| Purchasing Submission | Short History of Quebec |
|---|---|
 |  |
On the plane, I read 2 books:
Philip Hamburger's Purchasing Submission. It makes many good points about an important issue, but I have reservations about some aspects of the argument. Still, I definitely recommend the book to anyone interested in the subject.
The second was this "Short History of Quebec," which I was inspired to read by following the recent Canadian election. It's not actually all that short (400 pp.), but for that very reason had a lot of interesting material. Unfortunately, I noticed a couple whoppers that make me wonder whether the book can be trusted on issues I don't know much about: 1) confusing the The Treaty of Paris (which ended the Revolutionary War) with the Treaty of Versailles (which ended World War I), and 2) claiming that the radical left of the 1960s was a movement of radical elements of the "working class" (in reality, it was mostly a movement of students and intellectuals).
There are some other very dubious statements, too. Some, like 2 above, seem the product of trying to shoehorn as much Quebec/Canadian history as possible into a class conflict model. The authors do devote considerable space to conflicts over language and nationalism, too (you can't avoid them in a history of Quebec). But it often feels like they view these issues as distractions from the class struggle (Marx felt the same way!). I hate ethnic nationalism as much as classical Marxists do (it's one of my few points of agreement with them). But it's a mistake to underestimate its influence on history.
To be clear, the authors aren't classical Marxists themselves (as far as I can tell). But they make some of the same types of errors. When and if time allows, I will try to find a more reliable overview of this topic.