Curious Omission

What is striking about Pigott's account from the point of view of the critical perspective is his failure to subject the capitalist economic structure, particularly the pattern of technological change which it produces, to critical scrutiny. Instead, he views them as unalterable givens of social life, to which governments, adult educators and above all, Canadian workers, must somehow conform. Poverty, regional stagnation, unemployment--these are seen as the penalties for their failure to do so.

Canadian Marxist historian Leo Johnson identifies a "curious omission" in post-World War II studies of poverty and unemployment like Pigott's:

In these studies the location, social characteristics and personal attributes of the poor have been enumerated, analyzed and commented upon.... In all these studies...there is, however, a curious omission ... no real study has been made of the way that the existence of capitalism, and, in particular, of the way that the capitalist labour market has affected the distribution and levels, of personal income in Canada.9

Lacking a critical analysis of the economy, adherents of the liberal perspective like Pigott are blind to the possibility that poverty and unemployment are "built into" the structure of capitalist society. Thus while liberals are aware of some of the larger institutional forces at work creating economic hardship, according to Marxist political economist Howard Wachtel:

rather than seeking remedies by altering these social institutions .... or searching for ways to break class rigidities, liberals concentrate their energies on trying to find ways to use government either to ease the burden of poverty or assist the individual in adapting to prevailing institutions.10

In the present chapter and the one following it, an attempt is made to correct this "curious omission" with regard to the question of the relationship of illiteracy to economic hardship. To this end, the capitalist economic structure is introduced as a primary explanatory variable. The discussion proceeds through the analysis of three basic interrelationships among variables: the relationship of the capitalist economic structure to illiteracy, the relationship of the economic structure to poverty, and finally, the relationship of illiteracy to poverty--as mediated by the economic structure. The first two relationships--i.e. of the economic structure to illiteracy and poverty--is considered in the present chapter. The third relationship--i.e. illiteracy to poverty--is considered by itself in the following chapter under the heading of "Illiteracy and the Labour Market".