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Misplaced Polarities: A Comment on “State, Capital and World Economy” by Paul Kellogg
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
Abstract
Paul Kellogg has called on Canadian political economists to break decisively with dependency theory, arguing that Nikolai Bukharin's insights can provide the key to retheorizing Canada as an unqualifiedly advanced capitalist economy. This comment first questions Kellogg's assumption that left-nationalist dependency theorists were ascribing nationalist motivations to capital investment and then goes on to illustrate that the case for Carroll's internationalist thesis is not as strong as Kellogg supposes. Questions are raised about the appropriateness of Bukharin's emphasis on state capitalism and the nationalization of capitalist interests in the light of Canada's current strategy of market-led continentalism. Finally, the argument is made that capitalist laws of motion can provide only a starting point for understanding the political economy of Canada.
Résumé
Paul Kellogg a invité les spécialistes de I'économie politique du Canada à abandonner la théorie de la dépendance, sous prétexte que les idées de Nikolai Bukharin pourraient se révéler l'élément clé permettant de redéfinir le Canada comme une économie capitaliste parfaitement avancée. L'article remet d'abord en question la supposition de Kellogg, selon laquelle les nationalistes de gauche qui ont formulé la théorie de la dépendance attribuaient des motifs nationalistes aux investisseurs de capitaux, puis montre que la thèse internationaliste de Carroll n'est pas aussi solide que Kellogg le suppose. L'auteur s'interroge également sur la pertinence de l'accent que Bukharin place sur le capitalisme d'État et la nationalisation des intérêts capitalistes à la lumiére de la stratégie de continentalisme de marché que suit actuellement le Canada. Enfin, l'auteur soutient que les lois capitalistes du mouvement ne peuvent servir que de points de départ à la compréhension de l'économie politique du Canada.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , March 1991 , pp. 121 - 133
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1991
References
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24 Niosi, “Continental Nationalism,” 63.
25 Ibid., 64.
26 Bellon and Niosi, The Decline of the American Economy, 152.
27 Adjudicating their competing claims is complicated by the imprecision of the category of “semiperiphery.” Defined almost by default, the category has a residual quality. Semiperipheries, Resnick explains, “fall somewhere in between the core and the periphery,” exhibiting a fairly even mix between core-like and periphery-like activities (Resnick, “From Semiperiphery to Perimeter of the Core,” 265–66).
28 Ibid., 292, 274, 283. Resnick, like Glenday, notes the limitations of Wallerstein's typology.
29 Ibid., 269, 285, 292.
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