According to Marxism-Leninism the “socialist reconstruction of agriculture,” or collectivization, is a necessary step in the process of building socialism and, subsequently, communism. The communists realize, however, that in a country where the peasantry constitutes the overwhelming majority of the population the process may require some time and they admit that in such cases “the socialist reconstruction of agriculture is, after the seizure of power by the working class, the most difficult task of the revolution.”

Lenin was aware of the danger inherent in collectivization and he was planning it as a gradual process. The communist leaders in Eastern Europe and in China, keeping in mind the catastrophic results of the Soviet collectivization drive in the years 1928–33, were even more convinced that they should proceed slowly, gradually, and carefully, without antagonizing the majority of peasants. They tried, as the Bolsheviks had done during the 1920's, to reduce the power of the “kulaks” (the better-off peasants who were still rather poor by Western standards) and to enlist against them the support of the poor peasants and of the rest of the society. Neither the Bolsheviks in the late 1920's nor the communists in Eastern Europe in the late 1940's and in China in the 1950's could tolerate independent producers who represented a political menace and created economic complications for the administrators and the planners. Moreover, the land reforms, which were introduced by the communists for tactical reasons although regarded by them as a retrogressive step, increased the number of small holdings below the optimum size and destroyed larger farms which had been producing the majority of marketable output. The “class struggle in the countryside” had adverse effects on productivity, even when it was limited to discrimination in taxation, in delivery quotas, in availability of credit and producers' goods, and the administrative pressure and chicanery. In many instances it went, however, far beyond these measures.

For some time now, and with increasing frequency, it has been asserted that cultural differences between the two major language groups in Canada are marked and that these differences carry over into economic behaviour. On a less general plane it is also said that there are differences between patterns of consumption in Ontario and Quebec and that these differences are largely due to “cultural” and not economic factors. However, to date there has been no verification of the latter hypothesis.

There are several reasons for undertaking such a verification. First, it may make an indirect empirical contribution to the current debate about the existence and future development of a separate French-Canadian community, different from the rest of Canada in both cultural and economic aspects. Second, as far as it was possible to determine, there have been no investigations undertaken comparing regional patterns of consumption, possibly because most economically developed countries are considered homogeneous in this respect (but note, for instance, Belgium and Switzerland). Is it likely that two large groups of people living since “time immemorial” in a single economy and exposed to much the same economic and social pressures differ in important respects in their consumption patterns? And that these differences, if any, will tend to persist even after certain important economic and demographic variables have been controlled? Finally, on the commercial plane, if we can find significant differences in consumer expenditures (albeit confined in this study to major expenditure classes), sellers may be led to a conscious effort at the exploitation of regional market segments.

In 1965, many Canadian and British writers paid tribute to the seven hundredth anniversary of the founding of the British Parliament, and this year, Canadians celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of theirs. Criticism of parliament has been vigorous and almost continuous throughout all these years, and in the midst of these celebrations Canadians are conscious of an apparent decline in the time-worn institution. On October 8, 1963, the Globe and Mail reprinted excerpts from prominent Canadian newspapers describing parliament as “a farce,” “a wasteful bore,” whose members were “incompetents and buffoons” who “had played the role of clowns.” If parliament is to remain a vital and central part of our democracy, it must be resurrected from the morass of ineffectuality into which it has fallen. Although much of the criticism can be dismissed as irresponsible because the public does not understand its workings or functions, there still remains a hard core of difficulties that must be examined.

A recurring lament in commemorations of classic works is that they are so well known that little remains to be said about them. This is certainly not true of Marx's Capital. Its difficult method of presentation, the numerous myths about it which have grown up over the years, and recent tendencies to mathematicize popular conceptions of Marxian economics in lieu of digging into Marx's own writings have together made this work almost as little understood today as it has ever been. Böhm-Bawerk's famous “refutation” of Marx's “labour theory of value” continues to be reproduced, along with the economic “breakdown” of capitalism theory, the “dialectical” forces at work, and all the old familiar cast of fictitious characters. If one accepts the cynical definition of a classic as a work that everyone talks about and no one reads, there is certainly no more classic work in economics than Capital. The hundredth anniversary of its publication seems an appropriate time to reexamine not only the book itself but also the beliefs about it which have acquired a life-almost an immortality-of their own.

The studies of non-voting made in the United States and Europe have firmly established that failure to vote is associated with conflicting political preferences, with lack of interest in politics, with low position on the social stratification scale, with a feeling of political powerlessness and, to a lesser extent, with sex (women voting usually less than men) and with age (the very young and the very old voting less than the average). But while identifying the causes of non-voting these studies have been unable to determine with any precision the true level of voluntary non-voting and the relative size of the various groups of non-voters. The reason for this failure is in the non-coincidence of four types of electoral universes used and often confused during the research and the analysis: (a) the universe of the cases studied; (b) the universe of the sample (when the research is done by sampling, as is normally the case); (c) the electors registered on the rolls and thus able to vote; and (d) the potential electors. Unless there is a close coincidence between these four universes, determining the true level of electoral participation and the relative importance of the various types of non-voters becomes an open confrontation between hard data and guess work.