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Populism in the United States, Russia, and Canada: Explaining the Roots of Canada's Third Parties*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

J. F. Conway
J. F. Conway
Affiliation:
University of Regina
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Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 1978 , pp. 99 - 124
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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 The CCF affiliated with the Canadian Labour Congress in 1961 to become the New Democratic party, explicitly modelled on the social democratic parties of western Europe and the Labour parties of Britain and Australia. In so doing, there is a case for arguing that the CCF made a successful transition from a populist party to a social democratic party. Interestingly, the Saskatchewan branch put up some resistance to this move and only changed its official name to the NDP much later.

2 The Social Credit party won provincial office in Alberta in 1935 and governed continuously until its defeat in 1971. The CCF won provincial office in Saskatchewan in the 1944 election and governed as the CCF until 1961, then as the CCF-NDP until 1964, when it lost power to the Liberals. In 1971 the party was swept back to power as the NDP and is still in office in that province at the time of publication. No work has provided a detailed and critical analysis of the records of the two governments. In 1952, the Social Credit party in British Columbia won provincial power, not losing to the NDP until 1972. Further, the CCF-NDP have remained major opposition parties in Manitoba (holding power there from 1969 to 1977) and Ontario. A curious variant of the Social Credit party has emerged as a significant opposition party in the province of Quebec. Of course, prior to the founding of either the CCF or Social Credit, their predecessors as organized farm movements had won office in Ontario, Alberta, and Manitoba.

3 Both the Social Credit and the CCF (now the NDP) have survived as permanent third parties federally, consistently winning a handful of seats in the federal House of Commons.

4 Hofstadter, Richard, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Vintage Books, 1955), 12Google Scholar.

5 See, for example, Unger, Irwin, “Critique of Norman Pollack's Fear of Man,” Agricultural History 39 (1965)Google Scholar; and Bell, Daniel (ed.), The New American Right (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1955)Google Scholar, updated and republished as The Radical Right (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1963)Google Scholar.

6 Levy, L. W. and Young, A., “Foreword,” in Pollack, N. (ed.), The Populist Mind (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), xxi–xxiiGoogle Scholar.

7 Ibid., vii.

8 Hicks, John D., The Populist Revolt: A History of the Farmers' Alliance and the People's Party (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1931), 422Google Scholar.

9 Martin, Roscoe C., The People's Party in Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1933)Google Scholar.

10 Pollack, Norman, The Populist Response to Industrial America (New York: Norton, 1966), 6Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., 11–12.

12 Pollack (ed.), The Populist Mind.

13 See Saloutos, Theodore (ed.), Populism: Reaction or Reform? (New York: Holt, 1968)Google Scholar, for an excellent effort to marshal systematically the evidence supporting both points of view.

14 Gene, Clanton O., Kansas Populism: Ideas and Men (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1969)Google Scholar. Also, see an earlier work, Nugent, Walter T. K., The Tolerant Populists: Kansas Populism and Nativism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962)Google Scholar; a good summary and analysis of the controversy appears on pp. 3–32.

15 Abrams, Richard M. (ed.), Issues of the Populist and Progressive Eras, 1892–1914 (New York: Harper, 1969)Google Scholar.

16 Tindall, George B. (ed.), A Populist Reader: Selections from the Works of American Populist Leaders (New York: Harper, 1966)Google Scholar.

17 Durden, Robert F., The Climax of Populism: The Election of 1896 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1965)Google Scholar. In his preface the author writes: “Mostly farmers, the Populists were not spokesmen for a static society, nor were they opposing and fleeing from the industrial future of the nation. They sought rather to capture federal power and use it both negatively to end economic abuses that had flourished since the Civil War and positively to improve the lot of the farmers and industrial workers of the land” (x).

18 Woodward, C.Vann, Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963)Google Scholar.

19 Durden, Climax of Populism.

20 Kirwan, Albert D., Revolt of the Rednecks: Mississipi Politics, 1876–1925 (New York: Harper, 1951)Google Scholar.

21 Ibid., 312–13.

22 Clinch, Thomas A., Urban Populism and Free Silver in Montana(Missoula: University of Montana Press, 1970), 173Google Scholar.

23 Ibid., 174.

24 See Chamberlain, John, Farewell to Reform: The Rise, Life and Decay of the Progressive Mind in America (Chicago: Quandrangle Paperbacks, 1965)Google Scholar; and Kolko, Gabriel, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Re-interpretation of American History, 1900–1916 (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1963), 304Google Scholar.

25 George McGovern's campaign in 1972 can partly be seen most properly as a modern-day irruption of hitherto quiescent populist sentiment among the American electorate. The fact that McGovern is a senator from a cradle of Populism—the Dakotas—goes far in explaining the anti-war, anti-corporate, and moralistic tone of his campaign.

26 This phrase is a reworking of William Jennings Bryan's famous concluding statement in his speech at the Democratic Party National Convention in 1896 when he said: “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” See Bryan, W. J., The First Battle: The Story of the Campaign of 1896 (Chicago: Conkey Press, 1896), 199–206Google Scholar.

27 Minogue, Kenneth, “Populism as a Political Movement,” in Ionescu, G. and Gellner, E. (eds.), Populism: Its Meanings and National Characteristics (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), 197Google Scholar.

28 All scholarly works on pre-revolutionary Russia make this point. See Part I of Carr, E. H., The Bolshevik Revolution, Vol. I (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1950)Google Scholar, especially 15–37; Trotsky's, LeonThe History of the Russian Revolution, trans, by Eastman, Max (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1932)Google Scholar, especially Vol. I, 463; B. N. Ponomaryov et al., in the “official” (that is, Stalinist) History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.), 42–50; and finally, Palmer, R. P. and Colton, Joel, A History of the Modern World (New York: Knopf, 1965)Google Scholar, the standard college history text, which agrees with the significance of the struggle between Marxism and Populism in prerevolutionary Russia (706–11).

29 The author finds the term “independent commodity producer” to be unnecessarily cumbersome. For the remainder of this work the term “agrarian petit-bourgeoisie” will be used. The reader will understand the term to be used in the classical Marxist sense—that is, the agrarian petit-bourgeoisie is that class which owns and controls some small capital (land, machinery, etc.) which, in combination with its own labour, is applied to the production of agricultural commodities for the market. It should be noted that the labour at the disposal of a particular petit-bourgeois includes not only his own but his family's unpaid labour, and only occasionally and/or marginally does he rely upon wage-labour.

30 For this assertion and the analysis that follows see the following sources: Thompson, E. P., in The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963)Google Scholar, puts it most cryptically when he says, “The process of industrialization must, in any conceivable social context, entail suffering and the destruction of older and valued ways of life” (223). Also see this theme's comparative development in Barrington Moore, Jr.'s, sweeping analysis of modernization in Europe, North America, and Asia in Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon, 1966)Google Scholar. Another excellent study by a Marxist scholar is Dobbs, Maurice, Studies in the Development of Capitalism (New York: International, 1947), especially Chap. Six, “Growth of the Proletariat,” 221–54Google Scholar. Marx's, KarlCapital, Vol. 1 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966)Google Scholar, parts VII and VIII, “The Accumulation of Capital,” and “The So-called Primitive Accumulation,” 564–774, remains the classic from which all others derive inspiration in an analysis of modernization, even when disagreeing. I would hasten to add the voices of Weber, Max(General Economic History [New York: Collier, 1961])Google Scholar, and Rostow, W. W.(The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-communist Manifesto [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971])Google Scholar to the chorus of support for this general analysis.

31 The author accepts the classical Marxist definition of surplus value; it is the value extracted from a worker's labour by the capitalist and is equal to the exchange value of the products of the worker's labour less his wages and the costs of the means of production. See Hobsbawm, E. J., The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848 (New York: Mentor, 1962)Google Scholar, especially Chap. 11, “The Labouring Poor,” for a discussion of the increasing exploitation of wage-labour as a source of capital accumulation.

32 “Subsistence agriculture” is agricultural production which has as its main goal the subsistence of the immediate producer and his family and only incidentally the production of agricultural goods for sale on the market (and only then when there is a surplus over and above the immediate needs of the producer and his family). Of course, from the beginning, agriculture in the prairie West was commerciallyoriented, but this fact did not prevent farm families from also producing for their own needs.

33 Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 48–49.

34 Again, the author accepts the classical Marxist definition of the proletariat as that class which must sell its labour on the market for a wage in order to obtain the means of survival.

35 Marx makes this point repeatedly throughout his analysis of capitalism. It is best expressed, though, in Capital, Vol. I, Chap. XV, “Machinery and Modern Industry,” 371–507. At one point he says: “In the sphere of agriculture, modern industry has a more revolutionary effect than elsewhere, for this reason, that it annihilates the peasant, that bulwark of the old society, and replaces him by the wage-labourer” (505).

36 Walicki, A., The Controversy over Capitalism: Studies in the Social Philosophy of the Russian Populists (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 6Google Scholar.

37 Lenin, V. I., “The Economic Content of Narodism and the Critique of it in Mr. Struve's book,” Collected Works, Vol. 1 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1963), 337Google Scholar. All references to Lenin are taken from this edition of his Collected Works.

38 Ibid., 340–41.

39 Ibid., 503.

40 “A Characterisation of Economic Romanticism,” ibid., Vol. 2, 178.

41 Ibid., 200.

42 Ibid., 208–20.

43 Ibid., 243, 245.

44 “The Heritage We Renounce,” ibid., 516.

45 Ibid., 524.

46 “Letter to I. I. Skvortsov-Stepanov,” ibid., Vol. 16, 119–20.

47 “The Essence of the Agrarian Problem in Russia,” ibid., Vol. 18,73–77. See also “A Comparison of the Stolypin and the Narodnik Agrarian Programmes,” ibid., 143–49.

48 “The Land Question and the Rural Poor,” ibid., Vol. 19, 376–78. See also “The Heritage We Renounce,” ibid., Vol. 2,461–534, and “There's a Trudovik for You!” ibid., Vol. 19, 432–35.

49 Ibid., 377.

50 Ibid., Vol. 2, 210.

51 Ibid., 232.

52 Ibid., 503.

53 Ibid., Vol. 1. 503.

54 Ibid. Vol. 2, 204, 212, 448. The “money power” is a phrase that recurs again and again in Populist movements everywhere.

55 For confirmation of Lenin's characterizations see the following: Kindersley, Richard,The First Russian Revisionists: A Study of Legal' Marxism in Russia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962)Google Scholar, especially Chap. I. Also see Billington, James H.. Mikhailovsky and Russian Populism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958)Google Scholar; Wartman, Richard, The Crisis of Russian Populism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967)Google Scholar; and, most definitively, Walicki, The Controversy over Capitalis.

56 Lenin, “Gems of Narodnik Project Mongering,” Collected Works, Vol. 2, 459–89.

57 See Lenin, “The Handicraft Census of 1894–95 in Perm Gubernia and General Problems of 'Handicraft' Industry,” ibid., 355–458, especially see pp. 445–58 for an excellent, critical summary of the Narodnik industrial program.

58 Ibid., 446.

59 Ibid., 448.

60 Ibid., 456.

61 Ibid., 236.

62 Ibid., Vol. 16, 119–20.

63 Ibid., Vol. 19, 430.

64 Ibid., Vol. 1, 503.

65 Ibid., Vol. 18, 358.

66 Ibid., 359.

67 Ibid., 524–25.

68 Ibid., 556.

69 Ibid., Vol. 2, 523.

70 Ibid., Vol. 1, 366.

71 Ibid., 380.

72 Ibid., 384.

73 Ibid., Vol. 2, 220.

74 Ibid., 220–21.

75 Our detailed inquiries in this regard should perhaps be limited to the early terms of each party in government. Both governed so long that any larger effort would be too massive to contemplate. Yet there are sounder reasons than merely convenience for such a limitation. First, we are more likely to find the fundamental orientation of the two movements during their first enthusiastic terms as governments. After the initial blush of success wore off, it is likely that expediency began more and more to determine the legislation of each. Further, there is no doubt that the two movements changed after a time in power. For example, the CCF over the years, made a successful transition from a rural-based Populist party to a social democratic party whose main constituency, nationally at least, became the working class, and, after 1961, with the founding of the NDP through affiliation with the CLC, the organized working class. The Social Credit in Alberta, even by their second (and most successful) leader's frank admission (see Manning, E. C., Political Realignment: A Challenge to Thoughtful Canadians [Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1967])Google Scholar, became a rather orthodox conservative parliamentary party. Yet there was a basic similarity in the origin of both movements in a threatened agrarian petit-bourgeoisie.

76 See Wood, L. A., A History of Farmers' Movements in Canada (Toronto: Ryerson, 1924)Google Scholar, for the best and most complete social history of these movements. For a rather overly sympathetic discussion of the movements of agrarian discontent in Ontario see R. Hann, “Some Historical Perspectives on Canadian Agrarian Political Movements,” a pamphlet published by New Hogtown Press, Toronto, 1971.

77 Morton, W. L., The Progressive Party in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967), 85Google Scholar.

78 Morton, W. L., Manitoba: A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1957), 211–12Google Scholar.

79 McCutcheon, B., “The Patrons of Industry in Manitoba, 1890–1898,” in Swanson, D. (ed.), Historical Essays on the Prairie Provinces (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1970)Google Scholar.

80 Moorehouse, H., Deep Furrows (Toronto: McLeod, 1918), 22–26Google Scholar.

81 Morton, Progressive Party, 10–18.

82 Ibid., 11.

83 Ibid., 11–12.

84 Ibid., Chap. Four, “The Progressive Movement and the General Election, 1920–21,” 96–129; and Macpherson, C. B., Democracy in Alberta (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1953)Google Scholar, Chap. Three, “The U.F.A.: Democracy in Practice,” 62–92.

85 Progressive Parly, 283. Morton uses the phrase “western agrarianism” in almost the same way we are using the term “Populism.” His term seems to suggest that the politics in question flow out of a region rather than a class. For Morton, Populism seems to mean simply the specific influence of the various American movements on the Canadian farmer. This is a much too specific, and extremely theoretically confusing, use of the term.

86 Ibid., 285. He says, for example: “Social Credit was a new departure, but it was also a lawful heir and successor to the U.F.A. and of the Progressive movement.” There is a common assumption among many scholars on western Canada—the uniqueness and specificity of the CCF and Social Credit—almost as if these movements sprang into being without reference to what went before. This is clearly nonsense. Usually, like Morton, they concede a marginal impact from preexisting farmers' movements.

87 Lipset, S. M., Agrarian Socialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971)Google Scholar, Chap. 1, “The Background of Agrarian Radicalism,” 15–38.

88 Ibid., Chap. 4, “The Farmers' Movement Goes Socialist,” 99–117.

89 Ibid., 161, 163. My emphasis.

90 Ibid., Chap. 7, “Ideology and Program,” 160–96.

91 Democracy in Alberta, Chaps. II and III.

92 Ibid., 3.

93 Ibid., 216.

94 Ibid., 220.

95 Ibid., see Chap. VIII, “The Quasi-Party System,” Subsection 2, “Political Implications of Independent Commodity Production,” 221–30.

96 Ibid., 236. It should also be noted that the precursor of Social Credit in Alberta, the UFA, affiliated with the CCF.

97 See Sharp, P. F., The Agrarian Revolt in Western Canada: A Survey Showing American Parallels (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1948)Google Scholar, especially Chap.

98 Young, Walter D., The Anatomy of a Party: The National C.C.F., 1932–61 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), 15–16Google Scholar.

99 Morton, Progressive Party in Canada, 14, 38–39.

100 Peter R. Sinclair, “Populism in Alberta and Saskatchewan,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1972. See also, by the same author, “The Saskatchewan CCF: Ascent to Power and the Decline of Socialism,” Canadian Historical Review 54 (1973), 419–33; and “Class Structure and Populist Protest in the Western Canadian Hinterland,” a paper presented at the CSAA annual meeting, Toronto, August, 1974.

101 Smart, John, “Populist and Socialist Movements in Canadian History,” in Laxer, R. M. (ed.), (Canada) Ltd.: The Political Economy of Dependency (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973), 197–212Google Scholar.

102 Naylor, R. T. and Teeple, G., “Appendix: The Ideological Formations of Social Democracy and Social Credit,” in Teeple, Gary (ed.). Capitalism and the National Question in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973), 251–56Google Scholar.