The Left in Power
Bob Rae's NDP and the Working Class
by Steven High
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Pub Date Feb 11 2025 | Archive Date Jan 31 2025
Literary Press Group of Canada | Between the Lines
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Description
At the end of the twentieth century, as social democratic parties around the world struggled to produce a coherent response to the deindustrialization crisis, many pivoted towards progressive neoliberalism and Third Way social democracy. Almost everywhere, they turned their backs on the weakened trade union movement and embraced neoliberal assumptions about labour force flexibility and global competition. Shamefully, Third Way social democrats emphasized the moral dimension of poverty rather than its structural causes as they abandoned the old redistributive class politics of the Left.
Based on extensive archival research and interviews with NDP politicians, senior economic policy advisors, and trade unionists, The Left in Power examines the response of the political Left in Ontario to the crisis that gripped the old ‘industrialized world.’ Steven High revisits the heartbreaking years of Bob Rae’s Ontario NDP government—from their historic and unexpected 1990 victory, to their policy shifts that left working-class voters feeling betrayed, to their landslide defeat in 1995—to uncover what we can learn from one social democratic party’s mistakes about how to govern from the Left.
A Note From the Publisher
Steven High is a professor of history at Concordia University in Montreal where he co-founded the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling.
Many of the planned potential events will be at NDP and union conventions, as well as academic labour conferences.
The author has written extensively on the topic and has many media contacts in Ontario, Quebec, and across Canada. These include Le Devoir or La Presse and the Montreal Gazette.
Advance Praise
“Steven High’s thorough and balanced account of the Rae government in Ontario provides an invaluable contribution to understanding the province’s politics and political economy in a period of globalization and a world-wide ideological shift to neoliberalism. For the NDP (and social democracy generally), these developments intensified earlier trends towards the abandonment of class and political economy analysis, which, in turn, contributed to the government’s inability to meet the challenges. Its experimentation with new doctrines of communitarianism and competitiveness, and rupture with its traditional working-class base, led ultimately to its failure and neoliberalization.”
--Stephen McBride, professor, Department of Political Science, McMaster University
Marketing Plan
Events will include:
March 2025: National Council for Public History conference
June 2025: The 2025 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences will be in Toronto (George Brown College). Book launch tying it to Canadian Historical Association and CAWLS. Maybe also a roundtable or panel
June 2025: Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Times conference in Paris. This will be the second book launch. These deindustrialization specialists are most likely to assign the book at universities outside of Ontario.
NDP conventions Ontario/National - Ontario Federation of Labour convention
Canadian Labour Congress Convention. 31st Constitutional Convention will be held in May of 2026 in Winnipeg.
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781771136679 |
| PRICE | CA$34.95 (CAD) |
| PAGES | 250 |
