Reformist Themes in the Canadian Labour Congress

Abstract

Among the studies that have been done on the working class in industrialized liberal capitalist societies, one finding remains consistent. It is that while manual workers may not be committed to the predominant values of capitalism, it does not necessarily follow that they embrace an opposing ideology (Nordlinger, 1967; McKenzie and Silver, 1968; Goldthorpe et al., 1968; Kornhauser, 1965; Richter, 1973; Mann, 1970,1973). In his comprehensive review of the research in Great Britain and the United States, Michael Mann concludes that there are two types of values widely endorsed by the working class: (a) values expressed in concrete terms corresponding to everday reality, and (b) vague simplistic divisions of the social world into rich and poor. There is, he claims, no real political philosophy uniting these themes (1970:436). Maurice Pinard (1971:95), in his study of voting behaviour in Quebec, extends this phenomenon further when he states that