Unlike most Smithians, I learned my first lesson in one of Adam Smiths crucial discoveries  the efficiency of the division of labour relative to an artisanal approach  by being told to break up a task into steps and complete each step before moving to the next one. My job at the time was to split up tubes of rock drilled from deep underground and package up half of the split tubes into rock samples to be sent to a lab. The other half of the rock tubes, or core samples, were to be put back in the 4- foot trays they came in and stored for further inspection by a geologist. The company I was with was looking for gold in the samples that they had ordered drilled, so if there was gold in that rock, we needed a copy of the samples themselves for further examination because the lab basically destroyed their half in the process of looking for pay metals. The samples that didnt bear a closer examination at the time were kept for archival purposes, and by convention would have to be passed to another mining company if the property from which they came from was sold by our company or otherwise transferred.

Before I was taken aside, I performed that chore as an independent would: writing a record in a small sample book with a detachable tag; splitting one metres worth of tube using a machine splitter; loading half of the sample into a clear hard-plastic bag and putting the other metres splitting back into the board tray; and then stapling the bag and putting it into a box with the appropriate tag. I was told, instead, to: write all the records for the chore first; split and bag each sample; and then staple and box them up all at once. This approach, I was assured, would save a lot of time, and the person that told me to divide up the labor this way was right. I did get the job done much more quickly.

Since I was alone, the adjustment of habit was easy; my unconscious mind could still entertain the fantasy that I owned the job. It was simple to convince myself that my old ways were symptomatic of inappropriate casualness, and that the only problem with dividing the labor was the resultant boredom.

Had others been brought in to do this job, though, I would have faced another reaction common among artisan types. The sight of another guy doing a part of my job might have led to me making invidious comparisons between myself and him (or her), whose source is the usual self- overgrading made by a person in their imagination. The same reaction of the family that staked out a vacation land 150 years ago, when farmland was all that it was good for, and who sees cottagers moving in to what was their land, at least de facto, might very well have been going through my brain had the job been split up in terms of people rather than time. Based upon that somewhat-less-than-high maxim: I was here first, boy!

The above is the root of anti-Smithism  a man that was king of the shop being elbowed into a corner of it and having to make a psychological adjustment through comparing himself to the new others  not necessarily for productivitys sake. You can probably interpret a lot of the standard workers gripes as the effect of the above psychological reaction.

This is well known in job management; a mature jobholder is expected to keep their hostility to the level of griping and get with the new program. And, of course, most guys do precisely that, even if the need to make those comparisons does call forth a demand for workers solidarity in the shop. But the underlying discomfort is still there.

Which creates a demand for none other than...liberal politics!

You have to come from a country where a lot of the populace is still isolated from almost all forms of mainstream entertainment to see this. It leads to the typical Canadian politician feeling obliged to put on a show for the constituents in the Canadian legislature  Parliament. They worry about their wit to the same level that a Briton broods over his or her sense of humor  probably more. The constituents need something to talk about, and back in the old days, Canadas formative days, there was absolutely nothing else coming in from the outside world on a regular basis.

The Liberal type tends to build on this political mitier, though. Instead of confining themselves to scintillating flashes of wit and fiery word-jousts, they build a large part of their platform upon those lingering resentments that the common man has to live with in his or her capacity as money-acquirer. Hence the Liberals penchant for combining theory and demagogy.

This is restrained in normal times by the fear of the other party catching them out. But every now and then, the Liberals luck into a landslide, and what their real approach to politics is, is revealed, along with their underlying contempt for conservatives. The two attitudes, combined, impel the Liberals to reveal their tricks most clearly when they face a cakewalk.

Such a situation exists at the inter-party level among the Canadian Liberals today. Instead of a horserace, the Canadian Liberal leadership convention is effectively a coronation of the front-runner, Paul Martin. Since he has already secured approximately 90% of the Liberal delegates votes, he can show his hand with no fear of being unseated from within his party. His fear of competition gone, he can let loose.

This is what the Martin Party is up to:

1. The Liberal Party delegates are being organized in a fashion similar to that of Americas electoral college: the party members vote for a delegate pledged to vote for a specific leadership candidate and those delegates that make it to the convention through winning the appropriate sub-election then vote the way they earlier specified to their members. This might be gladdening to an American, but the Liberals tend to be tacticians: if Martin wins a competitive edge by Americanizing the Canadian Liberals, then American liberals will see a corresponding opportunity in Canadianizing the Democratic Party. Given the current composition of liberal Democrat notables available, this means that a Martin victory in the next general election will whisper to the Democrats that John Kenneth Galbraiths model is the properly analagous way to go for the 04 election, or 08s. Galbraith is a Canadian expatriate, and his thought might be useful to the Democrats for other reasons, especially as a staunch to growing anti-Americanism in the world.
2. Martins propaganda presents Martin himself as an endomorph type  someone that can go anywhere and make enemies of none. His Website further portrays himself as both a hard worker and a fun thinker. This might be taken as a reliable example of how a Liberal that is assured of victory presents him-or herself to the voters: a winner as a person. The regular Jo (e) that dislikes his or her job is supposed to identify with such a candidate, and see the conservative side as representing the spoilsport boss type.
3. At the platform level, Martins position has to cohere with his image as a natural winner. The usual way this is done is to present the leader as an agent of progress, and to make the other side appear as churlish reactionaries. His particular take on this is to be seen as every Canadians friendly bailer-outer, with Canadas treasury standing behind his chequebook. His goal is to hold himself up as a line executive, and to make any good-government type look like a petty bean counter. As such, he has to work management techniques into his platform, which he has: his blunderbuss-style policy statements show this frequently. I should add that an empiricists approach tends to jibe with the image of a man thats on top of his job.
4. This implies that an audit of all government accounts  not a spot check, but a thorough job - citizen control of the Treasury  is todays equivalent of what a balanced budget was twenty-to-twenty-five years ago. The conservatives that take up this standard will face the usual Liberal jibes  although the spin will present the other side not as loud- mouth and sedentary coupon clippers, but as geeky quibblers who are the computer nerds permanent wannabees. This is the loser slot that the Martin team is maneuvering the conservatives into. If the American liberals go Canadian, then this is the type-cast that American conservatives might face.

This is how todays Liberal in Canada is playing him- and herself off against the market economy. Since their conception of progress consists of fueling the dreams of people who dislike their jobs, they will always have a trust- fund air to them.



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Email Daniel M. Ryan: danielmryan@sprint.ca

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