No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
An Inverted Paradigm: A Reply to Elisabeth Gidengil
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
Abstract
Through a critique of the “internationalist” arguments outlined and defended by Paul Kellogg, Elisabeth Gidengil has mounted a defence of dependency theory as it has been applied to Canadian political economy. She argues that dependency theory, far from being discarded as Kellogg has suggested, must be part of any new synthesis that is developed in Canadian political economy. She argues that Bukharin's Marxism, defended by Kellogg, is too abstract to be of any real guide in this new synthesis. This reply first situates where a “Bukharinist” approach is in agreement with dependency theory. Both recognize the existence of a rigid hierarchy of nations that impedes development in the Third World. But in Canada, it is argued, this insight has been stood on its head, Canada being theorized as “dependent” and suffering dependency-induced “structural weaknesses.” A selection of empirical examples is introduced to indicate the weak factual ground on which this claim is based. If there are aspects of the dependency paradigm to be retained, in the Canadian case this requires inverting the way in which this paradigm has usually been applied and insisting on Canada's entrenched position, alongside the other G7 powers, at the top of the hierarchy of nations in the world system.
Résumé
Par une critique des arguments « internationalistes » forgés et soutenus par Paul Kellogg, Elisabeth Gidengil s'est porteé à la défense de la théorie de la dépendance telle qu'on l'a appliquée à l'économie politique canadienne. Elle maintient que la théorie de la dépendance, loin d'être dépassée comme Kellogg l'a suggéré, doit faire partie de toute nouvelle synthése en économie politique canadienne. Elle affirme que le marxisme de Boukharine, défendu par Kellogg, est trop abstrait pour trouver une place utile dans cette nouvelle synthèse. Dans cette réplique, il est d'abord montré dans quelle mesure l'approche ª boukhariniste » est en accord avec la théorie de la dépendance. Les deux théories reconnaissent l'existence d'une hiérarchie rigide des nations qui empêche le développement dans le Tiers-Monde. Mais au Canada, on a renversé l'argument, puisqu'on a posé en théorie que le Canada était ª dépendant » et souffrait de ª faiblesses structurelles » provoquées par la dépendance. En fait, une sélection d'exemples empiriques montre la faiblesse de cette assertion. Si des éléments du paradigme de la dépendance doivent être retenus, cela implique, dans le cas du Canada, une inversion de la façon dont ce paradigme a été appliqué, et une insistance sur la position particulière de ce pays, parmi les sept Grands, au sommet de la hiérarchie des nations dans le systéme mondial.
- Type
- Reply
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , March 1991 , pp. 135 - 147
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1991
References
1 Kellogg, Paul, “State, Capital and World Economy: Bukharin's Marxism and the ‘Dependency/Class’ Controversy in Canadian Political Economy,” this Journal 22 (1989), 337–362Google Scholar and Gidengil, Elisabeth, “Misplaced Polarities: A Comment on “State, Capital and World Economy” by Paul Kellogg,” this Journal 24 (1991), 121–133Google Scholar.
2 “Brazil's Economy: The Right Stuff,” The Economist, June 9, 1990, 75.
3 “Brazil: The Big Freeze,” Socialist Worker Review 131 (05 1990), 9Google Scholar.
4 “Brazil's Economy: The Right Stuff,” 75. World Bank figures for 1989 indicate that “developing countries paid out $42.9-billion (U.S.) more in servicing their debts … than they received in fresh funds.” In the 1980s “money continually flowed uphill from poor to rich” (Greenspon, Edward, “This Is a Replay of the Debt Crisis,” Globe and Mail: Focus on the Third World, 09 22, 1990, D3Google Scholar).
5 Harris, Nigel, The End of the Third World (Markham: Penguin Books, 1987), 70Google Scholar.
6 See, “The Drenching of Roh Tae Woo,” The Economist, May 12, 1990, 33–34. Waldon Bello says: “I think the age of the newly industrializing countries is over…. By the late nineties, there will probably be stagnation or negative growth. They [the Tigers]… have not created a self-sustaining economic base” (Waldon Bellow, The Dragons in Distress, cited in Hossie, Linda, “Four Dragons Are Losing Fire,” Globe and Mail: Focus on the Third World, 09 22, 1990, D2Google Scholar).
7 See Bakan, A., “Socialism and Development,” Worldscape 3 (1989), 9–12Google Scholar.
8 Harman, Chris, “The Storm Breaks,” International Socialism Series 2:46 (Spring 1990), 3–93Google Scholar. Harman writes: “The shift from national capitalism to multinational capitalism does not do away with the economic role of the national state in supporting ‘national’ firms…. World capitalism has outgrown the stage of state capitalism. But it would be wrong to label what has replaced it as ‘private capitalism’ or even ‘market capitalism,’ as if the role of the state had disappeared. What exists is a combination of state capitalism and multinational capitalism. I call it ‘multinational capitalism’ for short, but its components develop from national state capitalist bases and never completely break from them” (45–46).
9 Mittelstaedt describes the savings and loans fiasco as “the biggest private-sector bailout in the history of the free world.” It “demonstrates the hypocrisy of the free-market musings of many American political leaders…. The President, his frequent paeans to the magic of the market place and the marvels of free enterprise notwithstanding, is placing public money squarely behind a bailout that exceeds anything yet tried in the history of public rescues of private ineptitude” (Mittelstaedt, Martin, “The Billion-Dollar Cure,” Report on Business Magazine, 06 1989, 19–20Google Scholar).
10 It is true, as Gidengil points out, that Canadian investment abroad is oriented to the US and other OECD nations. But (a) a hallmark of investment for all the advanced powers in the postwar world has been a shift of investment away from the Third World and towards interimperialist investment in the First World; (b) in Gidengil's own words, Canada is now “one of the world's largest foreign investors, moving from being a net importer to a net exporter of capital”; and (c) from the standpoint of really dependent sectors of the world economy such as the Caribbean, it matters not that only a small percentage of Canadian trade and capital flows occurs with them-their entire economies are hemmed in and structured by the impact of imperialist investment caused by these “relatively small” trade and capital flows. In the Caribbean Islands, Canada is the third largest imperialist power, after the US and Great Britain (see Bakan, Abigail and Kellogg, Paul, “Labour and Capital in Canada and the Caribbean: The Dependency Paradigm Revisited,”paper presented to the annual meeting of the Society for Caribbean Studies,Hertfordshire, England, 1990Google Scholar).
11 Ruth Leger Sivard pioneered in the attempt at ranking nations in terms of economic and social development. By her criteria, Canada was the seventh most developed nation in the world in 1977, second most developed in 1983 and the most developed in 1986 (Sivard, Ruth Leger, World Military and Social Expenditures [Washington: World Priorities, 1980, 1986 and 1989]Google Scholar). The United Nations Development Programme has recently attempted the same measurement. By their criteria, Canada ranks fifth in the world, behind front-running Japan but ahead of the US, which ranked nineteenth (United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 1990 [New York: United Nations, 1990]Google Scholar).
12 Gidengil, “Misplaced Polarities,” 128.
13 Phillips, Paul and Watson, Stephen, “From Mobilization to Continentalism,” in Cross, Michael and Kealey, Gregory, eds., Modern Canada 1930–1980's (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1984), 38Google Scholar; Cy Gonick, , Inflation or Depression (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1975), 275–276Google Scholar; and Williams, Glen, Not For Export: Toward a Political Economy of Canada's Arrested Industrialization (rev. ed.; Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1986), 11Google Scholar.
14 According to Alfred Maizels, Industrial Growth and World Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 31Google Scholar.