Samir Gandesha

ONE OF THE DEFINING MOMENTS of the recent general federal election for the Canadian left was the release on September 15 of the Leap Manifesto.1 The Manifesto, spearheaded by prominent left Canadian intellectuals such as Naomi Klein, Avi Lewis, David Suzuki, and Martin Lukács as well as notable celebrities such as Donald Sutherland and Leonard Cohen, included a bold call for respect for Indigenous rights, transition to a “clean economy,” and a guaranteed annual income. [Read More]

No coarser insult, no baser defamation, can be thrown against the workers than the remark, ‘Theoretical controversies are for the intellectuals’ —Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution (1900) Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology formulated by the working masses themselves in the process of their movement the only choice is – either bourgeois or socialist ideology… This does not mean, of course, that the workers have no part in creating such an ideology. [Read More]

We are the 99%! —Occupy Wall Street (2011) The Left must define itself on the level of ideas, conceding that in many instances it will find itself in the minority. —Leszek Kolakowski, The Concept of the Left (1968) Description THE DISTINCTION OF THE LEFT and the right was never clear. But following the failure of the Old Left, the relevance of these categories has increasingly ceased to be self-evident. [Read More]