Stanley Brehaut Ryerson - Marxist Historian

Marxist Historian

Ryerson’s major contribution was as a Marxist historian and it was here that Ryerson was too find his voice. The Canadian bourgeoisie’s dismissal of Communism generally states that it is an alien importation and as such has no basis within Canadian society. By stressing the progressive nature of the Canadian past, the CPC hoped to prove the validity of its existence within Canadian society. During this period, numerous articles and pamphlets were published by the CPC, but it was not until the 1937 publication of Stanley Ryerson’s 1837-The Birth of Canadian Democracy, that the full Marxist analysis of the on the 1837 Rebellions would appear. 1837 should be viewed as a work of Marxist historiography written for a working-class audience and not for academia; since Ryerson wrote this book so it could be used as a weapon in the struggle of working people to build a qualitatively different and better world. Ryerson’s rationale for writing this book, as was the rationale for all his works, can be best summarised as an exploration of Canadian history with the hopes of educating the working-class, in a sense it was an exercise in the raising of class consciousness.

The choice of the title for this book is in itself an interesting by-product of the 1930s Popular Front activities of the CPC. Dedicated to the soldiers of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion fighting in the Spanish Civil War in defence of Republican Spain, this book was written in the hope of redefining the context of revolution. Ryerson referred to the cause of 1837 as the cause of democracy; his decision to place the word in the title of his book, was done with the hope of suggesting that this referred “to both bourgeois liberalism that will supplant the remnants of feudal oligarchy and the ultimate vision of equality in the classless society brought about by the proletarian revolution.” Doyle contended it was Ryerson’s aim to redefine “democracy,” and the way in which we refer to the events of 1837 and the idea of revolution in general.