There are two commonly accepted modes of organizing that the NDP should adopt in debates around its future. Some argue that its focus should be on winning power, often described as electoralism, while others have argued that the NDP should be focused on connecting with grassroots movements and being their voice in parliament.
The NDP should be ‘le parti des urnes et de la rue’, an orientation I describe as movementism. These are debates that have been taking place in the NDP going back decades, and while they have been explicitly laid bare in this leadership race – with Heather McPherson modelling herself as the electoralist candidate, and Avi Lewis as the movementist candidate – there is another model for the NDP which is emerging in the debate, the NDP as a mass party.
A mass party is a democratic membership-based organization where an emphasis is placed on creating strong institutions for members to engage with. Decisions are led by membership, members engage with committees, shape policy, and engage with the structures of the party.
European mass parties engaged in the construction of ‘people’s houses,’ building cultural and leisure centres. Mass parties served as the political vehicle of the working class, but they are more than that; they must be intimately connected with, and, in the case of the people’s houses, provide a physical place for working-class life.
A mass party is also a crucial part of its members’ social lives and identity. The NDP, as a mass party, could take many forms. Bruce McKenna in Perspectives Journal envisions an NDP mass party as a mix of strong committees, renewed and active EDAs and regional councils, member-led debate and policy decisions. But it could also mean renewed extra-parliamentary organizing, working with labour to organize workplaces and create NDP labour affiliates, organizing tenant unions as part of EDAs activity or party enterprises. There is no shortage of books on left-wing theory, politics, history and practice in Canada; nothing would stop the NDP from establishing a publishing house and selling the books. Likewise, the NDP or affiliated organizations could construct socialized housing, build/purchase physical properties across Canada to turn into physical meeting places for socialist politics, organizing, events, and enterprises.
Ironically, despite being a product of 19th and 20th-century socialist politics, the model of a mass party has largely been adopted by the modern right. An array of cultural outputs, social media accounts, printing presses and party intellectuals, physical locations for members to meet and congregate, and a deep sense from the membership that they are a part of a history-defining movement have defined many right-wing populist parties, adopting the structure of a mass party despite its history.
It is not that winning elections or working with social movements is wrong or bad; it is that it is not enough. Under electoralism, wins are few and far between. And the governments elected, when they are elected, are unable to implement their agenda. A mass party builds not only the infrastructure to win, but it also creates the required institutions to deliver on the party’s agenda, what Ali Terrenoire, writing in Canadian Dimensions, described as a ‘state-in-waiting.’
Terrenoire, in a piece worth reading, also critiques the movementism orientation as well. As he correctly points out, modern…
“Social movements” suffer from many of the same coordination failures as parliamentary parties themselves. When conditions are favourable, these movements can grow rapidly, drawing energy from moments of crisis or outrage. Yet with few durable structures, weak mechanisms for internal discipline, and minimal costs to exit, they are just as prone to rapid collapse—or to fossilization within the NGO and advocacy ecosystem once the moment passes.
It is not that social movements cannot, and have not created social change; it is that the conditions for this social change require work that social movements are not adapted to.
This critique of social movements is one shared by Vincent Bevins, If We Burn (a text that should be required reading for all organizers).
Bevins maps out why these social movements that emerged throughout the early 21st century were unable to capitalize on their mass support and success. He argues that the hollowness of social movements as institutions, their horizontalism, and their lack of long-term planning resulted in the failure of most social movements he researched. The advice he receives from members of those social movements years later? ‘Join a party.’
The NDP debate over the structure of its party has been narrow in scope between movementism and electoralism. But NDP supporters, organizers, and interested individuals should watch the debate emerging around the NDP as a mass party. Two years after McKenna first wrote that “The embers of the mass party are still smouldering” discussion and debate around a mass party have taken on a life of their own.
Building a mass party is not a problem solved by one leadership race; it would require years-long intentional reshaping of the NDP, the left in Canada, and the NDP’s allied organizations. It would require hard, arduous, boring work, starting likely from the bottom up with the empowering of EDAs, committees, and the strengthening of party structures and institutions. Organizations like the Broadbent Institute, the Canadian Labour Congress, and social movement partners would need to be intimately involved. But it would be worth it.
