By Barry Weisleder
Nearly four hundred people, with over one hundred attending in-person in Toronto, and many more on-line across the country, gave birth to a new Socialist Movement (SM) at a day-long conference on May 24, 2026.
It was the inadvertent product of two sequential socialist campaigns for the federal New Democratic Party leadership. Both bids were bureaucratically blocked by party controllers in 2025/2026, resulting in a bogus election that anointed the slightly left-of-centre social democrat Avi Lewis. In the course of the campaign, thousands of NDP members endorsed and financially backed the comprehensive ‘Capitalism Can’t be Fixed’ policy platform espoused by renowned anti-imperialist author Yves Engler, and star political organizer Bianca Mugyenyi.
In addition to Yves and Bianca, featured speakers at the Toronto conference included: Clayton Thomas-Muller, Dimitri Lascaris, Tamara Lorincz, Sara Rasikh, Ghada Sasa, Kevin MacKay, Seatle-based Kshama Sawant, and this writer. Animated plenary and workshops discussed: ‘The Political Moment: War, Capitalism and Resistance’, and ‘Strategy and Pathways Forward’. Indigenous activist Thomas-Muller opened the gathering with a powerful discourse on ‘Anti-colonialism and Extractivism.’
Sessions involving some ten breakout groups, both on-line and in-person, gave feedback to a draft Statement of Unity, and entertained proposals for political initiatives.
What is the pathway forward to win a majority for class struggle politics? Campaign-building! Campaigns can comprise stopping a pipeline, halting health care cuts, freezing rents, ending the genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, removing Canada from NATO and NORAD, and mobilizing to keep imperialist hands-off Cuba, Venezuela and Iran.
Several exciting, concrete ideas emerged, such as a “Carnival Against Capitalism” counter- conference and protest at the Global Investments Summit in Toronto in mid-September. In addition the Socialist Movement could field a few candidates in the upcoming municipal elections — an opportunity to take the Capitalism Can’t be Fixed policy book to a wider local audience – in an arena where the NDP does not run.
An immediate task facing the SM is to organize a Convention to launch the Movement as a new fighting organization. Why now? Because capitalism can’t be fixed. The world is in peril. Long ago the NDP abandoned the terrain of system change. A new movement/party is needed to fill the vacuum to the left of the NDP, and to significantly improve the chances of survival for humanity and nature.
While the major parties cater to climate criminals, financial elites and war profiteers, socialists aim to work alongside anti-capitalist, social justice and anti-imperialist fighters, including those in the ranks of the NDP and other organizations.
How should the new SM organize itself? The Conference made no firm decisions, but it paved the way forward. Working committees of volunteers from across the country will shortly be convened. A steering committee, made up of the co-chairs of these committees, will coordinate protest campaigns, regional organizing, political education, fund raising, and public events, including the preparation of the official SM convention.
The aim is to build democratic, participatory structures and collective leadership – from the ground up. The founding convention of the Socialist Movement, with the ratification of the Policy book and the adoption of a constitution, is likely to occur this year.
Many participants envision the movement becoming a political party, while foremost still being an insurgent force on the streets and in work places, committed to the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of a cooperative commonwealth.
One way to finance the revolution is to persuade members and supporters to become ‘sustainers.’ Hamilton organizer Tom Baker made a strong pitch for monthly, even one-time financial donors. Several folks instantly stood up to pledge funds.
The gathering was buoyant and optimistic. It was fed by good music and food (forgive the pun). Folk singer/song writer Tyler Ellis performed two of his works during an afternoon break. Conference organizers served a delicious buffet lunch of Palestinian food, providing an abundance of snacks, coffee, tea and sodas from early morning to adjournment eight and a half hours later.
At the registration table everyone received a “Committee and Volunteer Interest Form”, which they dutifully completed. Cash donations at the entrance totalled $700, plus more on-line. Following the singing of The Internationale, the post-conference clean-up of the rented space at the Workers’ Action Center was a breeze. Was it surprising to see so many people devote so much time and energy to changing the political landscape? Maybe not. Because “the times, they are a-changing”.
