In response, the capitalist class and the capitalist state have strengthened their hold, where necessary through coercive meant involving the repressive mechanisms of the army, police and courts, but more usually through the complementary ideological mechanisms which secure the active consent (or at least passive resignation) of the surplus population to the established structure of inequality. It has been in the latter approach--the ideological legitimation of the existing order, that literacy training and basic education have played a small, but at times significant role in Canadian history.

The perspectives on illiteracy which have become dominant in these periods have emerged out of the alliance of middle class educators with economic and political elites. They have primarily reflected the needs and interests of the latter, particularly their need to reestablish the reproduction of class relations on a firmer basis in the face of growing militance on the part of the surplus population stratum of the working class. Each perspective has embodied a strategy of closer ideological incorporation of exploited groups within dominant institutions through some form of literacy or basic education. To this end, each has held out certain concessions to the hopes and aspirations of the working class, such as increased avenues for social and cultural advancement and intellectual enrichment.

The way that the perspectives have attempted to reconcile these contradictory objectives --i.e. increased social control over the working class on the part of the capitalist class, and economic and social advance for the working class--has been through locating the source of the conflict and oppression within exploited groups, i.e. their lack of literacy skills, lack of knowledge, lack of adherence to dominant values, etc., and offering a route to social advance through correcting that deficiency. While the working class has made certain limited gains through such a strategy, the strategy has been incapable of compensating for the larger political economic forces creating poverty and exploitation, and the collective situation of the surplus population has remained the same. However, the strategy has reaped important gains for capitalist political and economic elites in that the poor have been diverted from critically questioning the political economic structures of capitalism and from seeking collective solutions to their problems. The strategy has contributed to renewed hope on the part of the poor that advance is possible through these structures, thus legitimating them and dampening class conflict.