Neoliberalism’s Failure and What the Left Must Do
2025 Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecturer Grace Blakeley sits down with Luke Savage in for a conversation on the failures of neoliberal capitalism and what the left must do if it is to win the working-class.
2025 Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecturer Grace Blakeley sits down with Luke Savage in for a conversation on the failures of neoliberal capitalism and what the left must do if it is to win the working-class.

Does the so-called green consumption of the “sustainability class” really work to help save us from climate catastrophe? Without challenging capitalism, can everyone afford the cost of living, reduce emissions, and achieve climate justice?

Public ownership of electricity has been one of the great progressive victories in Canadian history—a model that delivered high union density and good jobs for generations.

The 2025 Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture was delivered by Grace Blakeley, illustrating why neoliberal capitalism has overruled democracy and why we must organize to take back democratic power for the working-class.

‘May Our Joy Endure’ is a timely cultural intervention — a scathing yet beautifully crafted critique of Québec’s elite and the forces of gentrification.

While the ongoing cost-of-living crisis facing Canadians has been provoked by recent global events, the consolidation of the Canadian food system has been a long-running and strenuous process.

Regardless of one’s governing model, control over interjurisdictional capital flows is a necessary condition for genuinely democratic policy-making.

Volatile, short term and footloose private capital is supplanting stable, long-term public financing which is crucial for long-term economic and social development, and for climate investments.

Progressives should consider creating and developing their own “zones” for building democratic power, putting into practice social democratic values. Through these islands of social democracy, the diffusion of democratic power could be incubated and seeded to propagate widely as neoliberal systems wither and fail.


