The Decline of Capitalist Democracy & the Socialist Solution
by Gary Porter
John A Macdonald’s democracy was not inclusive. Canada’s first Prime Minister supported a property-based franchise (only men who owned property of a certain value should be able to vote).
He believed that property owners had a greater “stake in society” and would make more responsible decisions. This explicitly excluded the poor, Indigenous peoples, and all women. He famously said, “The rights of the minority ought to be protected, and the rich are always fewer in number than the poor.”
Canada was founded on the basis of private ownership of the means of production and the right to put private profit before human needs. Canada was capitalist from the outset. The state established by the Constitution Act of 1867 was a bourgeois state for the protection, defence and promotion of the common interests of the capitalist class against the interests of all others, especially the working class and poor farmers.
How has Canada’s “democratic” state responded when it feels threatened by workers or oppressed Canadians?
In 1869, 2 years after Confederation, The First Riel Rebellion was a conflict in the Red River Colony led by Métis leader Louis Riel to protest the transfer of the territory from the Hudson’s Bay Company to Canada without consulting the local population. The rebellion led to the establishment of a provisional government and ultimately resulted in the creation of Manitoba in 1870.
In 1873 a military style Royal North West Mounted Police (RNWMP) was formed as a result of this rebellion to bring bourgeois control to the North West and subdue indigenous and Metis objection to capitalist seizure of their lands and denial of their rights. Today this force is the RCMP and they are still trampling indigenous rights as they have recently against the We’tsuwet’en in northern BC fighting the gas pipeline.
The 1885 Riel Rebellion (or North-West Rebellion) was a violent uprising in present-day Saskatchewan and Alberta where Métis, First Nations (Cree, Assiniboine), and some white settlers fought the Canadian government over land rights, treaty failures, and political neglect. Led by Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont, it began with clashes near Duck Lake and ended with the defeat of the rebels at Batoche, Riel’s capture, trial for treason, and execution, which deeply divided Canada along linguistic lines.
In 1919, after World War 1, 40,000 workers struck in Winnipeg for better wages, working conditions and for the right to organize trade unions. Leading up to and during the strike, the RNWMP was deeply involved in intelligence-gathering against labour and socialist groups.
Undercover agents infiltrated meetings of labor organizations, including the Western Labour Conference in Calgary, to monitor for revolutionary activity. Reports from these agents were later used as evidence in sedition trials against strike leaders. On the advice of the anti-strike Citizens’ Committee of One Thousand in Winnipeg, the federal government authorized a decisive crackdown.
In the early hours of June 17, 1919, the RNWMP arrested several prominent strike leaders, including R.B. Russell and William Ivens, from their homes. They were charged with seditious conspiracy, a serious crime alleging a plot to overthrow the government. The raids also targeted immigrant activists who were labeled “enemy aliens”. The arrest of the leaders provoked outrage. When protesters gathered for a silent parade on June 21, the RNWMP’s intervention turned the day into a tragedy.
Winnipeg’s mayor read the Riot Act and called in the RNWMP to disperse the crowd of thousands. The Mounted Police charged on horseback into the crowd, swinging clubs. As protesters threw rocks and bricks, the RNWMP charged again, this time drawing their revolvers and firing into the crowd. Mike Sokolowski was shot in the heart and killed instantly.
Steve Szczerbanowicz was shot in the legs and died from gangrene two days later. At least 30 people were injured, and 94 were arrested. Special Constables (strike-breakers hired to replace the sympathetic city police) trapped and beat fleeing protesters in a lane that became known as “Hell’s Alley”. This was the response of the Canadian state to workers on strike.
The RNWMP’s actions were part of a broader government and employer strategy to break the strike, which involved significant legal and political maneuvering. Acting Minister of Justice Arthur Meighen had effectively placed the RNWMP at the disposal of the anti-strike Citizens’ Committee through his local representative, A.J. Andrews.
Parliament amended the Immigration Act to allow for the deportation of British-born immigrants without trial and broadened sedition laws in the Criminal Code to target strike leaders. “Bloody Saturday” broke the strike’s momentum. Demoralized and facing military occupation, the Central Strike Committee voted to end the strike on June 25.
While a short-term defeat for labor, the strike galvanized the Canadian labor movement. Some leaders helped form the Communist Party of Canada in a barn near Guelph, Ontario in 1921. Several strike leaders later entered electoral politics and helped found the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, a precursor to today’s New Democratic Party (NDP).
The War Measures Act was passed in 1914. It was a controversial Canadian law that granted extraordinary autocratic powers to the federal government during times of war, invasion, or insurrection. When invoked, it allowed the federal cabinet (the Governor in Council) to govern by decree without parliamentary approval. Its sweeping powers Allowing authorities to arrest, detain, and deport individuals without formal charges or trials or even legal counsel, controlling transportation, trade, and the censorship or suppression of a free press, authorizing the seizure and disposal of property. effectively suspending habeas corpus (the right to challenge unlawful detention) and other civil liberties.
It was used during three major periods in the 20th century, each raising significant questions about civil liberties:
In 1914 the Act was immediately invoked at the start of the war to register & detain “enemy aliens” from the Austro-Hungarian Empire
In 1917 after the workers overthrew the Tsar in Russia, the Act was extended to suppress labor strikes and political dissent
In 1939 the War Measures Act was re-invoked at the start of World War II when it was famously used to intern Japanese Canadians, seize their property and sell it cheaply to whites.
In 1945, the Act remained in force during the early Cold War period and rise of the industrial unions (autoworkers, steel workers)
In 1970 during the “October Crisis” the Act was invoked by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in the only peacetime use in Canada in response to FLQ kidnappings. Civil liberties were suspended, allowing search, arrest, & detention without charge, or legal counsel.
In 1988, the more limited Emergencies Act replaced the long criticized War Measures Act. Designed to provide a more measured, modern framework, it created four distinct types of emergencies (Public Welfare, Public Order, International, and War) with tailored powers for each. Any use of the Act must be reviewed by Parliament and is subject to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Declarations are time-limited (30 days, unless renewed) and require regular reporting.
In February 2022, the Act was used for the first time in response to the Freedom Convoy protests and blockades in Ottawa, reigniting debates about the balance between public order and civil liberties.
Very recently Bill C-12, “Strengthening Canada’s Immigration System and Borders Security Act” received first reading in the House of Commons. This dangerous legislation would give the government unchecked power to cancel work and study permits and permanent residency, deny refugee protections, and share migrants’ private information without meaningful oversight.
As the contradictions of capitalism deepen, the façade of bourgeois democracy is under attack by the ruling class. The ruling class is less and less willing to allocate wealth to major benefits such as healthcare as they spend huge and increasing amounts on repressive forces such as the police and military, and on their own luxury yachts, mansions, aircraft and bunkers.
Prime Minister Carney has abandoned the prescription drugs plan that Trudeau promised and pledged to increase military spending to the absurd level of 5% of GDP. Carney, a highly educated, very intelligent and extremely ruthless prince of capitalism will not be able to halt the decline of capitalism.
What is the Socialist Solution?
A Marxist critique of bourgeois democracy centers on the fundamental assertion that bourgeois democracy is not democracy for the majority (the working class or proletariat), but a form of class rule by the capitalist minority (the bourgeoisie). It is a democracy that is limited, formal, and ultimately serves to maintain capitalist exploitation. This critique can be broken down into several key points:
1. Democracy as a Form of Class Rule (The State as an Instrument of Class Oppression)
Marxists view the state not as a neutral arbiter of the public good, but as an instrument of class rule. In capitalist society, the state—even a democratic one—is a “bourgeois state.” Its primary function is to maintain the capitalist mode of production, protect private property, and ensure the conditions for capital accumulation.
Bourgeois democracy is thus the political shell for the economic content of capitalism. The forms of democracy (elections, parliaments, rights) exist, but real power resides in the economic sphere—in the ownership of the means of production (factories, land, banks, media), which is concentrated in the hands of the capitalist class.
2. Formal vs. Substantive Equality
Bourgeois democracy proclaims formal equality (”one person, one vote,” equality before the law). This is a historical advance over feudal absolutism. It allows for the independent organization of unions and workers’ political parties, strikes, mass meetings and demonstrations. But such rights are allowed only within strict and narrow limits. Such rights are important to workers and must be defended.
However, democracy masks profound substantive inequality, and the mailed fist of capitalist state power.
· Economic inequality: The capitalist owns the wealth; the worker owns only their labor power, which they must sell to survive. This economic dependency makes political equality hollow. A billionaire and a worker have the same single vote, but their ability to influence politics, media, and public discourse is vastly different.
· The tyranny of property: Rights like freedom of speech and assembly are constrained by material conditions. The capitalist class controls major media outlets, funds think tanks, and dominates cultural production, shaping the “marketplace of ideas” to its advantage. The worker’s “free speech” has a much smaller audience.
3. The Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie
Marxists refer to bourgeois democracy as a “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie,” not in the sense of a totalitarian absence of voting, but in the sense that state power is systematically wielded in the interests of the capitalist class. This is maintained through:
· The dominance of capitalist ideology (hegemony): The ruling class promotes ideas that naturalize capitalism (e.g., “there is no alternative,” “the market is efficient,” “individual meritocracy”). These ideas become “common sense”, limiting the range of acceptable political debate within the system.
· Repressive apparatuses: When hegemony fails, the state uses police, courts, and military to protect property and suppress serious threats to the capitalist order (e.g., crushing strikes, dismantling protests that challenge property rights).
4. The Limits of Bourgeois Democracy
The “Democratic Façade”: Elections and parliaments give the illusion of popular control. However, they often present a constrained choice between parties (center-right and center-left) that fundamentally accept the capitalist framework. Switching parties may change management but not the system.
· The primacy of the executive: Real power tends to shift from legislative bodies (where debate occurs) to the executive state (bureaucracies, military, intelligence) and unelected bodies like central banks, which are insulated from popular pressure to ensure “market confidence.”
· Capital’s structural power: Even a government with a sincere desire to help workers faces a constant threat: if it enacts policies that seriously threaten profitability (high taxes, strong regulations), capital can respond with “investment strike” (withholding investment), capital flight, currency crises, and media campaigns. This forces government to comply with capitalist imperatives, a phenomenon sometimes called the “privileged position of business.”
5. The Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat in “Democracy”
The working class is allowed to participate only within strict boundaries. Mass movements that challenge the core of capitalist property relations (e.g., revolutionary socialism) are met with legal suppression or force.
· Rights are conditional: Civil liberties are granted so long as they do not threaten the capitalist system. The history of bourgeois democracies is filled with suppression of communist parties, trade unions, and radical movements during times of crisis.
6. The Marxist Alternative: Proletarian Democracy
Marxists contrast bourgeois democracy with a higher form - socialist or proletarian democracy.
This is envisioned as a dictatorship of the proletariat (meaning working-class rule, not one-party rule in the later Stalinist distortion), which would be more democratic because it aims to abolish the economic basis of class rule.
Features might include:
· Direct, participatory democracy in workplaces and communities.
· Recallable delegates (not career politicians) to representative bodies.
· The merging of legislative and executive functions to ensure those who make laws also execute them.
· The gradual “withering away of the state” as class antagonisms disappear and administration of things replaces governance over people.
· The goal is to replace political emancipation (rights within an unequal system) with human emancipation (the abolition of class rule).
From a Marxist standpoint, bourgeois democracy is not an end in itself, but a historical stage and a battlefield. It provides workers with certain tools (organizing rights, a political arena) to build class consciousness and organization. However, these tools are structurally limited. The ultimate aim is not to perfect bourgeois democracy, but to transcend it through socialist revolution, replacing the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with genuine rule by the associated producers—a democracy extended from the political sphere into the economic, making society truly democratic for the first time.