The Marxist Quarterly Autumn 1965

Stanley Ryerson

the national-democratic revolution in French Canada poses thorny questions of theory as well as of policy. For some time now there has been under way a wide-ranging debate on its root causes, driving forces and prospects.* Recently the discussion has acquired new depth as a result of two not entirely unrelated developments. Canadian sociologists are beginning to face up to and probe the long-evaded question of class and class-structure in society; and the emergence in Quebec of a highly articulate, nationally conscious "new left" has infused theoretical debate within and beyond the labor movement there with new freshness and intensity.

Among matters in dispute are these:

The connection (if any) between the industrialization of Quebec and the contemporary upsurge of French-Canadian nationalism;

The character and causes of the relative lag in some aspects of Quebec's development; and the argument to the effect that "Quebec is a colony of English Canada";

Class and national factors in French Canada; the relationship between the struggles for national self-determination and for socialism.
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*Some of the works referred to in what follows are:
ANDRE RAYNAULD: Croissance et Structures econotniques de la Province de Quebec. 657 pp. Ministere de l'lndustrie et du Commerce, Province de Quebec, n.d.
JOHN PORTER: The Vertical Mosaic: an Analysis of Social Class and Power in Canada. 558 pp. University of Toronto Press, 1965. $15.
MARCEL RIOUX and YVES MARTIN: French Canadian Society, vol. I, sociological studies. 407 pp. Carleton Library, No. 18: McClelland and Stewart, 1964. paper-back: $3.95.
BENJAMIN AKZIN: State and Nation. 214 pp. Hutchinson University Library, London, 1964.

 

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QUESTIONS IN DISPUTE 57

These questions may seem a shade abstract and academic; yet all of ihem bear on the shaping of democratic and working-class policy.

In this article no more is attempted than to indicate some of the lines of argument that are being pursued, and to suggest an approach to further study and exploration.

* * *

A frequently-encountered explanation of the "Quiet Revolution" invokes what is described as the recent and relatively sudden surge of industrialization in Quebec. Here, it is suggested, we face a pattern of development radically at variance with that of Ontario or of the rest of Canada. Andre Raynauld's impressive study of Quebec's economic development casts considerable doubt on this hypothesis.

His examination of the long-term growth rate of manufacturing shows that it has been practically the same in Quebec and Ontario at least since 1870. The average annual percentage rate of growth has been 5.48 in Ontario, 5.53 in Quebec, with the two graphs following an almost identical upward curve (p. 45). The margin of difference remained constant for the whole period, with Quebec's level standing at about two-thirds that of Ontario.

Far from having only recently and abruptly emerged from a state of "underdevelopment," Quebec crossed the threshold of industrialization between 1896 and 1913. This was also the pattern in Canada as a whole. Even before the First World War, Quebec possessed a considerable and diversified industry: in 1910, iron and steel products industries accounted for 14 per cent of value added in manufacturing in Quebec, and 18 per cent in Ontario (p. 29).

Thus, emergence of a developed industrial economy in Quebec has been neither recent nor sudden, but a gradual process extending over sixty years or more. Invoking the image of a "suddenly disrupted pastoral symphony" just won't do.

Nevertheless, there can be no doubt as to the massive impact of industrialization in recent years. Between 1935 and 1960, while the number of manufacturing establishments in Quebec grew from 7,727 to 11,961, the number of employees rose from 183,000 to

 

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434,000. The number of persons engaged in agriculture declined, from about 280,000 to 150,000. Thus there occurred during this period a basic shift in the proportions of the labor force employed in factory and farm.

It would seem, then, that while the industrialization of Quebec has been no sudden, abrupt occurrence of the most recent past, and while its course appears to have roughly paralleled that of Ontario, it nevertheless has in the last few decades taken on a decisive dimension. What has this to do with the rebirth of French-Canadian nationalism?

Could it be that particular significance attaches to the fact that Quebec's "parallel" industrial development has been at a level about one-third lower than Ontario's? Is the "national" (or so-called "cultural") component relevant here? Some investigators have argued that it is not. The authors of a pioneering study (published in 1953) of industrial development in Quebec reject the idea "that Quebec's relative economic backwardness is chiefly related to the influence of specific cultural factors." In their opinion, the historic lag in economic development in Quebec is to be explained essentially in terms of geography, technological change and resource allocation: "a mere regional manifestation of the over-all economic evolution of the North American continent." (A. Faucher and M. Lamontagne: in French-Canadian Society, pp. 258, 268.)

Whatever weight may be accorded to the factors cited by these authors, (and they merit further study) it is still necessary to reckon with two major peculiarities in the political economy of Quebec which their argument tends to ignore: namely, the income differential as compared with that of English Canada, and the pattern of industrial ownership.

Andre Raynauld devotes a sizeable part of his book to an examination of the former, but (as we shall sec) excludes the latter from his field of vision. He amply documents the income differential, demonstrating the consistently lower level of per capita income and wages in Quebec: since 1926 average personal income has been 27.5 per cent lower for the Quobecker than for the On-tarian. Industrial wages arc roughly 15 per cent lower. These differentials the author considers to be "a structural phenomenon

 

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that dates back probably a century" [p. 03). He notes a number of factors that are involved:

—The labor force forms a lower proportion of the total population: 35 per cent in Quebec, 39.5 per cent in Ontario. (This has some bearing on the per capita income picture, as it is equivalent to some 200,000 less in the work force, proportionate to population.)

—At the same time, there is in Quebec a chronic excess of supply over demand on the labor market: one factor here is that "demand for labor is more restricted because the level of economic development is lower in Quebec than in Ontario" (p. 211).

—The internal market is more limited, and the scale of industrial establishments is less: 24 per cent smaller in average number of employees, 35 per cent smaller in net output per establishment); the size of iron and steel industry plants in Quebec is only 17 per cent of those in Ontario. Capital per employee in Quebec manufacturing as a whole is 77 per cent of that in Ontario.

—Relatively greater dispersal of the labor force in Ontario: Montreal accounts for 41 per cent of ils province's manufacturing labor force, Toronto for 21 per cent. Sixty per cent of the work force is located in 30 towns in Ontario, in ten in Quebec.

—The level of education of the work force likewise reflects the differential; on the average, Ontario workers have had a year more schooling than those in Quebec. On the other hand, technical school enrolment in Quebec is double that of Ontario. There is also an age differential: the "under twenty" group account for 6.5 per cent of the male work force in Ontario, 9.5 per cent in Quebec; corresponding percentages of the female work force are 15 and 20 in the two provinces.

—A study of thirteen industries in the two provinces shows a connection between level of trade-union organization and the overcoming of the wage differential: they range from tobacco, where Quebec has only 47 per cent of Ontario's level of unionization and a 25 per cent lower wage rate, to pulp and paper, where the percentage level of organization compared with Ontario is 79 per cent and the wage differential only 3 per cent.*
"his documented enumeration of factors helps to provide us
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*The data in this and the preceding paragraphs are cited by Raynauld, op. cit., pp. 220, 233, 242-3, 245-6, 260-7.

 

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with something of a picture of what goes to make up the "Quebec differential"; but it stops short of an organic analysis. If what confronts us is indeed a "structural phenomenon* (Raynauld's expression), then we need to grasp it as such: to see it as structure, in terms of class and nation. Here there enters the question of the pattern of ownership of the economy, in national as well as in class terms. How does the author of this major study of economic growth and structure in Quebec handle the problem? In his Introduction, Raynauld does mention, in relation to the process of industrialization in Quebec, "the minor role played by French Canadians in this development, particularly as regards the exercise of the essential function of entrepreneur." But after telling us that this is "a question whose bearing on the economic development of the Province of Quebec is immense," he proceeds to exclude it lrom his field of investigation! Pleading that it lies outside his range of competence, he argues that this is the kind of question about which economists "can tell us little": as a problem of "social climate," it should be left to the sociologists to worry over . . . Quite a commentary, this, on academic political economy!

* * *

In their study, "History of Economic Development," Faucher and Lamontagne argued that in Quebec's pattern of industrialization the national or "cultural" factor was essentially irrelevant. Yet in their conclusion they themselves draw attention to the fact "industrialization has not been a realization of the main ethnic group in this province . . . this is a very important feature of Quebec's economic development . . . economic development in Quebec has been financed, directed and controlled from outside."
What their study suffers from—like Raynauld's—is a reluctance to situate the problem "within the broader context of the structure of political and economic power in Canada." This point is made strongly by Jacques Dofny and Marcel Rioux ("Social Class in French Canada"), who argue further: ". . . If the geographical and ecological* factors have determined the industrial structure, how can we explain the preponderance of the English-Canadian element in Quebec industry in the years following
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•ecology: science dealing with the relation of living things to their environment.—Ed.

 

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1911?" By bringing into the picture "the variable of economic and political power" one gains a fresh insight into the presence, in Quebec, of "a unique stratification which is profoundly different from the stratification of Canadian society taken as a whole." (French-Canadian Society, pp. 268-70, 316-317)

The question. "Who owns Quebec?" and the demand, "Soyons maitres chez nous!" involve both the national and the class question. A significant advance in the contemporary debate is dawning recognition of the importance of studying class structure as a key to undemanding the forces involved in the "national" as well as the "social" question. Criticizing the lack of "a sociology of social classes in French Canada," Guy Rocher argues that "a more precise knowledge of the division of our society into classes and social strata would provide a central framework for almost all our sociological studies." (ibid, pp. 328, 340) The Rioux-Martin anthology provides a fascinating glimpse of stirrings in the direction of a class approach and class analysis (as well as of resistances to any such radical turn).

But it is only very recently indeed that non-Marxist scholars in English Canada have begun to approach this hitherto "forbidden ground." The pioneering Marxist work of Frank and Libbic Park —The Anatomy of Big Business (1962)— now has been joined and extended by the monumental exploration of Professor John Porter of Carleton University: The Vertical Mosaic: an Analysis of Social Class and Power in Canada* Of particular interest to us here is the author's treatment of the relationship between the national question and that of class and power, particularly the chapter entitled "Ethnicity and Social Class."

Alluding to the mythology of race, and its role as an instru-
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*The fact that the book's argument is presented as an "alternative to the Marxian model of class conflict" (the whole introductory chapter is an extended polemic with the Marxist theory of class and social structure) bears witness to the vitality of the latter as a current of thought and action, as the main challenge to academic sociology. The book is at the same time a vigorous invitation to the upholders of the "Marxian model" to seriously study John Porter's position and debate it with him. An extended review of this book will appear in a forthcoming issue; here we touch only on one facet of it: the "reciprocal relationships between ethnicity and social class."

 

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ment of social, economic and political dominance, the author deals with the "hierarchy of superiority" that is implied in the designation of Anglo-Saxon and French "founding races" (he refers to them as "charter groups in the mythology of race"). He speaks of "these ideas of race and inherited biological qualities, so important in the building up of a class system"; and observes that the "conservative tradition in Canadian life . . . gives ideological support to the continued high status of the British charter group. . . ."

As regards relations between the "charter groups," Porter observes that "economic relations are not ones of equality, for by and large the British run the industrial life of Quebec. . . . The higher up the authority structure of industry that one proceeds the greater is the proportion of British personnel. The French are predominantly workers at the lower end of the class system with, on the average, lower levels of skill than the British." Contrary to some rather widespread illusions, this situation has not been changing in the direction of eliminating the relative disadvantage of the French Canadians. In the period covered by the study (1931-1951)) while in both communities industrialization led to about the same proportionate reduction of the work force in agriculture,

In the non-agricultural part of the labor force the most significant change in the relationship between ethnic groups and occupational class level during the twenty years was the lower level of the French . . . The French have gained the least from the transition to industrialization, (pp. 84, 81)

A study of the trend in the two ethnic groups, extending over two generations, showed that "for both fathers and sons, the British were concentrated in the white-collar occupations and the French at the 'workers' level." A further important finding was that this concentration of the British at the white-collar level was almost double for sons what it had been for their fathers. At the same time the proportion of the younger generation of British in the 'workers' class' was less than the proportion of the older generation. . . . The proportion of younger generation of French in the "workers' class' has scarcely changed." Some jfy of British "sons" were at the unskilled level, compared to 26% of the French. (pp. 96-7)

 

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At the other pole of the social hierarchy, Porter's estimated "power elite" of 700 persons includes only 51 French Canadians, or 6.7% of the total. In the upper levels of public administration French Canadians account for 13.4% (in the population as a whole, 30%.)

* * *

What, in the light of the foregoing, is one to say of the claim that "Quebec is a colony of English Canada"?

First of all, it would seem indispensable to make a clear distinction between the territorial, political-administrative entity that is the Province of Quebec, on the one hand, and the people who constitute the French-Canadian nation, on the other. All the percentages that have been cited, in global terms of "Quebec" as compared with "Ontario," for instance, obscure the real contrast as between conditions of the French Canadians and those of English-speaking Canadians: for these figures mask the privileged economic position of the latter group in Quebec. (To which the position of the French-Canadian minority in Ontario is not exactly analogous!)

Second: Quebec, which possesses a highly industrialized, urbanized, monopoly-capitalist structure, is certainly not "a colony" in the sense of an economically underdeveloped, raw-materials-producing dependency such as the colonies of the European imperial metropolis tended to be. To the extent that there has been a major distortion in Quebec's capitalist development, it is one shared with Canada as a whole, and it derives from the effects of United States domination.

Third: the French-Canadian nation, however, does find itself in a position of economic, social and political inequality and inferiority, expressed (a) in the fact that (as Porter puts it) "the British run the industrial life of Quebec"; (b) in the "differential" in terms of income and social conditions, which the figures on "Quebec" do no more than indicate in a most incomplete way; and (c) in the denial of recognition of French-Canadian identity as a nation and of its right to national self-determination.

Far from eliminating these oppressive conditions, the accelerated industrialization and the growth of U.S.-Anglo-Canadian corporate monopoly have intensified them—and, therewith, the sense

 

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of inequality, the frustration of the French-Canadian national community.

It is in this context that the imperfect analogy of a French Canada that is "a colony of English Canada" finds its basis. The French Canadians' demand for independence, for their own national state, derives encouragement from the historic fact of the establishment in the last few years of some three-score new independent states by formerly colonial or dependent peoples. The demand for national equality and, to that end, a re-structuring of the social order situates the Revolution tranquille in the common mainstream of movements of national and social emancipation elsewhere.

Assuredly, the "colonial" analogy is imperfect and even misleading, to the extent that it can give grounds for obscuring the role of the handful of French-Canadian finance-capitalists, their integration with Anglo-Canadian (and U.S.) monopoly, their promotion (under Lesage's leadership) of state-monopoly capitalism in Quebec. There are some "left" nationalists who deny outright the very existence of a French-Canadian bourgeoisie (to say nothing of the clerical Establishment); obviously, such a stance renders impossible the adoption of a sound independent working-class policy.

In "The Social Evolution of Quebec Reconsidered", Hubert Guindon shows how "the traditional elites are still the commanding ones in French-Canadian society"; their current "rejuvenation," he argues, "can only be accounted for by as neat a set of converging interests of clergy, political parties, and foreign capitalists as can be imagined." A "developing clerical bureaucratic power is seen as evolving a new, streamlined relationship with the business-enmeshed Quebec provincial state. (French-Canadian Society, pp. 155-161) The picture is one of state- monopoly-capitalist development, in peculiar, specific conditions. The study of social classes for which Guy Rocher and others are calling must evidently include a thoroughgoing examination of the "anatomy" of the French-Canadian bourgeoisie. No such detailed study as yet exists.

* * *

From the foregoing it is apparent that much more concrete in-

 

QUESTIONS IN DISPUTE 65

vestigation is needed into the structures and relationships of state monopoly capitalism in Quebec and in Canada as a whole — carrying forward the work initiated by the Parks, Porter and Ray-nauld. (In relation to Canada, this would help clarify the problem that is expressed in the use of the term, "U.S.-Canadian oligarchy" in the Communist Party program: a problem that in a more complex way bears on the situation in French Canada as well.)

But just as important as concrete socio-economic research is the clarification of concepts. Confusion abounds as yet in regard to the concept of the nation; as in the persistent failure to distinguish between the two conflicting meanings that are attached to the term — nation as a certain type of community of persons, and nation as sovereign state entity (or as the sum-total of inhabitants of a given state). The expressions "Canada as a nation," "Quebec as a nation," illustrate this difficulty: neither is a nation in the sociological or the Marxist sense (which applies, not to a state structure, but to peoples: e.g. Do the Canadians constitute one nation or two? Are the people of Quebec a nation, or is it the French Canadians who are the nation there, etc.) On this point, the chapter entitled "The Terminological Jungle" which opens Benjamin Akzin's useful book State and Nation (London 1964) has much to recommend it. The author emphasizes that in the two alternative usages of the term "nation" there is involved not merely "a terminological debate nor a semantic refinement" but "rather a difference of essential meaning." Clarity is possible only if one of these meanings is chosen and adhered to throughout a given discussion (it is the often unconscious switching from one to another meaning that can bring discussion to a standstill); and Akzin opts for the meaning of nation as "a certain type of ethnic group":

Indeed, only if this meaning is attributed to our terms does the subject of our enquiry make any sense at all: for in its other meaning, where nation tends to coincide with the demographic element in statehood, our problem would resolve itself into a near-tautology and would amount to nothing else but an enquiry into the relation between the State and the sum total of human beings who form the State. What we are concerned with, however, is the very real complex of conflicts, of attempts at compromise and harmonization, and of mutual influences of two forces, the one political, the other ethnic,

 

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when they meet with mankind as their common ground, actors and object, (p. 10)

If the relationship (and distinction) between state and nation is one area of ambiguity and unclarity, it is not the only one. The relation of class and nation (now that class structure is receiving attention) emerges as another.

In their paper entitled "Social Class in French Canada , Jacques Dofny and Marcel Rioux present the concept of what they call an "ethnic class." They write:

A social class and a recognized, extensive ethnic minority share many common features . . . Our hypothesis is that most of the particular characteristics of the problem of social classes in French Canada stem from two factors. On the one hand, this socio-cultural entity considers itself and is considered to be a total society or a nation, and in this sense the problem of social classes resembles that in any other society in the process of industrialization and urbanization; on the other hand, French Canadians also regard themselves and are considered to be a recognizable ethnic minority which plays the same role within Canada, regarded in its turn as a total society, as a social class plays within a total society. It is the interaction between these two existing situations and the predominance of one or other "class" consciousness at any given moment that explains the particular characteristics of each period and the alliances and ideological struggles that appear. ... If the social structure of French Canada is differentiated almost as much as that of English Canada, its system of values and its culture have long remained much more homogeneous. It is precisely this fact that has delayed the realization of a social-class consciousness and, more specifically, the working-class consciousness. Indeed, if French Canada, as an ethnic "class," seems at a disadvantage within Canada, at how much greater a disadvantage is the working class within this ethnic class. (French-Canadian Society, pp. 308-311)

The concept of an "ethnic class" would seem to obscure rather than clarify the real relationships existing in society. To equate national community with socio-economic structure is to blur the specific qualities of each. Does the French-Canadian "ethnic minority" play "the same role within Canada ... as a social class plays within a total society?"

If it does, then class analysis in the Marxist sense, and the relationship between class consciousness and national sentiment, alike are meaningless. The kind of result that emerges is indicated

 

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in the assertion that "during the period from 1945 to 1958, social-class consciousness became more evident within French Canada as the ethnic-class concsiousness weakened . . . Since 1958, ethnic-class consciousness has regained ascendancy." (ibid, p. 312) In going on to explain this reversal, the authors do in fact present the interacting political and economic forces in terms of social class forces and nationalist ideology. This is simpler, and a more fruitful approach than the ambiguity of the idea of "ethnic class" (in which the blurred mingling in real life of national and class consciousness appears to undcrly a conceptual equating of social class and ethnic community in theory). The "ethnic-class" concept seems to lean heavily on a subjectivist tendency: "classes" tend to be treated in terms of "realization of consciousness." Thus, the question of the existence and struggles of "a 'middle class' or of a 'working class* in the sense of de facto groupings with their own values" is said to require substantiation through "the collection of data which arc often still not available, particularly data pertaining to identification of class consciousness ... a knowledge of the tendencies of the bourgeoisie and proletariat of French Canada." Certainlv such studies arc needed: but is there not here something of a suggestion that assurance regarding the objective existence of social classes is contingent on further knowledge of their subjective "tendencies"? Perhaps I am unfair to MM. Dofny and Rioux. Yet the outcome of their use of the concept of the "ethnic class" is hardly reassuring; we arc offered a hypothetical "evolution of class relations according to three schemes":

If both classes, freeing themselves from their restraining political past, were to turn their strength towards the assertion of common values, defined ethnically, the class struggle would be concentrated at the political level where the total French-Canadian group faces the English-Canadian group. Another possibility would be that the alliance would take place at the social level, uniting the Canadian bourgeoisie against the Canadian working class without any distinction as to ethnic origin. Finally, there is the possibility that the values and economic and political interests of both the English and the French would be subjected progressively to the influence of North American values (as has been the case, for example, with the trade unions) and by this means be definitely weakened or absorbed at all levels by the power of the United States, (ibid., p. 318)

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Of the three "schemes", the first and third offer nothing more than confrontations between ethnic communities, the second, between social classes. But does not our real problem start with establishing the role of social, class forces in i and 3, and of national factors in number 2? Unless we introduce this bothersome "complication", we arc reduced to cither "simple" (i.e. bourgeois) nationalism or else an oversimplified "class-struggle" approach which excludes the national factor (in other words, an approach of "national nihilism"). With the "ethnic class" it would seem, we arc back where we started.*

* * *

Fundamental, for Marxists, is the primacy of the role of the socio-economic formation, the mode of production. The ethnic or national community evolves, derives its dynamic of change, in ways and directions determined by the movement and conflict of social class forces. Not the nation but the class is primary. It is this point that the "ethnic class" idea wholly obscures. But from the primacy of social structure it docs not at all follow that the nation is merely a matter of form, void of a content of its own: this sort of denial of the autonomy and substance of the ethnic community is one of the impediments that have been placed by mechanical materialism in the roadway of development of revolutionary Marxism. (Has this been entirely foreign to our own difficulties and slowness in coming to grips with the issue of national self-determination?)

Marxists have of late begun to examine afresh some of the complexities and subtleties of the national question, in the light of new studies both of the peoples and liberation movements of Africa. Asia and the Americas, and of the new aspects which the national question has presented in some advanced capitalist countries in the period of intensified general crisis of the imperialist system.
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*This article had just been set in type when I received the issue of Rccherchcs Sociographitjucs (Laval) devoted to "Les Classes soriales an Canada Francais." It contains extremely rich material to which we shall devote future pages of comment. In particular, Professor Rioux, in an essay on "Conscience ethnique et conscience de classe au Quebec," develops and (it seems to me) somewhat modifies the position taken on the "ethnic class" in the paper discussed above.

 

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Both these areas were dealt with in the 1961 81 -party statement; further, more specialized studies are offered in Jean Chesneaux, "The Process of Formation of Nations in Africa and Asia: an Essay in Marxist Analysis" (La Pensee); and S. A. Tokarev, "The Problem of Types of Ethnic Community: on methological problems of ethnography" (Questions of Philosophy, No. 11, 1964)* The plan of study of the national question proposed by the Marxist Study Centre (cf. our Summer 1962 issue) included further investigation into problems of each of the two nations in Canada, and their relationships; the character and trends of the national group communities; the status and condition of the Indian and Eskimo peoples. It also pointed to the need for a critical appraisal of the large body of writing on nationalism and national movements that has appeared since the last war, especially under the stimulus of the national-liberation revolutions. Such a survey would certainly need to embrace developments in Marxist-Leninist theory in the half-century since Stalin formulated his definition of the nation. In pursuing as much of this program as lies within the limits of our capacities, we would wish to invite exchanges of opinion and mutual aid as between Marxists in this country, in both French and English Canada, and our colleagues working in this field in other countries.
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*An abridged translation of Tokarev has appeared in the Marxist Study Centre Bulletin, Spring 1965; both articles will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Marxist quarterly.

 

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