In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

The League for Social Reconstruction and the development of a Canadian socialism, 1932-1936 MICHIEL HORN J. S. Woodsworth in 1933 stated the wish for a "Canadian socialism." Speaking at Regina as the leader of the young Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) he told an enthusiastic audience: " ... I am convinced that we may develop in Canada a distinctive type of socialism. I refuse to follow slavishly the British model or the American model or the Russian model. We in Canada will solve our own problems along our own lines." 1 Did the CCF live up to its leader's declaration of intellectual independence? Kenneth McNaught argues that on the whole it did, that British and North American socialist and agrarian-populist ideas were seized upon by Canadians who "used their knowledge in an attempt to suggest specifically Canadian answers to the economic, political and constitutional problems of the country."2 Walter Young has more recently written that "the CCF did not quite succeed" in the job of developing a distinctively Canadian socialism . "Britain, and later Sweden, served as models throughout the party's history." 3 This paper will discuss the crucially important role which the League for Social Reconstruction ( LSR) played in the development of a Canadian socialism during the early years of the CCF. Without wishing to underestimate the great influence that the United States has had on Canada's intellectual development, and while recognizing that there was an Anglo-American stock of "socialist" ideas which had some influence south of the border, especially before the American entry into the Great War,4 I will argue that the models for the LSR's socialism were mainly British. But I will also contend that to posit anything like a clear disJournal of Canadian Studies tinction between British and Canadian ideas of socialism is to misunderstand the intellectual history of Canada. During the 1930s English Canada was in her attitudes and formal loyalties by and large still a British country. II The LSR was formed by two small groups of intellectuals* in Montreal and Toronto during the Depression winter of 1932. The Montreal organizers included Eugene Forsey, an economics lecturer at McGill, J. King Gordon, the recently appointed incumbent of the Chair of Christian Ethics at United Theological College, David Lewis, a law student , J. K. Mergler, a member of the Quebec Bar, and Frank Scott, law professor at McGill and poet. In the Queen City the nucleus consisted of Harry Cassidy, of the Social Science department at the University of Toronto, Eric Havelock, a classicist at Victoria College, Irene Biss and J. F. Parkinson of the department of Political Economy, and the historian Frank Underhill. A link existed between these groups and, indeed, their organizational activity had in large part begun as a result of a meeting in August, 1931 between Underhill and Scott at the Williamstown Institute in Massachusetts.5 The new organization "went public" as the League for Social Reconstruction in FebruaryMarch , 1932. The preamble of its manifesto described it as an organization of men and women who are working for the establishment in Canada of a social order in which the basic principle regulating production, distribution and service will be the common good rather than private profit.6 The capitalist system was denounced as "unjust and inhuman, economically wasteful, and a standing threat to peace and democratic government." The LSR sought "a new social order which will substitute a planned * " ...all those who create, distribute and apply culture, that Is, the symbolic world of man, Including art, science and religion ...." Seymour Martin Upset, Political Man (Anchor, 1963), p. 333. 3 and socialized economy for the existing chaotic individualism," thereby ending "the domination of one class by another." The nine "essential first steps towards the realization of this new order" were: (1) Public ownership of utilities and other industries approaching monopoly condition; (2) Socialization of banks and other financial institutions; (3) Full development of cooperative enterprises, especially in agricultu.re; (4) Legislation providing adequate social services for the worker as well as giving him "an effective voice in the management of his industry"; (5) Publicly organized health, hospital and medical services; (6) Steeply graduated income and estate taxes; (7...

pdf

Share