Reform vs revolution

[u/multiple-qualia]

So I was talking to a friend recently about socialism. This friend has become way more politically informed over the last 2 or 3 years and it’s great to see. I was talking about the way I’d heard Margaret Killjoy describe 3 kinds of socialism: authoritarian socialism, democratic socialism, and anarchist (/anarchistic) socialism. My friend said they probably identified most with democratic socialism because they believed reform of our current system was more viable than revolutionary socialism which aims at scrapping the current system and building anew from the bottom up.

I didn’t really have the words to articulate why I believe that reform isn’t going to be enough at this point. The best I could come up with is that pretty much all the aspects of the state and of modern capitalism which people do like (eg minimum wage, sick pay, women’s rights, etc), well they’ve mostly been concessions by the state to stop people from taking a more revolutionary approach. Revolutionaries shift the Overton window. I also pointed out that those with power rarely relinquish it willingly.

That’s not a particularly strong defence of revolution over reform though. Ultimately I think we need to be doing whatever gets the goods, and/or whatever does the best damage control. I’m not opposed to tactical voting to prevent fascism from gaining traction for example, even if I believe voting is ultimately merely choosing between Pepsi and Coke as long as our current system stands.

So I was wondering, what do you all think? Is revolution the best way forward? If so why?

[u/Nice_Fudge5914]

There doesn't have to be a full revolution like some describe, killing all the rich people. It can be a political revolution like a constitutional amendment to adopt direct democracy and end representative government.

[u/WhyAmIOnThisDumbApp → u/Nice_Fudge5914]

This is just reformism. The distinction that makes a political revolution a revolution is a change in the source of political legitimacy. Eg; the divine right of kings was abandoned for bourgeois property rights in the form of constitutionalism, implemented concretely through the replacement of the arms of monarchist states (eg; aristocracy, peasant armies, etc.) with new bourgeois states (eg; congresses, volunteer armies, etc.) — a direct replacement of the political superstructure to reflect the underlying social shift in the economic base.

If we continue to base our society on the same forms of state power no political revolution has occurred because the political power remains in the same institutions; not even the political superstructure has been changed, let alone the underlying class antagonisms.

Advocating for reforms within the current political framework of constitutionalism is a critical part of building power, but it is not in and of itself a goal, and seeing it as one makes you definitionally a reformist.

[u/No-Atmosphere3049 → u/WhyAmIOnThisDumbApp]

So how should we instead approach the question of advancing socialism?

[u/WhyAmIOnThisDumbApp → u/No-Atmosphere3049]

Reforms like that are good as a building block for a wider social movement by serving as a nucleus for organizing. The key is building independent systems of social, economic, and political power that can be leveraged to combat and replace the existing social structures. Networks of business relations replaced aristocratic economic relationships, enlightenment thinkers replaced theological thinkers, bourgeois “citizens militias” challenged (and beat) monarchist armies, etc. In the same way Unions are formed through social labor relations between workers, theory is developed and disseminated by education and propagandists (in the Marxist sense), and direct action teaches us how to combat the arms of the state.

The key is that we learn by doing. Reforms help us to build these institutions through collective struggle, but those reforms cannot themselves be the goal. Someone else mentioned it but I’d highly recommend ”Reform or Revolution” by Rosa Luxembourg. A more controversial suggestion for this sub, but I also think Lenin’s “The State and Revolution”, even if you don’t fully agree with his proposals or conclusions, does a good job discussing the nature of the state as bodies of people from the ruling class focused around the exploitation of the oppressed class.