R. JAMES SACOUMAN / Acadia University

Uneven capitalist underdevelopment in the rural
Maritimes has occurred largely through the 'semi-
proletarianization' of domestic relations of petty
primary production. Productive members of the
family unit have been reduced to a partial proletarian
status. The domestic mode of production has been
increasingly truncated to increase exploitation of the
domestic petty producer unit itself and to maintain
'cheap' reproduction of a relative surplus popula-
tion. This process of semi-proletarianization ex-
plains not only the traditional view of the rural Mari-
times as peripheralized holding areas for capitalist
development elsewhere; it also explains the reality of
the rural Maritimes as traditional centres of petty
producer protest and as increasingly important cen-
tres of working-class action.

The status of the Maritimes, and of Atlantic Canada
in general, as less developed than the rest of Canada
can be readily illustrated (e.g., Canada, Department
of Forestry, 1964). ¹ Although various economic,
geographical, social and historical approaches have
been used to explain the problem (for reviews see
Archibald, 1971 :101-5; Brym and Sacouman,
1979 : 'Introduction'), the non-Marxist approach
which is currently in vogue views post-
Confederation Maritime underdevelopment as pri-
marily the result of unfair federal state policy deci-
sions ( Acheson, 1977; Forbes, 1975; 1977; 1979;
McNiven, 1978).

Acheson argument ( 1977 ), for example, accepts
in principle the classical version of the metropolis-
hinterland staples theory of Canadian economic
growth (e.g., Creighton, 1956; Innis, 1954; 1956;
Lower, 1938; 1973), which posits hinterland staple-
based economic development within reciprocal me-
tropolis-hinterland relationships, given favourable
geographical and technological circumstances. But
it also incorporates a left revision of the staples-
growth thesis which emphasizes locked-in staple
dependence, given utter external dominance (see
Laxer, 1973; Watkins, 1967). Acheson argues
(1977:87-108) that the Maritimes had developed a
rather substantial wood and fish staple-related eco-
nomic base under the 'open society' of pre-
Confederation British-Maritime and US-Maritime
metropolis-hinterland relations; under the first dec-
ade of tariff protection provided by the federal
government (the 1880s), indigenous manufacturing
and banking enterprises in the Maritimes flourished
briefly but were rapidly consolidated, run down and/
or shut down by Toronto and Montreal-centred
capital (see, especially, Acheson, 1972):

By 1914 the Maritimes had become a branch plant
economy [of central Canada] ... In many respects
this nationalization of industry, banking and rail-
ways was a necessary pre-condition for the protec-

-232-