Reclaiming Democracy: The Social Justice and Political Economy of Gregory Baum and Kari Polanyi Levitt

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, Chile and the Nazis, and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of
Korea.

Gregory Baum is a former Roman Catholic priest who found his church too
reactionary. Kari Levitt gained fame with her 1970 book, Silent
Surrender, in which she deplored Canadians’ indifference to the loss
of control over their own economy. Both came to Canada as young
fugitives from Nazi-dominated Europe. This book consists of essays in
honour of these two McGill professors with huge social consciences. Both
Baum and Levitt contributed essays, and distinguished scholars from
Canada, the Caribbean, and Africa wrote the rest.

The essays are clear and profound. Amid other topics, Ursula Franklin
of the University of Toronto offers a strong case against the Allied
bombing of civilians during World War II. Denis Goulet of Indiana’s
Notre Dame University advises, “Religion’s most important mission
... is to keep hope alive.” Arvind Sharma, a Hinduism scholar from
McGill, questions whether human dignity and human rights are Western or
universal ideas. Carolyn Sharp from St. Paul’s University in Ottawa
discusses “The Catholic Left in Quebec,” with which Baum has
retained ties.

As Levitt has written extensively on the Caribbean and one of her
co-writers was Lloyd Best of the University of the West Indies in St.
Augustine, Professor Best’s expression of appreciation suggests that
she truly is a “West Indian from East Europe.” Best reviews their
collaboration as co-researchers. Norman Girvan, another professor from
Toronto, discusses Levitt’s contribution to critical thought in the
Caribbean. Pessimistically, he sees Jamaica as “imploding,” while
illiteracy is growing.

Mel Watkins, one of the half-dozen most prominent Canadian nationalists
of the 1960s and early 1970s, notes that decades ago, Levitt was
sympathetic to Quebec nationalism. Indeed, Jacques Parizeau wrote a
preface to the French-language edition of Silent Surrender. However,
says Professor Watkins, because Quebec nationalists supported free
trade, which English-speaking Canadian leftists opposed, “almost no
one in English Canada now supports Quebec’s national project.”

Finally, Samir Amin from Senegal offers a critique of capitalism, which
he says promotes inequality, and praises socialism.