Horowitz: CONSERVATISM, LIBERALISM, AND SOCIALISM IN CANADA: AN INTERPRETATION

USA

  • Organized socialism is dead

Canada

  • Socialism is a relevant political force (Far from national power)

  • Strength of socialism connected to Toryism & differing liberalism to America

  • Pan North American view of Canada and America can’t explain Canadian uniqueness bc only discusses similarities

  • Canadian socialism is much weaker than European socialism but stronger than American socialism


  • Explanatory technique used in this study developed by Hartz in The Liberal Tradition in America and The Founding of New Societies

  • Technique applied to Canada in mildly American way by Kenneth McRae in "The Structure of Canadian History”


Hartzian Approach

  • Study new societies founded by Europeans as fragments thrown off from Europe

  • Ideologies borne by founders of new society doesnt rep hist ideologcl spectrum of mother country, eg. French Canada & Latin America are “feudal fragments”


Fragmentation

  • New society thrown off from Europe loses stimulus to change that whole provides

  • In new society, the culture from the mother society is frozen in time


Socialism

  • Corporate organic collectivist ideas of Toryism + rationalist egalitarian views of liberalism

  • Feudal fragments: Escapes socialism bc develops no undemocratic (whig) liberalism so doesnt develop democratic liblsm. as a reaction to whiggery, & doesn’t develop socialism that devps. as a reaction to librl democracy

  • Bourgeois fragments: Opposite of above; radical rationalist egalitarian aspect of socialism is present but corporate organic collectivist part of socialism missing bc toryism left behind. No sense of class/yearning for corporate past

    • Absense of socialism=Related to absence of toryism

    • Liberal bourgeois society that never knew toryism: Demand for equality expressed as leftwing or democratic liberalism, not whiggery

    • Left: We Are not equal in comptv persuit for invdl happiness, gov has to assure greater equality of opportunity (19th cent: Destroyed monopolistic privileges, 20th cent: Providing welfare ‘floor’ & regulating economy to avoid periodic crises)

  • Abolition of classes to recognize good of society


Application of Hartzian Approach to Canada

  • English Canada as pan north American: