Intentional endings are important. I know very little about the deliberations that went into the decision by OCAP members to retire their organization. But I have deep respect for groups of people that do the difficult, unglamorous work of reflecting on their efforts, determining that their organization is no longer viable, and purposefully bringing it to a close.

The “in and against the state” view that is promoted by the Socialist Register has considerable support on the socialist left. Given the extraordinary period in the evolution of global capitalism which we are living through, this perspective needs to be carefully considered. The latest volume of the Socialist Register is an excellent basis for moving that process forward.

Corporate Pride is not about liberation but about keeping the potentially unruly in line. If Pride must maintain its corporate sponsorships, then I can only work to abolish it in the same vein as I work for police and prison abolition. This June I will be attending Abolition and Anti-Fascist Pride events for the second year in a row, where politics and a good party are intimate partners.

In this moment of global upheaval, and even as we acknowledge how much the political climate has been changed by anti-colonial and anti-racist movements, what would those who are bearing the brunt of our age’s most brutalizing forms of dispossession, disenfranchisement, wars, violence and ongoing genocides have to say of what we do in these institutions today?

Landlords have dug deep into the pockets of tenants since the colonization of Canada. Settlers pushed Indigenous Peoples off the land, establishing private property, and creating rental markets. Some settlers joined the capital-owning side; others ended up on the tenant side. Tenants have organized and fought back since, and continue to do it today.

When capital is in crisis, there are always two options—to give in or to move in. If masses are armed with a clear conception of the socialist alternative, they can turn a crisis in capitalism into the crisis of capitalism. Of course, it is possible that the current struggles against the capitalist offensive ultimately may lead to defeat. It is possible but we must take that chance.

On February 16, over 40 CUPW members at a Canada Post processing plant in Edmonton exercised their right to complain at a pre-scheduled meeting with management, who initially refused to give them five minutes to read their prepared statement and threatened them with discipline. Then those members were served with five-day consecutive suspensions and final warnings. Brett McKay reports.

Now in its fourth edition, From Consent to Coercion: The Continuing Assault on Labour remains an invaluable tool for understanding how the state and capital manage the subordination of labour. The new edition contains timely material that wrestles with the pressing issues of precarity and polarization and the dire need to rebuild and renew socialist politics. The following is excerpted from the book.

The statement by seventy-seven human rights and environmental organizations regarding OceanaGold’s activities around the world is an important call for industry accountability and sustainable development in the relevant countries. It is hardly surprising that, so far, nobody in the Trudeau government has acknowledged its publication.

Improved rent controls alone will not solve the housing crisis, but they can play a major role. With the evidence on our side, and a rigged market on the other, it’s long overdue for cities and provinces across Canada to pursue improved, expansive rent controls, and help bring the outrageous and unchallenged influence of speculators to an end.