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State, Capital and World Economy: Bukharin's Marxism and the “Dependency/Class” Controversy in Canadian Political Economy

1989; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 22; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0008423900001335

1744-9324

Paul Kellogg,

Labor Movements and Unions

Abstract In the late 1960s and early 1970s, “left-nationalist” dependency theories dominated Canadian political economy. However, Canada defied the predictions of dependency theory and developed all the class relations appropriate to advanced capitalist societies. The origins of Canadian industrial capitalism were not such that the country was locked into a staple-trap, notwithstanding the very real reliance of the economy on staple-export. In recent years, a number of political economists have offered an “orthodox” Marxist critique of dependency to account for these and other weaknesses in its overall framework. This article first summarizes the dependency arguments, then the arguments of its Marxist critics, and finally introduces a summary look at the ideas of Nikolai Bukharin, a little-examined but nonetheless important theorist whose insights on the relationship between the state as a capitalist and the growing internationalization of economic life are key to a Marxist re-theorization of Canadian political economy.