The problem of the nation in French Marxism gives rise to many difficulties. Most of the Marxist scholars, in spite of all their efforts, have not been able to explain the nation coherently in Marxist terms. Most frequently the attempt is made to integrate the nation into Marxist ideology by equating it to a social class. But this identification is impossible: (1) The nation and the social class are not treated on the same level in Marxist sociology. For Marxism, social class and nation have an unyielding content that prevents the reduction of one to the other. (2) The classes in a society play a dysfunctional role whereas the nation is an integrative factor that overcomes the divisions. (3) Finally, the class struggle, according to Marx, leads to social revolution, while a national struggle can only produce a political revolution. This analysis shows that it is impossible to integrate the nation in Marxist theory, if one grants to the nation an absolute value in the social order.

Marxism treats the nation as a secondary reality of the social order. It is the category of “partial-totality” which provides the key to this integration. Society is the totality, but not an empty one. It is a totality which gathers together other totalities linked in an essentially dynamic relationship. Marxism defends the concept of nation as a partial totality, that is as an “historic entity,” but in so doing deprives it of any absolute and definitive character and of formal autonomy. It is as a partial totality simultaneously determined by “the” totality (as goal) and by concrete behaviour or praxis (which constructs totality) that Marxism retains and defends the nation not only as a strategic and momentary element but also as a support for specific values which are integrated into the universalism of the civilization of free men.

Thus the French Marxists, faithful to their principles, have not only accepted the nations, but have even defended them as “partial totalities” and as the medium of praxis. It is by a distortion that some French Marxists such as Aragon, Casanova, Cogniot, Leduc, etc., have been able to surround the nation by a halo as if it had an eternal value in itself. More coherent are those who like Henri Lefebvre or Maxime Rodinson have seen in the nation a reality attached to historical development, setting loose in the development of humanity those values which are durable acquisitions in themselves, but whose forms are subject to time and to the renewal of praxis.

It is thus that neither the identification, nor even equality, but the simultaneity of national culture and socialist humanism can be explained. The specific can take the form of the universal.

Dans l'étude du comportement des groupes d'intérêts, il est courant d'analyser les processus par lesquels les demandes de ces groupes atteignent ceux qui détiennent le pouvoir de décision politique; on tient aussi compte de la formulation de ces demandes et de leur influence sur les actions gouvernementales. Cette perspective d'approche se fonde implicitement sur le postulat suivant: pour tel groupe donné, les demandes les plus importantes expriment les besoins et les aspirations des membres de ce groupe. En d'autres termes, plus telle demande répond essentiellement aux besoins du « membership » d'un groupe, plus on suppose qu'elle constitue une variable importante de l'analyse du comportement de ce groupe d'intérêt.

La présente étude se propose d'examiner si, dans le cas des groupes considérables et bureaucratisés, les pressions qu'ils exercent, en réponse aux besoins de leurs membres, ne sont pas subordonnées aux demandes que font leurs dirigeants relativement à leur organisation. Du moins, aux yeux de ces derniers, les demandes de reconnaissance organisationnelle sont-elles les plus importantes qu'ils tentent d'imposer au gouvernement. Le manque d'unité de la structure du travail organisé au Canada, de même que la compétition active entre les différentes centrales syndicales, nous ont permis de vérifier cette hypothèse.

Les résultats de cette analyse sont les suivants: (1) toute forme de reconnaissance susceptible d'être accordée par le gouvernement suscite une vive compétition entre les centrales établies; (2) celles-ci cherchent à susciter, pour elles-mêmes, de nouvelles occasions où elles seront reconnues par le gouvernement; (3) les plus amères disputes éclatent entre ces groupes et le gouvernement lorsque ce dernier leur refuse la reconnaissance à laquelle, aux yeux de leurs dirigeants, ces groupes auraient droit. Par exemple, le gouvernement Diefenbaker ayant posé un tel geste vis-à-vis du Congrès du travail du Canada, leurs relations se gâtèrent au point d'être décrites, par les dirigeants du CTC, comme « les plus mauvaises qui se puissent trouver entre une centrale nationale et un gouvernement, parmi les nations occidentales hautement industrialisées ».

The purpose of this study is to describe and to interpret the opinions of the French-speaking residents of Quebec on the questions of war and peace during the years 1945–60. The principal sources used in the study are the editorials of the French-language press, the results of the Gallup poll, and the speeches of Quebec members of Parliament at Ottawa. In the press, few traces of outright isolationism were found, but there were sharp divisions on the questions of relations with the countries of the communist bloc and with those of the non-aligned “third world.” The general public seems to have accepted in principle the main external commitments of Canada during this period, but to have remained against participation of a military sort in practice. If foreign policy was not the specialty of Quebec members of Parliament, there were always individuals or groups to make known points of view current in Quebec, especially when these were at variance with government policy. The year 1960 appears in hindsight to have been a turning point for French-Canadian opinion because of the appearance of a new government in Quebec but also because of the foreign policy of President de Gaulle and the appearance, that year, of a large new bloc of French-speaking states, independent and members of the United Nations.

As the background to his view that the liberal democratic theory of political obligation implies, under appropriate circumstances, not a right but a duty to resist one's government, Ake provides a judicious account not only of liberal democratic theory but also of utilitarian and legal positivist theory. None the less, his three synopses reveal the almost inevitable hazards of such accounts. The issue is not merely a historical one, for in each case the synoptic account determines the direction which his argument takes.