With the latest NDP defeat we're besieged by well meaning arguments on how we can save the NDP or return it to a working class party. As if that were ever the case.
The NDP was founded as a union with the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) in 1961. Even then, both parent organizations routinely silenced revolutionary aspirations of their members with swarming clouds of labor aristocrats determined to censor liberatory momentum with the very same careerist management/consultant parasites that dominate the Labour to NDP pipeline today. Leading to the NDP's formation, the CCF had recently caved to the red scare and replaced their revolutionary Regina Manifesto (a creed that won medicare and more) to the reformist Winnipeg Declaration which fell flat other than the "achievement" of creating the of the NDP. More disappointing, the bodies which made up the CLC had a proud history of purging socialists opposed to the Marshall Plan or NATO (also supported by the CCF), while banning entire unions they deemed as too friendly to socialism or socialist states, and eagerly imitated the American Federation of Labor’s partnership with the CIA to quietly collude with the Canadian state to suppress liberatory organizing at home and abroad.
Born from such rot, it's little wonder the NDP has brought Canadians no closer to securing the most minimal human demands of peace, land, or bread. Even while they routinely win provincial governments, the legacy of each NDP regime continues the pattern of bourgeoisie lackeyism to enforce the status quo at any cost; their most radical members serving only to redirect liberatory energy for material change into immaterial rhetorical campaigns at best. A small tasting of the exhaustive proof that the party is no instrument of the masses features the following recent lowlights:
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Evidence internal party rules and bylaws are continuously rewritten to ensure no democratic movement from within the party can achieve momentum to challenge the leading aristocrats includes:
- Today, the party's top officials are literally lobbyists for everything from Airbnb to fossil fuels and banks.
- In 2022, the BC NDP held a secret meeting of anonymous executives to disqualify the trending grassroots leadership candidate.
- In 2021, ridings requesting to run grassroots candidates were ignored, with party designated candidates being dropped in without any connection or introduction to the individual riding.
- In 2021, it was noted by the grassroots Courage Coalition that only 13 of the 29 resolutions passed by the convention were added to the NDP policy book. The party already scraps up to 40% of member-submitted resolutions with no oversight, so to drop passed resolutions further raises accusations of gatekeeping.
- In 2021, unions were given a much higher allocation of delegate spots - even where union members were not NDP members and no debate was had on the motion. This is notable as union delegates are typically the most reactionary vote at conventions, often obstructing revolutionary programs from riding associations and general members.
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Evidence that even when ignoring subservience to capital at the provincial level, the federal party directly aids military aggression, imperialism, and often serves as a collaborative mouthpiece for the bourgeoisie at it's highest positions include:
- Today, the NDP continues a neoliberal imperialist foreign policy with positive positions on Palestine barely present after decades of militant organizing.
- In 2022, the party made an executive decision to enter into a Supply and Confidence agreement with the Liberal party despite the Liberal's track record of strike-breaking and betrayal of working class interests (which they did again by breaking the 2024 Canada Post Strike during the agreement without a material response from the NDP)
- In 2011, the NDP clamored to vote in favor of the bombing of Libya which led to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians.
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Evidence that the NDP participates in bourgeoisie cash for access schemes while also securing financing (and coinciding conflicts of interest) from banks and large donors rather than building a wide base of grassroots support:
- Today, the NDP hosts events with the required entry fee ranging from $400 to $1,725. A working class party should not be chasing big donors as this inevitably creates systemic pressures to ignore grass roots organizing and populist support.
- Today, the NDP (like all parties) takes out massive loans to finance election campaigns ($7 million in 2019, down from $22 million in 2015). This creates a conflict of interest between the banks and newly indebted MPs and party while the profit the banks make inevitably is invested in the most profitable industries: fossil fuels and war.
- In 2022, 20% of the total amount donated to the NDP came from donors giving $1000 or more.
If this is the cutting edge of Canadian class struggle, of course the Canadian worker remains insulated from class consciousness, still happy to bathe in the spoils of western imperialism and ongoing genocides of Indigenous populations backed by Canadian corporations from coast to coast to coast. Few question where their tax dollars go, fewer how their state pension grows.
From 2025 forward, that period of comfort comes to a slow and obvious end alongside the American hegemony that secured it. As the decline of American empire will continue to bring about shocks to the western economic system, it's our duty not to prop up the equally decaying liberal/social democratic structures that brought us here, but to escalate the jailbreak of masses restrained by such unscientific idylic thought. Socialism is a scientific method to assess and advance the means of production beyond the anarchy of markets and nature alike. Now is the time of monsters, and only we can save us.
If we truly seek to secure universal peace, land, and bread, our task is to elevate class-consciousness and bring that awareness to life through the establishment of rank-and-file formations rooted in the real conditions and needs of working people. We must reawaken to our responsibilities of directing unions into struggle, assemblies into decisive projects, and movements into action without asking for permission or participation from institutions with a vested interest in prolonging the status quo.
The people, and only the people, are the motive force of history. We must go to the masses, not to instruct them, but to learn and understand their needs to forge a revolutionary program from their conditions. We must form new organs of people's power: workers' councils, tenant unions, Indigenous-led land defense formations, and more configurations of class struggle independent from the ruling class.
Our task is clear: unite the scattered, awaken the sleeping, organize the willing, and struggle without compromise.
There are some already taking up this task, with the Communist Party of Canada being at the forefront, but we need more hands at the wheel and eyes on deck as we continue to chart what socialism with Canadian characteristics will look like.
What is the efficient implementation of mass-line process across Canada's complex communities? What is the efficient recipe for cadre education and self criticism? What is the efficient congress to bridge organizations with evolutionary momentum into a singular revolutionary movement?
Let New Democrats cling to their sinking vanity project. Let us build something new.
