“Class” and “The Left” in Canadian Politics

through to the appearance of federal and provincial budgets in the winter and spring. (Third Annual Report, 1966 p. 177). The fulfillment of this goal requires a much greater incorporation of economic trends into the budgetary plans of the provincial government . Although there is much to be desired in the Commentary: "CLASS" AND "THE LEFT" IN CANADIAN POLITICS ROBIN MATHEWS The concept of a democratic class struggle offered by Professor Gad Horowitz (Iournal of Canadian Studies, November, 1966) is so important for an understanding of directions in contemporary Canadian politics that one may, I hope, consider it critically without appearing to denigrate the article's profound importance. That class may be seen as the difference between right and left in contemporary Canadian, U.S., and British history is an assumption at the back of Professor Horowitz's article ("the democratic class struggle") that I strongly suspect needs closer examination and which, in the context he presently uses, leads him into statements about the existence of a political polarity in the U.S.A. that may be more imagined than real. But for now I wish to leave aside a discussion of the differences (that I see) between left/right polarity and class conflict in order to consider the operation of the elite/right and the non-elite/left in their relation to the uses of political power in Canada. Professor Horowitz offers in that regard some important analyses of the Canadian situation . He says, laying the groundwork of his article , that, 46 Political decisions are decisions which are of importance to the community, decisions on public matters. And it is a development of more technically reliable economic forecasts, the immediate remedy seems to lie directly in the hands of senior government advisors and politicians who must be made to recognize the gains to be had from even the limited forecasting techniques which are bound to improve with further use. fact that the most important of these decisions are not made by our political elite but by other elites which are not accountable to the community. He goes on to say that if political power is to rule political decisions, our party system must be polarized on a left-right basis, and the main issues raised for discussion in the political arena must be class issues. Such an idea in Canada is revolutionary. The Frank Scott poem that says something like, "In Canada there are no classes, Only the Masseys and the masses," sums up the feelings of most Canadians in the political and corporate elites as well as in the Canadian street. If we ask why Canadians believe they live in a classless society (despite The Vertical Mosaic and the facts of life), the answers we find are not wholly ignoble. Class structure has been assumed by Canadians to include, intrinsically, qualities of injustice. Canadians have genuinely wanted, I think, to move toward equality of liberty in the widest sense, and so they have believed in the necessity of classlessness. Some Canadians have advertised classlessness as a front for class advantages they have wished to gain, as we shall see. But that is only one aspect of the favourable attitude to classlessness in Canada. The frontier tended to the creation of a meritocracy. Canadians have been inspired by the idea of United Nations and One World. Canadians, moreover, have been loathe to recognize class structures in their own midst because many of them or their parents emigrated from Europe to escape class. Canadians have Revue d'etudes canadiennes looked for signs of class as it appears in England and the rest of Europe. We have looked, almost, for the "literary" signs of class: an association with manners, gentility, grace, finish. Canadians have looked beyond the facts of clearly defined economic groups possessing similar aspirations and even similar morals to seek out the kind of class signs defined by Jane Austen, Matthew Arnold, and even by the "atmosphere" surrounding Marxist and Leninist writing. Class, Canadians have assumed, is connected overtly to finish, to rigid social position, to social comportment . The tough, insensitive power wielder of corporate management and political patronage in Canada could surely not be considered seriously as a representative...