysis from
ideological content to objective function is to be taken, there is a need to break
with the message-based definition of the audience . The definition should rest on
objective criteria . The distinction thus becomes one between the audience for

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"Happy Days" and the demographic and psychographic specifics of that

audience . This distinction is based on an historical process in which the audience
(not necessarily as a commodity) is the factor through which the commodity
form is articulated (see below) . Thus, in the earlier days of television, the
commodity form of mass media was the technology. As Raymond Williams
notes, the "major investment was in the means of distribution, and was devoted
to production only so far as to make the distribution technically possible and then
attractive." 3 A commodity was sold to an audience once the technology had been
widely distributed the commodity form of mass media changed to the production
of audiences . The development of the modern systems of market research
(numbers, demographics, psychographics) has greatly facilitated this process in
recent years. Furthermore, as soon as any material "emerges as a commodity, it
changes into a thing which transcends sensuousness . It not only stands with its
feet on the ground but in relation to all other commodities" 4 (Marx) . Hence some
audience commodities exchange for more than others . For instance, in the late
1960's, CBS decided to cancel a number ofpopular prime-time programmes, such
as "Andy Griffith" and "Ed Sullivan" because these programmes attracted pro-
portionately more elderly, lower-income, rural audiences . The new program-
mes, instead, had to try and capture the profitable markets of the young, affluent,
urban audiences who would be willing to try new products. This new audience
could be sold at a higher price to advertisers . Today, the most valuable TV
audience is the sports audience, which, because of its demographic specificity,
is sold at approximately twice the price of the prime-time audience . It is
important to note here that advertising rates are not based on time but on the
objective characteristics of the particular audience. The cost is calculated in terms
of cost per thousand viewers reached. As Pete Rozelle of the National Football
League says, "our demographics are such that an advertiser paying $7 per
thousand for football really has a better buy than if he paid $4 per thousand for
another programme ."5 The sports audience is more costly because the people
reached are mostly men with a decisive role in the decision-making process in the
purchase of high-cost consumer items, and because the characteristics of this
audience are more precise and specific than the more amorphous, prime-time
audience.
(4) Is the audience commodity produced by value-adding labour? Smythe
claims that the prime function of advertising-dominated media is to produce
audiences as commodities for sale to advertisers . Undoubtedly network
executives think that this is what they are doing. However, for us to substantiate
this objectively, we would have to show that television undertakes specific
actions not merely to draw existing aggregates together (although, strictly
speaking, that would be enough) but to create new ones that will sell on the
market for more than the original aggregates (raw materials) . To illustrate this,
an illuminating example can be chosen from the relationship between sports and
TV. In 1979, when Pete Rose signed for the Philadelphia Phillies, the latter were
able to guarantee his salary from television ($800,000 a year), after it was found
that having Rose with the team would significantly raise viewing figures . Rose

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 SUT JHALLY

signed for the Phillies because he could be used to create a new audience
commodity .6 As in the creation of all commodities for exchange, value is added
through the conscious activity of producers . The media work to change sports to
produce a new audience commodity.' Although the message is central to the
creation of this new commodity, it is not defined by the message . It is defined by
the objective characteristics of the audience commodity.8
(5) Is the audience commodity owned by specific capitalists? This is the most
vital issue concerning the audience as commodity and is, in a sense, the most
ambiguous and problematic. Orthodox Marxists baulk at the acceptance of the
audience as commodity on this point . The claim is put instead that, although
network executives and advertisers talk about buying and selling audiences,
objectively what is being sold is simply time. In this view the audience does not
exist as a commodity because it cannot be owned by anyone. Fortunately, a
number of situations along the Canada/US border have provided us with the
material to at least attempt a defence of the notion of audience commodity
ownership .9
The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission
(CRTC) proposed in 1971 to give cable companies permission to remove
commercials from American station broadcasts and to substitute Canadian
commercials instead . In August 1973, Rogers Cable of Toronto began to
randomly delete commercials from Buffalo station broadcasts . Three Buffalo
stations immediately threatened legal action, arguing that the Canadian action
was both immoral and illegal. While this legal action was ultimately unsuccessful,
the policy of random deletion has been stopped and, in the process, a number of
interesting relationships have been highlighted . The intriguing question is -
what exactly was being "stolen" to prompt this legal threat? The Buffalo stations
were threatened with the loss of their Canadian audience, meaning that this
audience could not be sold to advertisers, thus resulting in a loss of advertising
revenue . While the programmes of the American stations would be used to
produce the audience commodity, the selling would be done by Canadian cable
operators . As one broadcasting consultant put it : "substitution is plain
stealing. "1° The present border policy is one of overlapping programme
substitution. If the same programme is being shown on both Canadian and
American stations at the same time, the cable company blocks out the American
signal, thus assuring the Canadian stations an unfractioned audience that can be
sold to advertisers at a higher cost than if the audience was split between
different stations . While the American/Canadian situation certainly highlights
the issues, the question of audience commodity ownership is not only an
international affair. Within the US and Canada, the FCC and the CRTC have
fairly stringent rules protecting markets within a certain geographic range
of each other; i.e. if Toronto were in the USA the Buffalo stations would be
prevented by FCC regulations from doing any selling in that market .
Smythe starts his analysis with the question of the objective definition of the
commodity produced by advertising-based media, but unfortunately he addresses
the key issues only tangentially and thus fails to establish sufficient theoretical

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support for his argument . The questions posed here are the ones that address the
central issues, and while more problematic, I believe that, in the long run, their
working through will provide stronger support for Smythe's assertions
regarding the audience commodity.
Smyth's second major contention is that the audience commodity labours
productively for capital in marketing goods to itself, and by reproducing workers'
labour power through consumption ." Now clearly the term "labour" has some
very specific meanings within a Marxist perspective, most importantly that
labour is used to create value in the production of commodities . For Smythe it
seems that as labour power is a commodity, that which produces it is labour .
Because workers can reproduce their labour power only through consumption in
the monopoly capitalist marketplace, all time becomes work time . Livant clearly
agrees with Smythe on the general point although his position as regards the
productivity of labour is unclear . The whole discussion of audience labour
revolves, however, around the issue of productivity . What is actually meant by
productive? For Smythe and Livant the answer would seem to be: "if it is
essential for the maintenance of the system of monopoly capitalism it is
productive ." Clearly this is not a very Marxist position, which would stress that
labour creates value which is reflected in the exchange-value of the product. 'z
What then happens to Smythe's suggestion that marketing and consumption
are part of productive labour when viewed from the perspective of the Marxist
definition of labour? It seems that for Smythe the marketing function is a purely
subjective act . It is a learning of cues when making up a "mental shopping list"
(p. 14). Audience members sit in front of a TV and learn certain actions . Surely
there can be no claim that there is anything productive in this activity by itself .
For the claim to have any basis it must take place with some form of real
(objective) activity - spending income in consumption . It must be in this
activity of consumption (subsuming self-marketing) that Smythe locates
productive activity . For consumption to be productive it would have to be shown
that the consumption involved in creating the commodity labour power is
adding value to labour power. But if the value of labour power is defined as the
value of the means of subsistence of the worker and his family (the Marxist
definition), then labour power would have to exchange at this value plus the
value added by consumption . Thus labour power would have to exchange at
above its value . 13 Smythe's claim about the productivity of marketing and
consumption cannot remain consistent within a Marxist framework. It only
makes sense outside of it, although the alternative framework is not stated and is
not plainly obvious . By viewing monopoly capitalism in a holistic manner,
Smythe (and Livant, it seems) label the functionally distinct parts with the
essence of the most vital (production) . They mistake an integration into
monopoly capitalism for the installation of monopoly capitalist relations of
production .'4 This is not to deny Smythe's claim that advertising by capitalists
can be productive, but is to specify that productive activity takes place within
production (in the age of monopoly capitalism including marketing and
distribution), and not in response to this activity, in consumption, which is

207
 SUT JHALLY

outside production. Within production, activity is concerned with the production

of commodities-in-general. In consumption, activity is geared towards creating
something else (labour power) . 1 5 The only formulation of audience labour that
might remain consistent and fruitful is one which sees that labour is not being
performed for advertisers but for the mass media. Audience labour is part of the
production process of the audience commodity . Their "wages" are the
programmes, without which they would not watch TV. The networks get more
from advertisers than it costs to produce the audience commodity, so value (or at
least surplus) is being created. 16
Livant, in an extension of Smythe's position, asserts that the notion of
audience commodity applies even to non-advertising-based media. Whereas for
Smythe it is the content that is cross-marketed, for Livant it is the audience itself
that is cross-marketed. The audience is the commodity form through which the
media are internally articulated . "In some of the media, some of the time,
commodities-in-general are being sold; but in all sectors, all of the time, the
audience commodity is being made. In all sectors it is being traded, in all sectors it
is being measured ." Just as audience labour was generalized from a specific
section to the whole, so now Livant has overextended the useful concept of
audience commodity . I think it is indisputable that the audience is the key to the
internal unity of the media and that Smythe is correct when he says that the
content is cross-marketed. It is quite another thing to say that the audience as a
commodity fulfills this function. Within advertising-dominated media,
accumulation is based on the sale of the audience commodity . In other media,
accumulation is based on the sale of a commodity (book, movie, record) to an
audience . All mass media create audiences but it is only advertising-based media
that produce audiences for sale. Thus "Star Wars" was a commodity sold to an
audience (or rather a cinema seat was sold for a particular periodof time) . When
"Star Wars" is shown on TV, it is being used as a producer's good to produce an
audience for sale to advertisers. When "Star Wars" books are produced they are
commodities for sale to an audience. When "Star Wars" music is played on AM
radio, it is the audience commodity that is being produced. While the audience
and the audience commodity may be comprised of the same aggregates, the
specific context of their relations with various media define them in different
ways. It is through the audience that the commodity form of mass media is
articulated . The audience commodity is not the commodity form through which
the media is internally articulated . The term "commodity" is a description of
relations . It is not a description of static characteristics.
To conclude, the argument of the audience as a commodity is a vital one for
Marxist analysis and should greatly increase a critical comprehension of the
workings of mass communication . The claims put forward about audience labour
and the internal unity of the media cannot be included within the same analysis in
their present formulations, although there may be room for a more limited
notion of audience labour and of the audience as the key to the internal unity of
the media .
Department of Communication
Simon Fraser University

208
 PROBING THE BLIND SPOT

Notes

The present comment is a shortened version of a paper presented at the 1981 Canadian
Communications Association meetings in Halifax, "Probing the Blindspot: Issues Concerning
the Audience Commodity", mimeo, Communication Studies, Simon Fraser University, 1981 .

1 . D. Smythe "Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism", CJPST Vol. 1 No. 3. 1977 pp.
1-27 . G. Murdock "Blindspots about Western Marxism: A Reply to Dallas Smythe" CJPSTVol. 2
No. 2 1978 pp. 109-119. D. Smythe "Rejoinder to Graham Murdock", CJPSTVol. 2 No . 21978 pp
120-129. B. Livant "The Audience Commodity : On the 'Blindspot' Debate"CJPST Vol. 3 No. 1
1979 pp. 91-106 . Page references in the text to these authors will be based on these articles .

2. Smythe's questions are, 'What do advertisers buy?', 'What institutions produce the audience?',
'How do advertisers know they are getting what they paid for?','What does this audience do for
advertisers?' . These questions already pre-suppose the acceptance of the audience
as a commodity.

3. Raymond Williams, Television : Technology and Cultural Form, London : Fontana, 1974, p. 25.
Williams goes on to write, "Unlike all previous communications technologies, radio and
television were systems primarily devised for transmission and reception as abstract processes,
with little or no definition of preceding content."

4. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, London : Penguin, 1976, p. 163 .

5. In WilliamD. Johnson, SuperSpectatorandthe Electric Lilliputians, Boston, Little Brown, 1971 .

6. See William O. Johnson, "The Greenhacking of Pete Rose", Sports Illustrated, 1979.

7. A more spectacular example is that of the American Football League, which was given a huge
increase in its television contract by NBC, so that the AFL could compete for the top college
players and so break the football audience monopoly for the National Football League and CBS.
When they were successful, the two leagues realigned (merged) to assure the networks their
valued monopoly .

8. Further to this productive activity by the networks we can also seehow theState acts to create the
conditions for the most profitable production of the audience commodity. Murdock in his reply
criticises Smythe forunderplaying the role of the State, and in his rejoinder the latter writes that
he did not deal with theories of theState because they are "at a level of abstraction remote from
the nitty-gritty level wheredaily the institutions of monopoly capitalism use commodity-market-
ing and the mass media to push capitalist ideology" (p .122) . However, he correctly states that
theories of theState and theories of audience commodity should not be mutually exclusive of each
other. Indeed they should not, for the production andexchange of the audience commodity takes
place under conditions explicitly moulded by State activity. For instance, it is the audience as
commodity that stands at the centre of the articulation between professional sports, television
and the State. The State not only allows a professional sports league to operate as a monopoly
within a particular sport but it also allows a sports league to bargain as a league, rather than as
individual teams when negotiating the sale of television broadcast rights. The effect of the latter
is to guarantee that thesports audience will not be fragmented between different stations but can
be sold as a lump monopolistic sum of demographic and pyschographic variables to the networks .

209
 SUTJHALLY

This is profitable to both the sports leagues which can get a higher price from the networks and
the networks themselves which command higher prices from advertisers because they can
guarantee an unfractioned audience. It is also profitable to advertisers who get full value for their
advertising dollar . The State has explicitly created the conditions for the most profitable
production of the audience commodity.

9. I would like to thank Charles Tolman for originally raising the issue of ownership and Rohan
Samarajiwa for suggesting where an answer to it might be found .

10 . See Morris Wolfe, "The desperate (and sometimes ridiculous) battle to save Canadian
Television", Saturday Night, September, 1975 .

11 . Smythe writes, "The work of audience members which advertisers find productive for them is
one of learning clues which are used when the audience member makes up his/her mental
shopping list and spends his/her income." (p.14) .

12 . Ian Gough has written that productive labour under capitalism is a historically specific
relationship in which "only labour which is directly transformed into (productive) capital is
productive . When wage labour is exchanged for the variable part of capital, it reproduces the
valueof its own labour power and in addition surplus value for the capitalist ." See "Marx's Theory
of Productive and Unproductive Labour", New Left Review No .76, 1972, p 50.

13 . One is reminded here of the debates concerning the productivity of housework . For a useful
summary of this, see "Relations of Production, Relations of Re-Production" in Working Papers
in Cultural Studies, No.9, Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Birmingham, 1976 . In fact
the role of the housewife is vital in the reproduction of labour power in that she fulfills the basic
consumption activities to this end. If anyone is working to reproduce the labour power of the
worker it is the housewife and yet she is strangely absent from Smythe's analysis .

14. One is reminded here of another debate within a Marxist framework concerning the articulation
between modes of production, i .e. the Frank/Laclau debate . In fact, Laclau makes this very
criticism of Frank. See E. Laclau, "Feudalism and Capitalism in Latin America", NewLeft Review,
No. 67, 1971 .

15 . In a footnote to his paper (p .105) Livant argues that Murdock splits apart production and
consumption and assigns an analytic symmetry between them and thus "blocks investigation into
the nature of the object which is being produced which includes both 'production' and
'consumption' in the more restricted sense." Production here seems to include consumption, just
as consumption includes production ("when the listener buys his player, he participates in its
production" (p .96) . I believe an intermediate and more balanced view would see consumption as
completing production, but being analytically distinct from it . One can give production
dominance without subsuming everything under it .

16 . During the course of a private correspondence, both Bill Livant and myself independently
reached this position . I am much more tenative with it than is Livant.
Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory / Revue Canadienne de theorie
politique et sociale, Vol. 6, Nos . 1-2 (River/Printemps, 1982) .

WORKING AT WATCHING :,A REPLY

TO SUT JHALLY

Bill Livant

I am grateful to Sut Jhally for his critique, both in the preceding article and in
our informal exchanges (see his footnote 16). I have gone back to the drawing
board; back to the beginning of the debate on the audience commodity. In my
contribution to that debate in this journal, I was concerned to support Dallas
Smythe against a peculiar kind of criticism of his views on the audience
commodity . I called it criticism of the form "yes, yes, of course. ..but what about
X?" ; or criticism in which the concept of the audience commodity "seems
self-evidently true, but not terribly interesting . Its theoretical meaning is
obvious, and already exhausted. There is much that is new outside it, but nothing
new within it".
I think that there is something quite new within it, but I am no longer sure that
Smythe would agree with me about what it is. His very important point
(expanded in his recent book, Dependency Road, 1981) 1 is that mass media sell
audiences to advertisers, and that these audiences perform value-adding labour in
the marketing of commodities . But from the very beginning of this debate I felt
that watching, listening itself was the new thing within the media that needed
attention . And this is what I attend to below. Just what is it that we have
heretofore called "an audience commodity"?
The "audience commodity" is the talk of the TV trade. In his article Smythe
cites the talk of traders, and his book cites more. Jhally notes that "network
executives and advertisers talk about buying and selling audiences". Now, the
talk of traders is valuable data as to what they believe to be true . But that doesn't
mean it is true. The nature of what they buy and sell may be invisible to them, or
only partly visible, in distorted form. Things go on behind their backs .
I will stick with advertising-based media here because this is the case that
demands clear understanding. Ifwe are wrong or unclear about the nature of the
"audience commodity" in this classic case, we are sure to be wrong on the others .
Indeed, in this case, the "obvious" case, the "audience commodity" turns out to be
different from what it first appears .

There is one empirical fact about watching TV that a theory of the "audience
 BILL LIVANT

commodity" must address . People watchso much. And yet they are not obliged to
watch; they are formally free not to watch at all.
We need not review in great detail how much . In North America, an average
of about 30 hours a week. By the time the average person reaches working
retirement at 65, he or she will have put in nineyears watching TV. Nine years,
365 days a year, 24 hours a day. TV watching compares very closely with the total
hours spent by a fully employedworker working for a wage over a whole working
lifetime. For TV there.is no child labor law, and no retirement age . And to top it
off, the new narrowcasting technologies promise more watching, not less.
No theory can ignore this immense amount of time spent watching . Not
buying ; watching. It is because so much time is spent here that it becomes
reasonable to ask questions about economic value, surplus value, accumulation
within this time itself, and not simply as an adjunct to something else. If people
watched only 30 hours a year; if we expected this time to decrease in periods of
economic depression as is the case with home-buying, then a theory which puts
watching time at the center would have little plausibility . But this is not the case.
A theory of the "audience commodity" must explain this immense watching
time. Watching time, and no other, is its primary material.

What goes on in this time? To whom does it have value, and how does that
value arise? Jhally's fascinating example of the U.S.-Canadian cable conflict is
relevant here. Jhally turns to it to help solve "the most vital issue", but also "the
most ambiguous and problematic one" concerning the audience commodity.
Why is it most vital forJhally? Because to sell a thing you have to own it. And why
most ambiguous and problematic? Because it is unclear what the commodity is. Is
it "audiences"? Is it "time"?
As mentioned earlier, people in the media talk of buying and selling
"audiences, like herds of cattle". But they also talk of "time": "The basic
economics of television are quite simple. They involve a commodity that's traded
by both the networks and the creators of programs: time. The networks sell it,
and the producers fill it."' These citations are typical . If the audience is the
commodity, just what is it about the audience that is bought and sold? If time is
the commodity, whose time? It is not only some "Marxists who balk" ; something
is not yet in focus.
In Jhally's example, the American stations may declare that "substitution is
plain stealing". But note that it is not any old substitution. If, for example, Rogers
cable had deleted some American programs but kept the American spot
commercials, there would be no theft at all . It would be a gift, a gift Rogers cable
is not about to give.
What is it that marks the difference between theft and gift? The theft is
substitution in time that Rogers can sell to sponsors. The gift is substitution in

21 2
 WORKING AT WATCHING

time Rogers can't sell to sponsors. For not all the time can be sold, only some ofit.
The time that can't be sold to a sponsor is, asJhally says, "program" time. This
is time necessary to "produce the audience" . Why can't this time be sold to a
sponsor? Because this time, this part of watching-time, must be. sold to the
audience .
This time has economic value . It was produced by value-adding labour . Its cost
to the media is the cost of its production, the socially necessary labour time to
produce the programs, to produce the news, the entertainments, to produce what
Smythe has called "the free lunch" .
And what does the media buy from the audience in return for the time it sells
to them? It buys from the audience extra time ; it buys extra watching time by the
audience. This extra time is the time the media can sell to the sponsors. If the
audience did not watch extra, the media would have nothing to sell.
It is in the form of extra watching time that surplus value appears . This extra
watching time I will call surplus time. This is the commodity that the media do
own, that they have indeed paid for, and that they can sell to sponsors. The media
do not own "audiences" . They do not own abstract "time" . They own the extra
watching time, the surplus time. The loose talk of the trade is that "programs"
are sold to audiences, and "audiences" are sold to sponsors . In fact time is bought
and sold in both cases. But the important difference is between necessary and
surplus watching time. The distinction between necessary and surplus time has
become more visible with the evolution of commercial television. Sponsors no
longer own programs . As Erik Barnouw points out : "By the 1970's network-
sponsor economic relations focussed entirely on the buying and selling of
spots-mainly in 30-second and 60-second units."3
Why did TV evolve in this direction rather than the opposite way? Because
spot-selling works to raise the fraction ofsurplus/necessary watching time. The
struggle to increase surplus time and decrease necessary time animates the mass
media . On this proportion the rate of surplus value produced in the media
depends . The trade literature is full of studies which strive, one and all, to convert
necessary time into surplus time. For example, a fascinating recent example is
time compression whereby a 36-second message is squeezed into a 30-second
spot without pitch distortion. This subdivides time in such a way that now there
are six spots for sale where before there were only five. And according to the
Wall Street journal, "fast talkers are more believable."4
More surplus time . And this process will be intensified by satellite/cable
technologies. Bergreen notes that: "While they cannot expand time either, they
can divide it, a process which amounts to a form of expansion ." 5 In this process of
determining the ratio of surplus/ necessary time, the audience fully participates .
Jerry Mander's young son Kai told him : "I don't want to watch television as much
as I do but I can't help it. It makes me watch it."6 Kai Mander shows us that it is
not only wage-workers in the media but audiences that participate in the
production of surplus time; that is, add value to it.
This is the path by which I come to agreement withJhally when he formulates
audience labour as working "not for the advertisers but for the mass media" .

21 3
 BILL LIVANT

Audience labour is part of the production process of what he calls (and what I
formerly called) the "audience commodity" . Only this commodity is not "an
audience" . It is an audience's extra time, its surplus watching time. This is its
media-relevant commodity, no other.
Jhally writes that it is important to note that "advertisers rates are not based
on time but on the objective characteristics of the particular audience . The cost is
calculated in terms of cost per thousand viewers reached ." But this begs the
question of how much time the network owns and therefore can sell. They cannot
sell necessary time to sponsors; they do not own it. They own only surplus time.
This is why Jhally's last sentence, just cited, lacks a real subject. "The cost" of
what? The cost of those spots, of those 30-seconds or 60-seconds, the cost ofthat
watching-time.
The fact that only surplus watching time is the commodity in no way denies
the importance of audience demographics. Quite the contrary; it shows how they
are important . Jhally approves of my break with message-based definitions of
audiences in favor of objective ones. But when we focus on necessary and surplus
time, we see that a minute of TV time is filled in two ways. It is filled with
messages which embody the labour time of their production. And it is filled with
watching by specific kinds of people. Surplus time is their time which they have
sold. It will then be put to work by the buyer.

IV

Once we see that, appearances and trade-talk to the contrary, "audiences" are
not commodities, we can take a fresh look at the last ofJhally's three points : the
unity of the mass media. Since an audience commodity is the surplus watching
time of an audience, I do not agree with Jhally that " ... the audience and the
audience commodity may be comprised of the same aggregates." Because we
were not able to describe clearly the nature of the audience's commodity, we fell
into the attitude which I earlier called "Yes, yes, of course ..... . That there was an
"audience commodity" in advertising-based media seemed obviously true. That
there was an "audience commodity" in non-advertising based media seemed
obviously false .
From our present point of view, both of these "obvious" points are false.
Despite the talk on the 16th floor, "an audience" is not sold in advertising-based
media . And again, in non-advertising-based media, surplus watching time is
being produced, although it may besold in another medium at another time. If we
fail to distinguish an audience from its surplus time we are forced into an
incorrect opposition between situations in which it appears, on the one hand,
that "an audience" is being sold to an advertiser ; and on the other, in which some
other commodity (a book, a record) is being sold to an audience . Where we see
the second, we think the first does not exist. But on television, both are true
simultaneously . They mark the boundary at a given time between necessary and

21 4
 WORKING AT WATCHING

surplus watching time itself.

Once we properly distinguish the audience from its media-relevant
commodity, we can see the proper place of other kinds of commodities-in-
general (communications equipment, consumption goods, etc.) and I never
claimed that they have no role in accumulation.
I do agree with Jhally that "it is through the audience that the commodity form
of the mass media is articulated", and I am grateful to him for stressing this point .
But I do believe that the distinction between necessary and surplus audience time
it precisely the commodity form through which capitalist media are internally
articulated. In all sectors, all of the time, this commodity is being made and
measured. The struggle over surplus and necessary watching time is is the central
strugle over accumulation in the mass media. As Harry Cleaver put it :
Capital tries to convince us that time is universal and just a
physical entity . But we know it is not. One hour of work time is
not equal to one hour of free time by any means . . . . Any time
spent by the working class that is not work-exactly the time
workers fight to increase-is dead time for capital .'
Is it accidental that socially necessary labour time, which appears in latent form
in the values of all commodities-in-general, appears manifest in the mass media
as the terrain of struggle?

Department of Psychology
University of Regina

Notes
Editor's note : See The Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, Dallas Smythe,
"Communications : Blindspot of Western Marxism", Vol . 1, No . 3, 1977 and Bill Livant, "The
Audience Commodity: On the Blindspor Debate", Vol . 3, No. 1, 1974 .

I am grateful to the department of sociology, Brooklyn College, CUNY for their hospitality and the
use of research facilities, 1981-1982.
1. Dallas W . Smythe, Dependency Road: Communications, Capitalism, Consciousness and Canada,
Ablex, 1981, see especially ch. 2, "On the Audience commodity and its work" .
2 . "TV at $10,000 a minute", TV. Guide, 12 July, 1980, p . 3 .

3. Erik Barnouw, The Sponsor: Notes on a Modern Potentate, Oxford, 1978, p . 68.
4 . John Andrew, "Need to Convey More Data? Squeeze 36-second Message into 30-seconds", Wall
Street Journal Journal, 14 May, 1981 . A limit on the speedup of producing the spot is mentioned
in the last paragraph of the article : "Common sense might say that advertisers and others could
save money by simply getting their actors to talk faster. Not so . .. People tend to slur their words
when they talk fast . Time-compressed voices don't sound slurred . Another problem : People can
only talk as fast as they can think."
5. Laurence Bergreen, Look Now, Pay Later: The Rise of Network Broadcasting, Mentor, 1981,
p . 289 .
6. Jerry Mander, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, Morrow, 1978, p . 158 .

7 . Harry Cleaver, Reading Capital Politically, U . Texas Press, 1979, p . 119.

21 5
Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory / Revue Canadienne de theorie
politique et sociale, Vol. 6, Nos. 1-2 (River/Printemps, 1982) .

OLLMAN VS. THE UNIVERSITY

OF MARYLAND :
ACADEMIC FREEDOM ON TRIAL

On March 15, 1978, Professor Bertell Ollman was offered the position of
Chairman of the Department of Government and Politics at the University of
Maryland (College Park) by the Provost with the full approval of the Chancellor .
Oilman, a professor at New York University and author of the bookAlienation :
Marx's Conception ofMan in Capitalist Society, was selected over 100 or so other
candidates chosen by a faculty search committee .
More than a dozen Maryland state legislators, including the chairmen of the
committees which deal with the university's budget, protested the appointment .
Acting Governor Blair Lee dubbed it "unwise", saying "it may kick up quite a
backlash" . Several conservative newspaper columnists condemned the
appointment, and at least three members of the university's Board of Regents
made their objections public.
Outgoing president of the University of Maryland, Wilson Elkins, stalled any
final decision . OnJuly 19, 1978, incoming president John Toll rejected the
appointment . Denying that Professor Oilman's Marxist views played any part in
the decision, President Toll claimed that he acted solely on academic grounds, but
refused to state what these were. Professor Ollman then filed a suit against the
university for violating his constitutional rights by denying him a job on political
grounds .
 ACADEMIC FREEDOM ON TRIAL

The case came to trial in Baltimore on May 18, 1981. During the month-long
trial, considerable evidence was produced indicating political pressure on
presidents Elkins and Toll not to appoint Oilman. In his testimony, President
Toll cited "academic grounds" as the basis for his negative decision. The main
reason being, he said, that Ollman has "poor administrative judgement" ; as
evidence of which, he cited anti-Vietnam War political activities that Ollman is
alledged to have taken part in.
Judge Alexander Harvey III, a member of one of Maryland's leading banking
families, found for the defendants, claiming that President Toll acted "honestly
and conscienciously" . Praising the great achievements of presidents Elkins and
Toll as educators,Judge Harvey said he simply did not believe that they would lie
about their actions .
The decision is being appealed .
Judge Harvey made a number of possibly serious judicial errors. For example,
he ruled out as irrelevant all evidence pertaining to the standards President Toll
used in appointing department chairmen in his 16 years as university president .
This deprived Ollman of a base from which toshow that he was being treated in a
unique manner and judged from a standard that did not apply in other similar
appointments.
The rejection ofOilman's appointment has contributed further to the chilling
atmosphere for academic freedom in America's universities . This is even more
true in light of the widespread publicity that this case has received . Whatever the
final judgement on Oilman, this ruling cannot be allowed to stand .
Oilman's lawyers are working pro bono, but he is responsible for various
"incidental" expenses, the most pressing of which is $15,000 to $20,000 (which
he does not have) for typing out the trial transcript in order to begin the process
of appeal . If progressives and others concerned with issues of academic freedom
cannot help out in cases of such flagrant abuse, the time will come when no one
will want or be financially able to seek legal redress for any discriminatory
practice. What will reactionary administrators unleash then? Solidarity and
enlightened self-interest both require that Ollman be supported.

Please give generously:

Make cheques out to Ollman Academic Freedom Fund and
send to Prof. Michael Brown, 210 Spring St ., New York, N.Y.,
U.S.A. 10012.

Supporters of this appeal include: Sheldon Wolin (Princeton) ; Frances Fox

Piven (Boston) ; Harry Magdoff (Monthly Review) ; Immanuel Wallerstein
(SUNY-Binghamtonn) ; Sam Bowles (U. Mass.) ; Ted Lowi (Cornell); Bert Gross
(CUNY-Hunter) ; Peter Bachrach (Temple) ; Christian Bay andC.B. Macpherson
(Toronto) ; Bill Livant (Regina) ;James O'Connor (U . Calif .) ; Ben Barber
(Rutgers) .
 BOOKS RECEIVED

Benjamin Constant's Philosophy of Liberalism, Guy H. Dodge, University of North

Carolina Press, 194 pp .

The Vietnam Trauma in America Foreign Policy 1945-1975, Paul M. Kattenburg,

Transaction Books, $19.95 (cloth), 354 pp.

In Search of Political Stability: A Comparitive Study of New Brunswick and Northern

Ireland, Edmund A. Aunger, McGill-Queen's Univ . Press, $21.95 (cloth), 224 pp .

More than a Labour of Love : Three generations of women's work in the home, Meg
Luxton, The Women's Press, $9.95 (paper), 260 pp .

Canadian Perspectives on Economic Relations with Japan, Keith AJ. Hay, Institute for
Research on Public Policy, 383 pp.

Dealing with Interracial Conflict : Policy Alternatives, Dhiru Patel, Institute for Research
on Public Policy, 85 pp .

The Automated Citizen, P. Pergler, Institute for Research on Public Policy, 47 pp .

The Origin of Formalism in Social Science, Jeffrey T. Bergner, University of Chicago

Press, $16.00 (cloth), 162 pp.

The Politics of Work and Occupations, Geoff Esland and Graeme Salaman (eds .),
University of Toronto Press, $11.00 (paper), 408 pp .

Paths to Political Reform, William J. Crotty, Lexington Books, $29.95 (cloth), 366 pp .

Science and Ethical Responsiblity, Sanford A. Lakoff (ed.), Addison-Wesley, 331 pp .

Telecommunications and Productivity, Mitchell L. Moss (ed .), Addison-Wesley, 376 pp .

Dialectic and Sociological Thought, Damir Mirkovic, Dilton Publications Inc., 217 pp .

Toward an Ecological Society, Murray Bookchin, Black Rose Books, $8.95 (paper), 331 pp.

Coping with Proposition 13, Roger L. Kemp, Lexington Books, $24.95 (cloth), 222 pp .

Estrangement : Marx's Conception of Human Nature and the Division of Labor, Isidor
Walliman, Greenwood Press, $29.95 (cloth), 195 pp .

Political Concepts: A Reconstruction, Felix E. Oppenheim, University of Chicago Press,

$22.00 (cloth), 227 pp .

Canada Since 1945 : Power, politics andprovincialism, Robert Bothwell, Ian Drummond
andJohn English, University of Toronto Press, $19.95 (cloth), 489 pp .

Effective Policy Implementation, Daniel A. Mazmanian & Paul A. Sabatier, Lexington

Books, 220 pp .

21 8
 BOOKS RECEIVED

The Analysis of Policy Impact, John G. Grumm and Stephen L. Wasby, Lexington Books,
208 pp .

The Political Unconscious : Narrative as a Socially SymbolicAct, Fredricjameson, Cornell

University Press, $19.50 (cloth), 305 pp .

Eurocommunism: the Ideological andPolitical-Theoretical Foundations, George Schwab

(ed.), $25.00 (cloth), 325 pp .

Political Parties in Europe, Theo Stammen, Meckler Books, $42.50 (cloth), 321 pp .

The Philosopher in the City : the Moral Dimensions of Urban Politics, Hadley Arkes,
Princeton University Press., $27.50 (cloth), 465 pp .

Making Canadian Indian Policy : The Hidden Agenda 1968-1970, Sally M. Weaver,
University of Toronto Press, $25.00 (cloth), 236 pp.

Assassination in Switzerland: The Murderof Vatslav Vorovsky, Alfred Erich Senn,

University of Wisconsin Press, $21.50 (cloth), 219 pp.

Main Currents of Marxism, Leszek Kolakowski,

I - The Founders, 434 pp .
II - The Golden Age, 542 pp .
III - The Breakdown, 548 pp.
Oxford University Press, $9 .95 (paper)

Equality, Moral Incentives and the Market: An Essay in Utopian Politico-Economic

Theory, Joseph H. Carens, University of Chicago Press, $19 .00 (paper), 252 pp .

Thomas Hill Green and the Development of Liberal-Democratic Thought, I.M .

Greengarten, University of Toronto Press, $20.00 (cloth), 151 pp .

Energy and the Quality of Life : Understanding Energy Policy, C.A . Hooker et al .,
University of Toronto Press, $25.00 (cloth), 283 pp .

Ethical issues in Government, Norman E. Bowie (ed.), Temple University Press, $19.95
(cloth), 251 pp .

Reasoned Argument in Social Science, Eugene J. Meehan, Greenwood Press, $27.50

(cloth), 218 pp.

Dependency Road: Communications, Capitalism, Consciousness and Canada, Dallas W.

Smythe, Temple University Press, $29.50 (cloth), 347 pp .

The L-shaped Party: The Liberal Party of Canada, 1958-1980, Joseph Wearing,
McGraw-Hill/Ryerson, 260 pp.

Bringing the Left Back Home : A Critique of American Social Criticism, Gary Thom, Yale
University Press, $17.50 (cloth), 303 pp.

21 9
 BOOKS RECEIVED

Culture, Communication and Dependency: The Tradition of H .A . Innis, William H.

Melody, Liora R. Salter, Paul Heyer (eds .), Ablex Publishing Corp ., $24.95 (cloth),
264 pp.

Trilateralism: the Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management,
Holly Sklar (ed.), Black Rose Books, $12.95 (paper), 604 pp .

Constitution-making : Principles, Process, Practice, Edward McWhinney, University of

Toronto Press, $20.00 (cloth), 231 pp.

The Sociology of Talcott Parsons Francois Bourricaud, (tr . Arthur Goldhammer),

University of Chicago Press, $23.00 (paper), 326 pp .

The Metropolis, John C. Bollens and Henry J. Schmandt, Harper & Row, 461 pp .

Assessing the Elderly: A Practical Guide to Measurement, Rosalie A. Kane and Robert L.
Kane, $23.75, 301 pp . (cloth)

Ideologies in Quebec: The Historical Development, University of Toronto Press, Denis

Moniere, $30.00 (cloth), $10.95 (paper), 328 pp .

Inequality: Essays on the Political Economy of Social Welfare, Allan Moscovitch and
Glenn Drover (eds .), University of Toronto Press, $30.00 (cloth), $12.50 (paper),
386 pp.

Eastern and Western Perspectives, David Jay Bercuson and Phillip A. Buckner (eds .),
University of Toronto Press, $25 .00 (cloth), $10.00 (paper), 227 pp .
 INDEX TO VOLUME V

Articles
Cook, David
The Dark Side of Enlightenment, No . 3, 3 .
Darby, Tom
Nihilism, Politics and Technology, No . 3, 57 .
Davies, loan
Escapes from the Cultural Prison-House, Nos 1-2, 147 .
Kornberg, Jacques
Rethinking Dilthey, No. 3, 16 .
Mandel, Eli
Strange Loops : Northrop Frye and Cultural Freudianism, No . 3, 33.
Milne, David
Architecture, Politics and the Public Realm, Nos. 1-2, 131 .
Misgeld, Dieter
Habermas's Retreat from Hermeneutics : Systems Integration, Social Integration and
the Crisis of Legitimation, Nos 1-2, 8.
Mohr, Joann W .
The Phenomenology of the Broken Spirit, Nos 1-2,112 .
Schwartz, Ronald David
Habermas and the Politics of Discourse, Nos 1-2, 45 .
Weinstein, Michael A
Lament and Utopia : Responses to American Empire in George Grant and Leopoldo
Zea, No . 3, 44 .
Wolfe, David
Mercantilism, Liberalism and Keynesianism : Changing Forms of State Intervention of
Capitalist Economics, Nos. 1-2, 69 .
Review Articles
Berland, Jody
A Musician Under the Influence . Whore Music? A Sociology of Languages by Trevor
Wisehart, John Sheppard and Phil Virden . Forward by Howard Becket, Nos . 1-2, 174 .
Cooper, Barry
Phenomenology and Political Science . The Crisis of Political Understanding : A
Phenomenological Perspective on the Conduct of Political Inquiry by Hwa Jol Jung,
No 3, 99 .
Gibson, Kenneth
Paraphrase of Heresy. Literature Against Itself: Literary Ideas on Modern Society by
Gerald Graff, Nos. 1-2, 196.
Kett, Robert
The Cultural Anthropology of Advanced Industrial Society, Reproduction in
Education, Culture and Society by Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron .
Translated by Richard Nice . . Outline of a Theory of Practice by Pierre Bourdieu.
Translated by Richard Nice. La Distinction by Pierre Bourdieu, Nos. 1-2, 208 .
 INDEX

Kontos, Alkis
Homo Ludens. The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia by Bernard Suits, Nos . 1-2,
230.
McCallum, Pamela
Cultural Criticism and Lived Experience. Politics and Letters by Raymond Williams, No .
3, 1-2, 168 .
Naylor, R .T .
Johnson on Cambridge and Keynes . The Legacy of Keynes by Elizabeth S. Johnson and
Harry G . Johnson, Nos . 1-2, 216 .
O'Connor, Alan
Cultural Studies and Common Sense . Subculture : The Meaning of Style by Rick
Hebdige and Working-Class Culture: Studies in History and Theory, Nos . 1-2, 183.
Pick, Zuzana
Cinema as Sign and Language, Language and Cinema by Christian Metz . Translated by
Donna Jean Umiker-Seboek, Nos . 1-2, 199.
Commentary/Exchanges
Kroker, Arthur
Life Against History, No . 3, 93.
Neal, Aubrey
From Magritte, The Invisible Visible, Nos. 1-2, 108 .
Shell, Susan Meld -
The Confessions of Voegelin, No. 3, 90 .
Editorials
Arthur Kroker
The Warring Subject, Nos . 1-2, 5 .
An Ideology in Waiting, No . 3, 112
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