League For Social Reconstruction - Origins and Ideology

Origins and Ideology

The Canadian economy had boomed during the late 1920s and showed no sign of weakness, but during the 1930s the Great Depression swept across Canada and provoked mass unemployment, and this incited the LSR into action. The LSR believed that the roots of the Depression were laissez-faire capitalism and governance, and that the "free" market was anything but. Politicians worked closely with business, securing interest-free loans, developing tariffs, and managing labour disputes; in short: manipulating markets. A small group of political businessmen controlled public policy and economic development, and guided the centralization of finance and power into private hands. Widespread unemployment marked the Depression, and served to underscore financial inequity. In the eyes of the LSR, the problem facing Canada was not an economic Depression, it was a corrupt political economy.

Faced with what they believed to be profiteering politicians, a group of men and women were united in their resolve that this could not stand. Three key influences stood out among the members of this group: religious affiliation, maturation in an environ of war and urbanization, and intellectual cultivation in the university environment. These characteristics defined the group's ideals, and set them apart from other social groups as a new elite; an exclusive group of righteous intellectual radicals.

Believing the existing system was not practicable, the League set about establishing a new system. The solution to end this and all depressions would be a planned economy, and the transformation of Canada from a royal commonwealth into a socialist commonwealth. To achieve this transformation, the League planned to perform research, and apply the results toward public education and public policy. However, because the LSR believed that the system was not only corrupt but corruptive, the League planned to lay their foundations beyond politics. Public education would take the form of books and lectures, and influence over policy would be achieved through the institutionalization of expert intellectuals. Politicians would call upon the League's extra-political organization to perform research, and recommend policy. In this way, the League hoped to minimize partisanship, and influence government policy writ large. However, the ideals of the LSR found them working closest with one political party in particular, the avowedly socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, or CCF.