Preface
I first arrived in Saskatchewan in August 1963 to take a teaching job in the Department of Economics and Political Science at the University of Saskatchewan. I was not only moving to a new job, I was moving to a new country. I was emigrating from the United States, hoping to get a long term appointment at the university and take out Canadian citizenship. Fortunately for me, this came true.
I was attracted to this department because of its tradition of political economy. As an undergraduate at Duke University I took an interdisciplinary program in social science which was political science, history, economics and sociology. I did not really get to study anthropology until the academic year I spent at York University, 1970-1. There was no discipline called political economy in the United States. Political economy was a British and European tradition. In the United States all the social sciences were deemed to be separate. American academics were absolutely certain that there was no connection between politics and economics. All the way through my studies at three universities I was protected from any radical social science theories like Marxism.
Sometime during my years in North Carolina I decided to try for a career in the U.S. Foreign Service. I enrolled for advanced study in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. On the positive side, its academic approach was interdisciplinary social science. Foreign service officers were expected to be "generalists." On the negative side, the university was dominated by right wing Jesuits, academics from Eastern Europe who had fled when the Soviet Army arrived at the end of World War II, and rich Roman Catholic students.
Not satisfied with Georgetown, I transferred to American University, also in Washington to do a masters degree and doctorate in interdisciplinary social sciences. In early 1961 I was accepted into the U.S. Foreign Service and assigned to the Latin American section of the Economics branch of the Department of State. My arrival coincided with the beginning of John F. Kennedy's administration. It was an important time in the history of U.S. foreign policy, and with my top secret security clearance I saw from the inside the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the Alliance for Progress approach to intervention in Latin America, the subversion of Patrice Lumumba's government in the Congo, the Cuban missile crisis, and the decision of the Kennedy administration to get directly involved in the civil war in Indochina. In Iraq in February 1963 there was coup by Saddam Hussein's faction of the Baath Party, supported by the Kennedy administration. They provided the new Baath government with a list of suspected Communists who were then killed. As early as 1959 Saddam was "Our Man in Bagdad," hired by the CIA to try to assassinate the prime minister. After two years I decided I did not want to spend my adult life "going abroad to lie for your country" as Metternich had once described the role of a diplomat.
Why did I seek employment at the University of Saskatchewan? I admit that part of the reason was my love of outdoor activities, and I had been to Canada. I was impressed by the faculty in the Department of Economics and Political Science. It was not as pure a political economy department as at other Canadian universities. But the scholarly work of its faculty was clearly in the British tradition of political economy, it had political economy courses, and there was an honours course in political economy and history. I was also interested in the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) government, the first social democratic government in North America.
When I arrived at the department in August 1963 the first person I met was Cy Gonick. He was in the process of moving to the Department of Economics at the University of Manitoba. We discussed his plan to create Canadian Dimension Magazine, and he invited me to contribute to it and be on the original board of directors. This was the beginning of my commitment to Canadian politics and journalism.
The second person I met was Ed Safarian, who had replaced the deceased George Britnell as chairman of the department. Safarian, who had a doctorate from the University of California, would begin the shift in the department away from political economy and toward an eventual split between economics and political science. He introduced me to Vernon Fowke. When my wife Betty and our young daughter arrived in Saskatoon, we spent our first weekend together in Saskatchewan at Fowke's cottage at Wakaw Lake.
Shirley Spafford has documented the early history of this department and its political economy tradition in her book, No Ordinary Academics (University of Toronto Press, 2000). There was an early conflict between William Walker Swanson, the first chairman, and those who followed. Swanson, born in Scotland, had a doctorate from the University of Chicago, and while he did important research on the wheat economy, he was a staunch free market liberal and was hostile to the Saskatchewan tradition of populist politics and the CCF.
The department changed under the new chairman, George Britnell. A local boy from Moosomin, he studied under Harold Innis at the University of Toronto. Vernon Fowke had been born at Parry Sound, Ontario, but his family had moved to Melville, and he attended the University of Saskatchewan. Ken Buckley, another leading figure in the department, was from Aberdeen, just down the rail from Saskatoon; he had also studied under Innis at the University of Toronto.
The most amazing person in the department, however, was Mable Frances Timlin. Born in Wisconsin, she graduated from Milwaukee state Normal School and in 1916 moved to Saskatchewan to teach school, first in Bounty and Wilkie, and then in Saskatoon. She earned a bachelor's degree in English at the University of Saskatchewan while at the same time reading economics and political science. In 1935 she was appointed instructor in economics. She was the real theorist in the department. She completed a doctorate in economics at the University of Washington at the age of 40, authored widely acclaimed works on Keynesian economics, was the first woman social scientist admitted to the Royal Society of Canada, and was the first woman elected to the executive committee of the American Economics Association. While she had retired in 1959, "Timmie" regularly came around the department to engage in wide ranging discussions. I well remember a conversation with her when she strongly attacked mathematical economics and neoclassical model building as contributing nothing to the understanding of the Canadian economy. It was far removed, she argued, from the reality of Canada's integration with the United States, dependence on resource extraction industries, and enormous size and pronounced regionalism.
It was under these four academics that the department earned its reputation as a Saskatchewan department devoted to the farm movement in western Canada and social democracy. The province was their home, they had lived here during the depression, and they well knew the problems of the farmer. They also believed that academics had an obligation to serve the people who paid their salaries. They gave lectures all around the province, worked for royal commissions, and advised governments. When Tommy Douglas' CCF government was formed in 1944, George Britnell, Vernon Fowke, and Dean F.C. Cronkite of the College of Law served as the members of the Economic Advisory Committee. Britnell became an adviser to the leftist government of Guatemala under Jacobo Arbenz (1950-4), overthrown by a U.S. government-sponsored military coup.
Unfortunately, Fowke died prematurely, and I only had the benefit of his kindness and knowledge for several short years. He introduced me to Innis, the metropolitan hinterland thesis of Canadian political economy, and always stressed that we should understand the power of capital in economic development. Ken Buckley's office was across from mine, and we had long discussions about the nature of capitalism and Canadian economic development. He introduced me to duck hunting. Norman Ward, the senior political scientist and resident humourist, introduced me to grouse and partridge hunting. Ward, one of Canada's best known political scientists at that time, was the first to tell me that George Britnell taught more political science courses than economics or political economy. Britnell insisted that "anyone can teach political science." Ward liked to say that being an academic was the next best thing to being a bum: you got paid well for doing what you really liked to do.
The other major influence on my development as a political economist came from Irene M. Spry, who only taught in the department for one year, 1967-8, before moving on to the University of Ottawa. She was a delightful woman, and as her office was adjacent to mine, I spent many hours there. She was still working on the Palliser books. But along with Helen Buckley, who was in the Centre for Community Studies, she was one of the very few academics who had any intellectual and political interest in the impact of the National Policy on the Aboriginal people in Western Canada. Spry was an impressive scholar with degrees in political economy from London School of Economics and Cambridge University, where she studied under John Maynard Keynes and the Marxist scholar, Maurice Dobb. She also had a masters degree in Social Research and Social Work from Bryn Mawr College. At the University of Toronto she worked with Harold Innis. She and her husband, Graham Spry, had co-founded Saskatchewan House in London. Graham Spry was the Agent-General for the province in London between 1946 and 1967. Like her husband she was a long time social democrat and member of the League for Social Reconstruction in the 1930s. It was a great loss when she moved on to the University of Ottawa. I was pleased to read that right up to her death at age 91 she was a political activist as well as a scholar. She encouraged me to be active in politics, insisting that if you hide away in the university you quickly lose touch with the views of ordinary people. I am still waiting for the book she was working on at the time of her death, From the Hunt to the Homestead, a political economy history of the prairies. She was an active supporter of the Associated Country Women of the World.
Over the years many well known scholars taught for a short time in this department including Frank Underhill, James A. Corry, Robert MacGregor Dawson, James Mallory, Bernard
Crick, Hugh Thorburn, and Gordon Thiessen. While I was there Bruce Wilkinson, Ken Rae, Elias Tuma, John Cartwright, Don Rowlatt, and Robin Neill moved on to major careers elsewhere. Jack McLeod, who switched to the University of Toronto, wrote Zinger and Me on academic life in Saskatoon.
The University of Saskatchewan's tradition in Canadian political economy was a combination of Harold Innis and John Maynard Keynes. It was liberal social democratic and materialist. In the 1960s a new political economy was emerging in Canada which looked to the traditions of continental Europe. I spent the 1970-1 academic year at Atkinson College, York University. Daniel Drache and I shared an office and a year trying to find more radical materials to include in our teaching of Canadian political economy. The older tradition identified with Harold Innis was almost completely devoid of human content. There was absolutely no discussion of social class in Canada, nothing on the development of the trade union movement or the Communist Party, and precious little on the nature of the capitalist class. There was virtually nothing on the relationship between the capitalist class in Canada and the many dominant foreign owned corporations. There was almost nothing on the relationship between the European settlers and the Aboriginal population nor on the role of women in the economy and society. All of those subjects are now very well covered by the new political economy.
The 1960s and 1970s were exciting times to teach in university. A large number of students were not only active in politics they were actually interested in reading, learning and trying to find the answers to the bigger questions. They were not satisfied with being spoon fed the usual liberal dogma. They wanted to read Marxism and study imperialism. Today most students focus on getting good grades hoping that this will land them a job after they graduate. Most go out of their way to avoid controversy. There are no active student course unions any more. Quite a few students do have a critical approach to their studies, but they are very cynical about changing anything. But there are still some who become active in the anti-war movement, the anti-globalization movement and Green politics. In my own early work and development as an instructor, researcher and writer in the new Canadian political economy I benefitted from a close relationship with Ed Mahood and Howard Adams, both of whom taught in the College of Education. They provided the critical intellectual support that was largely absent from my rather conservative colleagues.
The department changed under the direction of Ed Safarian and Bob Kautz. More Americans were hired as well as more Canadians who had received their advanced degrees in the United States. A crisis developed in 1971 when John Richards, a very popular professor, was not rehired. Richards was born and raised in Saskatchewan, had gone to the University of Saskatchewan, and was completing a doctorate at the University of Washington in St. Louis. It was widely believed that he was "fired" because he was a promoter of the Canadian tradition of political economy while the majority in the department wanted to move to the American tradition of completely separate disciplines of economics and political science. Others believed that he was not rehired because he was active in the Waffle group, the left wing organization within the New Democratic Party. Indeed, in the 1971 provincial election he was elected to the legislature from Saskatoon-Sutherland. He was a close personal, political and academic friend of mine at the time.
In any case, hundreds of students protested by occupying the department for weeks on end. Professors were blocked from getting to their offices. Student course unions demanded that Richards be re-hired. The department was deeply split, never really recovered from this conflict, chose to follow the American road, and formally divided. A few years after the occupation I decided to leave the department and move to British Columbia. The political economy tradition disappeared from the two new reconstructed departments but re-appeared as the new Canadian political economy in the Department of Sociology.
In British Columbia I was a fruit grower in the Okanagan but also a researcher and writer specializing in the political economy of food and agriculture. I became involved in the environmental movement. But I never lost touch with my friends in Saskatchewan. In 1986 John Conway and Joe Roberts asked me to return to the University of Regina as a special lecturer. It was natural that when I returned it would be to the University of Regina. Academics at this university had been major participants in the development of the new Canadian political economy. I found my home in the Department of Sociology which had developed a reputation in political economy, rural sociology, and continental integration, my major fields of interest.
Looking Toward the Future
The policy shift from the more egalitarian Keynesian welfare state to the neoliberal order of inequality was not ordained by God. It is not a product of some biologically determined evolution. It was fashioned by political and economic forces who stand to benefit from the changes. We still live in a democracy, and people can and will mobilize to change government policy. During World War II Canadians demonstrated that we do not need depressions and high unemployment. A government with broad popular support brought full employment, higher standards of living, and a more egalitarian society. To have such a government again Canada would have to withdraw from the North America free trade agreements which greatly constrain the scope of government. But this is a real option open to Canadians.
Saskatchewan has also had governments which took the lead in Canada in introducing progressive social legislation that benefits the majority. Under the CCF government of T. C. Douglas great strides were made. The NDP government of Allan Blakeney began a process of gaining ownership and control over our own natural resources. That policy has been reversed by subsequent provincial governments. But there is no divine law that says that a future government could not decided to again take up that political goal. All it takes is a government with some imagination, the political will, and support from the general population.
This book is not a comprehensive study of the political economy of Saskatchewan. It is a series of essays that I have written over the past few years. They focus on the province's major continuing problems and issues, and in that sense I believe that they hang together. We have just entered the 21st century, and Saskatchewan is about to celebrate its centennial. Traditionally, human beings have used such occasions to reflect on the past, assess the present situation, and try to plan for the future. It is time to do this in Saskatchewan.
The essays in this book are designed to encourage people to look at the political economy and political culture of Saskatchewan in a meaningful way. Is this the best society we can create? How can we bring about change? Can we expand democracy? Can we once again establish a goal of a just society for everyone? This requires going to the root of long standing problems. We should all be concerned about the future of the economy, the persistence of patriarchy, and the reality of racism and discrimination. We have a long political tradition of popular change, represented by the grass roots agrarian movement and the social democratic ideal of social justice. We have ongoing and persistent problems and deeply held prejudices. But we also have the experience and ability to move away from the status quo and take another road.
From a political economy perspective, there is very little serious discussion of the state of the province. When economic growth rates are high, the government claims it is because of their policies. When they are low, the opposition parties claim it is because of bad government policies. The same thing happens when population figures come out. While in opposition the major parties always complain that kids have to leave the province because the government is not creating enough jobs or is scaring business away. They were arguing about that when I arrived in Saskatchewan in 1963.
The political right in the province, represented by the Saskatchewan Party, the Canadian Reform-Alliance-Conservative Party, the business organizations, and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation are insisting that economic growth and re-population can only happen if we move faster and farther down the road of the free market economy with very limited government. It is the "socialists" who are driving away investment and business activity. Most understand this as political rhetoric, but with strong support from the mass media, it has a major influence on people. Is the political economy of the free market and free trade the best option for Saskatchewan? The policies they advocate have been in place in North Dakota for quite a few years. What have they done for that state? Compared to North Dakota, Saskatchewan looks like the promised land.
There is almost no discussion about the nature of Saskatchewan as a resource hinterland within the Canadian and North American economy. In the past political and community leaders openly discussed the political economy of the metropolitan-hinterland relationship. Farmers were well aware of how the wealth they created was siphoned off by the farm supply industry, the financial sector, the food processing industry, and the wholesale and retail trade. No one discusses these issue in a serious way any more. There needs to be a real debate unless people just want to go along with business as usual. I have made this a central focus of this book.
To understand what is happening to Saskatchewan's economy it is necessary to understand how capitalism works. As long as people believe that the economy is just individuals and firms buying and selling goods and services in a market, where rational people all pursue their own self interest, people will remain mystified. It is necessary to look at Saskatchewan from a political economy perspective. People must recognize that the key to the operation of the capitalist system is the accumulation of capital. Those who own capital invest to make a profit and accumulate more capital. They shift their investments to maximize their returns. If businesses do not invest and expand they are squeezed out by competition. What happened to all the mom and pop neighbourhood grocery stores? Ask the owners of Seven Eleven and Mac's Milk. Adam Smith was the first to demonstrate that this is the core of the capitalist system of production. He called it the Law of Accumulation.
It is also imperative that we understand how societies and economies create a surplus above the subsistence level, who controls that surplus, and how it is invested. The creation of an economic surplus and its investment in productive enterprise is what produces economic growth. Once we understand this, for example, we know why in a hinterland economy it is better for the majority when Crown corporations own and develop our natural resources rather than giant foreign corporations. That was the conclusion that Eric Kierans reached when he examined the resource extraction industries in Manitoba in 1973. It is still true today. Thus several essays at the beginning of the book address the differences between economics and political economy, how economic surpluses are created and controlled, the nature of capitalism, and how it operates in a hinterland resource community.
The people of Saskatchewan also must confront the historical origins of the province and the ongoing conflict between the European settlers and the Aboriginal population. This problem is not unique to Canada but is found in all those countries where a European white population settled during the period of colonial domination. The notion of European supremacy, and indigenous inferiority, is found in all white settler societies. It was the official ideology of the imperial government, the colonial society and all of its institutions. The ideology of European racial superiority served as a justification for taking the land from the indigenous population by force of arms and marginalizing and excluding those who survived.
Commentators often argue that Saskatchewan may be progressive when it comes to economic questions but at the same time it has a deeply entrenched "social conservatism." The term "social conservatism" is a code phrase used in place of "traditional patriarchal values."
What are the issues that are most commonly identified with social conservatism in Saskatchewan? They would include opposition to equal rights for gays and lesbians, including state rights which come from being officially married. Opposition to a range of rights for women, including the right to choice on whether or not to have an abortion. The right to own a firearm without having to register it with the government. Opposition to government-sponsored child care. Opposition to sex education in the schools and reading materials in libraries. Many social conservatives oppose the right of women to own farms, work outside the household, and object to government support for women who are victims of family violence.
One of the major concerns of social conservatives has been the rather dramatic rise in the divorce rate, and in particular, divorces initiated by women. Thus social conservatives in North America have been leading a campaign to make divorce more difficult. They have been very concerned about social assistance and their rates, for this program has provided a social safety net for women who wish to leave their marriage.
Public opinion polls regularly show that on these issues Saskatchewan is more conservative and traditional than Canadian opinion in general. Some attribute this to the fact that people in this province are more committed to institutional religion. Polls show majority support in Saskatchewan for using the Lord's Prayer in school. One poll conducted by the Social Research Unit at the University of Saskatchewan in 2000 reported that 40 percent believe that religion should be taught in the public schools. Historically, the major Christian churches have been a foundation of patriarchal culture. They have been particularly influential in rural and farm communities. The rise of fundamentalist Christian churches in North America has re-enforced traditional "family values."
Saskatchewan has a long history of radical and progressive politics. I have addressed this is several essays. It began with the farmers' resistance to their exploitation by big business interests based in eastern Canada. From the formation of the Progressive Party, this movement evolved into the social democratic and populist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). Not only did Saskatchewan elect the first social democratic government in North America in 1944, the CCF-NDP became the natural governing party of the province with a core support of around 40 percent of the electorate.
The CCF was never a success on the federal level, and in 1962 it was transformed into the New Democratic Party. Following the tradition of social democratic parties elsewhere, the new party was formed by an official alliance with the trade union movement. As the NDP it was elected to government in Saskatchewan in 1971. Under the leadership of Allan Blakeney this government brought in a range of social reforms and used the state to try to gain some control over economic development.
However, that social democratic policy tradition has all but disappeared. With the election of Roy Romanow's NDP government in 1991, the party moved steadily to the right. Today on basic issues it is hardly distinguishable from the conservative parties. Thus any discussion of political economy or political culture in Saskatchewan must include an analysis of the CCF-NDP tradition and why has it moved to the right. Has the progressive tradition in this province come to an end?
Saskatchewan also has a long history of extra-parliamentary political activity, beginning with the farmers' movements. During the CCF governments of T.C. Douglas the Saskatchewan Teachers Federation, the Saskatchewan Farmers Union and the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour worked together to try to influence government policy. During the NDP government of Allan Blakeney the Waffle movement worked within and outside the party to promote socialist policies. The Tory government of Grant Devine was confronted by a broad range of popular groups operating under the umbrella of the Saskatchewan Coalition for Social Justice. This extra-parliamentary political activity faded during the NDP governments of Roy Romanow and Lorne Calvert.
Will a new progressive tradition emerge within the NDP? Or outside the NDP? In the past in Saskatchewan when progressive movements became bureaucratized and stagnant, new movements emerged. Over the 1990s a growing sector of the Saskatchewan public lost interest in politics, became disillusioned with the NDP, and withdrew from political activity. The number of people even voting fell to less than 60 percent in 1999 and 2003. Does this mean that 40 percent of the population is no longer at all interested in politics? Or does it mean that they are just waiting for a new politics to develop?
The world is facing a number of serious crises as we begin the 21st century. Global warming and climate change is already a major problem. The world economy is stagnating and uncertain. The administration of President George W. Bush in the United States is pursuing a unilateralist policy which stresses militarism. There is widespread disillusionment and cynicism with liberal democracy as governments become more elitist and ignore the views of the majority of their citizens. Big business and corporations determine policy while at the same time corruption is widespread at the top. In most less developed countries governments are unable to meet the needs and demands of their own people. These countries are constrained by the rules imposed upon them by international institutions and First World governments.
The new world political economy system, known as "globalization" or neoliberalism, is facing a crisis of legitimacy. It has produced inequality, poverty and precarious working conditions in the industrialized countries. The structural adjustment programs imposed on the Third World have made things worse for the large majority, and this has undermined the credibility of capitalism. The new neoliberal political economy is highly undemocratic, with its stress on centralization, hierarchy and authoritarianism, decision-making behind closed doors, with emphasis always placed on giving first priority to the owners of capital over the needs of common people. Critics of the system, including the broad "anti-globalization movement," are growing in number and size. This is an environment that is ripe for political and economic change. It forms the background to any new analysis of the political economy of Saskatchewan.
Regina, Saskatchewan
April, 2004