No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
Paul Kellogg has called on Canadian political economists to break decisively with dependency theory, arguing that Nikolai Bukharin's insights can provide the key to retheorizing Canada as an unqualifiedly advanced capitalist economy. This comment first questions Kellogg's assumption that left-nationalist dependency theorists were ascribing nationalist motivations to capital investment and then goes on to illustrate that the case for Carroll's internationalist thesis is not as strong as Kellogg supposes. Questions are raised about the appropriateness of Bukharin's emphasis on state capitalism and the nationalization of capitalist interests in the light of Canada's current strategy of market-led continentalism. Finally, the argument is made that capitalist laws of motion can provide only a starting point for understanding the political economy of Canada.
Paul Kellogg a invité les spécialistes de I'économie politique du Canada à abandonner la théorie de la dépendance, sous prétexte que les idées de Nikolai Bukharin pourraient se révéler l'élément clé permettant de redéfinir le Canada comme une économie capitaliste parfaitement avancée. L'article remet d'abord en question la supposition de Kellogg, selon laquelle les nationalistes de gauche qui ont formulé la théorie de la dépendance attribuaient des motifs nationalistes aux investisseurs de capitaux, puis montre que la thèse internationaliste de Carroll n'est pas aussi solide que Kellogg le suppose. L'auteur s'interroge également sur la pertinence de l'accent que Bukharin place sur le capitalisme d'État et la nationalisation des intérêts capitalistes à la lumiére de la stratégie de continentalisme de marché que suit actuellement le Canada. Enfin, l'auteur soutient que les lois capitalistes du mouvement ne peuvent servir que de points de départ à la compréhension de l'économie politique du Canada.
1 Pal, Leslie, “Political Economy as a Hegemonic Project,” this Journal 22 (1989), 827–839Google Scholar.
2 Kellogg, Paul, “State, Capital and World Economy: Bukharin's Marxism and the ‘Dependency/Class’ Controversy in Canadian Political Economy,” this Journal 22 (1989), 337–362Google Scholar.
3 See also Williams, Glen, “On Determining Canada's Location within the International Political Economy,” Studies in Political Economy (1988: 25), 107–140Google Scholar; Glenday, Daniel, “Rich but Semiperipheral: Canada's Ambiguous Position in the World-Economy,” Review: Fernand Braudel Center 12 (1989), 209–261Google Scholar; and Resnick, Philip, “From Semiperiphery to Perimeter of the Core: Canada's Place in the Capitalist World-Economy,” Review: Fernand Braudel Center 12(1989), 263–297Google Scholar. Resnick's essay also appears as chapter 9 in The Masks of Proteus: Canadian Reflections on the State (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.
4 The sense of crisis also springs from the political engagement of many scholars in the new Canadian political economy. Mahon suggests that the seemingly inexorable logic treat of continentalism reflected in the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement has bred a pessimistic functionalism (Mahon, Rianne, “Review Symposium: New Developments in Comparative Political Economy,” Canadian Journal of Sociology 14 [1989], 501–509CrossRefGoogle Scholar).
5 Drache, Daniel, “The Crisis of Canadian Political Economy: Dependency Theory versus the New Orthodoxy,” Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 7 (1983), 25Google Scholar. See also Laxer, Gordon, “The Schizophrenic Character of Canadian Political Economy,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 26 (1989), 178–191CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Phillips, Paul, “Review: Retrospection and Revisionism—Dependency and Class in Canadian Political Economy,” Journal of Canadian Studies 22 (1987), 198CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 The term is Drache's. Drache, Daniel, “Rediscovering Canadian Political Economy,” Journal of Canadian Studies 11 (1976), 3–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 See especially Smiley, Donald, “Must Canadian Political Science Be a Miniature Replica?” Journal of Canadian Studies 9 (1974), 31–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Cairns, Alan C., “Political Science in Canada and the Americanization Issue,” this Journal 8 (1975), 191–234CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 Cairns, “Political Science in Canada and the Americanization Issue,” 233.
10 Niosi's term. Niosi, Jorge, “The Canadian Bourgeoisie: Towards a Synthetical Approach,” Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 7 (1983), 128Google Scholar.
11 Cairns, “Political Science in Canada and the Americanization Issue,” 233.
12 Most notably Panitch, Leo, “Dependency and Class in Canadian Political Economy,” Studies in Political Economy (1981: 6), 7–33Google Scholar, and “Class and Power in Canada,” Monthly Review 36 (1985), 1–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Carroll, William, “Dependency, Imperialism and the Capitalist Class in Canada,” in Brym, Robert J., ed., The Structure of the Canadian Capitalist Class (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1985)Google Scholar, and Carroll, William, Corporate Power and Canadian Capitalism (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1986)Google Scholar.
14 Porter, John, The Vertical Mosaic (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 Ibid., 270 (emphasis added).
16 This has long been a theme of Watkins' work. See most recently Watkins, Mel, “The Political Economy of Growth,” in Clement, Wallace and Williams, Glen, eds., The New Canadian Political Economy (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.
17 Frank, Andre Gunder, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967)Google Scholar.
18 Kellogg, “State, Capital and World Economy,” 341, note 12.
19 See especially Niosi, Jorge, The Economy of Canada: A Study of Ownership and Control (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1978)Google Scholar; “The Canadian Bourgeoisie: Towards a Synthetical Approach”; “Continental Nationalism: the Strategy of the Canadian Bourgeoisie,” in Brym, Robert J. (ed.), The Structure of the Canadian Capitalist Class (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Canadian Multinationals (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Bellon, Bertrand and Niosi, Jorge, The Decline of the American Economy (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1988), chapter 7Google Scholar.
20 Niosi, The Economy of Canada, 64.
21 Niosi, “The Canadian Bourgeoisie,” 135–36. In a recent update of his analysis, Carroll describes a shift from a loosely structured system of “polyarchic financial hegemony” to a “family-based holding system” that has occurred since 1976 as investment companies proliferated in tandem with the reassertion of family capitalism. Carroll also notes, however, that this “enormous centralization of strategic control” has been marked by an orientation to financial-rentier (as opposed to industrial) investments (Carroll, William K., “Neoliberalism and the Recomposition of Finance Capital in Canada,” Capital and Class 38 [Summer 1989], 95–97)Google Scholar.
22 Niosi, Canadian Multinationals, 177. By 1989, however, the six largest Canadian chartered banks had either bought controlling interests in major investment banks or, in the case of the Toronto-Dominion, established their own investment-banking subsidiary.
23 Glenday, “Rich but Semiperipheral,” 252–53.
24 Niosi, “Continental Nationalism,” 63.
25 Ibid., 64.
26 Bellon and Niosi, The Decline of the American Economy, 152.
27 Adjudicating their competing claims is complicated by the imprecision of the category of “semiperiphery.” Defined almost by default, the category has a residual quality. Semiperipheries, Resnick explains, “fall somewhere in between the core and the periphery,” exhibiting a fairly even mix between core-like and periphery-like activities (Resnick, “From Semiperiphery to Perimeter of the Core,” 265–66).
28 Ibid., 292, 274, 283. Resnick, like Glenday, notes the limitations of Wallerstein's typology.
29 Ibid., 269, 285, 292.
30 Niosi and Bellon, The Decline of the American Economy, 155.
31 See Cohen, Marjorie Griffin, “Services: The Vanishing Opportunity,” in Cameron, Duncan, ed., The Free Trade Deal (Toronto: Lorimer, 1988)Google Scholar.
32 Cohen, Stephen S. and Zysman, John, Manufacturing Matters: the Myth of the Post-Industrial Economy (New York: Basic Books, 1987)Google Scholar.
33 Glenday, “Rich but Semiperipheral,” 213.
34 By this criterion, however, the US would have to be considered semiperipheral, too, by 1985. See Glenday, “Rich but Semiperipheral,” Table 2, 251.
35 Ibid., 213.
36 Gagnon, Alain-G. and Montcalm, Mary Beth, Quebec: Beyond the Quiet Revolution (Scarborough: Nelson, 1990), 198Google Scholar.
37 Carroll, Corporate Power and Canadian Capitalism, 198. In fact, scholars in the so-called “new dependency school” consider the formation of indigenous finance capital to be essential to the viability of associated-dependent development. See, for example, Cardoso, Fernando, “Development Under Fire,” in Makler, Harry M., Martinelli, Alberto and Smelser, Neil J., eds., The New International Economy (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1982)Google Scholar.
38 Ritchie, Gordon, “The Negotiating Process,” in Crispo, John, ed., Free Trade: The Real Story (Toronto: Gage, 1988), 20Google Scholar.
39 Niosi, “The Canadian Bourgeoisie,” 129–30.
40 For a recent example of this tendency, see Drache's reading of the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement as “a politico-administrative project imposed by an astute commercially-minded American empire on its feckless client state” (Drache, Daniel, “Canada in American Empire,” Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 12 [1988], 212–229Google Scholar).
41 Kellogg, “State, Capital and World Economy,” 362.
42 Carroll, Corporate Power and Canadian Capitalism, 188. Emphasis added.
43 Laxer, Gordon, “The Schizophrenic Character of Canadian Political Economy,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 26 (1989), 178–179CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
44 Clow has criticized Marxist analyses of Maritime underdevelopment for treating capitalist development as a process governed by automatic capitalist laws of motion (Clow, Michael, “Politics and Uneven Capitalist Development: the Maritime Challenge to the Study of Canadian Political Economy,” Studies in Political Economy [1984: 14], 117–140Google Scholar).
45 McNally, David, “Staple Theory as Commodity Fetishism: Marx, Innis and Canadian Political Economy,” Studies in Political Economy (1981: 6), 35–63Google Scholar.
46 Ibid., 55.
47 Laxer, Gordon, Open for Business: The Roots of Foreign Ownership in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar. Laxer's claim in “The Schizophrenic Character of Canadian Political Economy” that a comparative-historical approach can provide a way “to bridge the bifurcation of the uniqueness versus general laws approaches in Canadian political economy” (188) is certainly borne out by Open for Business. Like Williams' Not for Export, its emphasis on human agency contrasts with the mood of determinism and pessimism that often characterizes Canadian political economy. As Mahon has recently pointed out, however, “just when he has opened the door, he slams it shut again: for Laxer, the die was cast in the first decade of this century” (Mahon, “Review Symposium,” 505).
48 Corbridge, Stuart, Capitalist World Development (London: Macmillan, 1986), 245CrossRefGoogle Scholar.