- Why Does Canada Develop Megaprojects Instead of Innovation Systems? – Brendan Haley
- False Promises and Economic Reconciliation – Anna Stanley
- Do Neoliberals Dream of AI Growth? – Madison Lee
- The Ground Game is Not Enough, the NDP Needs Courage – Rachel Loewen Walker
- Requiem for the Waffle? – David Coaker
- League for Social Reconstruction: Intellectual Foundations of the Canadian Left – James Adair
- Market Socialism Against Capitalism – Bhaskar Sunkara
In his newly released book Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization without Political Consequences (Verso, 2026), historian Anton Jäger briefly analyzes today’s sense that while “everything is political,” change seems so challenging to the point of nihilism; a sentiment that today, as before, fuels far-right ideologies. A chapter entitled ‘Putnam from the Left’ regards the liberal US political scientist Robert Putnam and his argument that the decline in so-called “social capital” (I would summarize as society’s system of trust, norms of reciprocity, and networks that pad social relations between strangers) has been responsible for the decline in collective action, and democracy as a collective act. While Putnam pins things down to the “individualization” caused by technology (from the television to the Internet) for the decline in “voluntary associations” (such as bowling and other sports clubs) that lend to collective action, there is a large material element missing from his argument that does not account for capitalism’s imperative to suppress wages and labour power.
Today, the right-wing is winning elections around the world, super charged by frustration, while inequality reaches unprecedented proportions, inflation eats into the wages of the working class, and Tech Giants further erode social relations by expediting distrust on a mass and fast scale. At the time of writing, two contested elections in Peru and Colombia see the left losing to far-right candidates by 1% of voters. The electoral choice in several democracies across Europe has become a decision between the centre-right and the far-right. While there are islands of progress in the United States, the US Trump Administration continues to entrench right-wing shifts in institutions across the federal government, from ICE to the Federal Reserve to the Department of War. Canada is not immune to this trend. In one year, the Carney government has implemented a policy agenda of tax cuts, privatization, accelerated military spending, and increased public capital investment in resource extraction, moving the big tent right-ward to capture the economic agenda of the 2003 alliance between Tory conservatism and right-wing populism. Today, right-wing public policy in Canada does not need Conservative Party representation to prevail.
This is the result of a decades-long effort of building ‘Putnam from the Right’ that has established the trust, norms, and networks for electoral success to legitimize their rule among the electorate. In a remark regarding this undertaking and the right-ward shift of the ideological centre, popularly attributed to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher,: “We forced our opponents to change their minds.” Canadian historian Quinn Slobodian’s 2025 Hayek’s Bastards (Princeton University Press) and historian A.J.A. Woods’ The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy (Verso, 2026) detail the great lengths that the right-wing, in reaction to the post-war welfare state and the 1968 watershed, developed international networks of thinkers, organizers, and media to reinforce their ideologies. Allied with industrial interests, religious traditionalists, and intellectual elites, these systems have matured since the mid-20th century while left-wing institutions failed, were defeated, or have been reborn in the 21st century as exciting, but nascent and inexperienced, social movements without institutional foundations. As highlighted by David Adler at the 2026 Progress Summit, the right-wing is not short on financial capital to organize and legitimize rule through a different kind of hyperpolitics, weaponizing dissatisfaction into outward anger directed away from capital itself. The left’s hyperpolitics today, however, have succumbed to an inward weltschmerz, driven by economic individualization, despite a desire for collective action.
The Canadian left needs confidence, a feeling of trust and certainty in self and in others, to restart from scratch and learn to use this hyperpolitical moment. The 2026 Ellen Meiksins Wood Prize was delivered by Jacobin Magazine founder Bhaskar Sunkara on April 22nd at Toronto Metropolitan University on what socialism for the 21st century should look like. This year’s public lecture was sponsored by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung – New York Office – a partnership honouring Meiksins Wood and her socialist intellectual legacy.
A 2020 Jacobin interview with Zohran Mamdani entitled ‘Roti and Roses for All’ connects his worldview to his initial run for New York State Assembly. Despite being 28 years old at the time, starting from scratch, his initial campaign confidently uses history to assert a universal message:
That’s why our slogan is “Roti and Roses,” building off the labor chant of the early twentieth century in Massachusetts where they said they were fighting for “Bread and Roses” — for that which is necessary to survive, and that which is necessary to thrive. We call it roti and not bread to make clear that while this is a universal cause, we’re also making sure to highlight the struggles of specific communities that have been left out in the cold for decades.
In his Lecture, Sunkara offers a continuation to that universalist conclusion and historicization:
Those who participated in almost any wing, even the most reformist, of the workers’ movement, from the first international through the 1980s, thought that they were at the vanguard of history itself. In an age that has taught us to mistrust every grand narrative, to settle for lesser evils, to treat the existing order as the furthest horizon our imagination is permitted to even think of, we can look to these workers for confidence. We can look to them for the confidence that we have to recover: a confidence in a socialism that no longer speaks merely in terms of election campaigns and small protests, but in the language of centuries and continents.
The 6th edition of Perspectives Journal includes Sunkara’s lecture, entitled ‘Market Socialism Against Capitalism’ that demonstrates a new vision for building economic democracy.
In an assessment of the current state of economic democracy in Canada, Broadbent Research Fellow Brendan Haley asks, “Why Does Canada Develop Megaprojects Instead of Innovation Systems?” Looking back at the Staple Thesis of Canada’s economic development as revised by political economist Mel Watkins, Haley looks for a way out of the historical trend of “nation-building” megaproject path dependency, and towards a sustainable economy where economic democracy has a role to play.
Following this thread, Broadbent Research Fellow Anna Stanley analyzes the capital investments behind the Ring of Fire land grab in Ontario. Akin to speculative bubbles in housing and technology markets, the financialized “gold rush” for lands in Northern Ontario seeks to ignore Indigenous rights, with the complicity of provincial and federal governments, in the name of “nation-building” for economic growth.
Madison Lee, PhD candidate at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, also looks at Canada’s neoliberal model and the dream of AI-led economic growth that rests largely on speculation. Lee analyzes the industry interests behind Canada’s hastily assembled 2025 AI Strategy Taskforce and questions the priorities and objectives behind the Carney government’s attempt to regulate the technology.
Building off the Perspectives Journal special issue no. 5 and the confidence needed to rebuild Canada’s electoral left, Rachel Loewen Walker revisits the 2025 federal election and the strategic focus on “ground game.” Loewen Walker finds that even a well-oiled organizing machinery could not succeed without a confident narrative of progressive change that led conversations on doorsteps across the country.
Looking back, David Coaker discusses the continued impact of the short-lived “Waffle” movement within the New Democratic Party that provided answers to the crises of the 1960’s and 70’s. The intellectual movement led by Watkins, of the aforementioned Staples Thesis, and James Laxer was nearly successful in organizing a confident left-wing movement, but was foiled by collective anxiety over the ambition of this program. Today, the irony of an Avi Lewis-led NDP and the Waffle-like values of his 2026 leadership campaign is certainly not lost on many, but the next generation does have an opportunity to realize its confidence.
Lastly, James Adair brings forward the 1930’s League for Social Reconstruction; an important intellectual institution of the Canadian left that gave the Canadian Co-operative Federation the confidence to establish itself amid the Great Depression. Adair calls to rebuild this left-wing ecosystem of institutions that shape public discourse and help build a socialist movement. Conveniently, there are historical templates with which to follow.
This print edition of the Perspectives Journal could not have been made possible without the generous contribution of the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung – New York Office. RLS is an internationally operating, progressive nonprofit organization dedicated to civic education and critical social analysis. Building on Ed Broadbent’s legacy of internationalism through his own leadership of the Socialist International and International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development (Rights & Democracy), the Broadbent Institute is grateful for RLS-NYC’s partnership on delivering Canadian thought leadership through Perspectives Journal.
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About Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung – New York Office
Founded in Berlin in 1990, RLS is one of the six major political foundations in the Federal Republic of Germany, primarily tasked with conducting political education both domestically and internationally.
The New York Office, part of this global network of more than 20 regional and country offices collaborating with hundreds of partners worldwide, serves as RLS’s strategic base for engagement with multilateral institutions and progressive actors across the United States and Canada.
