Can Canada’s NDP Step Back From the Brink of Electoral Ruin?In March, Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP) will elect a new leader. This April, the federal party suffered its worst election showing ever, winning a mere seven seats. Leader Jagmeet Singh promptly resigned. Five candidates have registered in the race to replace him, including current member of parliament (MP) Heather McPherson, activist and filmmaker Avi Lewis, union leader Rob Ashton, social worker and town councilor Tanille Johnston, and Tony McQuail, a farmer and former party candidate. Montreal activist Yves Engler is running but has yet to register with the party. To get a sense of the state of the race to date and where it might be headed, Jacobin writers David Moscrop and Edgardo Sepulveda examine four aspects of the party and the leadership competition. They take up the historical context, how candidates are addressing environmental, economic, and industrial policy, the class and cultural dynamics at play, and the state of party democracy.
https://jacobin.com/2025/11/ndp-canada-election-leader-democracyCulling The Working Class: Acceleration and the Period of Capitalist Democide - Jeff ShantzCapitalism has moved into a stage of open mass culling of the working class—starting with those currently deemed unusable (as workers or consumers). This is a rapidly escalating period of democide—state killing of its own populations—for capital. For purposes—requirements—of accumulation. It will increasingly expand that category as fewer and fewer workers and consumers are needed to maintain profitability. Tightened conditions of accumulation mean that the ruling class is not simply okay with working-class people dying off—they have determined it is a necessity that must happen, and as quickly as possible. Automation, robotization, AI, put to new and more expansive uses will ensure this culling of the unusable is an ongoing need of capital. As conditions of accumulation become tighter, more avenues will need to be opened spatially. What has been called accumulation by dispossession, already advancing in cities (street sweeps of unhoused people, encampment evictions, displacement, and gentrification) and the countryside (land grabs, extractives expansion) is switching over to accumulation by democide. And this has moved to the imperial core—its heartland—even as mineral wars, as in Congo, neo-colonialism, the genocide in Gaza, show that this is always readymade capitalist practice against the colonized. Capital has lost its patience with keeping unneeded working-class people alive. Notably in the very center of advanced capital and so-called liberal democracies (“the West”). Any and all social policies that even minimally address the needs of the unneeded working class—social housing, welfare, shelters, disability benefits, harm reduction, etc.)—are drains on accumulation. They are, from capital’s perspective, wasted resources, unacceptable costs—at a time when capital needs to squeeze out all it can get.
https://libcom.org/article/culling-working-class-acceleration-and-period-capitalist-democide-jeff-shantzThe coup kids are in charge nowNapoleon is said to have remarked that to understand a man, you must understand what was happening around him when he was 20. Traoré spent those years in peacekeeping operations, battling an insurgency that arose after a Western intervention in Libya flooded the Sahel region with arms and militants. Despite the seriousness of the threat Burkina Faso faced at the time, and continues to face, in an interview with French daily Le Monde, he bristled at the fact that Burkinabes fighting the al-Qaida-affiliated insurgents were “four to five soldiers for one Kalashnikov,” whilst civilian leaders handled “suitcases of money.” “It really hurts soldiers to see that. Worse, we were taunted,” he said. Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, who led before the brace of coups, was dubbed the “diesel president” for the lethargy of his response and perceived inability to meet the moment. Traoré reached a similar verdict on the first coup leader, Damiba, whom he swiftly deposed. The country needed a serious wartime leader, he told the public, and he was the man for the job. This is where a key theme in the rise of several African militaries becomes clear. Traoré and his fellow plotters dismissed the civilian leader (and his successor) as incompetent and broadened their own sense of duty to include defending the country through direct political intervention, much like in Madagascar. Traoré—or IB, as Burkinabès call him—has since become an internet sensation, blending a slick yet hard-edged military aesthetic (he has never been seen in a suit). Even the Financial Times has conceded that he is an “icon.” The inability of his regime to push back armed groups—which are believed to control more than half the country and have propelled Burkina Faso to the top of the Global Terrorism Index—has done little to dent his appeal. None of his fans around the world care because that appeal doesn’t come from what he does, or who he is, but his ability to put into words what a lot of people think, and the viral nature of many of his remarks slamming the West and comprador elites across Africa. Not all coups are created equal, however. In some cases, they are simply power struggles among elites, as seen in Niger and Sudan. Though it has since been largely buried, Niger’s Abdourahamane Tchiani did not initially overthrow President Mohamed Bazoum for being too pro-Western. In fact, Tchiani was close to Bazoum’s predecessor, whom The Economist described as a “staunch ally of the West.” Bazoum sought to replace Tchiani, who believed he knew better what was needed for Niger than a newbie president and decided to pull the plug on his boss. The anti-Western rhetoric probably came after Tchiani realized that he wouldn’t receive support from Paris, the US, or the EU due to the coup against an elected leader. There is little evidence that he held strong beliefs about the West before assuming power.
https://africasacountry.com/2025/11/the-coup-kids-are-in-charge-now