The Fate of Labour Socialism: The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the Dream of a Working-Class Future by James Naylor (review)

James Naylor, in this analysis of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) during the 1930s and into the early 1940s has made an unequivocally provocative, comprehensive, and groundbreaking contribution to an already developed – though recently complacent – historiography of the CCF / New Democratic Party (NDP). Based largely on works originating from political scientists in the 1960s through the 1980s, the CCF / NDP field remains divided between two general narratives: the first is that the modern NDP has "remained loyal" to its founding ideologies and objectives, while the second points to a "protest movement becalmed," suggesting that there was a departure from socialism as the party became more moderate, professionalized, and concerned with winning elections than transforming the social order.

While Naylor might certainly be said to fit in this second camp more than the first, he mostly transcends these debates to question the assumptions both sides have long held. Essentially, Naylor argues that much of the existing literature lacks both the historian's lens as well as the application of the "new" social and labour history that gained prominence in the 1970s. In other words, the existing works focus too closely on institutions and formal figures and less on the specific intellectual, cultural, economic context that gave rise to the CCF and that enveloped in its early transformations.

Naylor, in bringing the perspective of a social and labour historian, argues that the early CCF's image as a respectable party built by middle-class British-Canadian intellectuals is a deeply incomplete one: "[T]his traditional narrative presents a very skewed picture of the CCF in the 1930s and early 1940s, dramatically exaggerating the role of middle-class leadership and liberal ideas at the expense of much of the party's activist core and this core's firm and widespread rejection of the idea that capitalism could be successfully reformed and that such reform should be the CCF's goal."

Naylor stresses that this middle-class storyline of the CCF was a retroactive creation that served to accommodate the assumptions of various left scholars and activists. Modern NDP members looking for a respectable history could point to these origins, while left critics of the CCF/NDP could dismiss the party as rooted in a bourgeois orientation. Naylor instead demonstrates that the CCF, from its founding until the mid-1940s, was mostly a party of working-class leftists drawing their influence, experiences, and objectives from the class struggle. Naylor terms these CCF members "labour socialists" and argues that they, while not discounting the contributions of academics and farmers, were the key force. The middle-class image of the CCF only really took hold after the war, when the multi-class experience of Depression era suffering, along with the mainstream acceptance of state planning and social security, meant that post-war capitalism was reformed upon the basis of critiques, not just by labour socialists but also by those more optimistic about capitalism's potential recovery.

This, combined with the formalization and bureaucratization of trade unionism, meant that the CCF and its allied labour unions were less willing to propose a wholly alternative society and more focused upon ensuring the place of workers within a post-war society. For Naylor, this signalled the end of the CCF as a labour socialist party and its origin as the social-democratic reformist body. This argument is largely convincing and adds additional wrinkles to the post-war deradicalization narrative of the CCF, which Naylor suggests is too singularly tied to the twin forces of Cold War anti-communism and post-war prosperity.

Ultimately, Naylor's first-rate research is presented in an accessible and engaging fashion. Anyone interested in the study of the CCF/NDP must now include The Fate of Labour Socialism among the field's foundational texts, but the book also has value for anyone examining broader...