CANADIAN DEMOCRACY, Camouflage for the Dictatorship of the Capitalist Class

By Gary Porter

Canada is a class based society.  Social classes are defined by their relationship to the means of production. The capitalist class owns the means of production plus the financial institutions and property. The working class apart from some personal possessions, own nothing but their labour power, which they must sell to the capitalists in order to live and raise their children. The capitalists, after paying the workers as little as they can get away with, take (alienate) everything the workers produce.

Labour power is a commodity, but with a difference from any other commodities. When workers apply their labour power, they create new value. New value is only created when workers apply their labour power at work. The third class is the middle class, the petit bourgeoisie, consisting of  shop keepers, management and technocratic layers, small farmers and professionals etc. But the decisive classes are the capitalists, the 1% that owns the bulk of the means of production, is very wealthy and very powerful, and the working class which does all the work and creates all the value, but which owns almost nothing and has no power, except when they organize independently of the capitalist class and fight the capitalist class for wages, benefits and rights.

When Canada began to organize in 1864 to 1867, all the decisions were made by conferences of businessmen  and senior politicians in smoke fill backrooms in conferences held in Charlotte Town, PEI and Quebec. Ordinary small farmers and workers were never consulted at any stage. They discussed how railroads, canals and roads would greatly benefit business opportunities in Canada, how much profits would be increased and how Canada should be organized.

They decided the head of state should remain Queen Victoria, a hereditary monarch in Britain and a representative of both the old feudal aristocracy and the well established class of British imperialists who, with the Royal Navy, ruled the waves and world trade. The conferences of Canadian capitalists decided there should be a Parliament of 2 houses, the House of Commons and the Senate.  The Commons would be elected by men of property.  and the Senate would be appointed essentially by the Prime Minister with the acceptance of the Queen or her Canadian representative, the Governor General.

In no Province was there ever a referendum or an election on the new constitution or even the creation of Canada. The votes to accept the British North America Act were only held in the legislatures completely dominated by lawyers and businessmen. Canada was delivered by the capitalist class to ordinary Canadians as a fait accomplit. Workers had nothing to say about its creation, its constitution or their rights as workers.

Although the right to vote for members of the Commons has been extended over the decades to women, indigenous people and those without property, it still excludes immigrants until they become landed residents. But workers and the poor are essentially still excluded from the governing process. Campaigns cost far too much for workers to afford the cost. The capitalist  media dominate the public space advocating powerfully for capitalist candidates. Rich capitalists shower business parties and candidates with funds. Voters are organized  (atomized) as individuals in geographic ridings, not by social class. If workers were organized to vote as workers at factory meetings, meetings at mines, construction projects and in offices, then workers representatives would have a majority in the Commons. Such a form of class representation has never once existed in capitalist “democracies”

In 1917, in Russia, workers councils were set up by workers and soldiers and they were called soviets. Under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky and the Communist party, they took power away from the Capitalist parliament (Duma) and set up a true democracy where representatives of workers, soldiers and peasants ran the country directly for the first time in human history.