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Notes on “Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism in Canada”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Gad Horowitz
Gad Horowitz
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

These notes are replies to criticisms that have been made over the years of my essay, “Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism in Canada: An Interpretation,” which originally appeared in the Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 32 (1966), 143–71.

Type
Notes
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , June 1978 , pp. 383 - 400
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1978

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References

1 Quoted in Lipset, Seymour Martin, The First New Nation (New York: Basic Books, 1963), 5Google Scholar.

2 Quoted in ibid., 7n.

3 McNaught, Kenneth, “Comment on Louis Hartz, “The Liberal Tradition,” in Laslett, John H. M. and Lipset, Seymour Martin (eds.), Failure of a Dream? (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1974), 409Google Scholar.

4 Hartz, Louis, The Founding of New Societies (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964), 27–28nGoogle Scholar.

5 Ibid., 28n.

6 Ibid., 44–48.

7 Naylor, R. T., “The Rise and Fall of the Third Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence,” in Teeple, Gary (ed.). Capitalism and the National Question in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972), 18Google Scholar and 39. n. 57.

8 Horowitz, Gad, Canadian Labour in Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968), 11Google Scholar, 19. Hereafter, Horowitz, 1968.

9 Penner, Norman, The Canadian Left (Scarborough: Prentice Hall of Canada, 1977), 75–76Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., 202.

11 Ibid., 198.

12 Ibid., 76.

13 Coates, David, The Labour Party and the Struggle for Socialism (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 136Google Scholar.

14 Horowitz, 1968, 14–15.

15 McNaught, “Comment,” 419n.

16 Truman, Tom, “A Critique of Seymour Martin Upset's Article, ‘Value Differences, Absolute or Relative: The English Speaking Democracies,’” this Journal 4 (1971), 523Google Scholar.

17 Louis Hartz, “Reply” to McNaught's Comment, in Laslettand Lipset (eds.), Failure of a Dream? 424.

18 Horowitz, 1968, 16.

19 Truman, “A Critique.” 518–19.

20 Ibid., 523.

21 Ibid., 520.

22 Ibid., 523.

23 Winn, Conrad and McMenemy, John, Political Parlies in Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1976), 4–6Google Scholar.

24 Winn, Conrad and Twiss, James, “The Spatial Analysis of Political Cleavages and the Case of the Ontario Legislature” this Journal 10 (1977), 295–96Google Scholar.

25 Ibid., 288n.

26 Ibid., 288.

27 Winn and McMenemy, Political Parties in Canada, 5.

28 Winn and Twiss, “Spatial Analysis,” 288.

29 Winn and McMenemy, Political Parties in Canada, 5–6, 7n.

30 Winn and Twiss, “Spatial Analysis,” 309.

31 Winn and McMenemy, Political Parties in Canada, 6.

32 Actually, I have argued the contrary. See my “Toward the Democratic Class Struggle,” Journal of Canadian Studies 1 (1966), 3–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Horowitz, 1968, 19.

34 Ibid., 30–32.

35 Ibid., 22.

36 For example, in 1933, at the first annual Conservative summer school at Newmarket, Ontario, with R. B. Bennett in attendance, Professor H. M. Cassidy proposed a plan for unemployment insurance which he legitimated in part as follows: the plan is “consistent with first premises of Conservatism” as laid down “in a little book … by Lord Hugh Cecil.” Among these first premises are “reverence for religion and authority” and the “defence of property…. Conservatives hold it just and proper that those with property, acquired or inherited, are entitled to superior rank and station.” But Conservatives also support “important measures of social reform… ‘modern Conservatism inherits the traditions of Toryism which are favorable to the activity and authority of the state’ “(Wilbur, J. R. H., The Bennett New Deal: Fraud or Portent [Toronto: Copp Clark, 1968], 20, 32–34)Google Scholar.

37 Winn and Twiss, “Spatial Analysis,” 300.

38 Liberalism does not necessarily have to become impure. In the early years of the American republic, Federalists and Republicans alike “supported a great deal of government intervention and even public investment in the economy so as to develop industry and commerce” (Lipset, First New Nation, 48). The rationale was that the US must become economically independent in order to avoid “spiritual and economic domination at the hand of European manufacturers … presided over by a ‘devilish class of aristocrats’” (ibid., 57). Support for collective action is not always an indication of the presence of any toryism or socialism whatsoever.

39 Quoted in Christian, William and Campbell, Colin, Political Parties and Ideologies in Canada (Toronto: McGraw Hill Ryerson, 1974), 140Google Scholar.

40 Horowitz, 1968, 29–30.

41 Ibid., 32.

42 Wilbur, The Bennett New Deal, 95–96.

43 Wilbur, Richard, H. H. Stevens (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), 184Google Scholar.

44 We must, however, be prepared to indulge and forgive journalists and politicians.

45 And it isn't necessarily true. Howard Scarrow's study of poll captains in an urban Ontario riding in 1962 found that while the Liberals were more favourable to “increases in old age pensions … and a plan for government subsidized medical care” the Conservatives were more in favour of “increased government control over trade union activity as well a s … increased government control over business practices.” Is it possible that the greater Liberal support for collective action is limited to typically reform-liberal redistributive schemes, while the relatively stronger toryism among Conservatives is that which inclines them more than the Liberals to “increased control” of the whole even over its capitalists? (Scarrow, Howard, “Three Dimensions of a Local Political Party.” in Meisel, John [ed.], Papers on the 1962 Election [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964], 62.)Google Scholar

46 Tom Truman has developed a “toryism-conservatism scale” consisting of fourteen items, only one of which indisputably reflects toryism as I define it (“The various classes and groups in a well run society are a hierarchy of parts and it functions like a human body with each part dependent on the other. The upper classes correspond to the head and the lower classes are like the limbs” [Truman, Tom, “A Scale for Measuring a Tory Streak in Canada and the United States, this Journal 10 (1977), 597–614])Google Scholar. The other thirteen items reflect ideological positions which originated in toryism, but are not necessarily tory, that is, they are not incompatible with pure liberalism; liberalism can endorse them fully without becoming any less liberal. “Distrust of human nature … the fundamental importance of law, order, and stability” are not only tory ideas; they are imported into liberalism by the quintessential liberal, Thomas Hobbes. “A religious view of the basis of civil obligation… the love of tradition and custom… a cautious… attitude to change” are ideas characteristic of the unchallenged and therefore nonradical, anti-revolutionary American brand of liberalism. In a society which is “born equal,” to appeal to tradition is to appeal to liberalism. (See Hartz, L., The Liberal Tradition in America [New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1955]Google Scholar, Chapter Two.)

Nevertheless, Truman maintains that his scale “is an adequate measure of the tory streak.” I do not understand his logic.

47 Hartz, The Liberal Tradition, 233, 238.

48 R. M. Morse, “The Heritage of Latin America,” in Hartz, New Societies, 164.

49 Ibid., 27–28.

50 Hartz, New Societies, 32.