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Notes
1 Whack-a-mole is a fairground game in which players use a hammer to hit toy moles that appear at random from holes.
2 The CCF’s greatest success was in the Province of Saskatchewan where it formed the first socialist government in North America in 1944 and retained power until 1964. Since then, the NDP has governed in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, and Ontario. Analysis indicates that in virtually all cases, such governance was aligned with neo liberal approaches with little evidence of socialist or social democratic values and principles (Evans Citation2012). The NDP has never been part of any federal government in Ottawa.
3 Ever since its founding of the NDP in 1961 there have been those calling for transformation of the party from within and we have documented the major efforts to do so. There are a handful of current NDP federal members of parliament who do not hide from proclaiming themselves as democratic socialists (Matthew Green and Niki Ashton) or socialists (Leah Gazan) (Moscop Citation2021). There have also been ongoing unsuccessful attempts to win the presidencies of provincial and federal NDP by members associated with the Socialist Caucus of the NDP. We believe the history of the NDP over the past 60 years makes such efforts to transform the party unlikely.
4 Winlow and Hall (Citation2022) and McGrane (Citation2018) suggest that when social democratic parties give up on presenting a compelling economic and political vision, they are reduced to claiming they are more moral or honest or caring than the other parties. Salutin (Citation2023) comments regarding NDP leader Jagmeet Singh apparently following this playbook:
This week, asked about the political value of his alliance with Trudeau, Singh said that, hard as it is for many to comprehend, the NDP are in politics only to do good for ‘people’ unlike other parties, who’re there solely for power. This tedious crap will be his legacy. It proves forever that the NDP is a spent force.
5 See DuRand (Citation2016), Wolfe (Citation2019) and Gindin (Citation2018) for what such a post-capitalist socialist society could look like.