Approaches to Politics (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Approaches to Politics Christo Aivalis Approaches to Politics. Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. 89, $12.95 paper Before becoming one of Canada's most divisive and long-running prime ministers, Pierre Elliott Trudeau wrote almost endlessly. The essays in Approaches to Politics represent a vein of Trudeau's thought from the late 1950s. Originally published in the independent Montreal weekly newspaper Vrai, these essays sought to spur a democratic movement in a Quebec still dominated by Duplessis and the Union Nationale. They were subsequently published in English in 1970, with a foreword by historian Ramsay Cook, and have now been made available in a new edition. The collection's overarching theme is remarkably simple. In true liberal-democratic fashion, Trudeau argued that authority rests not with those who wield it but with those who obey it. In this sense, the legitimacy of the state rests not with God, king, or prime minister, but with the people. If public officials fail to serve the people, they void their right to exert authority. On this premise, civil disobedience becomes a vital tool to promote democratic thought and action. Because the state is so central to Trudeau's conception of liberal democracy, in these writings he places considerable blame on a neglectful state for Quebec's poverty, inequality, poor infrastructure, and dismal education rates. Individual rights were still supreme in his view, but Trudeau believed that state programs were vital in enhancing individual potential and freedom. In the end, the beneficial exercise of state power, like the legitimacy of protest, could be assured only through the existence of a democratic process and a democratic spirit among the populace. Without liberal democracy, protest would be little more than anarchy, and state action little more than fascism. Cook's original 1970 foreword to these writings does an excellent job of contextualizing 1950s Quebec from a liberal perspective. Cook [End Page 784] portrays a people searching for emancipation from an apparently invincible Duplessis regime. Attempts to unseat him seemed futile, for opposition forces remained divided, and it was felt by many, including Trudeau, that socialist parties must yield and rally under liberal calls for 'democracy first.' By 1960, liberals, in their triumph, had secured democracy by neutralizing both left-wing Quebec nationalists and federalist social democrats within the ccf. Cook's new foreword in this edition offers a defence of Trudeau's ideological consistency, arguing that his actions as prime minister have an intellectual link to these essays, specifically in reference to his handling of the Front de Libération du Québec and of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In hindsight, Cook argues, Approaches to Politics was a strong indication of 'the determination with which [Trudeau] would work to implement and defend the practical application of his ideas' (xi). These are perceptive observations, but it needs to be noted that Cook's perception of Quebec history is predicated on the belief that, before the Quiet Revolution, the only legitimate forces standing against Duplessis were liberals like Trudeau. On this reading, socialists and communists were merely impractical 'vote-splitters.' Yet Quebec's progressive history and the arrival of the Quiet Revolution cannot be attributed to liberals alone, and the liberal consensus was far from universal. The same issue is evident in Cook's portrayal of organized labour's political goals and of Trudeau's relationship with working-class organizations. Cook portrays Quebec's labour movement in the 1950s as being in favour of a unification of forces under a liberal-democratic leadership. While certain unions, especially the Confédération des travailleurs catholiques du Canada under Jean Marchand, rejected an independent workers' party, the newly unified Fédération du travail du Québec supported a working-class political organization, specifically under the 'new party' that became the ndp. Likewise, Trudeau's idealized consistency breaks down when we compare his writings on labour with his actions as prime minister. His early essays certainly portray workers' fundamental rights to representation and free collective bargaining as central elements in a democratic society, but as prime minister he was responsible for wage controls and other attempts to limit collective bargaining...