Column: Simultaneously Socialist and Canadian? It seemed possible then.

By Charles Jeanes

March 24th, 2026

Column: Simultaneously Socialist and Canadian? It seemed possible then.

“Our movement began as an alliance of socialist farmers and workers. It’s a part of our DNA as the NDP and we are reconnecting with those roots. That’s why I’m so honoured to have the support of these remarkable agriculture leaders against corporate control of our food system. This campaign is about rebuilding our party for every community, including farming communities where the CCF quite literally grew out of the soil.” — Avi Lewis, NDP leadership candidate

[My prophecy: he will win]

A socialist song (1915) https://canadianlabour.ca/history-post-with-tag/

Solidarity forever! (3 times)
For the union makes us strong. [chorus#*]

When the union’s inspiration through the workers’ blood shall run,
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,
Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite,
Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?
Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight? # *

It is we who plowed the prairies; built the cities where they trade;
Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid;
All the world that’s owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone.
We have laid the wide foundations; built it skyward stone by stone.
It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own. #*

They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.
We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn
In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
Greater than the might of armies, multiplied a thousand-fold.
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old. #*

[Note: some lines were omitted to emphasize the socialist over the unionist message]

Introduction

Canada has had a Socialist Party, and a few Communist Parties; they followed orthodox Marxian patterns. [see Appendix * 1] They still do.

Canadians’ truly original contribution, to the world history of the political Left and a theory of just social order and wealth-sharing, was the C.C.F. – Co-operative Commonwealth Federation.

I mourn this Party is long gone, lost when a new party – with weakened principles – absorbed it. The CCF is linear grandfather of today’s NDP: the NDP did not become in my opinion the party it is meant to be, and failed to evolve the promises of the CCF as a force for a better social, cultural, political, and economic order in Canada.

When Canada made a contribution to world Socialism

I wish to celebrate, review, and draw conclusions, from the history of this lost party, and grieve, for the sake of Canada, it did not endure in its original form. I’d prefer the old CCF back, intact.

The CCF was not Marxian, not Leninist, not Stalinite nor Trotskyite, and not, in important ways, beholden to European models. It was, in one word, Canadian. A Canadian Leftist invention with spiritual and idealist content. Today the CCF is a museum artifact; that’s my grievance.

With eerie timing, just as I write this Arc, Lori Idlout, NDP MP in the House of Commons, quit her party, ‘crossed the floor’, and is now ‘a Liberal MP.’ Idlout leaves the NDP with 6 members in the Commons; this seat count is lower than any the CCF held while it existed for 26 years as a federal party. https://nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/ndp-plans-to-rebuild-from-grief-idlout-says/

The NDP has been underwhelming lately. It has done outstanding work when it held the balance of power; at the moment, it struggles for survival. The NDP’s new leader – I predict Avi Lewis – is to be chosen by members at month’s-end.

CCF’s Manifesto: federated and cooperative [see* 2] Common-wealth

The CCF founded itself with a thorough description of its blueprint for a Canada where equality, justice, and shared wealth, were the cornerstones.

At Regina in 1933, in the midst of a global capitalist crisis provoked by the Wall Street Crash of 1929, in the Dirty Thirties of misery, hunger, and desperation, the new party unequivocally concluded its Manifesto with this sentence: “No CCF Government will rest content until it has eradicated capitalism and put into operation the full programme of socialized planning which will lead to the establishment in Canada of the Cooperative Commonwealth.” [emphasis added]

It was structured as a unified-not-centralized “federation of organizations.” The ultimate goal was to rule Canada, to form our national government — electing MPs to Ottawa’s House of Commons sufficient to form a majority in the Commons. Why? to legislate an end to capitalism. Socialism would replace amoral capitalism, socialism rationally planned. [Please peruse the Manifesto.] Legislation, not revolution, was the means to the end of a socialist Commonwealth.

Also important: co-operatives, not unions, were the CCF’s anchor for the new order. Unions do not aim to eradicate capitalism but to negotiate to get more money from it. Unions engage in labourist politics.

[https://canadianworker.coop/about/what-is-a-worker-co-op/ explains a worker co-op.]

The difference between union and co-operative is essential to understand. The death of the CCF in its merger with the Canadian Labour Congress political section in 1961, was the victory of mere labour-unionist principles over co-operative socialist ones. That is an error of fundamental principle, the focus of my distaste for NDP politics. Understand: I want the original CCF back.

The word “Common-wealth” in the party name, laying emphasis on economic justice, was also deeply significant; the party asserted “capitalism is immoral.”

The Federal Principle: the significance of Provinces in the CCF

The most important feature of the CCF was its insistence on regional parties as the path to national power with a federation of parties. The strategy of uniting federated parties did manage to succeed insofar as BC, Ontario, and Manitoba branches became the Official Opposition.

[In BC and Manitoba today, the successor to the CCF – the NDP – holds power as government; it has held power in Alberta recently (Premier Rachel Notley). It once ruled Ontario. In Atlantic Canada: https://thewalrus.ca/the-ndp-is-hoping-for-a-breakthrough-in-atlantic-canada/ ]

The Party ideal was, each Canadian Province would have a CCF branch or equivalent social-democratic party (such as United Farmers in Ontario and Alberta, parties now departed. https://www.britannica.com/topic/United-Farmers-Party )

All these regional parties united in a Federation for a Cooperative Commonwealth.

The greatest CCF success was in Saskatchewan. Tommy Douglas became Premier in 1944, and introduced public health care; later, as an NDP MP at Ottawa, he was instrumental in the creation of the Liberal government’s 1966 public healthcare act under Lester Pearson. (The CCF by then had disappeared.)

Douglas is revered by many; his idealism was rooted in Baptist Social Gospel.

What were ‘the Dirty Thirties’ in Canadian History?

If one doesn’t understand the sad history of Canada between the world wars, (1918-39) one cannot grasp why the CCF existed nor the context of its ideals. One should read about this period; please read it in Pierre Berton’s book, The Great Depression. Berton was angry when he learned of governments’ lack of empathy to ensure the poorest Canadians survived with dignity.

[“Interspersing the narrative with earlier quotes by both Bennett and King about the danger of spending public money for the common good, Berton demonstrates his genuine contempt for those former Canadian leaders… Berton says that he did not set out to write a political tract—”It’s not a left-wing book, but you can’t write a book about the Depression without being considered left-wing, because the right-wingers were in charge, and they bungled it.” He added, “Those are the facts; it’s about time this book was written.” https://www.enotes.com/topics/pierre-berton/criticism/criticism/victor-dwyer-review-date-10-september-1990 ]

The Party and its critics

The CCF was steadfastly non-violent, refusing Revolution and declaring evolution by constitutional, parliamentary methods, was its goal. Socialists and Communists of the orthodox Marxian tradition disdained the CCF. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/50/article/242320/pdf

Anti-Communists also treated the CCF with derision and disrespect in the 1930s. Fear of Bolshevism of the Stalinist and Troskyite types drove this.

The CCF was pacifist at a time when Canada was quite ready to make war; WWII meant the CCF faced serious accusations that its members lacked “true patriot love.” The Canadian national anthem demands this: “O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all of us command”.

[see also this essay on the Canadian Left https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/canadas-socialist-legacy ]

The CCF and Christian teachings [see* 10]

Let it be said baldly that the CCF, despite publications that say little about it, was profoundly shaped by deep-set Christian principles of both leadership and membership in 1933. Its founders were openly, proudly, pious Christians. The CCF laid emphasis on the Social Gospel “building what was called the Co-operative Commonwealth, a new society in which the exploitation inherent in the capitalist system would be replaced by the ideal of Christian brotherhood.” [ https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/14/the-canadian-social-gospel-1880-1960/#:~:text=the%20social%20gospel?-,What%20is%20the%20social%20gospel?,in%20the%201930s%20and%201940s.

One other group in the world shared the spiritual orientation of the CCF: the Fabian Socialists of England; Fabians were artists and intellectuals, never essaying popular vote-mobilization, parliamentary activism, or electoral office.

Some priests disliked the CCF; its socialist language alienated the Church in Quebec where the clergy assumed it was Marxian therefore atheistic.

[ https://cchahistory.ca/journal/CCHA1963/Ballantyne.pdf e.g. “The second opinion reached by the committee is that a danger exists that the policies of the CCF tend toward loss of liberty and possible totalitarianism.” – RC clerical opinion]

( Four prominent CCF leaders were clergymen: J. S. Woodsworth, T. Douglas, W. Irvine, R. Connell. )

“Moderation” – or, Retreat from the Manifesto [see* 3]

In 1956, capitalist readers will be happy to know, the CCF had to disavow its radicalism, rewriting its former clear proclamation (enmity to capitalism) in a moderated form. The CCF retreated from asserting the end of capitalist order: “The CCF will not rest content until every person in this land and in all other lands is able to enjoy equality and freedom, a sense of human dignity, and an opportunity to live a rich and meaningful life as a citizen of a free and peaceful world.” The party was strategizing its image for an election in 1957.

And with this retreat, the CCF unraveled. It lost a lot of MP’s in the 1958 federal election, and soon the party was absorbed in 1961 into Labour.

Electoral Collapse: defeat leads to disappearance

CCF candidates ran in seven federal elections – 1935, ’40,’45,’49,’53, ’57,’58 – with these results in the number of its MPs: 7, 8, 28, 13, 23, 25, 8. With 25 seats in the Commons in the 1957 election, the party had reached a zenith of popular support and seemed poised for further advance. John Diefenbaker won the 1957 contest for the Progressive Conservatives, with a strong base in Prairie populism. Diefenbaker went to the polls again in 1958, and the CCF fell disastrously to only 8 MPs in the Commons, its last election before dissolving in a merger.

Decline and Disappearance: submerged in a New Party, 1961

The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), the congress devoted to specific interests of organized, unionized, urban, industrial, proletarian workers, wanted a Canadian party modeled on the Labour Party in the United Kingdom. CLC is devoted to unions. Its labourist politics aren’t socialist.

The CCF, a party with more varied social roots than “the working class” and with socialist goals, agreed to form a new party that meant the CCF must merge with labour-union politics. Tommy Douglas, the CCF leader, became NDP leader, understanding the CCF had lost an identity in the merger, willing to let labourism dominate the new party. Douglas’ surrender to CLC politics isn’t approved by all, and I for one criticize the choice he made in 1961. [ See https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2019/07/08/Moderate-NDP-Has-Not-Worked/ ]

The New Democratic Party: loss of CCF socialist content

As I said at the outset, the CCF was a party deserving of endurance, persisting as its own form of social-justice political institution. Other people saw things quite differently in 1958-61; the party was absorbed into the NDP. The new party was inspired by uninspiring perspectives, looking to English models of how the “working class” ought to mobilize for parliamentary electoral politics. [to read a fierce attack on Labourism in the UK, see https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/01/06/labour-has-almost-nothing-to-do-with-socialism-and-its-religion-is-mediocrity/]

European ‘socialist’ models, of which England’s Labour Party is a variety, have run out of possibility for improving society – Progress, as Marx would say. They can’t build socialism.

I would still love to see Europe embrace the Nordic social model, and Canada too. Capitalism is alive and well among the Nordics, but it is regulated much better, and disciplined to be responsive to human needs, with humane values, in a way that our capitalists ridicule. https://lanekenworthy.net/sdc-generalizable/#:~:text=The%20successful%20outcomes%20we%20observe,adopt%20social%20democratic%20capitalist%20policies.

Marxian mistakes, socialist enfeeblement

My diagnosis of the reason Marxists failed in Europe is this: Marx and his sharp analyses were time-sensitive politics, theories and practices bound to become obsolete; circumstances evolved in ways Marx did not foresee. He failed as prophet; he succeeded wildly as Father of Revolution in the sense that a multitude of parties modelled on Lenin’s and Mao’s Marxian Parties were established in many states in the 20^th century, and seized power, and ruled. Lenin made revolution in Russia, an underdeveloped society where capitalism was feeblest, so the USSR experimental order consequently failed, lasting merely 73 years (1918-91). Marx confidently said socialism would replace capitalism, a process determined by natural socio-economic motion, i.e. that this was “a scientific-historical Law.” Marx loved Science!

If one had to pinpoint an area of Marxian thought that was least accurate about the evolution of politics after Karl Marx, I would opine that his intangible subject – “consciousness” – is where he most misunderstood human being. A proletariat such as he foresaw, never existed.

What Marx believed, but what never came true, was this: the “proletariat” would become a “class-conscious” force and understand its “world-historical role” to bring a Revolution; the dictatorship of the proletariat would end capitalist rule and create social justice because workers were the vast majority of humans and sheer democratic numbers would determine who ruled.

Capitalism has unfolded and complexified in ways Marx did indeed understand and describe. But he erred in his vision that a united class of conscious working people politically well-organized (mobilized by communists who applied his theory) would overthrow capitalists and establish a “dictatorship of the proletariat” and finally bring an end to the State.

(This is the famous “withering away of the State” in the phrase of Friedrich Engels: “The state is not “abolished”, it withers away. (German: Der Staat wird nicht „abgeschafft“, er stirbt ab.,lit. ’The state is not “abolished”, it atrophies.’)

The class-conscious proletariat did not appear. Modern and post-modern capitalist societies in the West, the civilization Marx loved and exalted, have no such working class.

Labourism of the Canadian Labour Congress variety is the politics of getting a bigger share of capitalist profit for workers; it is not social-justice politics, it is not socialist, and it maintains capitalism. The CCF wanted to end capitalism. In my opinion, that is still the goal of politics for a better humanity.

Conclusions

As I indicated, my wish is to change history in this regard, to preserve the historical evolution of a unique Canadian path to socialism begun 90 years ago; I would have the CCF still in being and still attached to the principles of 1933. I would have the CCF still attempting to be more than “working-class” in its appeal. The idealism and spiritual values of the party deserved to endure.

Changing history not a possibility, so I must move to a pragmatic view and endorse the NDP despite my reservations. It is better than the other two. Canada and Canadians have demonstrably benefited from a third party as a balance-of-power-holder to the mainstream parties who have always governed. The CCF and Progressives demonstrated that balance-of-power tactics work in a minority Parliament. And it makes perfect sense for the NDP to be that third party again, after some more time as a small, unnoticed but not negligible quantity in the House of Commons. Not in the next election, but in the one after, the NDP will return to prominence as the third option.

A call goes out to Canada

It comes from out the soil—

Come and join the ranks through all the land

To fight for those who toil

Come on farmer, soldier, labourer,

From the mine and factory,

And side by side we’ll swell the tide—

C.C.F. to Victory.

(CCF song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTYSiDpXRiM )

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Appendix: historical documents/essays