The Liberal Corporatist Ideas of Mackenzie King

Bibliographic Data

ID3981847
AuthorsReginald Whitaker (Carleton University, corresponding author)
Year1977
Volume2
Pages137
Publication date1977-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueLabour / Le Travail (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0700-3862 • E-ISSN: 1911-4842
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/25139900
OpenAlexW1668244447
LanguageEN
Citations received8

In 1904 the young deputy minister of labour, William Lyon Mackenzie King, was reading Sir John Willison's biography of the Prime Minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier. King noticed that after Laurier had become Liberal leader in the late 1880s, his speeches lost all originality and became mere repetition of the ideas of his youth. This is perhaps inevitable, King reflected, once launched as a leader the day for intellectual capital is Characteristi cally, King drew a personal moral: must learn this, I must learn now is the time to become prepared or the day will pass and the opportunity not be known.1 Fifteen years later, King became Laurier's successor as Liberal leader, and his own time for intellec tual capital accumulation was past. His subsequent record as Canada's most successful politician has tended to obscure from view the early King, whose general reputation among contemporaries was that of a bright young man with advanced ideas. Political biographers may argue about King's personality, but quite apart from this is an interest in what King did and said in these early years of gaining intellectual capital. More than twenty years ago Ferns and Ostry, in a pioneering attempt to uncover the ideologi cal thread which underlay his early activities, came to hostile yet strangely respectful conclusions.2 More recently the suggestion has

Political science · Sociology · Australian History and Society · Canadian Identity and History

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