Summary

To summarize the movements of capital and labour in the 1950's period, large numbers of workers were cast out of the primary sector, denied entry to a stagnating durable goods manufacturing sector, and made the "lever" for the rapid development of the low-pay service and non-durable manufacturing sectors. It is in this massive uprooting of subordinate classes and their subsequent transformation into a particularly exploited stratum of the urban working class that the critical perspective would locate the most important source of poverty and unemployment in the 1950's and 1960's period. The stratum of native and immigrant workers implicated in these movements are sometimes referred to as "dirty workers" or the "working poor" when they are employed, or the "underclass", "sub-proletariat" or "hardcore poor" when they are not. We have termed them the surplus population, referring to the fact that whether we are speaking of welfare clients, low-wage workers or the chronically unemployed, we are discussing members of the. working class who are surplus to the average needs of capital. As we saw in an earlier chapter, some of the most vulnerable among them are women, teenagers, the aged, minorities, those without job skills, those lacking educational credentials and those without fundamental literacy and numeracy skills.

Critique of the Liberal Analysis

As we have seen, adherents of the liberal perspective like Arthur Pigott consider the economic changes of the 1950's as more or less natural and inevitable manifestations of technological change and economic modernization. This assumption is crucial, for it provides the basis for their view that the onus for the poverty and unemployment of the 1950's and 1960's period rests on the low level of education and training of the Canadian workforce, which is seen as having impaired the ability of workers to adapt to the new occupational demands. However, sociologist Wallace Clement rejects this assumption, arguing that the uneven economic development which led to the massive uprooting and impoverishment of members of subordinate classes in the 1950's period was "the product of a series of actions and institutions created and alterable by man" 36. He suggests that to consider the pattern of uneven development as "natural" or primarily due to geography or historical accident "ignores the realities of power and the control some men have over the lives of others".37

Regions

For example, economic development could have occurred more evenly across the regions of Canada, but for the actions of metropolitan capitalist elites. Bowles and Craib observe:

It is important to note that...under certain conditions --- metropolitan exploitation of resources in a hinterland lead(s) to the establishment of stable and self-sustaining economic patterns in the hinterland. If the staple trade is conducted in such a way that local entrepreneurs can accumulate capital and if there are local resources and access to markets which make possible the development of other industries, there is the potential for economic growth which is not dependent on the staple as such. In the absence of these conditions, a hinterland is likely to flourish during a period of staple exploitation but to stagnate or decline afterward.38