Instead of Reform or Revolution, why not Reform and Revolution?
Instead of Reform or Revolution, why not Reform and Revolution?
Christian Taylor
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Kayden Wood
because reformism directly hinders revolution.
Gavin Reed
Good times leftypol
Good times
Jose Mitchell
You should look into the concept of transitional demands comrade; Trotsky is your man for this question. Of course reform is necessary as part of revolutionary process, but reforms alone are by definition and nature unable to have revolutionary outcome. Read "The Transitional Program"
Gabriel Morales
Because reform exists to make sure a revolution doesn't happen.
Jaxon Robinson
So where will revolution come from? There is little organization on the left aside from anti-fa (who if I understand this right are anarchists?). If there are no leaders and no organizations from which a leader looks likely to emerge then how will the revolution happen, specifically in the west? How much worse do things have to get, and is it really worth the suffering a revolution will require?
Luis Carter
I agree with you 100% OP for what it's worth. There's a difference between staunch left wing democratic political action and the meek centrist social democracy that people rightly criticize. But really, a genuine left wing party is hardly playing a fair game even disregarding the forces of capital arrayed against them, since most leftists will just make fun of them for trying to do something instead of helping.
Samuel Torres
You're spot on to identify the problem as a problem of a lack of revolutionary leadership. That's another thing to look to Trotsky for; he would agree with you.
You say these organizations building such leadership don't exist, but they do; they might not be big, but they can only grow. Usually the ones that focus on this are Trotskyist organizations, logically. But hell, it doesn't have to be that formal; make a revolutionary leader of yourself. Find others who are well versed and have leadership potential too. Build the revolutionary leadership you've correctly identified as lacking.
Landon Martin
Is it bad I teared up a little bit while reading that?
idk what's wrong with me.
Anyway OP, in reguards to your question, watch this from zizek, he explains the whole reform revolution thing quite well.
youtube.com
Tldr, we need to try and make reasonable claims that we know the system cannot provide. That is what will scare the ruling class more than saying we need to go from full communism from the start. Make it gradual, for example in the US, 'why CANT we have universal health care?'
While it's not marxism, it's the first steps to revolution.
Easton Torres
Reformism as an ideology maybe, and maybe some reforms are double-edged, altering the terrain of struggle to neither sides' distinct advantage.
Now, I am coming from that Engels "Dialectics of Nature" mode of thought.
What are the limits of very very generally applying a schema to the development of human societies in the mode of "evolutionary development, followed by revolutionary change"? Basically, in nature we see this sort of occurrence, be it in the realm of speciation/evolution or when it comes to physical changes in matter. Am I being too inductive? What I think this sort of approach lacks, when it comes to the difference between inorganic matter and human society is that it cannot account for ideology.
At any rate, were not the Bolsheviks in favor of both reform and revolution? Reform and parliamentary participation under Tsarism, revolution and dispersing parliament when conditions changed? Granted, Lenin was the key figure in both developments of Russian Social Democracy, with his insistence on the strict revolutionary outlook all the while. The Situationists likewise had an ideological purity.
Maybe the schema of development can be more applicable with the qualifier of a sort of ideological purity. At any rate, perhaps the lesson to take away is that social development needs to be examined thoroughly by true dialecticians, because there is a sort of nexus of development that needs to be reached before a situation can be called revolutionary.
Naw, man nothing wrong with you. I just visited NYC for the first time a couple weeks ago and reading this really brings me back there and makes my heart swell at the possibilities. I mean the Marx stuff was stupid and not tear-worthy but all the little minutia, yeah.