PIERRE TRUDEAU AND TRUDEAUISME: FUNCTIONAL POLITICS AS QUÉBÉCOCENTRISME
Christopher Richard Wade Dettling (2018)
The American world is a double–edged sword, but when it cuts its cloth, it always errs on the side of reason.
Pierre Elliott Trudeau attacks the British imperialist élites of English and French Canada because “what is most lacking in French Canada is a positive philosophy of action.”¹ What is the necessity of a “positive philosophy of action” in the eyes of Trudeau? A positive philosophy of action, according to Trudeau, is the basis of political science (politique fonctionnelle), as opposed to magic, or ideology, — the Catholic Church’s opium of the masses: As the political and economic forces of autonomy and centralization, are we not rather the “phenomena of material existence (phénomènes d’espèce tellurique), controlled by an irresistible historical dynamism, and subjected to impersonal laws (subjectivity writ large) which have nothing to do with the moral categories of ‘good’ and ‘evil’?”² Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s Kantio–Hegelianism, borrowed from French existentialism, will be expanded throughout anglophone and francophone Canada, beginning in the 1960s, thanks to the work of Charles Margrave Taylor, a founder of the European New Left in Britain, and his erstwhile colleague at Cité Libre.
What utility is functional “political science” in Québec, à la Pierre Trudeau? Trudeauiste political “science” (une philosophie positive), under the category of French Canada, is the instrument of a “functional politics by which only a free city can be created, tailored to the dimensions of the masters (supervivants) that we French Canadians must become.”³ The old autonomy and centralization of the Industrial Revolution, “arbitrarily determined by a constitution made for another era”⁴ (British imperialism), must be undone. What is the meaning of the functional political and economic category of French Canada in the positivist “philosophy” of Pierre Elliott Trudeau? Functional politics means that Gaullist France, whether left or right, and la francophonie are at the very heart of Trudeauisme:
“Today, economic and fiscal theory is unanimous in postulating the need for (British imperialistic) centralization. The full employment of manpower and resources is impossible to secure without cyclical budgets, through which the state buffers inflationary and deflationary surges. Therefore, in the name of (British imperialistic) autonomy, a province should not be free to integrate into the cycle: For it would be inadmissible for a regional government to benefit from funds from other provinces in order to restore its own treasury, when we endeavor to fight a general crisis by heroic budget deficits. Monetary and banking theory (of British imperialism in Canada) also supports this.”⁵
Pierre Elliott Trudeau implies that his own Trudeauiste economic and fiscal theory of functional political autonomy is not unanimous in postulating the need for imperialistic centralization born from the Industrial Revolution. The full employment of manpower and resources is possible to secure with cyclical budgets, through which the state buffers inflationary and deflationary surges. Therefore, in the name of Trudeauiste autonomy, a province (Québec) should be free to integrate into the cycle: For it would be admissible for a regional government to benefit from funds from other provinces (asymmetrical federalism) in order to restore its treasury, when they try to stop a general crisis by heroic deficit budgets. The Trudeauiste monetary and banking theory of British imperialism in Canada also supports this doctrine of politique functionnelle. As the Trudeauiste delusion of French Canada, Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s Gallocentric “philosophy” of positivism reconciles the Industrial and French Revolutions under the outdated and surpassed Napoléonic and French Revolutionary category of right (functional political autonomy), in the tradition of modern European political and economic irrationalism, which is the fountainhead of Bonapartism in the arena of 20th century world history, — as autocracy founded upon popular consent, the power of the people and tyranny of the masses.
In Québec, Pierre Elliott Trudeau will espouse the cause of left–wing Gaullism, while in Ottawa he will advance the cause of right–wing Gaullism: The “philosophy” of Pierre Elliott Trudeau is not American Idealism, but rather the outdated and surpassed sophistry of Eurocentricism. This is a hard truth for many Canadians to swallow, especially in Eastern Canada, since nurtured over the years on the pablum of the inexact Trudeau philology of the Québécocentric media empire of Paul Desmarais, so–called “Canadian Culture”: Hagiologists such as Max and Monique Nemni, as well as John English, Robert Bothwell and company, concentrate on a small number of Trudeau’s publications in Cité Libre, while they ignore or neglect a vast number of works signed collectively, and especially those commissioned by Trudeau himself, while a leading member of the editorial board of the magazine.
Trudeauisme is modern European political and economic irrationalism: The Québécocracy is passing away in the American Idealistic world of today.
ENDNOTES
1. Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau, “Politique fonctionnelle,” Cité Libre, 1.1(juin, 1950): 20–24; 21: “Ce qui manque le plus au Canada français, c’est une philosophie positive de l’action.”
2. Trudeau, Ibidem, 23: “Pouvons–nous dire après cela que l’autonomie est bonne et que la centralisation est mauvaise? Ne s’agit–il pas plutôt de phénomènes d’espèce tellurique, commandés par un dynamisme historique irrésistible, et soumis à des lois impersonnelles qui n’ont rien à voir aux catégories morales de ‘bien’ et de ‘mal’?” [Italics added]
3. Ibidem, 24: “Il faut concevoir audacieusement cette politique fonctionnelle par quoi seule peut s’ériger une cité libre, faite aux dimensions des supervivants que nous voulons être.” [Italics added]
4. Ibidem, 22: “Ceux qui régissent une partie de nos activités s’imaginent pouvoir gouverner beaucoup plus sagement en contrôlant aussi l’autre partie (arbitrairement déterminée par une constitution faite pour une autre époque).” [Italics added]
5. Ibidem, 22: “La théorie économique et fiscale est unanime à postuler la nécessité de la centralisation. Le plein–emploi de la main d’oeuvre et des ressources est impossible à assurer sans des budgets cycliques, au moyen desquels l’État amortit les poussées tour à tour inflationnaires et déflationaires. Il ne faudrait donc pas qu’au nom de l’autonomie une province soit libre de ne pas s’intégrer au cycle: Car il serait inadmissible qu’un gouvernement régional profite, pour redorer son trésor, de fonds en provenance d’autres provinces, lorsque celles–ci tentent d’enrayer une crise générale par d’héroïques budgets déficitaires. La théorie monétaire et banquaire adonde aussi dans ce sens.” [Italics added]
©2018 Christopher Richard Wade Dettling, Pierre Trudeau and Trudeauisme: Functional Politics as Québécocentrisme. All rights reserved. This work is only for MEDIUM and the MEDIUM CORPORATION and its users: Users are not permitted to mount this writing on any network servers. No part of this writing may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the author, except for reading and browsing via the World Wide Web.
I wish to dedicate these ideas for a better Canada to my beloved wife, who loyally and lovingly supported me during decades of extreme hardship, and whose life was wrecked in a terrible automobile accident, a hit and run in which the perpetrator was never apprehended.
