Reviving Working Class Politics: Canadian Labour and the Struggle for Public Services

Abstract

This article explores the theoretical contributions of Marx and Engels regarding the progressive potential and political limitations of trade union organizing as an end in itself. Section two overviews the demographic shifts that has taken place since the 1980s, drawing attention to an increasingly feminized and public sector-centred Canadian labour movement. Section three makes the case for an extended public sector. In creating new inroads into spaces currently seen as private, Canadian labour, rooted as it is in the public sector, may begin to challenge the structural power of capital and the state, enhancing democratic control and potentially serving as an example for other sectors of the economy.