In this industry, technological change and expanded productivity have slowed down', and at times have come to a halt, in part precisely because the railroad workers have attempted to resist the bifurcation of the work force into one group of privileged employed workers and another group of impoverished- unemployed workers.40

The struggle of railroad workers illustrates an alternative vision of economic development--i.e. development which is not accomplished at the expense of working people. However, this vision is not compatible with the tenets of 'If reenterpri sell capitalism, and can only be viewed by capitalists and their apologists as an attempt to "obstruct progress".

Summary

It is evident that the liberal perspective is incorrect in its conclusion that the economic changes of the 1950's in Canada can be explained through the uncritical reference to "technological necessity" or "economic modernization". Factors like the economic and social underdevelopment of Canadian hinterlands by metropolitan capitalist elites, the takeover of key sectors of the Canadian economy by U.S. interests after World War II and the uncoordinated and disruptive mechanization of the primary sector--these are all products of decisions and actions of capitalist economic elites which in an important sense have been limited or constrained by the nature of productive technology available to them, but which have not been dictated by it, as the liberal "technological necessity" assumption suggests.

Capitalism and Poverty

It is important to point out once again that capitalist development is by its nature uneven, and this means that poverty and unemployment are normal by products of it. Particular geographical, political, cultural, or ideological forces may modify the pattern of development in such a way as to reduce the extent of unevenness, or mitigate its social consequences somewhat, but as long as the production process is found upon the principle of maximization of private gain, they cannot prevent it..

Sudden Expansion

Capitalist economic development, as based on competition and governed by the "free market", is by its nature unplanned and uncoordinated--in Marx's term, "anarchic". Periods of rapid expansion of production are followed by inevitable periods of stagnation, as markets become glutted with goods and demand fails to keep pace. This pattern occurs both across the economy as a whole (e.g. in 1982, Canada is in the midst of a prolonged period of stagnation) as well as unevenly across production sectors (e.g. during the .1950's, the service sector expanded while the manufacturing sector stagnated).

The periods of sudden economic expansion, e.g. in a particular production sector, require the existence of a mass of unemployed and underemployed workers who can be called up without depleting the workforce employed in already established spheres of production. (For example, we have seen how the expansion of the service sector depended upon the existence of a mass of unemployed workers forced to accept low-wage employment in order to subsist.) Such a surplus population is more or less constantly being created in a capitalist society through three main processes: periods of general stagnation across the economy, when unemployment levels rise; when technology "sets free" workers from established spheres of production (as was the case during the 1950's); or when immigration policy of the capitalist state draws to Canada workers who have been "set free" by capitalist penetration of agricultural regions of their home countries.