Canada as Churkendoose: A Response to Paul Kellogg, Escape from the Staple Trap
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18740/S4705XKeywords:
Canadian political economy, historical materialism, epistemologyAbstract
This response is based on a presentation as part of a panel on Paul Kellogg's Escape from the Staples Trap at the annual meeting of the Society for Socialist Studies. The responder welcomes Kellogg's diligent use of statistics and argumentation in critiquing the left-nationalist tradition, including its emphasis on staples (raw-material exports) as central to Canada as a "rich dependency" and false comparisons with countries of the Global South. It also suggests a possible one-sided over-emphasis on Canada's membership in top-tier advanced industrialized societies, and questions the general emphasis on categorization at the expense of a more humanistic multi-sidedness, or of an acceptance of ironic or paradoxical categorizations. Some features of Kellogg's positive case about Canada, including "extractivism", need to be more clearly distinguished from the approaches he rejects. Finally, the categorical rejection of the possibility of a sound left-nationalism may need to be explained or qualified.References
Abele, Frances, and Daiva Stasiulus. 1989. "Canada as a 'White Settler Colony': What about Natives and Immigrants?" In The New Canadian Political Economy, edited by Wallace Clement and Glen Williams, 240-277. Kingston-Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
Bakan, Abigail, and Philip Murton. 2006. "Origins of the International Socialists." Marxism: A Socialist Annual no. 4.
Berenberg, Ben Ross, and Dellwyn Cunningham. 1946. The Churkendoose: Part Chicken, Turkey, Duck, and Goose: Wonder Books.
Deneault, Alain, and William Sacher. 2012. Imperial Canada Inc.: Legal Haven of Choice for the World's Mining Industries. Translated by Fred A. Reid and Robin Philpot. Montréal: Talonbooks.
Fowke, Vernon C. 1946. Canadian Agriculture Policy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Frank, André Gunder. 1969. Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: Penguin.
Howlett, Michael. 1996. "De-Mythologizing Provincial Political Economies: The Development of the Service Sectors in the Provinces, 1911-1991." In Provinces: Canadian Provincial Politics, edited by Christopher Dunn, 423-448. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press.
Innis, Harold A. (1930) 1970. The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History. revised ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Karl, Terry Lynn. 1997. The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and PetroStates. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Klassen, Jerome. 2014. Joining Empire: The Political Economy of the New Canadian Foreign Policy. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.
McQuaig, Linda. 2007. Holding the Bully's Coat: Canada and the U.S. Empire Doubleday Canada.
Naylor, R.T. 1972. "The Rise and Fall of the Third Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence." In Capitalism and the National Question in Canada, edited by Gary Teeple, 1-43. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Watkins, Mel, ed. 1977. Dene Nation: The Colony Within. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright: Authors who publish in the Journal agree to the following terms: 1)Authors retain copyright and grant the Journal the right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in the Journal; and, 2)Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the Journal's published version of the work (eg post to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in the Journal.
