Avi Lewis and the NDP: Why Democratic Socialism Isn’t Enough for Me

Avi Lewis is the new leader of the federal NDP.

I watched his victory speech. I heard him say the words we don’t usually hear from federal politicians. He talked about the “one per cent.” He talked about public ownership. He talked about the cost of living emergency being driven by extreme wealth.

For a moment, I felt something I don’t feel often in Canadian politics: a flicker of recognition.

He sounded like one of us. He sounded like the arguments we’ve been making for years—that the system isn’t just malfunctioning, it’s working exactly as designed for the people at the top. That capitalism itself is the problem.

But then the feeling passed. Because I’ve watched this play out before. A new face comes along, promising to shake the foundation, only to discover that the foundation is made of reinforced steel designed to crush anyone who tries to dig too deep.

Lewis is a democratic socialist. I am a revolutionary socialist.

We are opposed to the same system. But we fundamentally disagree on how it can be defeated.

The Anti-Capitalist Rhetoric We’ve Been Waiting For

Let’s give credit where it’s due. Lewis didn’t run on “affordability” like it’s a weather event. He named the structure.

He said what federal politicians almost never say plainly: “The cost of living emergency is driven by the extreme wealth and power in the hands of the one per cent.”

That is a statement of class war. It is anti-capitalist. When he talks about publicly owned grocery stores, telecoms, housing, and pharmaceuticals, he is rejecting the foundational logic of the market. He is questioning the idea that the essentials of life should be organized around profit in the first place and leveraged by oligopolies.

He wants a Green New Deal. He wants a wealth tax.

By the standards of Canadian federal politics, that is a thunderclap.

I welcome it. I genuinely do.

Because if the NDP under Lewis can shift the Overton window—if they can make “public ownership” a dinner table conversation instead of a radical slur—then he is doing the work of clearing the brush for the rest of us.

A Voice That Sounds Familiar

If you’ve been reading here for a while, you know this isn’t new ground for me. The Enough is Enough series has been saying the same thing: the corporate stranglehold on our essentials has to end. Public ownership isn’t a radical fantasy. It’s the only way out of a system designed to bleed us dry.

Lewis didn’t borrow that from me, of course. But when a federal leader stands on a stage and says what we’ve been saying in these pages—that the groceries you buy, the roof over your head, and the medicine you need should not be commodities for the wealthy—you pay attention.

It means we aren’t alone. It means the argument has reached the top.

But Here Is Where We Part Ways

I believe, as Marx and Engels argued, that the history of society is the history of class struggle. I believe, as Lenin taught us, that the state is not a neutral instrument, but an apparatus built to preserve the rule of one class over another.

Avi Lewis believes that apparatus can be captured and repurposed.

I do not.

He is trying to take the NDP—a party burdened by institutional weakness, parliamentary marginalization, debt, and a long history of compromise—and turn it into an instrument of working-class liberation.

He is trying to do this inside a political system specifically designed to contain and defang movements like his.

Look at the history. The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) had radical roots. Tommy Douglas was called a socialist. And what happened? The party spent decades managing capitalism, not ending it.

That is not because individuals failed morally. It is because the system protects itself.

Parliamentary parties do not enter a neutral arena. They enter a machine shaped by corporate media, constitutional limits, investor pressure, bureaucratic inertia, and the permanent threat of economic sabotage. Even before a radical government passes a single law, it is already being disciplined.

That is how capitalist democracy survives: not only through repression, but through containment.

Do we really believe the grocery oligopoly will calmly accept a publicly owned competitor undercutting its profits?

Do we believe telecom giants will surrender their monopoly power because Parliament asks nicely?

Do we believe corporate media—owned by the same class interests Lewis claims to oppose—will give him a fair hearing once he becomes a genuine threat?

They will not. They never do. The system protects itself.

Why the System Protects Itself

This is the core of my disagreement with democratic socialism.

It assumes that enough votes, enough pressure, and enough good policy can fundamentally alter the balance of class power without provoking a structural response from capital itself.

But capital is not passive. It is organized. It is strategic. And when threatened, it does not simply retreat. It counterattacks.

It relocates. It sabotages. It panics markets. It weaponizes institutions. It manufactures consent. It funds reaction.

That is why I do not see Parliament as the road to liberation.

At best, it can become a site of exposure—a place where contradictions are made visible and reforms are extracted under pressure. But it is not where emancipation begins or ends.

That work happens outside it: in workplaces, communities, movements, unions, tenant struggles, mutual aid, political education, and mass organization.

Not in the chamber. In the rupture.

Parliament Is Not Neutral

When I look at the NDP, I see a party that still believes the machinery can be made humane.

It wants better emergency response. Better guardrails. Better legislation. Better oversight.

And to be fair, in the short term, those things matter. People need relief. People need housing. People need medicine. People need food.

But relief is not liberation.

You cannot build a free society on institutions designed to preserve class rule.

Lewis is trying to work within the system to change the system. It cannot be done. I understand the appeal. It feels safer. It feels pragmatic.

But “pragmatic” is often just the name we give to managed defeat.

Pragmatic is how societies slide into fascism and authoritarianism while insisting the next ballot question or election will save them.

Pragmatic is how crisis becomes permanent.

Pragmatic is how capitalism buys time.

We do not need a “beacon for the 99 per cent” inside a parliament that serves the one per cent. We need the 99 per cent to realize that parliament is a cage, and we are the ones holding the keys.

A Final Word to Avi Lewis

Avi Lewis, if you are reading this, I am not your enemy.

I am part of the audience you are trying to reach: the activist, the writer, the organizer, the person who has spent decades watching Canadian politics promise relief while protecting the conditions that produce misery in the first place.

I welcome your voice. I welcome the pressure you are going to put on the Liberals and Conservatives. And if you manage to nationalize grocery stores, I will be among the first to celebrate.

But I am not holding my breath.

You are trying to convince a system to surrender the power on which it depends.

I am telling you that systems like this do not surrender. It will fight you. It will absorb, co-opt, stall, distort, and, when necessary, crush you. It will turn your radicalism into a brand and sell it back to you as a t-shirt.

You are betting that democracy can tame capital.

I am betting that capital must be abolished.

I wish you luck. Genuinely.

Because the status quo is intolerable, and any force that widens public understanding of class power is doing meaningful work.

But when the system shows its teeth—and it will—and you find yourself surrounded by advisors telling you to be “reasonable,” remember what you said about the one per cent.

Remember that no movement survives by trying to serve two masters.

The rest of us will be out here, ready to build something new when the old world finally cracks.

_______________

❖

Sources & Further Reading

Canadian Dimension: “The socialist revolution beyond Sanders and the Democratic Party”
A sharp piece arguing that the left must push beyond electoral politics and toward workers owning the means of production. Directly addresses why democratic socialism within a capitalist party framework is a dead end—exactly the argument I’ve made about Lewis.
Read More

BBC News: “Canada’s new NDP leader says party must have ‘hard conversations’ over energy policy”
International coverage of Lewis’s win and his refusal to bend on oil and gas. The BBC frames the divide between Lewis and provincial leaders like Nenshi and Beck without the usual Canadian media hand-wringing. 
Read More

Marxists Internet Archive: “State and Revolution” by V.I. Lenin
For those who want to understand why I believe working within the parliamentary system is a dead end, start here. Lenin lays out the fundamental argument that the state is a product of irreconcilable class contradictions and cannot be transformed into a tool of liberation without being shattered. It’s the theoretical foundation for why democratic socialism, while well-intentioned, ultimately fails to dismantle capitalist power.
Read More

The Tyee: “Alberta’s Panicked Media Warn the Communists Are at the Gate”
Covers the red-baiting response to Lewis’s victory, including Premier Danielle Smith calling him “pretty communist.” The piece quotes a Communist Party leader wondering why Lewis gets all the ink. Useful for showing how the establishment reacts—and for drawing my own distinction between democratic and revolutionary socialism.
Read More

_______________

❖