Representations in Crisis: The Roots of Canada's Permeable Fordism

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Representations in Crisis: The Roots of Canada's Permeable FordismAuthor(s): Jane JensonSource: Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, Vol. 23,No. 4, (Dec., 1990), pp. 653-683Published by: Canadian Political Science Association and the Société québécoise de sciencepolitiqueStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3228437Accessed: 07/04/2008 11:17

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Representations in Crisis: The Roots of Canada's Permeable Fordism*

JANE JENSON Carleton University

There is general agreement that the new Canadian political economy (NCPE) was shaped by nationalism.1 Since the late 1960s its practitioners' primary attention has gone to theorizing Canada's location in the international economy. Moreover, the controversies which animated debates among political economists during two decades emerged around and because of the framing effects of nationalist concerns. In the 1990s, after more than a decade of economic restructuring-including the Free Trade Agreement of 1988-some of these debates have begun to re-form, as the strategies of capital, labour and the state alter in the face of international and domestic economies whose contours have substantially shifted away from post-1945 realities. In the process, new conceptual categories are emerging to address the perennial theoretical concerns of the NCPE.

One useful re-conceptualization is provided by the French regulation approach to political economy, which proposes a particular periodization of the history of capitalism.2 Nevertheless, there are gaps which limit its utility for any thoroughgoing political economy analysis. Most

* Work on the theoretical section of this article was supported by SSHRCC grant #410-88-0912. For helpful comments on earlier versions I am grateful to Greg Albo, Wally Clement, Bill Coleman, Bob Jessop, Fuat Keyman, Rianne Mahon, John Myles, Alain Noel, Pascal Petit and Rob Ryan.

1 The discussion of the NCPE which follows applies only to debates in English Canada. The importance of the "national question" and the evolution of Quebecois political economy is described in William D. Coleman, "The Political Economy of Quebec," in Wallace Clement and Glen Williams (eds.), The New Canadian Political Economy (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1989), 160-79.

2 For a presentation of the French regulation approach and discussion of its variety see "Avant-propos," in Gerard Boismenu and Daniel Drache (eds.), Politique et regulation: modele de developpement et trajectoire canadienne (Montreal: Meridien, 1990), 27-34.

Jane Jenson, Department of Political Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario K1S 5B6

Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, XXIII:4 (December/ decembre 1990). Printed in Canada / Imprime au Canada

JANE JENSON

striking is the short shrift given to politics.3 In consequence, the regulation approach cannot address social theory's traditional concerns with explaining stability and change. Therefore, this article augments the basic categories of the French regulation approach with a conceptualization of politics appropriate to its periodization. The resulting conceptual categories are then used as a theoretical lens for rereading the interwar economic and political experience of Canada. The novelty of this rereading is the specific combination of proposed solutions to several of the basic controversies within the NCPE.

Five Issues for the New Canadian Political Economy

The NCPE emerged out of a meeting between left nationalism and the "old" Canadian political economy, especially the work of Harold Innis.4 From this encounter five controversies eventually emerged. They are: the identification of collective actors, the role of the state, the comparison of Canada with like cases, the categorization of space and the periodization of time. This section briefly describes each controversy and then summarizes this article's position on each matter.

The first issue, the identification of actors, appeared in early debates among the "new" political economists. An initial controversy over whether left nationalists should emphasize their "left" or "nationalist" identities quickly evolved into a thoroughgoing theoretical discussion. Many analysts saw Innis' stress on geography and technology as an inappropriate concentration on the forces of production and trade, with a concomitant absence of attention to the relations of production.5

The incorporation of the categories of class analysis within an argument about the shaping effects of staple trade and production did constitute a step towards a more actor-oriented view of history. Sub- sequent commentaries addressed two criticisms to such efforts, however. First, class analyses of this sort focussed exclusively on a single 3 For an excellent discussion of the regulation approach's difficulties in dealing with

politics-defined as the forces and processes which create stability or change-see Alain Noel, "Action collective, politique partisane et relations industrielles," in Boismenu and Drache (eds.), Politique et regulation, 99-100. That book as a whole

attempts to provide more analysis of politics and the state from within a regulationist perspective.

4 This lineage has been traced in many places. For an overview see "Introduction," in Daniel Drache and Wallace Clement (eds.), The New Practical Guide to Canadian Political Economy (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1985), ix-xxiv. For a recent discussion see "Introduction," in Clement and Williams (eds.), The New Canadian Political

Economy, 3-15. 5 See David McNally, "Staple Theory as Commodity Fetishism: Marx, Innis and

Canadian Political Economy," Studies in Political Economy, No. 6 (Autumn 1981), 35-63, and Leo Panitch, "Dependency and Class in Canadian Political Economy," Studies in Political Economy, No. 6 (Autumn 1981), 7-33.

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Abstract. This article utilizes the "regulation approach" in order to rethink the origins and resolution of crisis. It provides an account of the political conflicts of the 1930s and 1940s which gave rise to a model of development in Canada which can be labelled "permeable fordism." Rapid economic growth after the Second World War had specific national traits but these were based on wage relations and macro-economic policies similar to other countries which have been labelled fordist. The political compromise of Canada's "fordism" was, in contrast, quite different. The compromise was based on a new national discourse more than on one stressing the capital-labour relationship and organized by class-based parties. The article demonstrates how these differences were rooted in the political conflict of the 1930s and 1940s, the moment when the earlier model of development came apart around the challenges posed to Canadian federalism by the Depression and the Second World War.

Resume. Cet article fait part de l'approche de la r6gulation-une des analyses qui con- tribuent a red6finir l'6tude theorique de l'apres-guerre-pour repenser les origines et la fin des < crises >. L'article explique comment les conflits politiques des ann6es trente et quarante ont faconn6 pour l'apres-guerre un modele de d6veloppement propre au Canada, le ? fordisme permeable >. La croissance 6conomique rapide de l'apres-guerre avait des aspects specifiquement canadiens, mais reposait en meme temps sur des relations de travail et des politiques macro-economique semblables a celles des pays dits < fordistes ?.

Le compromis politique propre au < fordisme > canadien, par contre, s'est av6er tres different. Ce compromis 6tait fonde sur un nouveau discours national plut6t que sur une entente capital-travail organisee par des partis de classe. Le gouvernement federal deve- nait alors un acteur social central, capable de r6organizer les rapports economiques et sociaux en liant la poursuite de la justice sociale a celle du d6veloppement national. L'article montre comment ces differences sont enracin6es dans les conflits politiques des ann6es trente et quarante, p6riode oi le mod&le pr6ecdent s'est effondre. Regional et local, ce modele n'a pas r6sist6 au d6fi pose au federalisme canadien par la depression et la guerre.

class-capital-and its power rather than on the unequal but mutual power of social relations between classes. Insufficient theorizing of the role of workers and other subordinate classes limited the analysis of those who claimed to be the heirs of Marx.6 Subsequent "generations" turned their focus to the actions of all classes and the unequal power relations among them.7

A second criticism which can be levied against even analyses which consider subordinate classes is that they pay insufficient attention to the role of class struggle in class formation. Indeed, class formation, as opposed to classes-in-struggle, has rarely occupied the attention of the NCPE.8 The explanations of differences in Canada's experience tended

6 The classic statement of this position can be found in Panitch, "Dependency and Class in Canadian Political Economy," 13.

7 There is much general agreement about this analytic strategy, as indicated by the definition of "strong" political economy given in Clement and Williams, "Introduc-

tion," 6-7, 10-11. Nevertheless, the relative weight assigned to structures and agents differs widely, as do the lingering effects of elite analysis for many practitioners of the NCPE.

8 See Ray Schmidt, "Canadian Political Economy: A Critique," Studies in Political

Economy, No. 6 (Autumn 1981), 65-92, and Panitch, "Dependency and Class in Canadian Political Economy." This attention to class formation as one consequence of class conflict was the theoretical motivation for Janine Brodie and Jane Jenson, Crisis, Challenge and Change: Party and Class in Canada (Toronto: Methuen, 1980).

to remain in the realm of geography and/or technology and were described as constraints on the ability of classes to master their potential within such forces. Rarer is the notion that the specificities of Canadian history emerge from the ways in which classes have struggled to create themselves.

To carry through on this distinction, my analysis distinguishes between two levels of analysis, the esoteric world of structural relations and the exoteric realm of everyday life and its meanings.9 With this distinction the analysis employs a double optic. The first is the long- standing observation at the heart of social theory that social relations reproduce through time, whether or not participants comprehend the structures which set constraints on the ways they construct their lives. This is the realm of esoteric knowledge, of theory which can demonstrate that at the heart of social relations are contradictions which must be regulated for a time if social relations are to be reproduced. The second optic is the claim that to understand ongoing and changing social relations, analysis must also acknowledge space for choice and subjectivity. Only with this claim can it explicate the ways in which, despite the contradictory nature of social relations, an ensemble of institutional forms, networks and explicit or implicit norms emerge which actors incorporate into the collective identities which organize their actions. With this foray into the exoteric world it is possible to comprehend how and in what ways contradictory social relations come to be (temporarily) stabilized. Through this double optic history becomes the result of a dialectical process-the open-ended result of actors creating their lives under conditions of constraint.

From the beginning, then, the approach posits that actors are simultaneously subjects of social structures which continue regardless of their perception of them and acting subjects carrying in their practices and the meaning systems which motivate them the possibilities of not only reproduction but also social change and transformation. This notion of the simultaneity of subjectivity is central to the argument.10 Working at these two levels of analysis addresses the long-standing absence of a meaningful discussion of politics in the regulation approach. 1

9 This distinction is from Ricardo Hausmann and Alain Lipietz, "Esoteric vs. Exoteric Economic Laws: The Forgotten Dialectic," CEPREMAP S6rie Orange, 1980, incor- porated in Alain Lipietz, The Enchanted World: Inflation, Credit and the World Crisis (London: Verso, 1985), chaps. 1-2, 9-43.

10 On this point see also Jane Jenson, "Paradigms and Political Discourse: Protective Legislation in France and the United States Before 1914," this JOURNAL 22 (1989), 236-37. This epistemological position differs from positivism's strict search for general laws or prediction. For a discussion of the method see Noel, "Action collective, politique partisane and relations industriels," 107-08.

11 As Noel describes the problem, "Action collective, politique partisane et relations industrielles," 106, the inability of the regulation approach to analyze politics in a

656 JANE JENSON

The Roots of Canada's Permeable Fordism

This said, however, it is crucial to insist that whether classes form and act in all political sites, or not, class relations shape Canadian

society. Canada is a class-divided society and the social relations of capitalism have consequences far beyond the realm of production, even if the discourse of politics does not explicitly mediate them as such.12

This article addresses the issue of actors in history, then, by putting the stress as much on the formation of actors as on the consequences of their struggles. Indeed, the argument is that the two are inseparable. Because of this focus, the answer to the question of which actors emerge at any historical moment remains an open one. Classes may-or may not-constitute themselves in their familiar guise. Other collectivities may take form alongside or as substitutes for class actors.13 In this way, the argument embeds politics, in its broadest sense, at the heart of the analysis; class formation is a political outcome.14

Given its attention to politics, this argument necessarily invokes a second issue much debated in the NCPE, the role of the state. As with the controversies about actors, the consideration of the state has its

lineage in the encounter between nationalism and Innis. Whereas the "old" political economy tended to have a quite determinist as well as underdeveloped view of the state, the NCPE has devoted a great deal of sustained attention to nuancing analyses. Attention to the state derived from the same concerns which introduced class analysis to the NCPE.15 As such, the state's role has been defined as the creation and re-creation

meaningful way led not to economism but to a neo-structuralism in which the "rebel sons" did not escape their Althusserianism. See Alain Lipietz, "Rebel Sons: The French Regulation Approach," French Politics and Society 5 (1987), 3-17.

12 For a consideration of this distinction see Janine Brodie and Jane Jenson, Crisis, Challenge and Change: Party and Class in Canada Revisited (Ottawa: Carleton

University Press, 1988), 1 and passim. 13 This position reflects in part the impact of feminist theory on the notions of how

collectivities create themselves in conflicts over legitimate identities. For a discussion of this lineage see Jane Jenson, "The Politics of Crisis: Political Economy Looks to the 1990s," paper presented at the Conference on Canadian Political Economy in the Era of Free Trade, Carleton University, April 1990.

14 The definition of "politics" used in this article is a broad one, as the next section makes clear. It incorporates a distinction sometimes made in French between le politique and la politique. Le politique, the more general term, refers to the forms of

organization and exercise of power in society, including the power of the state. La politique, in turn, refers to the practices of power by "political actors." The first provides the ordering principle for the second. See Anne Legar6 and Nicole Morf, La Societe distincte de l'Etat (Quebec: Hurtibise HMH, 1989), 38-39. This distinction between an ordering principle and practices is elaborated in the discussion of levels of analysis here.

15 For discussions of this literature see Rianne Mahon, The Politics of Industrial Restructuring: Canadian Textiles (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), chap. 1, and Gregory Albo and Jane Jenson, "A Contested Concept: The Relative Autonomy of the State," in Clement and Williams (eds.), The New Canadian Political Economy, 180-211.

657

JANE JENSON

of Canada as a rich dependency, whether because of the role of elites within the state or because of the content of class relations.

This article does not take the state per se as an object of analysis as do neo-institutional political economy, the elite analyses of left nationalists and neo-Marxist theories of the state. Rather, it starts from the observation that the state does play a regulating role in capitalist societies but returns to the social relations of civil society to determine how that role has been played in this particular case. Thus the focus is on the actual exercise of class power, including the representation of alliances between fractions of capital as well as subordinate classes and other collectivities. This analytic strategy for understanding the state, coupled with study of the variety of actors described above, requires attention to the institutions of liberal democracy.16 The specific articulation of the formal equality of liberal democracy and the class-based inequalities of capitalism emerge from such scrutiny as do the ways in which all forms of difference in social relations find expression in representative institutions. From this perspective too the partisan expression of class struggle is a historical construction, not an inevitable outcome in a class-divided society.17

The double optic-analyzing both the level of the structured relations of capitalism and the realm of actors' lived experience-is crucial for determining the side adopted in the third controversy, that is, whether Canada is an "exception" or one of a set of advanced capitalist countries. This is one of the hoariest issues in the NCPE, pitting neo- Innisians against those who would assimilate Canada to the category of industrial capitalism.18 The position adopted depends, in part, on whether relations of trade or of production are privileged. In the first case there is less attention to domestic social relations than in the latter.19

Here it is argued that specificity does not equal uniqueness. Despite the particularities of its location in the international economy and the permeability of its economy to the effects of international trade, Canada is best compared to the set of advanced capitalist countries whose history of industrialization dates from the late nineteenth century. More

16 Panitch called for such analysis in "Dependency and Class in Canadian Political Economy" but did not devote much attention to it. See Albo and Jenson, "A Contested Concept: The Relative Autonomy of the State," 202-03. For a recent theoretical discussion see David Wolfe, "The Canadian State in Comparative Per- spective," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 26 (1989), 97-98.

17 An analysis of such historical constructions since 1867 is offered in Brodie and Jenson, Crisis, Challenge and Change: Party and Class in Canada Revisited.

18 For an overview of strategies of comparison see John Myles, "Introduction: Under- standing Canada: Comparative Political Economy Perspectives," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 26 (1989), 1-3.

19 For an outline of this controversy see "Introduction," in Drache and Clement (eds.), The New Practical Guide to Canadian Political Economy, xi-xii.

658


broadly, all such countries are "different," because none has exactly the same history of political mediation of class, gender, linguistic or other social relations. If history is made by actors constrained but not completely limited by the social structures within which they create their lives, then such differences are an inevitable outcome.20 This stance implies a constant need to focus explicitly on domestic as well as international forces structuring society and on the space for manipula- tion of the constraints of both, because the articulation of such forces and the meanings attached to them by actors are social constructions which change over time, as political struggles give shape to them.21

Problematizing the constitution of "the international" and "the national" raises the fourth issue in the NCPE, that of space. The "new" political economists drew on Innisian attention to the sequential structuring effects of staple trade on spatial relations. For Innis the different use of space for each staple left an imprint on the geography of Canada.22 Of particular importance were the effects on regions. Indeed, for Innis the relevant spatial dichotomization was regional/international. Trade in staples created domestic effects of international forces, experienced differently in the several regions. Focus on the wheat staple and its boom dispersed this thinking throughout the "old" political economy.23

The NCPE altered the Innisian arguments with its turn to an almost exclusive focus on a new couplet, the national/international.24 This shift reflected the impact of postwar nationalism and the emergence of another sense of space.25 For the neo-Innisians spatial relations were

20 Myles labels this a method of "individualizing comparisons" ("Introduction: Under-

standing Canada: Comparative Political Economy Perspectives," 7). See also Noel, "Action collective, politique partisane et relations industrielles," 107-10.

21 This position differs from that of Gordon Laxer in his Open for Business: The Roots of Foreign Ownership in Canada (Toronto: Oxford, 19898). Laxer criticizes the neo- Innisians by setting out a typology in which Canada falls into the "late-follower"

category, for which agrarian politics is particularly important. Nevertheless, despite making claims for an agency-centred form of analysis, his remains ahistorical pre- cisely because the die was cast at the end of the nineteenth century and little space for actors making change existed after that. For this critique see Rianne Mahon's contribution to a "Review Symposium" titled "New Developments in Comparative Politi- cal Economy," reviewing Laxer's book, Canadian Journal of Sociology 14 (1989), 501-09.

22 For analysis see Janine Brodie, "The Political Economy of Regionalism," in Clement and Williams (eds.), The New Canadian Political Economy, 144.

23 One of the routes of dispersion was via "hinterland" political economy. That

approach was more political, assigning state institutions responsibility for creating regionalism and differential economic and political power. See Brodie, "The Political

Economy of Regionalism," 147. 24 An exception is obviously discussion of uneven development. See Drache and Cle-

ment (eds.), The New Practical Guide to Canadian Political Economy, Part V. 25 The "old" political economists, especially Harold Innis and Donald Creighton, were

concerned to demonstrate the reasonableness of Canada's existence, despite the international effects creating regional variations. See Schmidt, "Canadian Political

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constituted by power relations of international exchange reflected in national society. The nation-state was the unit of analysis and its spatial characteristics corresponded to class and institutional power. Thus, patterns of distribution of class actors and their access to the institutions of economic and political power, especially federalism, created political space. History was often "rewritten" to reinsert the national/international couplet into analyses of the pre-Second World War years, albeit never without challenge from those who would grant greater attention to the social construction of regions.26

This article treats spatial categories as social constructions. In particular, it periodizes by arguing that the space-structuring effects of class composition and institutions change during moments of crisis and restructuring of the model of development. At such times actors involved in proposing alternative strategies for the future may recom- pose the practices and meanings attached to space. Thus new social constructions of space are one of the consequences of crisis and restructuring, reflecting the conflicts which resolve them.

Moreover, this notion of crisis and restructuring inserts into the analysis a conception of time which differs substantially from the categories familier to the NCPE. The periodization of history is a fifth issue much disputed within the NCPE. For Innisians, shifts from one staple to another brought moments of crisis, altering social relations and their political mediation.27 For neo-Innisians a change in staples was associated not simply with the demands of international trade but also with permutations in imperial and neo-imperial power relations. Thus,

Economy: A Critique," 69. For left nationalists in the 1970s, Canada's relationship with the US had become an all-consuming focus.

26 This dispute over the "national" versus the "regional" is seen in, inter alia, the discussions of 1919. Compare Gregory S. Kealey, "1919: The Canadian Labour Revolt," Labour/Le Travail, No. 13 (Spring 1984), 11-44, with David J. Bercuson, Fools and Wise Men: The Rise and Fall of the One Big Union (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1978) on whether 1919 should be interpreted primarily as a national or a

regional event. See also Schmidt, "Canadian Political Economy: A Critique" and Paul Phillips, "Through Different Lenses: the Political Economy of Labour," in Clement and Williams (eds.), The New Canadian Political Economy, 77-98, on the competition among class, regional and ethnic identities.

27 See Wallace Clement, "Debates and Direction: A Political Economy of Resources," in Clement and Williams (eds.), The New Canadian Political Economy, 38. Given their emphasis on politics, the "hinterland" historians dated by National Policies (Brodie, "The Political Economy of Regionalism," 147-48). Nevertheless, some neo-Innisians make no time distinctions in the twentieth century. "... Williams has stressed the essential continuity in various periods of industrial expansion that followed the National Policy. This continuity stems from the logic imposed on investment decisions of firms and states by Canada's unique location within the international political economy" (Neil Bradford and Glen Williams, "What Went Wrong? Explaining Canadian Industrialization," in Clement and Williams [eds.], The New Canadian Political Economy, 67).

660 JANE JENSON


periodization of Canadian history responded to external forces. Critics of this approach proposed an alternative way of designating time; an understanding of Canada as an industrial capitalist society looked for domestically-induced markers for time. Changes in class composition, mediated by class mobilizations, stamped the boundaries of time from a linear process in the development of monopoly capitalism.28 Thus politics was crucial to this view of time, just as it was for naming actors, designating the role of the state and identifying the specificity of Canada within the set of capitalist societies.

While agreeing with much of the latter position, this article nevertheless presents another periodization. Politics is no less important but the analysis explores in more detail the articulation of economic and political crises and restructurings, developing a periodization of history in which changes in practices of capital accumulation are associated with reorganisation of representative practices and meanings. In addition, it argues that the potential for change is not the same at all times. Some moments recreate stability in social relations while others gener- ate room for experimentation and the clash of alternative social projects. Thus the history of capitalism in Canada can be divided into times in which a model of development reproduces ongoing social arrangements and moments of renegotiation, albeit within constraints.

In the rest of the article, this approach is utilized to describe how the 1930s crisis and wartime restructuring led to Canada's postwar model of development, "permeable fordism," so as to account for the constitution of Canada's particular version of fordism.29 The postwar model of development included an expanded commitment to increased continental integration based on exporting resources and importing capital. Therefore, since 1945 the Canadian economy has been permeated by international-or, more exactly, continental-effects. In addition, Can- ada's permeable fordism did not depend on mobilization of the labour movement in a party or corporatist institutions, but rather on governmental oversight of the actions of firms and unions in private collective bargaining relations. As the Canadian economy expanded after the war, based on mass production and consumption industries as well as on resource exports, it had three aspects which were somewhat unique

28 See, for example, Panitch, "Dependency and Class in Canadian Political Economy" which turns to union mobilizations to periodize the trajectory toward dependent development, and Brodie and Jenson, Crisis, Challenge and Change: Party and Class in Canada Revisited which dates crises of representations by major shifts in patterns of electoral support.

29 For the analysis which supports the generalizations in the next few paragraphs see Jane Jenson, "'Different' but not 'Exceptional': Canada's Permeable Fordism," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 26 (1989), 69-94. That article explores the consequences of permeable fordism for the unfolding crisis of the last two decades in Canada.

661

when compared to other fordist systems: reliance on relatively unpro- cessed natural resources as the real leaders of the economy, high rates of capital and goods imports, and a state that spent little on social programmes and left labour-management relations to the arena of private collective bargaining. Nevertheless, the basic economic arrangements of both labour-management relations and state macro-economic policy followed the lines made familiar in other countries which have been labelled fordist.30

Not so, however, other arrangements of Canada's permeable fordism. The social compromise-constructed out of conflicts of the 1930s and 1940s-which institutionalized fordism depended less on partisan politics than on federal-provincial negotiations. No class compromise was organized in the party system between left and right parties; its crucial ideological and organizational underpinnings lay elsewhere. Nor was it a fordism in which the state gained a determinant role. Canada's permeable fordism was based on a discourse of nation-building, and social justice through nation-building was the primary theme. The organized working class was accorded a small role in the political institutions and in the language of politics for the postwar years.31

The task of this article is to show how these differences took shape as fordism was constructed in Canada. In order to do this it is necessary to think more about politics from this perspective.

Politics in Regulation and Crisis

If it is only by rehabilitating the subject and undertaking an analysis of the politics of action that social theory can account for both stability and change, then attention to the constitution of actors is crucial. Within such a perspective politics can be seen as involving actors' efforts to carve out a constituency for themselves by mobilizing support for their preferred formulation of their own collective identity (and often that of their protagonists) and for the enumeration of their interests, which follows from that collective identity. This definition of politics depends upon an understanding of the dual aspects of representation. One type of representation involves an actor's representation of self to others, via a collective identity. A second type, familiar from the language of liberal democracy, is the representation of interests. These two senses of the term representation are closely linked by the fact that both involve

30 See Jenson, "'Different' but not 'Exceptional': Canada's Permeable Fordism," and Gerard Boismenu and Daniel Drache, "Une Economie politique pour la compr6hen- sion de la crise et ses enjeux," in Boismenu and Drache (eds.), Politique et regulation, 41-47.

31 G6rard Boismenu characterizes this situation as one of "fordisme a dominante priv6e" in his "L'Etat et la r6gulation du rapport salarial depuis 1945," in Boismenu and Drache (eds.), Politique et regulation, 159.

662 JANE JENSON


power, the power to give meaning to social relations and thereby to represent and dispute over "interests."32

Representation of self-that is, a collective identity-involves, among other things, naming oneself, since only an actor with a name is recognizable to others. As a consequence of such naming, social relations become visible and a range of political strategies for sustaining or changing social relations emerges. Because representation of self is the chosen, and therefore variable, strategy of actors, there will be diversity in the names with which actors in similar circumstances describe themselves. The particular outcome, in each place and time, results from a specific conflict involving negotiated mutual recognition. Representa- tion of interests is also part of this process, of course. Resolution of basic questions about who the main protagonists are to be in turn places broad limits on the definition of interests of actors and also makes such definitions historical rather than "objective."33

Understanding representation in this double sense makes the politics of struggles over meaning-the power to label social relations- crucial. Politics is about conflict over or acceptance of collective identities-about who has a right to make claims-as much as it concerns conflict among groups and organizations over disputed claims about who gets what, when and how. The terrain on which actors struggle for representation is the universe ofpolitical discourse, a space in which socially-constructed identities emerge in discursive struggle.34 Because actors with a variety of collective identities co-exist in the universe of political discourse, their practices and meaning systems jostle each other for social attention and legitimacy.

Nevertheless, observation of history shows us that all historical moments are not equally open to the recognition of new actors and interests. There are times when there is a relative societal consensus about the names of the actors and their interests. In this case politics is conflict primarily within the terms of an ongoing system of representation, which is in regulation. But there are other moments when there is

32 These notions of representation imply that "interests" are never other than relative and subjective, because they cannot be separated from identities. Yet, everything is not possible. Specific conjunctures do give greater weight to some identities and their definitions of interest, because of the form of social relations at that time. For a similar discussion see Bob Jessop, The Capitalist State (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1982), 255-58.

33 In these terms, the emergence of a universalizing class identity in advanced capitalist society was-and is-the result of struggle in concrete circumstances. Success for class institutions in particular times and places was measured by their ability, first, to

shape a meaning system which represented class-based collective identities and

political interests as coterminous; and second, to develop strategies to impose their world view, including their definition of interests, on others.

34 For an elaboration of the universe of political discourse see Jane Jenson, "Gender and

Reproduction: Or, Babies and the State," Studies in Political Economy, No. 20 (Summer 1986), 25-27.

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turmoil in the universe of political discourse, when debates challenge not only the distributional effects of politics but also the very right of some actors to make claims. Under such conditions there is "space" in the universe of political discourse to demonstrate alternative meaning systems and to institute alternative practices. In this case politics is conflict over the very legitimacy of actors' participation, and the situation can be termed one of crisis. It is necessary, then, to think more about regulation and crisis as well as about representation.35

Non-crisis moments can be thought of as regulated by a model of development which, as the particular achievement of each national society, is a combination of institutionalized social relations which reproduce over time. Throughout the history of capitalism situations have existed of long-term stabilization of the allocation of social production between consumption and accumulation. The existence of such a regime of accumulation implies a certain correspondence between transformation of the conditions of production and reproduction of wage-labour, including between certain of the modalities in which capitalism is articulated with other modes of production within a national social formation. A social bloc composed of a stable system of alliances, compromises and patterns of domination among social groups provides a good match for the regime of accumulation. While the leading fraction of the capitalist class may place its stamp on the model of development, and is likely to be a visibly important actor, its political position depends upon its ability to participate in a project which can secure the consent of virtually all important groups in any social formation.36 The unity and opposition of the social relations in the regime of accumulation and social bloc stamp out a system of places, which make a trajectory through time.37

These systems, whose reproduction over time indicates that they are in regulation, do not occur magically, and, that they stabilize the model of development certainly does not explain their existence. Any explanation of continuity must call on different conceptualizations which consider the ways in which actors constitute social relations through the meanings which they give them as well as through their practices. These representations generated by actors are, of course,

35 Much of the rest of this theoretical section has been developed in dialogue and therefore collaboration with Alain Lipietz.

36 For a thorough discussion of the theoretical lineage of the concept of social bloc see Mahon, The Politics of Industrial Restructuring, chap. 1. For the joint use of regime of accumulation and social bloc, with reference to postwar France, see Alain Lipietz, "Governing the Economy," in J. Hollifield and G. Ross (eds.), In Search of the New France (New York: Routledge, forthcoming).

37 For a discussion of such trajectories see Alain Lipietz, "La Trame, la chaine, et la

regulation: Un Outil pour les sciences sociales," CEPREMAP S6rie Orange, 8816, 1988, 8-14.

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limited; everything is not possible. Therefore, concrete analyses must be undertaken of historically-developed sets of practices and meanings which provide the actual mechanisms of regulation. Making a loose distinction between the social relations of production and a broader set of social relations, we can label these regulatory mechanisms the mode of regulation and the societal paradigm.38

Stabilization of a regime of accumulation depends, then, upon its being institutionalized as norms, habits and laws in a mode of regulation which guarantees that its agents conform more or less to the schema of reproduction in their day-to-day behaviour and in their struggles within contradictory social relations. When a set of practices, and the meanings which accompany them, succeed in stabilizing a regime of accumulation, we can say that a mode of regulation exists. A societal paradigm is similarly a shared set of interconnected norms, habits and laws which make sense of the many social relations beyond the realm of production. Every societal paradigm contains a view of human nature, a definition of basic and proper forms of social relations among equals and among those in relationships of hierarchy, and specification of relations among institutions as well as a stipulation of the role of such institutions. Thus a societal paradigm is a meaning system as well as a set of practices, and a well-functioning societal paradigm will stabilize the specific relations of domination of its social bloc.

If a mode of regulation and societal paradigm's sets of interconnected premises come to be widely shared as the result of a social compromise, they are "hegemonic." Hegemony means, in this sense, that there are socially-limited ways of living social relations which exist as effective constraints on social relations. Divergences are minimal and are confined to disputes internal to the representational system itself; they are insufficient to undermine the regime of accumulation or the social bloc.

The constitution and continuation of a stable, or hegemonic, mode of regulation and societal paradigm, within which only some collective identities are represented, is the product of politics in its broadest sense. Any number of institutions-ranging from political parties, trade unions and other social movements to the various apparatuses of the state, churches, corporations, families and scientific establishments-may be identified as the multiple sites of its constitution.

38 The term "paradigm" derives from linguistics, where a paradigm links different forms of the same root, therefore ordering difference and demonstrating connections across forms which might not otherwise appear linked. The best-known use of the concept in social science is by Thomas S. Kuhn who suggests that paradigms are historical constructs, whose selection from a range of possible paradigms is based on struggle for allegiances. Paradigms illuminate the world until the contradictions which they can no longer absorb permit other scientists to imagine an alternative and gain support for that vision. See Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2nd ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).

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From this description of elements which contribute to its emergence and sustenance it is clear that we must acknowledge the miracle which lies behind the construction of a workable model of development out of moments of crisis. Yet because a regime of accumulation and social bloc can never overcome but can simply stall contradictions, there is always the possibility that the practices and meanings institutionalized in the mode of regulation and the societal paradigm will no longer be sufficient to sustain the unity in opposition, and a major crisis will break out.

A crisis cannot, then, be understood simply as the result of reaching certain structural limits. It is also both manifested and resolved within the representational system. In a situation of crisis, newly visible and active actors in the expanding universe of political discourse will begin to present alternative modes of regulation and societal paradigms and will engage in political conflict over the terms of a new compromise. If, as a result of conflict within the universe of political discourse that is linked to the emergence of new structural relations, a new model of development emerges, then another set of rules for recognizing actors and defining interests for the future will also then exist.

The rest of this article examines the roots of Canada's postwar regime of accumulation and mode of regulation in the crisis situation of the 1930s and the war. While economic arrangements in postwar Canada were in many ways similar to those of other advanced industrial societies, the social bloc and societal paradigms were quite different. Moreover, these latter differences had an important role to play in creating the variations observed in the regime of accumulation and mode of regulation. The analytic task is to demonstrate, first, the effects of increasing contradictions in the older model of development and, then, the politics of crisis resolution which could stabilize a new mode of regulation and societal paradigm.

Prelude to Crisis: Contradictions in the Model of Development

The form of the crisis in Canada during the 1930s and possible routes to restructuring were constrained by the earlier model of development. This model had sustained an immense economic boom in the first decades of the century, although it was slowing by the 1920s.39 The model could not hold up under the contradictions which the 1930s unveiled. The previously hegemonic mode of regulation and societal paradigm lost its power to make sense of the world and the universe of

39 In the first years of the 1920s there was a serious economic downturn, but after that most indicators turned up again until the end of the decade. See Robert Bothwell, Ian Drummond and John English, Canada, 1900-1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), chap. 13.

666 JANE JENSON


political discourse was cacophonic through the end of the Second World War, as many actors struggled over the power to define alternative futures.

Going into the 1920s the regime of accumulation displayed the particular characteristics of Canada's economic development. Capital accumulation was heavily dependent on primary production as well as industry. Western agriculture provided immense export earnings in addition to a market for the industrial production of eastern factories. Steel and agricultural implements manufacturing as well as railways became an important source of capital accumulation. Along with the new automotive and electrical industries they began the transition from extensive to intensive forms of accumulation.40 In industry, the relatively high wages obtained by Canadian workers became a strong inducement for modernization, via imported technology, labour processes and styles of industrial relations.41 Moreover, by the twentieth century mines and forests generated primary production, bringing exports, employment and an expanding domestic market. While there was some direct involvement of the state in monitoring and encouraging capital accumulation in trade and manufacturing, its role in regulating monetary relations was less developed. Credit was left to private bank- ing institutions. No central bank intervened to expand or contract credit nor did federal expenditures much affect the economy.42

In these years the regime of accumulation worked; it was in regulation. Its foundation was the accumulation strategy-often labelled the National Policy-of the hegemonic fraction within Canada's social bloc. Analysts have long argued that throughout Canadian history the staples fraction has dominated the capitalist class, reflecting first the importance of trade in staples and then staples industries.43 With the rapid accumulation of financial and industrial capital at the beginning of the twentieth century, the largest financial institution, the Bank of Mont- real, and the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) which it underwrote,

40 The wheat boom was central to the process of industrialization as well as to international trade. Accumulation had an extensive character, at least until 1896 when manufacturing bounded forward, in part because of an improved international market but also because of a growing domestic one. See Alain Noel, "What Went Right? The Political Construction of Postwar Canada," paper prepared for the Conference on Canadian Political Economy in the Era of Free Trade, Carleton University, April 1990.

41 On the high-wage argument and its dependency-creating effects see Panitch, "Dependency and Class in Canadian Political Economy." For a description of the shift toward Taylorist production and scientific management see Noel, "What Went Right?" as well as studies by historians cited below.

42 In 1929 the federal government's revenue was 6 per cent of GNP, more than three-

quarters of it from customs duties. Expenditures were primarily for debt servicing and

pensions to war veterans. Only 1 per cent of GNP was spending on buildings or structures. Bothwell, Drummond and English, Canada, 1900-1945, 223.

43 Mahon, The Politics of Industrial Restructuring, 11.

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coalesced and manufacturing capital centralized via an intense merger movement between 1908 and 1913. Indeed, the interlocking of investment and corporate positions fused big industry with high finance in a small elite, which had tight links with politicians.

Yet, the hegemony of any social bloc depends on an alliance between the staples fraction and others whose activities complete the model of development. Canada's hegemonic social bloc after the First World War expanded to incorporate increasingly important fractions of capital, including a comprador bourgeoisie growing with the foreign investment that had become a crucial base for ongoing accumulation.44 Therefore, support for-including protection of-manufacturing in Canada, whether by Canadian or foreign capitals, was an essential element of the alliance relations of the interwar social bloc. Continued hegemony also depended on the construction of consent among independent commodity producers, resource-sector and manufacturing workers and among other categories, especially middle-class profes- sionals and the burgeoning intermediary strata of an industrial society.

Characteristics of the accumulation process and the strategy organized by the social bloc contributed directly to its crisis in the 1930s. The more that Canada's boom depended on exports of foodstuffs, the more the economy was held hostage to the vagaries of weather and international markets. Both of these turned bad in the next decade. The institutions of credit-and the inflexible response of those institutions-were also a source of instability in the regime of accumulation. The privatization of credit and its potential instability if bank failures or tighter restrictions on lending were to occur, were factors which weighed heavily on agriculture. Inflexibility of credit and the absence of a central institution to intervene countercyclically could drive the situation down- ward in a crisis. In addition, not all of the immigration into Canada went to the western farms; industrial development drew millions from Europe and from rural Canada to the cities and towns. Manufacturing assumed greater weight in the model of development. Moreover, the jobs in the new factories, as those available in the resource sector, were not for skilled workers who had participated in the first wave of industrialization in the nineteenth century.45 They were jobs in which produc- tivity gains depended more on new labour processes and/or hiring unskilled workers.

44 Wallace Clement, The Canadian Corporate Elite: An Analysis of Economic Power (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1975), 74. The incorporation of this comprador fraction into the heart of the hegemonic social bloc marks one of the specificities of the Canadian model of development, in contrast to other late-industrializing countries.

45 Tom Traves, "Security Without Regulation," in Michael S. Cross and Gregory S. Kealey (eds.), The Consolidation of Capitalism, 1896-1929 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1983), 33-34.

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The mode of regulation, for many of these reasons, was precari- ously regulated in the first three decades of the century. This set of norms, institutions and laws recreated through the representational practices in the workplace and on the farm began to unravel as a result of the new social relations which the model of development itself brought into being. In particular, among industrial workers, conflict and new forms of collective organization began to threaten the institutionalized mechanisms of regulation which had emerged earlier but were not suited to resource industries and mass production. And throughout the 1920s farmers agitated for changes in the design of the National Policy.

The mode of regulation which characterized these years can be labelled competitive regulation. Individual workers or small groups based on specific categories of workers competed for a limited number of jobs. In this system, wages remained low and often fell precipitously as labour supply changed or business conditions altered. Therefore, the goal of a "living wage" was high on labour's agenda.46 But unions were weak, organizing relatively few workers, and were strongly opposed by employers. Therefore the norms of everyday working life were competitive. Nevertheless, as the costs of this system became clearer and as the regime of accumulation altered so that the social distance between employer and employee grew and stabilized, organizations with a con- flictual vision of class relations began to have greater influence.47 These class-based organizations entered a struggle which they shared with social reformers and some state bureaucrats. As a result of workplace and community actions the mode of regulation was adjusted in several ways via intense class conflict and a class discourse was installed in some areas and for some purposes.48

The adjusted competitive regulation depended upon a number of elements, most notably new forms of industrial relations. Having per- mitted the organization of unions in the 1870s, governments had to contend with the consequences of growing unionization. One response was state repression, including the use of the militia and declaration of martial law or reading of the Riot Act by provincial or municipal

46 For example, Terry Copp's study of working-class incomes in Montreal during the 1920s found that the average income of males in the occupations which accounted for over two-thirds of the labour force fell well below the minimum required to support an

average family. Cited in Dennis Guest, The Emergence of Social Security in Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1980), 65.

47 Traves ("Security Without Regulation," 34) describes the emergence of this social distance, attributable to the fact that as capitalism became based on larger and larger units and factory production, individual workers could no longer anticipate moving back and forth between sometimes being waged labour and other times employing labour. Even skilled craftsmen would live out their working lives as waged workers.

48 While a class discourse in this period did organize attention to work life, it was much less influential in organizing partisan politics. See Brodie and Jenson, Crisis, Chal-

lenge and Change: Party and Class in Canada Revisited, chap. 3.

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authorities.49 Another was legislation providing for state intervention in industrial disputes, culminating in the federal government's Industrial Disputes Investigation Act (IDIA) of 1907. Such legislation restricted unions' rights to strike, picket and boycott, instituting mechanisms which were not only much more pro-business than pro-union but also "amounted to promoting 'company unions,' or 'employee representation,' at the expense of bona fide labour organizations."50 After 1900 many companies engaged in union-busting but corporate practices were also adjusting, as the notion of "company unions" suggests. Rather than simply clashing head on with unions, employers attempted to circum- vent the problem by establishing schemes of corporate welfare and other plans which would develop loyalties among workers to the company.51

A second central element of the adjusted competitive mode of regulation was the consolidation of the position of craft unions as the dominant actors in the labour movement. Craft unions assumed a new lease on life with the return of prosperity in the late 1890s.52 With this new strength, the Trades and Labour Council (TLC)-the craft union central-was able to oust challengers to its representations of class relations and practices for labour-management relations. By the first years of the twentieth century, the TLC exercised hegemony within the movement and sustained craft unionism, even in the face of new social relations in modern factories.53

There were, however, constant challenges to the TLC's forms of organization as well as to its Gomperist discourse which recognized class conflict only in workplaces. Unions with a more radical vision and a broader political project tried to oust business unionism.54 While the TLC managed to hold its position, at least in the centre of the country, a consequence of this contestation was the frequent representation of interorganizational conflict in regional more than class discourse. Radi- cal western unions frequently faced off against craft unions based in central Canada.

The lottery of resource distribution and the effects of industrialization via branch plants mapped a regional cleavage into the heart

49 Stuart Jamieson, Times of Trouble: Labour Unrest and Industrial Conflict in Canada, 1900-66 (Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1968), 67.

50 Ibid., 70. 51 Craig Heron, "The Crisis of the Craftsman: Hamilton's Metal Workers in the Early

Twentieth Century," in Cross and Kealey (eds.), The Consolidation of Capitalism, 83-84.

52 Ibid., 82. 53 Brodie and Jenson, Crisis, Challenge and Change: Party and Class in Canada

Revisited, chap. 3. 54 For the history of an alternative discourse and practice for representing class relations

see Bryan Palmer, Working-Class Experience: The Rise and Reconstitution of Cana- dian Labour, 1800-1980 (Toronto: Butterworth, 1983), chaps. 3 and 4. For a history of the internal conflicts in the labour movement in these years see Brodie and Jenson, Crisis, Challenge and Change: Party and Class in Canada Revisited, 27-41.

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of the Canadian working class and recreated, through time, a framework which interpreted class through the lens of region. The western union movement was dominated by workers in resource industries like log- ging, lumbering and mining. Their experience with the wage relation, often in isolated single-industry settlements, was very different from that of craft workers in eastern factories. The real cleavage, which was one of differences in the experiences of the workers themselves, was veiled by a discourse of place.55 Grounding for regional identities lay in the shared interests of eastern workers-mostly organized in the TLC-and those parts of the business community which promoted the National Policy, especially manufacturing.56 The particularities of the Canadian regime of accumulation made unionists who were concen- trated in the manufacturing enterprises of central Canada dependent upon the maintenance of tariffs and the economic exploitation of the western consumers. Divisions within the movement over partisan strategy, forms of organization and styles of militancy limited the impact of labour, especially in electoral politics. For example, whereas the Gom- perist TLC sought partisan representation in the mainstream parties and feared industrial unionism, the One Big Union and Socialist Party of Canada organized widely in the West around a quite different union and electoral strategy.

Labour's failure to unite politically then left space for the regionally-based protests of farmers. The social relations of wheat farming in the West were absolutely crucial to the mode of regulation, but the mechanisms in place before the First World War maximized the uncer- tainties which individual farmers faced. A vast number of individual farmers faced a few large institutions of credit as well as railways which controlled prices for transporting their products. Moreover, they sold on a notoriously fickle international market.

Nevertheless, the social relations of independent commodity production could continue in regulation as long as certain conditions were met. First, prices for wheat were high enough to pay for the elevated expenses of transportation and purchases of manufactured goods at tariff-protected prices. Each time that the international market for wheat contracted, however, regulation was threatened as the trade-offs of the National Policy began to be questioned. Second, the re-creation of the system depended on the difficulties which farmers faced in organizing collectively. With huge numbers of new immigrants flooding the West

55 For example, conflicts within the TLC in 1918-while never exclusively opposing eastern and western unionists-did provoke the westerners to schedule their own meeting, the Western Labour Conference. The decision gave a regional designation to the militancy which western unionists shared with many in the east. On eastern militants and the TLC see Kealey, "1919: The Canadian Labour Revolt."

56 Paul Craven and Tom Traves, "The Class Politics of the National Policy, 1872-1933," Journal of Canadian Studies 3 (1977), 14-38.

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each year, the emergence of a common representation of the situation of farmers was unlikely as long as the group kept expanding. Newcomers did not speak a common language and carried with them the identities forged in the very different circumstances of Eastern Europe and the United Kingdom. Once this fragmenting way of settling the farming areas ended with the freeze on immigration during the war and its slowdown in the 1920s, however, organizations could begin to address both the immigrants, and, increasingly, the second generation, with a common discourse based on the experience of wheat farming in the Canadian West. A new identity would emerge.

A third factor helping to sustain the social relations of this mode of regulation was the development of modern manufacturing, which lowered the price of consumer goods. For the model of development to work, farmers had to pay the costs of protected domestic manufacturing. The goods which they bought were substantially more expensive than they would have been under a freer trading relationship with the United States. But tariffs were a crucial element of the National Policy and an essential support for the regime of accumulation. Therefore, throughout the 1920s, the implementation of new production techniques leading to lower prices for consumer goods was welcomed as a solution to the threat of discontent among farmers. But these lowered prices derived from labour processes in manufacturing which threatened the existing labour-management relations on which the mode of regulation also depended. There was, therefore, throughout the 1920s, a tension between the needs of the farmers for lower-priced goods (if they were not to organize and destabilize the mode of regulation) and existing mechanisms for regulating labour-management relations within the mode of regulation.

Much of this tension was expressed, of course, in the politics of representation and in demands on the state, through the terms of a space-sensitive societal paradigm.57 Attention to place was announced in several ways. First, the crucial decision was taken by francophone leaders at the end of the nineteenth century to concentrate their efforts to sustain French-Canadian culture and language by reinforcing the power of the province of Quebec. Given the position of provincial and national leaders around the Riel Rebellion and the Manitoba School Question, it became clear that cultural politics and provincial rights would coincide in the future; that is, cultural politics depended upon a politics of place.

57 I have taken this term from John Taylor whose article on urban politics in this period has been very helpful in illuminating the societal paradigm. See John H. Taylor, "Sources of Political Conflict in the Thirties: Welfare Policy and the Geography of Need," in Allan Moscovitch and Jim Albert (eds.), The "Benevolent" State: The Growth of Welfare in Canada (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1987), 144-54.

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Attention to the specificities of place-coming from links to the land-was reinforced by the conservative nationalist movements of those years. With an analysis of the dangers of geographical mobility to the city in search of jobs for the continuation of the French "race" in North America, conservative nationalists and the Catholic Church emphasized the importance of farming, of settlement and of place-stability. These actors' contribution to the societal paradigm was a representation of cultural politics which put place front and centre, by calling up cultural identities.

A second element creating place-sensitivity in the societal paradigm was the division of powers in federalism. If the intention of the Fathers of Confederation had been to create a strong central government capable of developing the country, their intentions were not shared by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council which systematically interpreted the British North America Act so as to guard provincial jurisdictions. The major sources of funds were in the provinces' hands, as was almost all responsibility for spending them. With its primary source of income from customs duties and only minor spending on a few social programmes for veterans and their families, the federal government was not a major actor in social policy. Nor would the Judicial Committee allow it to become one, instead systematically turning back federal programmes, including a plan for national unemployment insurance in 1935.

In turn, the provinces assigned responsibility for social services- which could not be provided by private charities, the preferred solution for all actors-to their dependents, the municipalities. Sometimes they ceded funds to them but more often they left programmes to be financed out of property taxes, which after the First World War were no longer an expanding source of state revenue. The important role of the municipal governments in building urban infrastructures as well as providing relief services meant that in rapidly growing cities a political philosophy emerged which has been labelled the "Booster Ethic." This discourse linked economic prosperity to place, to the growth of the city.58 This was a third element of place-sensitivity in the societal paradigm.

This discursive link was part of a broader representation of politics which came with the municipal reform movement of the last decade of the nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth century. Led by local businessmen in smaller urban centres and by the very captains of Cana- dian industry and finance in Montreal and Toronto, the reform movement modelled municipal government on business practices.59 Corrup- tion was inefficient because it resulted not only in shoddy results but

58 Ibid., 147-48. 59 John C. Weaver, "Elitism and the Corporate Ideal: Businessmen and Boosters in

Canadian Civic Reform, 1890-1920," in Cross and Kealey (eds.), The Consolidation of Capitalism, 143-68.

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also in higher costs; sound business practices translated into government would bring new forms of administration which were less "partisan" and more technocratic. This political discourse was central in defining the role of the state as minimalist. If cities were like companies, they had to balance their budgets and could not spend large amounts unproductively, especially on relief. Only social spending on the "deserving poor"--essentially veterans and mothers, but preferably widows of veterans-was easily justified.

A final element of place-sensitivity followed from the collective identity of the independent commodity producers. For farmers, land was crucial and geographical mobility was not something to be anticipated with any enthusiasm. Therefore, the representations which farmers contributed to the societal paradigm were ones for which the specificities of place were also crucial.

In this representation of their interests-coming from politicians oriented to cultural politics, from the three levels of government, from municipal reformers and from independent commodity producers- conflict turned around citizens' concerns about their places of residence more than any other characteristic. As was the case for the mode of regulation, the conflict in the sociltal paradigm blurred class differences by superimposing other types of issues; class identities remained underdeveloped while others-linguistic or spatial-came to the fore.

But this societal paradigm, dependent upon a political discourse which minimized the role of the state and especially the federal government, could not survive the crisis of the 1930s. Its contradictory terms and the impact of changes in the economic realm would force it apart. As industrialization and urbanization proceeded in Quebec, a philosophy of landedness would not be sufficient. Rather than leaving things to the Church, the provincial government would have to claim greater discre- tion in designing programmes which reflected its own specificities. Such new agitation for provincial rights by the province of Quebec would put pressure on the institutions of federalism at the same time that the division of responsibilities across levels of government would make municipalities into weak vessels for charting a route out of the Depres- sion. The societal paradigm would collapse, then, around the workings of federalism. But it would also disappear as the place-specific politics of farmers and workers gave way to a more nationally-oriented debate about economic development and collective rights. The collective identities of workers and other subordinate groups took on new content in the 1930s, more national and less regional. Out of a societal paradigm imploding around the existing versions of place-sensitivity came another, one which substituted another space-the nation-for the smaller spaces of the previous one.

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Crisis and Restructuring: Disputed Alternatives and Resolution

Among all of the other things which it was, the Depression of the 1930s was a time of great ferment in the universe of political discourse. Alter- native positions appeared, borne by actors with new collective identities or actors who were attempting to renegotiate existing forms of recognition. There was space in the ferment of crisis for a number of outcomes, including a representational schema forming classes as important partisan actors into the postwar years. Nevertheless, despite the openness of the historical moment and despite the best efforts of some class actors to impose their representation of politics on others, such an outcome was not forthcoming. While postwar Canada shared many of the same economic forms as other fordist countries, its specificity in recent decades has been much affected by the conflicts which produced a discursive closure in the mode of regulation and societal paradigm after 1945 which did not expand the place of class representatives in party or state institutions. The implications of class conflict were recognized and opposed in workplace politics, resulting in wage relations which reflected the new strength of the unions. But the politics of the workplace did not translate into wider legitimacy for labour in the state. As a result, Canadian worker's identities beyond the workplace formed around criteria other than class.

By the 1930s the existing regime of accumulation had reached its limits. Agriculture could no longer play as dominant a role, both because of the difficulties of producing under drought conditions and because markets abroad were no longer as large or expanding. Staples industries were in serious difficulty, as pulp and paper production fell to 53 per cent of capacity and mineral exports dropped over 60 per cent.60 Only during the war did they recover and then begin to play a more important role. Thirdly, the boom of consumer goods, associated with but not confined to the invention and mass production of the automobile, was becoming a more important element of the accumulation process; yet consumption of mass-produced goods was narrowly limited until the 1940s.61

Throughout these years, especially in the 1940s, restructuring went forward. Under the pressure of full economic mobilization, Canadian

industry modernized and grew at extraordinary rates. Output increased

phenomenally, leaving a legacy of modern plants with the most up- to-date production techniques.62 The result was a restructured economy

60 Wallace Clement, "Canada's Social Structure: Capital, Labour, and the State, 1930-1980," in Michael S. Cross and Gregory S. Kealey (eds.), Modern Canada 1930-1980's (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1984), 87.

61 Noel, "What Went Right?," 22. 62 Employment in manufacturing doubled between 1939 and 1943 (Clement, "Canada's

Social Structure," 89). For details of wartime restructuring see Paul Phillips and

Stephen Watson, "From Mobilization to Continentalism: The Canadian Economy in the Post-Depression Period," in Cross and Kealey (eds.), Modern Canada, 20-45.

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in which the contribution of agricultural production had declined dramatically and in which resource industries and manufacturing shared pride of place. At the same time, the possibility of stabilization of monetary relations increased with the establishment of a central bank in 1935.

In this new situation, the mechanisms which had regulated the earlier regime of accumulation were no longer appropriate. As agriculture lost its centrality to the restructured economy, farmers and their organizations would no longer be important actors institutionalizing the new mode of regulation. Many of the compromises which had been a crucial aspect of the earlier mode were abandoned and farmers were pushed to the margins of the universe of political discourse.63

By the end of the war restructuring made industrial workers central actors in the institutionalization of a new mode of regulation. State repression, corporate welfare and craft unions no longer were conventions of behaviour which would stabilize the regime of accumulation, however. Indeed, each element was contested almost daily through the Depression and war years. One important actor in this contestation was the new industrial unionism which by the 1930s reached beyond the resource sector and the western provinces into the heart of modern manufacturing. These unions appeared in the technologically-advanced factories organized according to Taylorist principles. The centre of strike activity shifted, at this time, from the West to Ontario.64

The organization of locals of the United Steelworkers and United Autoworkers in plants in Ontario occurred despite the staunch opposition of corporations.65 At the same time, the provincial premier, Mitchell Hepburn, resorted to familiar repressive measures as he tried to break strikes, and unions, in the auto industry and to prevent the organization of industrial unions in Ontario's mines. In Quebec, Premier Maurice Duplessis used the infamous Padlock Law to close down industrial unions and jail their leaders.66 But by the late 1930s and into the war corporate opposition and provincial repression did not prevail. Strikes succeeded, despite state repression, and rates of unionization rose dramatically.67 These changes reflected a shift from conflict within the

63 Only where their numbers were great enough to carry provincial weight (that is, Saskatchewan) or at moments of crisis within the regulatory mechanisms of permeable fordism (that is, in the late 1950s when they contributed crucial elements to the coalition which brought Diefenbaker's Conservatives to office) did they emerge from the shadows to demand recognition.

64 Clement, "Canada's Social Structure," 88. 65 Charlotte Yates, "From Plant to Politics: the Canadian UAW, 1936-1984," unpub-

lished doctoral thesis, Carleton University, 1984, chap. 2. 66 Brodie and Jenson, Crisis, Challenge and Change: Party and Class in Canada

Revisited, 194-95. 67 Roberts and Bullen, "A Heritage of Hope: Workers, Unions, and Politics in Canada,

1930-1982," in Cross and Kealey (eds.), Modern Canada, 110-11.

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terms of the previous mode of regulation towards contestation during crisis over the alternatives to new regulatory mechanisms.

The organization which the industrial unions, operating by the 1930s under the banner of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), succeeded in establishing was one which emphasized class solidarity and utilized a discourse of class to draw workers into the union and to mobilize them for militant workplace action. Their strikes, demands for recognition of the rights of workers, use of disruptive tactics like sit-down strikes in the 1930s and refusal to accept no-strike pledges during the war, made industrial unions bearers of a class identity very much like industrial unions in other countries.68 Yet this representation of a class identity did not prevail, even within the labour movement, as other discourses competed with it; the CIO unions were not the only ones proposing alternatives. The TLC remained very influential with its Gomperist positions which limited legitimate militancy to the workplace and eschewed broad-based societal mobilization. The All-Canadian Congress of Labour (ACCL), whose major strategic position was opposition to the international unions, was an important actor among anglophone workers.69 Its nationalist discourse helped to create unity across the ACCL's melange of some of the most conservative and radical unions, but it was one which explicitly contradicted the representation of class solidarity promoted by the CIO. It proposed instead a collective identity based on a national identity, which blurred class boundaries and stressed national borders. Finally, a regional and cultural cleavage continued within the labour movement. The Catholic Confederation of Labour organized an increasing number of workers in Quebec around a moderate, conciliatory and national alternative to emerging international unionism.70 Thus, strategic divisions between the francophone and anglophone wings of labour, as well as a divided anglophone movement, meant that no strong force promoting a coherent representation of a class identity emerged out of these years of massive and rapid mobilization and jostling in the universe of political discourse.

Instead, internal conflicts continued. Eventually the CIO-affiliated unions were expelled from the TLC in 1939. Long-standing disputes within the labour movement over political strategy resurfaced and remained unresolved with the founding of the Co-operative Common- wealth Federation (CCF). There was no agreement at all within the

68 The Workers' Unity League, organized by the Communist party, promoted a clear class discourse. It was hampered, however, by affiliation with a clandestine party tightly linked to the Third International. In 1935 the party ordered the League to disband. See Roberts and Bullen, "A Heritage of Hope," 107-08.

69 Brodie and Jenson, Crisis, Challenge and Change: Party and Class in Canada Revisited, 166.

70 Noel, "What Went Right?," 29-31.

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labour movement that unions required a partisan arm. The TLC remained firmly opposed to any institutional relationship with the CCF, while the new Canadian Congress of Labour (CCL), which included CIO unions, endorsed the CCF for only one year during the war.71 Indeed, intervention in partisan politics and lobbying were downplayed by several crucial unions. In addition to internal conflicts among Communists and CCFers which often made non-partisanship the wisest strategy, some unions were-and remained through the 1950s-quite syndicalist in their strategic proclivities. The United Autoworkers were particularly important because their industry was in many ways the flagship of fordism, as indicated by the generalization of several of their bargaining victories in the auto industry. The union's reluctance to abandon its strategic focus on the strike, and its unwillingness to turn either to lobbying the state or strongly supporting the CCF, provided a model for the rest of the labour movement.72

In this way, deep divisions over political strategy limited union political action beyond the workplace. Therefore, throughout the years that alternatives for the future were being debated, the CCF and the union movement did not move together (as social democrats and unionists did in so many other countries) and offered no common representation of the new circumstances. As a result, any institutionalization of a new mode of regulation was unlikely to be based upon a set of corporatist arrangements or any of the other institutions which a social- democratic and union alliance produced elsewhere.

Despite these deep conflicts over strategy, however, there was a set of demands around which all could agree. As a result of union militancy during and after the war, the labour movement forced business and the state to a point of compromise. The unions were not sufficiently strong, however-or united in their goals-to push business and the state towards a compromise around the conventions of the postwar mode of regulation which would empower them as class actors with clear partisan or corporatist responsibilities.

First among labour demands was the recognition of unions and the protection of collective bargaining rights, which would address companies that refused to negotiate and tried to smash unions and strikes. Finally, after immense union militancy in the war years, the federal government was prepared to act, first with Privy Council Order 1003 and

71 A major reason for even the CCL's reluctance to endorse the CCF was that the Federation housed unions dominated by both CCFers and Communists. After the USSR entered the Second World War the Canadian Communist party concluded that the most effective war effort required a Liberal government. Therefore, Communists within the labour movement strongly opposed any affiliation with the social- democratic CCF.

72 For an excellent description of the UAW's practices in the 1950s and the reasons they were adopted, see Yates, "From Plant to Politics: The Canadian UAW, 1936-1984."

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then with the 1948 Industrial Relations and Disputes Investigation Act. With the dissemination of this model to the provinces, Canadian unions acquired some of the rights they had been demanding for decades, although the right to strike remained more limited and circumscribed in Canada than it was even in the US under the Wagner Act.

This way of recognizing unions, via "protective" legislation, left subsequent responsibility to the unions to negotiate employer- by-employer for any further gains. The Rand Formula, which became the defining element of postwar labour-management relations, was privately negotiated to settle a strike at Windsor Ford in 1945. The Rand Formula simultaneously provided union security, via automatic check- off of dues, and required unions to police contracts by making strikes impossible during the life of a collective agreement. A series of major strikes in the familiar sectors of fordism-automobiles and steel-and in the staples industries-wood and asbestos-marked a firm-by-firm adjustment to the new conditions of collective bargaining, as other unions demanded the Rand Formula for themselves.73 Eventually these practices set out a "privatized" wage relation in which collective bargaining rather than state programmes provided much of the social wage. It established a mode of regulation in which trade unions eschewed responsibility for "politics," except as lobbyists for their "special" interests. The organizing identity was only partially a class one, confined to workplace politics; workers remained available for mobilization by other actors who addressed them by other names. The Liberals did this most successfully when they turned Keynesian economics to national purposes, calling on all "Canadians" to support the system labelled here as fordist.

The Canadian state also developed a particular role for itself. Given the legacy of ideas about a limited state carried in the interwar place- sensitive societal paradigm, the federal government was unlikely to claim responsibility for creating-as opposed to encouraging-a postwar economy freed of its interwar debilities.74 Neither was there much which encouraged the state to present itself as the mediator of class conflict in a corporatist system. Instead, wartime experiences provided the model.

Industrial mobilization for war had been organized by an alliance between the state and business which was labour-exclusionist.75 This

73 Roberts and Bullen, "A Heritage of Hope," 117-23, and Clement, "Canada's Social Structure," 91.

74 This claim was made by large parts of the French state at the end of the Second World War. See Jane Jenson, "Learning to be Fordist: Conflict and Consensus in Postwar France," paper prepared for the Seventh International Conference of Europeanists, Washington, March 1990.

75 This particular strategy of mobilization-also used in 1914-1918-is described in William D. Coleman and Kim Richard Nossal, "The State, War and Business in

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experience was interpreted as a lesson in the organizational abilities and national importance of business leaders, who could be counted on for the future. "Reconstruction" would allow this promise to be realized, if business were given the space to act. Another lesson taken by the state was that labour-management relations could be cooled down with legislation recognizing collective bargaining; no new presence of labour within the state was mandated. Thus, in the 1940s Canada's fordism was constructed as a hybrid. C. D. Howe's vision of dismantling the federal economic machinery by returning it to the private sector was realized in programmes for postwar reconstruction under the terms of "free enterprise.' 76 At the same time, however, the state assumed responsibility for macro-economic policy and for some welfare-state social spending, especially for unemployment insurance, family allowances and housing, which were also presented within a discourse of the needs of demobilization and reconstruction. In this way, the Canadian state established what has been termed "bastard Keynesianism" in which the government shaped investment with monetary and fiscal policy but left much else-including pensions and health care-to be negotiated privately by the unionized labour force. All this involved stressing the boundaries between "public" and "private." The "private" economy belonged to business and unions, while the "public" belonged to the state to strengthen the nation, rewarding those who sacrificed for it- like veterans or mothers.77

Some of the reasons for this form of social compromise are found in the way that a place-sensitive societal paradigm was reconstructed out of the crisis of the Depression and out of a political situation in which spatial and/or cultural identities overwhelmed those of class. It also reflects the influence of a hegemonic social bloc which pressed a development strategy led by the private sector with minimal state involvement and which was increasingly linked to American capital.

This process, as so much else in Canadian politics, worked itself out in the federal institutions which have always entangled fiscal and social policy. The Depression, in particular the high levels of unemployment, destroyed the existing relations of federalism. Municipalities could not cover the costs of relief. Moreover, their systems of rules, which stressed residency and community ties, meant that the young unem- ployed men who moved about in search of work found themselves with no options at all. But beyond this, several provinces found themselves

Canada, 1939-1945," in Wyn Grant, Jan Nekkers and Frans van Waarden (eds.), Organizing Business for War: Corporatist Economic Organization during the Second World War (Providence: Berg Publishers, forthcoming).

76 Bothwell, Drummond and English, Canada, 1900-1945, 393-94. 77 The family allowance programme instituted after the war was one of the few new

social programmes not directed towards veterans.

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with such limited resources that they were threatened with bankruptcy. And the federal initiative to respond in part to the unemployment crisis-a system of unemployment insurance-had been declared ultra vires by the Judicial Committee in 1935. Thereafter, several important actors began to propose changes in constitutional arrangements, including the mayors of Canadian cities demanding "Relief from Relief" and seeking to escape the burdens of municipal debt.78

Ultimately, the response to this situation was to turn to a royal commission. Of course, resort to a royal commission at a time of such

deep crisis was a quite specific way of representing the problem. To

governmental actors and many social reformers who sought sources of funds which could address pressing problems of unemployment, low

wages, pensions and regional disparities, the crisis was first represented as one of federalism, not one of the economic system. Despite the

findings in the 1930s of the Royal Commission on Price Spreads that

wages were far too low and working conditions unacceptable, resolution of the political crisis first required changes in federal-provincial relations. Unemployment insurance had foundered not on business objec- tions but on those of the guardians of provincial rights. Therefore, relations among governments took precedence over class relations. A new mode of regulation could not be put into place until the institutional blockages were cleared away. But in the process of clearing away, new

emphasis was put on place and the societal paradigm which emerged promoted a national identity.

The wartime "seizure of power" of the federal government was

quick and broad and federalism did alter de facto. Canada came out of the war with its federal institutions partially reconstructed but without a nation-wide social security system. What it did have, however, for the first time was a centralized system for income security, justified as a means of eliminating interregional disparities in benefits, related to the differential income sources of provincial governments.79 A national level of income security, which could accommodate the mobility of workers in the new national labour market of fordism, was achieved.

By war's end the notion that the federal government's responsibility legitimately extended to economic redistribution and provision of social security had become more acceptable. A factor contributing to this legitimacy was rising electoral support of the CCF. This led not only the Liberals but also the Conservative party to adopt their own discourses of governmental responsibility for social and economic problems. A new compromise emerged in which the basic policy and discursive components of postwar fordism were sponsored by the Liberals,

78 Taylor, "The Geography of Need," 151. 79 Keith Banting, The Welfare State and Canadian Federalism (2nd ed.; Montreal:

McGill-Queen's University Press, 1987), 63.

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supported by the Conservatives and claimed as a victory by the CCF. But as the foregoing describes, for the mainstream parties reforms were meant to meet national needs for social justice rather than the class needs the CCF identified. Social spending was represented as part of the state's proposals for reconstructing the nation after the travails of wartime mobilization. The controversy which such discussions did arouse centred on the effects of new programmes for federalism.

When the federal government addressed Canadians after the war- in election campaigns as the Liberal party, in federal-provincial confer- ences, through policy documents-it seized the high ground. It claimed to speak for the nation which had just come through the war, thanks to the massive regulation of economic life by the central government, and which now faced a future in which only that government had the know- how, experience and good sense to avoid a repetition of the 1930s crisis. Only the central government, giving guidance to the provinces, could speak for the whole. Also as a result of the war Canada as a nation had a larger role to play in international affairs, at the founding of the United Nations, in the establishment of new international economic institutions, and as one of the most established members of the Commonwealth upon which the mother country's recovery depended. This meant that the discourse of politics was a national one, albeit tempered by a recognition that federalism prevented the central government from seizing too much initiative and "free enterprise" meant that the role of the state would be limited.

Canada had, then, come out of the interwar crisis with a new regime of accumulation more oriented towards manufacturing and resources and with a mode of regulation beginning to take form which promised to couple labour peace with high levels of employment and wages. This was a fordist system based on mass production and consumption, albeit a permeable one. It had been designed domestically by Canadian business, labour and the state, but to work it always had to have an eye open to the international economy. The mode of regulation was based on privatized collective bargaining, guaranteed and overseen by the state, more than on the full Keynesian conventions familiar elsewhere. Moreover, the collective identity around which the societal paradigm formed was a national identity, one which stressed the spatial common- ality of all residents of a large and dispersed country. It identified the country's natural resources rather than its workers as the source of its greatness. A discourse of productivism, which would have legitimated the social and political power of workers because of their place in the postwar boom, never took hold in Canada. Instead, one sort of place- sensitive societal paradigm replaced another. To traditional ideas about defensive expansionism were grafted macro-economic policies and a national responsibility for some social spending. This compromise owed

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less to the politics of elections and partisan competition than it did to responses to class struggle organized through the careful diplomacy of state officials, working first to convince the federal government of the need for recognition of unions and some new social programmes, and then to negotiate a compromise out of balky federal institutions. It was Canada's particular compromise, which would last until a much later crisis revealed that it too was contradictory.

Representations in Crisis: The Roots of Canada's Permeable Fordism

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