It is widely acknowledged that the Canadian economy was a model of economic stability among Western nations during the Great Recession of 2008. What is far less well understood, however, is the extent to which Canada's stability through the crisis was a consequence of its broader integration in the network of global capitalist relations over the course of this period. The Servant State: Overseeing Capital Accumulation in Canada offers a refreshingly unique perspective on the crisis, using the Marxist method of inquiry to explore how the Canadian economy managed to maintain liquidity in times of global uncertainty.

In order to explore how Canada survived the Great Recession, McCormack and Workman argue that we must consider it in the context of the trajectory of capitalist relations. The Servant State makes the case that the stability of the Canadian economy after the crash of global financial markets can be explained by a growing mass of profit from 1993 to 2008. Fifteen years of consistent accumulation and profitability in the years leading up to the crisis allowed companies to make use of large reserves of cash to service their debts to banks and to mobilize as capital.

The authors address three common explanations about the Canadian approach to the crisis management. First, although stringent banking regulations are often cited as the central explanation for Canada's stability during the crisis, McCormack and Workman argue that the store of capital built up during the prosperous years prior to 2008 allowed the Canadian economy to endure the global slowdown with considerable strength relative to other nations. Second, the authors make the case that although Alberta is commonly thought of as acting as the spine of the Canadian economy through the Great Recession, this explanation is also overstated. Although Alberta's energy sector played a significant role, the mass of profit built up throughout the broader Canadian economy in the years prior to the crisis created the conditions necessary for the accumulation of capital even after the international credit system began to adopt more restrictive lending practices.

Third, while the Harper government rarely missed an opportunity to take credit for steering Canada through the recession, this too was an exaggeration. The stimulus plan encouraged some investment, but it was not a major factor in stabilizing the economy. To this end, McCormack and Workman claim that the credit given to the Conservative government for overlooking their ideological prejudices to pass Keynesian-era stimulus measures is misplaced. The government's decision, they claim, was in fact profoundly political, in that government intervention in the economy was primarily about “preserving the conditions for the accumulation of capital and maintaining social order” (38).

The authors argue that the most significant impact of the crisis has been to legitimize a more aggressive application of neoliberalism. The Harper government sought to address declining international demand through trade liberalization policies throughout Asia and Europe. It also expanded the temporary foreign workers program, tightened employment insurance regulations and rolled back the rights of labour unions to organize in an effort to control the wage bill for capital. McCormack and Workman demonstrate that although wages did increase slightly in the post-crisis period after stagnating for most of the neoliberal era, this has been accompanied by an extension of the working day and an increase in reliance upon multiple part-time jobs. This “hidden agenda of austerity,” however, only serves to deepen the contradictions of capitalism by placing its crisis tendencies in a temporary state of abeyance while at the same time eroding the state apparatus that serves to dull its sharp edges (97).

In the final chapters, the authors argue that a shift in the balance of class forces towards the interest of capitalism in recent years has resulted in precarity for an increasingly sizeable portion of the population. They conclude that the only way to emancipate the majority of society from declining standards of living is to move beyond the crisis tendencies of the capitalist mode of production. The march towards a more inclusive social order, however, is obstructed by a mainstream left that, they argue, has become more concerned with electability than transformational change.

In this concisely written book, McCormack and Workman offer a much needed critical analysis of the economic crisis in Canada, dispelling a number of commonly held myths about its exceptionalism in the process. While Canada managed to navigate choppy economic waters better than most Western nations, it was as a result of robust economic growth in years leading up to the crisis, rather than political clairvoyance.

The authors warn that although Canada was fortunate to have a sufficient store of capital to survive the Great Recession of 2008, it is unlikely to be so well positioned for the next market crash. We are left to ponder an uncertain future in which the majority of Canadians will be forced to weather a much deeper economic crisis with a weakened social safety net and few meaningful political alternatives to neoliberalism.