[lbo-talk] A highly critical take on Fitch

Marvin Gandall marvgandall at videotron.ca
Wed Mar 15 04:41:49 PST 2006


Doug Henwood wrote:


> The comparison works for Canada and the US; Canada is both more
> concentrated and more social democratic.
========================================= Also, Canada -spread thinly across the vast distance of the 49th parallel - historically had need of a strong state to lay down its unifying infrastructure and provide other services, such as insurance for health care, which fell to the much more powerful bourgeoisie in the US. Louis Hartz and others also thought the Tory culture of noblesse oblige inherited from Britain, which was typically counterposed by the empire loyalists to the "vulgar" capitalism to the south, helped to create a more propititious climate for social democracy in Canada, but I think this factor is exaggerated. I think the later arrival of socialist immigrants from Britain and Eastern Europe had more to do with it.

Otherwise, the Canadian labour movement resembled that of the US, sans the corrosive effect of racism and imperialism. Until the 60s and the appearance of the public sector unions, the dominant craft and industrial unions in Canada were, like the Canadian branch plants, simply offshoots of those in the AFL and CIO. The Winnipeg General Strike involved the strong participation of revolutionary trade unionists who came out of the tradition of the Wobblies and One Big Union. Quebec was an exception, however, until its transformation in the 60s; the Catholic trade union tradition from Europe dominated its labour movement when it was industrializing in the first half of the 20th century.



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