Wage Labour and the Transition to Capitalism: A Critique of Pentland

This paper examines two basic conceptual flaws in H. Clare Pentland's influential history of the early Canadian working class, Labour and Capital in Canada, 1650-1850. First, Pentland's eclectic use of Marxist, staples thesis, and Weberian approaches makes for a fundamentally incoherent treatment of the subject. Second, focusing on "labour" (that is, waged labour) and "capital," Pentland neglects the central features of Canada's pre-capitaiist social formations: features such as the household economy of production and direct consumption, which had little to do with waged labour or capital. Because his understanding of pre-capitalist society is so defective, Pentland is unable to deal adequately with the transition to capitalism.