The New Prince in a New Principality: OCAP and the Toronto Poor

The article employs Antonio Gramsci's philosophy of praxis to analyze the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty's battle against the proto-fascist, neoconservative Ontario provincial government. A structural diagram, entitled "The Party at the Margin," is presented to show OCAP's place in the current social formation. Adapting Machiavelli, the article considers OCAP's collective "new prince" role, as well as the role of the intellectual. A retired academic, the author was a member of the OCAP executive.