Tag: Canada

In Brief: The Myth of Chinese Authoritarianism
The negative media coverage of China has risen almost in perfect correlation with their economic development and relative power. A cynic might say the two are related.

China conjures up the thesis from Chomsky and Herman’s book Manufacturing Consent; repeat anything often enough and it becomes assumed truth without question. Xi Jinping is an autocrat. China has no freedom and especially not freedom of speech. No right to choose leaders. Uyghurs are experiencing genocide. Constant surveillance by the state. Dissent crushed instantly. Beijing is an oppressive regime—and any country the West doesn’t like automatically has a “regime” instead of a government.

The first thing to untangle with China is the nature of a one-party system. The ruling party of a Marxist-Leninist state does not operate like a party in a liberal state. The Communist Party of China is a mass party with 101 million members. 31% are women, roughly a third of members are farmers or workers and another third comprise of professionals and public administrators. There are about eight million cadres working to carry out national programming, implement anti-poverty measures and run community services centres. From this membership base, delegates are elected who, in turn, elect members to higher leadership posts.

State power in China is decentralized, with municipal and provincial governments holding considerable autonomy. There are local, direct elections of representatives who then choose the governors or mayors or congresspeople for the next level up. Aside from local elections, consultative democracy is employed through online government feedback portals, continuous surveying of the population and hot topics of social media discussion.

The data collected from the citizen body are used to define issues that need improving, set a government agenda and establish key performance indicators that politicians must reach in order to hold onto their jobs. Because the main levers of the economy are under public ownership—including banking, resource extraction and construction—the government actually has the necessary tools to fix quality of life issues for those in their jurisdiction.

China does not have multiparty national elections factionalizing society. They have a system of steady citizen input and government redress. The major advantage of this system is the continuity of government; long-term development plans can be seen through rather than getting thrown out the window every four years.

The adherence to long-term economic planning under continuous government is the reason why China was able to eliminate absolute poverty within their borders, guarantee housing and utilities and basic needs for 1.4 billion people, dominate global rare earths production, vertically integrate their strategic industries, and pivot to constructing the world’s first ecological civilization.

With all of these great things the West can’t have under current management, here comes the copium: “China won’t let you speak your mind!” Well, that’s not really true either. Speaking your mind is encouraged to set the government agenda and there are tens of thousands of protests each year in China that result in activists obtaining most or all of their demands.

Western media routinely blames their new favourite boogeyman, the CPC, for very typical Asian norms and legal customs. Asia, and the East in general, approaches politics from radically different philosophical lineages than the West does. Eastern religions along with Confucianism, Legalism and Daoism place heavy emphasis on collective well-being over individualistic impulses. One must also consider that eastern countries including China bear deep collective scars from a past era of brutal colonial subjugation. Additionally, the security threats and military tensions in Asia are far more difficult than anything Western Europe or North America currently faces.

Once the existence of a different social reality is accepted, we can see that the civil liberties and political priorities of Asia are the popular byproduct of unique ancient histories and cultural sensitivities rather than government oppression.

In Thailand, it is a 3–50 year sentence for disparaging the king. In South Korea, it is prison for praising any element of the North’s society and it is prison for questioning painful historical memories. India, likewise, has strict laws against depreciating national heroes. Publicly insulting Indian political leaders or cracking jokes about religion on stage will lead to arrest. Japan, plagued by political apathy, is a de facto one party state largely run by unelected bureaucrats. Political messaging is highly restricted and insulting language is banned from the digital and public sphere. Singapore notoriously punishes offenders with “judicial caning” for everything from bullying to theft to violent crime. They also run one of the strictest censorship regimes in the world against content deemed contrary to the public interest. Taiwan has laboured to silence pro-unification voices like CUPP and CTi and Indonesia has outright bans on a wide range of political activity deemed subversive. These are just a few examples of illiberal policies in nominally liberal Asian states but the list could go on and on.

Whether these laws offend our western sensibilities or not is irrelevant to the sovereignty of these countries. They enforce laws to maintain social harmony and balance individual rights with collective well-being and security. In this regard, China is no different from any government in Asia.

China even compares favourably to the freedom-loving United States on many issues for which they are criticized. For example, surveillance in China holds an 82% approval rating because it has virtually eliminated the petty thefts and scams that were once rampant in cities. By contrast, in the heavily-surveilled United States, only 38% of Americans support community surveillance while 46% oppose it. Both countries have it but only one wants it. Which is more democratic?

Separately, China stands accused in western media of detaining up to one million ethnic Uyghurs after a spate of lethal terrorist attacks over the course of the Xinjiang conflict.¹ While many western claims about Xinjiang are questionable propaganda, China’s Islamic deradicalization program has been wound down. Long-term solutions have been found with poverty reduction efforts in Xinjiang and the successful implementation of regional development strategies. Compared with western actions in Gaza, it is clear where moral authority lies.

Meanwhile, mass incarceration in the United States persists. There is no poverty reduction effort. Many times more Black and Hispanic people face arrest and imprisonment each year in America than Uyghurs ever have. The same is true of Romani in Europe or First Nations in Canada. Furthermore, the per capita prison population of the United States is almost five times larger than the prison population of China. Being arrested in China is a rare occurrence; a Chinese citizen is far less likely to be arrested in their lifetime than a British, American or Australian is.

One could make a defensible argument that any state government is an inherently authoritarian institution. But to claim that China’s popular socialist system is authoritarian relative to liberal countries in Asia or the West falls apart upon scrutiny.

It’s been said that, in Asia, “many citizens prioritize stability, economic growth and effective leadership over individual freedoms.”² Still, let’s not forget the pernicious fact that liberal tenets in the West are frequently only promoted by capitalist oligarchs as a means to divide public opinion and smuggle corporate dictates into our governing system, much to the detriment of ordinary people and workers.

The East is rising while the West declines. Given the divergent trajectories between the two civilizations, the West should find out what it can learn from other systems instead of fixating on what it can criticize.

Thanks for reading!
1. Carlos Martinez describes the economic motivations behind western propaganda narratives about Xinjiang in chapter five of his book, The East is Still Red: Chinese Socialism in the 21st Century (Praxis Press, 2023): 109–126. ↩︎
2. Diego Fossati, “Beyond the liberal model in East and Southeast Asia,” East Asia Forum, May 26, 2025. ↩︎
03 Sep 26
Historical Nihilism and Canadian Capitalism
The first thing to understand about Canada is that it is a company turned into a country.¹ It is from this kernel that all else sprouted. First Nations across the country are the keystone to Canadian history. And the settlement of New France, with its importation of the seigneurial system along the St. Lawrence river, must be acknowledged. But the process of state formation in North America’s most expansive territory begins with a British-chartered monopoly, a fur trading outfit called the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Crazy as it sounds, there was a time when beaver hats in Europe were so fashionable that it drove grizzled trappers deep into the boreal forest in search of pelts. Solitary months drifting in canoes, scavenging off the land, marrying into First Nations communities—everything to get in on the beaver trade.

The Hudson’s Bay Company streamlined the pelt procurement process by establishing trading posts along the great Arctic gateway to the Atlantic. Métis and Indigenous trappers would trade pelts for Made Beavers, a unit of currency that could be exchanged for European goods at the post. These included axes, flintlock muskets, kettles and the iconic HBC point blanket.

Canada thus entered the global commodity market as a repository of raw materials to be shovelled into the global furnace of production in exchange for high-value finished products. The fur trade leveraged a claim to nearly four million square kilometres of land—Rupert’s Land—named after the Hudson’s Bay Company’s first governor, a man who never set foot on the territory. Of course, those who had occupied the land for thousands of years were never considered to have claim to it. That is because their traditional economy did not produce commodities and was therefore considered unproductive in Lockean terms. HBC’s claim was premised on their exclusive ability to monetize the land.

When Canada became a country, it was as a British check on American expansion. Beaver money had to be converted into something more stately and Rupert’s Land had to be purchased from HBC’s British board of governors. Hudson’s Bay Company continued to own and operate trading posts on the land they occupied.

Hudson’s Bay Company post in Aklavik, Northwest Territories, 1956. Image: Library and Archives Canada.

The history of Hudson’s Bay is emblematic of the country that it kickstarted. Commodity production creates and destroys. Monopoly capital works like a zombie contagion, converting pristine nature into undead objects for sale and human bodies into lurching agents of accumulation. Beavers were turned into hats and Cree into commercial trappers. When the resource ran dry, nations of people lost their commercial utility and suddenly became barriers to novel means of settler commerce.

Reflecting the shift from the fur trade to settler commerce, HBC trading posts rapidly transitioned to general merchandise stores servicing the influx of European farmers, loggers and merchants. As cities grew and banks became more prominent, these merchandise shops became voguish department stores luxuriating in downtown Beaux-Arts constructs.

The British company was only acquired by Canadian billionaire owners in 1979; coincidentally this was about the time that the national constitution was patriated from London. Throughout the 20th century, The Bay was the crown adorning Canada’s golden age of brick and mortar retail, and millions of HBC point blankets draped over Canadian beds are a visible legacy of this era.

Sold to American financiers in 2006, The Bay abandoned any ambitions of serving a useful function in the age of Big Tech and financial oligopoly. By 2008, the company made its final transition from department store to “holding company that owns many billions of dollars of real estate.”² Being taken over by financiers is always the harbinger of a “last stop” before liquidation, which occurred unceremoniously in 2025.

In Manitoba, the Southern Chiefs Organization was gifted Winnipeg’s flagship HBC department store and are right now transforming it into a mixed-use facility that includes a First Nations cultural centre, residential complex and independent shops. They have seized a limb of the once-zombifying monopoly and are turning it into an institution to support the living.

Manitoba First Nations offered a roadmap for resolving historic colonial contradictions and seizing national identity from the clutches of foreign capital. Predictably, political leadership took nothing from this experience. They stood idle as The Bay’s 95 other locations shuttered and 355 years of history—4,400 artworks and artifacts—were auctioned off to the highest bidder.

From Winnipeg. The Bay had flagships built in all major canadian downtowns. image: wikimedia commons.

The enslaving logic of profit destroyed The Bay; it is destroying the country. Canada’s Big Six banks control 93% of banking assets. In unison, these same banks walked out on commitments to curb pollution almost the moment Donald Trump won the US presidency, irrespective of domestic opinion. The country is embroiled in a housing crisis culminating in $2.4 trillion worth of mortgages and the highest household debt in the G7. Manufacturing has been in decline since World War II, and tariffs pressure what’s left to move south of the border. Professional ice hockey was once a communitarian experience hosted by the public broadcaster in English, French and Punjabi. Since 2026, the national pastime has disappeared from public airwaves, stowed behind the paywall of a price-gouging telecom monopoly.

The economy is extractivist; it exports cheap natural resources and imports expensive finished goods. This has created a climate of persistent low wages and unbearably high costs on everything from basic foodstuffs to energy to housing. Over the last five years, homelessness and lethal drug addiction have created apocalyptic conditions in cities and towns alike. 28% of the country is at poverty-level. Owing to economic distress, 43% of people under 35 are outwardly in favour of American annexation.

As these very serious crises mount, the latest brainwaves from Canada’s Goldman Sachs-trained prime minister include privatizing airports and putting hundreds of billions of dollars on the national credit card for obsolete weapons of war. A zombie corporation is defined as an unviable business that generates just enough cash flow to pay the interest on its debts and cover basic operating costs, but cannot pay back the principal debt or fund new growth. This now defines the entire country.

With so much attention paid to American hegemonic decline, the sorry state of countries that uncritically hitched their wagons to the fortune of US power is often overlooked. The decades-long political and economic dependency of the American satellite states is now backfiring as the Trump administration attempts to vassalize allies.

This should not have been an entirely unforeseen outcome, as accumulation by dispossession driven by finance capital has been in full swing across the world since at least the 1980s, economically ruining many countries en route.³ For Canada, Hudson’s Bay was only the canary in the coal mine, the acid test for the neoliberal crises that now surround us. Although there are proven socialist fixes to the economic trade wars and social decay confronting Canada, the capture of the national elite by private capital will doubtless prevent their implementation.

Thanks for reading!
1. Paraphrasing Cody Caetano in Rollie Pemberton, “Is It Offensive to Wear the Hudson’s Bay Point Coat?” The Walrus, March 5, 2026. ↩︎
2. Richard Baker quoted in Don Gillmor, “The End of Hudson’s Bay,” The Walrus, March 26, 2025. ↩︎
3. One notable exception to this global trend is China. ↩︎
24 Aug 26
Liberal Democracy is a Sham
The concept of civilizational decline has been a staple of the far-right at least since the rise of fascism in Europe a century ago. While the right has always fixed its consternation with fast moving cultural changes and the erosion of “traditional values,” they are ideologically incapable of linking their grievances to the capitalist economic system that constantly revolutionizes our way of life.¹ But the first quarter of the 21st century has had the experience of successive wars and economic crises and political realignments against the backdrop of a rising China. The anti-capitalist left has therefore embraced the decline narrative, given the extraordinary challenges of environmental deterioration and affordability amidst a rising concentration of wealth and power into the hands of an elite western oligarchy. Throw in the demoralizing Epstein revelations and a rupture to the political order by a berserk President Trump and even western liberals are acknowledging decline.

If there is one shibboleth of the West that deserves scrutiny at this moment in history, it is liberal democracy. Liberal democracy has been the veneer over western capitalism; a moral ornament obscuring the ransacking of colonies around the world and used to coordinate a unified western response to competition from emergent powers. This has not always been a bad thing—the alliance between liberal capitalist states and the Soviet Union was fruitful in tearing down Nazi Germany, for example.

In the period post-World War II, western liberal countries could lay claim to progressive achievements on the home front—such as civil rights, accessible education and affordable housing—even while supporting many heinous regimes abroad. Free speech and multiparty elections appeared as great strengths under a regime of centralized news media that gave citizens a common information platform, while high union membership in domestic manufacturing ensured a reasonable distribution of profits.

Today that regime has changed. Private sector unions have fallen off a cliff and the digital age has turned media consumption into a “Choose Your Own Adventure” story. In a dialectical reversal, yesterday’s free speech and partisan competition have become forces that propel their own demise: conspiratorial misinformation, foreign subversion, online mobs of neo-Nazis, unchecked corporate power, the ascent of dictatorial right-wing populists into office. While smartphone apps and AI models rush out like a waterfall, public infrastructure is achingly slow to build. In Canada it can take 41 years to cut the ribbon on a simple light rail transport—to say nothing of badly needed doctors, schools, energy generation and bridges. The refusal to scrutinize liberal democracy out of some fear that its only alternative is dictatorship must be admonished because capitalism has already put us on an openly authoritarian trajectory with accelerating speed. If the democratic veneer that the West has placed over its society is no longer compatible with the communications technology and global economic structure in existence today, then it is high time to say so.

Washington’s Warning

In his farewell address, the first president of the United States foresaw exactly why liberal democracy would cease to function. George Washington argued that partisanship would fragment the common interest into competing factions. A citizenry that identified with a political party rather than the country would lose its principles; they would fail to identify policies affecting the common interest and concern themselves only with gaining power at the next instance. Political parties turn society against itself and create countries within countries: “Thus the policy and will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.” In the partisan political environment, Washington said, jealousies prevail and a “spirit of revenge” takes over, clearing the way for “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men” to take over on the back of “foreign influence and corruption.”

“I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat.” George Washington warned that partisan animosity would destroy national unity and invite the foreign subversion of national interests.

The body politic is now terminally ill with the viruses that Washington identified centuries ago. Liberal societies divided by political allegiance has turned the digital space into a playground for foreign actors. While weaker countries like Georgia and the Philippines are sites of proxy wars between East and West influence, the president of the United States openly accepts foreign bribes and Canadian separatists collaborate with agitators from the U.S. government. Elections have turned into sports matches where the politicians are the players, the voters are the fans and corporate CEOs own the teams.

The Brexit referendum was dominated by Britain’s wealthiest individuals and the OECD has already acknowledged that capital interests have saturated public discourse through industry-funded think tanks, lobbying and direct corporate political advertising. Representative government is powerless to reverse these trends because it is baked into the system; whoever holds power has necessarily benefitted from the existing framework or they wouldn’t be in office. Major reforms therefore hold little incentive but face massive pushback from an elite minority eager to retain its influence.

Contemporary liberal governance aligns with Washington’s description of “a frightful despotism” that negates the common interest in favour of permanent minority rule. In Canada, pollution reduction measures have been rolled back while oil companies have received billions in new subsidies—despite a two-thirds majority favouring clean energy and climate protection. A full three-quarters of Canadians give failing grades to their government in assisting with the cost of living crisis. The Canadian government does not possess the tools to meaningfully direct economic outcomes and the majority of people are plunged daily into the hazards of the market. Meanwhile, Canada’s central bank receives no input from labour or consumer stakeholders and the CEO-drenched Business Council of Canada has emerged as the prime minister’s top advisor.

When majority opinion is fragmented between multiple elected parties, it is only economic elites who maintain consistent influence through successive governments. In the United States, this is especially true; studies analyzing popular opinion and political legislation have concluded that average Americans “have practically zero influence on government policy.”

On policy, Democrats, Independents and Republicans agree with each other far more often than not. Large majorities in the United States favour public health insurance, ending the embargo of Cuba, ending mass incarceration, avoiding confrontation with Iran and Venezuela, reducing military expenditures, cutting support for Israel and adopting a pro-Main Street economic approach. Yet this is ignored by administration after administration resulting in rock-bottom public trust in government. As little as 17% of Americans trust their government “to do what is right most of the time.”

A United States that was subordinated to the popular will of Americans would immediately be a gentler, more sustainable global power with an economy that doesn’t cannabilize its own people for profits. But a government anchored by popular opinion would hurt margins across multiple industries—which is a red line for the capitalist regime. Partisan competition therefore exists to exploit wedge issues and keep the democratic majority as far from power as possible.

Toward a People’s Democracy

In The State and Revolution, Lenin described liberal democracy as “the best possible political shell for capitalism” because it allows corporate oligarchs to establish their power “so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois democratic republic can shake it.”² The western dictatorship of capital donned respectable attire for the purposes of winning hearts and minds during the Cold War. But since the dissolution of the Soviet Union it has shed its clothes once again.

Although the People’s Republic of China is derided in the mainstream as an authoritarian country, their decision-making process gathers more input from their citizens than most western countries do. Through online platforms, opinion polling, surveys, telephone hotlines and direct elections of local officials, the people of China give their local governments long lists of actionable items and provide guidance to the strategic Five Year Plans that have modernized their country at warp speed. This does not mean many aspects of the Chinese political system would be palatable to western society but it does expose the arbitrary criteria by which one country is deemed “democratic” while another is smeared as “authoritarian.” After all, if the “democratic” label can apply to a country that grants its citizens zero input in legislation and locks up more of its own people than any other in history, what good is the label?

The object of liberal democracy represents a major barrier to class consciousness, even among the left. A misplaced faith in this unworkable system has led to disastrous outcomes for the economic security of western workers; for the debt loads of governments; for slums of the Global South; for the biosphere. This is not a world designed by the democratic majority. To earn the label of democracy, the West must rethink the utility of career politicians making decisions on behalf of the population. Corporate influence must be ruthlessly suppressed and a public sector economy servile to the material wants and needs of the democratic majority must be constructed. With the commanding heights of the economy under public control, fertile ground for cooperative enterprises can finally be laid.

If a one party state is a bridge too far, we should consider alternative power structures that could exalt the great mass of working people over special interest groups. For example, power could be vested to non-partisan people’s assemblies chosen by lot. Such assemblies would supervise the bureaucracy and hire expert panels that implement the laws and economic plans determined by direct referenda. It is this, direct democracy, that reconciles the people with their government instead of alienating them from it.

Contrary to the musings of thinkers like John Stuart Mill, the “tyranny of the majority” is not a historical reality. Every tyranny in history has rested on minority power and the forfeiture of rights to elites. Capital interests have co-opted the democratic title and deformed the concept beyond recognition. But liberal government must be viewed as an enemy in the struggle against elite power. As Marx and Engels said, “the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.”³ As things now stand, that “battle of democracy” has yet to begin.

Thanks for reading!

Footnotes:
1. Recalling Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto (Arcturus Publishing, 2017): 37. “Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.” ↩︎
2. Vladimir Lenin, “The State and Revolution” in Essential Works of Lenin: “What Is To Be Done? And Other Writings (CreateSpace, 2012): 382-3. ↩︎
3. Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, 85. ↩︎
06 Feb 26
Ask the Editor: ‘The Rupture’
To the editor,

Canada has been targeted with threats from Trump since Prime Minister Carney’s Davos speech. Can you tell me why it was so provocative?

Thank you,

Kay.

[Sent via WordPress]

Hi Kay,

Mark Carney’s diagnosis of “a rupture” in the world order has been hailed for its clarion call to middle powers to band together and form a counterweight to American global hegemony. Under threat of U.S. economic reprisals, Carney explained, a variety of demands are now being made on the allies that have benefitted from Pax Americana. As if trying to prove Carney’s point, Trump replied the next day: “Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.” By acknowledging Trump’s coercive demands, Carney invited another one—stop complaining or Canada might not live.

Since 2016, Trump has promised to shake down the world on behalf of America and Carney only affirmed that fact in Davos. It is unclear if Trump really understood the content of the message or if he was merely offended that headlines were grabbed by another world leader. The psychological pathologies of the current U.S. leader are difficult to overstate. Unintentionally, Trump’s threatening response to Carney’s speech elevated its importance and imparted a lot more aura to its content than it would have otherwise had.

Carney only described a rupture in the appearance of the world order. Not its substance. Speaking as an elite financier, Carney cited a controversial former president of Czechoslovakia and said it was only a sign in the window that made people believe in the working class power of former socialist states. As an analogy for the present, Carney implied that the concept of a liberal “rules-based international order” was only ever a guise for operational U.S. global hegemony. Strategic allies such as Germany, Saudi Arabia and South Korea enjoyed market access in exchange for adherence to “American interests”—but this was the extent of the norm.

The U.S.-led global order has always been transactional and never about hifalutin “democratic values” or rational global governance. The trail of human rights violations, democratic overthrows, targeted assassinations and full-scale invasions is too long to claim otherwise. The revival of state-sanctioned piracy and gunboat diplomacy targeting Venezuela, Cuba and Iran only adds to a long-established pattern of lawless American aggression abroad.

The shockwave of U.S. military rampage felt for decades in the Global South harkens Karl Marx: “The profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois civilization lies unveiled before our eyes, turning from its home, where it assumes respectable forms, to the colonies, where it goes naked.”¹ Trump is not a rupture to the American hegemonic order. He is the ruling class without clothes. He offends the elitist sensibility of a Davos crowd not accustomed to being slapped about the head by the swinging dick of America’s president. But let’s exit the world of posh Swiss resorts in the Alps. How about those crowds of Baghdad, Caracas, Mogadishu, Havana, Jakarta, Ramallah or Tehran? Threats of annexation and tariffs against middle powers must appear positively trifling next to the suffocating economic embargoes, CIA-managed torture chambers, genocidal carpet bombings and rock-ribbed support for right wing dictatorships that have visited the Global South.

As a central banker, Carney is well aware of the vital function that international debt bondage and structural adjustment programs play in securing cheap labour and resources to middle powers. If he seemed to gesture toward the brutal and ongoing excesses of American control without denouncing any examples—this is why. The middle powers lack the scale of the hegemon but they lean on a system of dramatic capitalist exploitation all the same. Carney may be able to capture the zeitgeist of the World Economic Forum but a man with his pedigree will never apprehend the economic basis that is needed to construct a true new world order.

In sols,

Your editor.

Send your questions to the Reclamation: editor@thereclamation.co

Footnotes:
1. Karl Marx, “The Future Results of British Rule in India,” in Dispatches for the New York Tribune: Selected Journalism of Karl Marx (Penguin, 2007): 124. ↩︎
29 Jan 26
Ask the Editor: Predicting 2026
To the editor,

What do you expect in the year ahead?

Happy New Year,

Teela.

[Sent from Bluesky]

Happy New Year!

Predictions may be a fool’s errand but there is always some low-hanging fruit. Democrats will sweep midterm elections, Canada’s prime minister likely obtains his coveted majority government and plastic pollution continues to worsen. Marxists understand the relatively low stakes of these surface-level tendencies. The world we are living in is one where power has long been consolidated by an elite corporate class; yawning economic inequalities and corrupted liberal democracies are only symptoms of this fact. I do not foresee any challenge to ruling class power in the near term, which means that the direction of 2026 has already been set.

For all its Trump-related pandemonium, 2025 did not really move the needle away from trajectories previously established. Inflation continued to eat away at pocketbooks around the world. Russia and Israel aggressively redrew the maps of their respective neighbourhoods. China held on to its massive gains in global exports and new technologies. The Western world, including Canada and the European Union, have once again proven politically adrift without the tide of American leadership. The artificial intelligence economy—buoying the world’s stock markets by hype—has turned flat without reaching any clear tipping point. Venezuela has invited condemnable aggression from Washington and this is the fate of any Latin American country daring to exercise sovereignty over their national resources.

With the big stories of 2025, you’ll notice there was not a lot that was new; events have all unfolded around past momentum. Even an objective change, like US tariff polilcy, has only accelerated the existing trend of Western decline relative to a rising East. Populist movements demonstrate a world clamouring for catharsis but 2026 won’t be the year to deliver it. That is because the economic forces at play tell a story of near-term easing rather than escalation. Inflation is slowing down. AI investors have begun to exercise caution amidst talk of a bubble. The prospect of a Russia–Ukraine ceasefire signal the willingness of both to prioritize economic repair over military objectives. And the erraticism of the Trump White House has only spurred China to stay its course while the West begrudgingly flounders. The fate of Venezuela’s Maduro government may be an open question but, whatever happens, it will be a movie we have seen before.

The tense stability which looms over the globe this January does not portend any major improvement. Financial strain, environmental deterioration, warfare, oligarchic power, political impulsivity and social unrest will all continue to simmer under the heat of the recent past. The ancient Greek philosopher Anaxagoras said that to “separate off” elements from one another takes a revolution.¹ Likewise, the West will need to “separate off” its current ruling class in order to realize a change to its set trajectory. History shows us that revolutions do not occur unless class conflict reaches a raging boil. Although we will be waiting past the new year for that, let’s raise a glass to 2026 and try our best to enjoy the simmer.

In sols,

Your editor.

Send your questions to the Reclamation: editor@thereclamation.co

Footnotes:
1. Early Greek Philosophy, trans. Jonathan Barnes (Penguin, 2002): 196. Anaxagoras here was referencing the nature of matter in the universe. ↩︎
31 Dec 25
Ask the Editor: Carney No Match For Trump’s Gutpolitik
To the editor,

Why is Canada getting hit so hard with American tariffs? It’s among the top five nations in terms of the relative tariff rate. Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, had taken a tough tone toward Washington during the spring election, but he’s been very agreeable since taking office and eager to get a trade deal behind him. What is holding up the US side?

Thanks,

Ian.

Hi Ian,

For all the oceans Canada touches with its long borderlines drawn out over maps, there is one geographical disadvantage that has come with the northern territory: there is only one neighbour, and it’s a juggernaut of economic and military proportions. Trump sees a geographic dependency and is determined to use it as a cudgel to extract concessions from Canada.

However lopsided the relationship may appear on paper, it is a mistake for any resource-rich country to play the pauper and beg to be relieved of their abundance. Yet that is exactly what Carney has done. When the US raised tariffs over laughable fentanyl export allegations, Canadian Liberals responded with a multi-billion dollar border security package. When Trump threatened a halt to trade negotiations over the digital service tax—applied to the harvest and sale of personal data by tech giants—Ottawa scrapped it. When the Ontario government ran an anti-tariff ad that Trump didn’t like, it was immediately pulled from the airwaves with a profuse apology from Carney. Despite this, Washington has suspended negotiations with its northern neighbour, preferring to leave the full brunt of tariffs intact.

Epictetus said that bullies may mock your principles but, “if you let these people dissuade you from your choice, you will earn their derision twice over.”¹ Trump, no doubt, sensed an opportunity the moment that Carney put his elbows down and went hat-in-hand to the White House shortly after winning his election. In that moment he had dutifully earned Trump’s derision—and it has been Carney dancing to Trump’s tune ever since. Why should the US negotiate tariffs when so much can be extracted with them in place?

The tariffs may be disastrous policy but that is unseen in Washington. Although the Business Council of Canada has tasked Carney with having the American president see the light, the opposite has occurred. As a global banker, Carney is powerless to look beyond the facts and figures of the neoliberal order. Meanwhile, Trump has invented a new genre of politik somewhere between the real and ideal—gutpolitik—and Carney is squirming within its sweaty fold.

It is unlikely he’s going to slither out. Ottawa should be leveraging the public appetite for a hardline on trade negotiations in order to open up a new relationship with China, including Belt-and-Road participation. Ottawa should be rescuing its environmental commitments and stabilizing unemployment with a worker owned enterprise program. Ottawa should be minting crown corporations in order to expand the national manufacturing of cars, homes and military equipment for domestic use. Instead automobile factories will shutter, knowledge will go to waste, corporate bailouts will accumulate, and billions will be shed abroad on arms purchases.

The neoliberal era is over. Trump is only a sign of the times. Until the public understands this, the slide into the abyss is irresistible.

In sols,

Your editor.

Send your questions to the Reclamation: editor@thereclamation.co

Footnotes:
1. Epictetus, Discourses and Selected Writings (Penguin, 2008): 229. ↩︎
11 Dec 25