reform and revolution

This is an extract from ‘Class, Party and Revolution: The 2018 Socialist Register’. RRR Virtual Conference 'Transnationalism' Call for Papers Closes, 17:00 GMT. According to them, initially there should be a sincere attempt at a policy resting on indirect controls and freely accepted managerial prerogatives. Make a donation, About The latter must not direct its daily activity toward the conquest of political power, but toward the betterment of the condition of the working class, within the existing order. No doubt it is technically true that a selective policy in fiscal, price, and credit matters can imprint qualitative social and geographical orientations on production, differentiating the growth of its sectors, services, and regions according to social criteria and a global economic rationality. According to scientific socialism, the historic necessity of the socialist revolution manifests itself above all in the growing anarchy of capitalism, which drives the system into an impasse. In that case socialism ceases to be an historic necessity. It would thus remove any reason why a private company should seek a rationalization or innovation which would increase its profits beyond the rate reckoned as normal, thereby destroying one of the major incentives to technical progress. Its institutions are so conceived as to perpetuate the separation of individuals and their molecular dispersion, to deny them all collective power over the organization of society, leaving them merely with the possibility, as a substitute for popular power, of a permanent delegation of power every four or ve years to representatives with no direct relations with the masses, to parties which are only considered “acceptable partners” on condition that they represent vis-à-vis their electors the superior interests of the capitalist state, rather than the interests of their electors vis-à-vis the capitalist state. Revisionist theory thus places itself in a dilemma. In the foreseeable future there will be no crisis of European capitalism so dramatic as to drive the mass of workers to revolutionary general strikes or armed insurrection in defense of their vital interests. It does not completely overthrow a gov… However eloquently it may be advocated by the opposition, a different policy will neither convince nor appear possible unless there has already been a virtual demonstration of the power of promulgating it, unless the relation of social forces has been modi ed by direct mass action which, organized and led by the working class parties, has created a crisis for the policies of the government in office. There may be disagreement with the terms in which I have posed the problem; some may think socialism unnecessary for the liberation and fulfillment of men. Second, on the progressive socialisation of the process of production, which creates the germs of the future social order. A socialist strategy of progressive reforms does not mean the installation of islands of socialism in a capitalist ocean. At the present time there is a danger that this same process of decay of a situation favorable to the working class will be reproduced every time a coalition coming to power on a program of reforms is a heterogeneous alliance of neocapitalist reformists and socialists. We offer a supportive environment for both established and inexperienced scholars, including students. There is the question in a nutshell. For rules on re-publication of work in RRR, see our policies, WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF NINETEENTH CENTURY RESEARCH, The Journal particularly aims to assist new researchers and early career academics in publishing their latest findings. Written in 1899, it provides a devastating demolition of the theoretical and practical basis of reformism. The bourgeoisie reacts to the actions that threaten its prerogatives and powers by a fight of capital, an investment strike, and selective dismissals, aimed first of all at trade union militants; in short, by unleashing an economic crisis whose effects penalize the working classes. It was completely valid at the time when it was written and it remains completely valid today. These have been the means of making changes within the power structure of a society. Next: Chap.2: The Adaptation of Capitalism. It follows from this situation that a program with a “social” character—concerning the raising of low wages; the development of social construction and backward regions; the improvement of education and public services, etc.—must either use a coherent set of reforms to attack the logic and the core of capitalist accumulation, or retreat precipitately before the lightning response of capitalist forces whose interests are threatened or adversely affected. Materially, the UK is not a nation – with fewer common experiences than ever before, from schools and policing to borders and governance – argue Medb MacDaibheid and Brian Christopher, While economic activity slowed down during the Covid-19 crisis, accumulation of wealth continues for capitalists at the cost of key workers’ health and wellbeing, writes Notes From Below, Utopianism isn’t a rose-tinted optimism: it’s ‘the realism of hope’ we now desperately need, argues Jack Kellam, Get involved Chapter I The Opportunist Method. The dilemma leads to another. exchange, controls, price ceilings, import quotas, nationalization of financial or industrial monopolies—and which could only be attempted by a government “striking while the iron is hot,” at the moment of maximum popular support and mobilization. The autonomy of trade union and political organizations must bring the antagonisms into the open and allow them to develop freely, and then bring the existing organization of power into question and into crisis, and upset the balance of social forces and of the capitalist economy—a balance which tends to reconstitute itself at a higher level after every initiation of partial reforms, a point which will be taken up presently. He rejects the very possibility of collapse. The repetition of a similar process—which occurred in France after 1936 and 1945, in Great Britain after 1945 and 1964, in Italy after 1947 and 1963—can only be prevented if the coalition is sufficiently homogeneous and conscious of the trials awaiting it to respond to the offensive of the capitalist forces by a lightning reaction in the country of the working masses, and by governmental measures prepared preventively in advance, well before the victory. We should not conclude from the impossibility, failing a pre-revolutionary situation, of passing directly to reforms destructive of the system, that a socialist strategy of reforms can or must be limited to isolated or partial reforms, called “democratic” because they have not only no socialist content, but no socialist perspective or revolutionary dynamic. It is essential that this antagonism should never be institutionalized, as it usually is in neocapitalist and social-democratic regimes, by the integration of working-class organizations in the state and their subordination to it, by compulsory negotiation and arbitration. If not, the socialist movement, by seeming to give a totally unmerited “socialist” warrant to the social-democratic leaders through tactical agreements at the summit, will have prepared the rout in ideological and political confusion of the whole of the work- ing class movement and particularly of its avant-garde. It is a consequence of the latter’s actual impossibility in the European context. Thus the suppression of crises can only mean the suppression of the antagonism between production and exchange on the capitalist base. For from this moment on the situation has already changed. This is true. The original minimum program has already become inapplicable. Instead, she argues from a historical materialist perspective that capitalismis economically unsustainable and will eve… But the promulgation of such public directives quickly comes up against the logic of capitalist activity and destroys its dynamic.10 In fact, it amounts to the destruction of managerial authority, to the factual socialization of the activity of the entrepreneur, and to indirect pub- lic direction of rms. But it, too, is in the given case no the simple intellectual reflection of the growing contradictions of capitalism and its approaching decline. On the other hand, preventative measures against the offensive of the capitalist forces presupposes that from the start the coalition had no illusions about the possibility of appeasing the bourgeoisie and reconciling it with a loyal collaboration with the new state.8 But social- democratic leaders are supporters of a popular front. Either the socialist transformation is, as was admitted up to now, the consequence of the internal contradictions of capitalism, and with the growth of capitalism will develop its inner contradictions, resulting inevitably, at some point, in its collapse, (in that case the “means of adaptation” are ineffective and the theory of collapse is correct); or the “means of adaptation” will really stop the collapse of the capitalist system and thereby enable capitalism to maintain itself by suppressing its own contradictions. We have here, in brief, the explanation of the socialist programme by means of “pure reason.” We have here, to use simpler language, an idealist explanation of socialism. Sophie Welsh, Universities of Exeter and Southampton, Title TBD, (Virtual). To attack the consequences of the system’s logic is necessarily to attack this logic itself and to threaten the system. But by presenting it in its capitalist form, the same factors render superfluous, inversely, in the same measure, the transformation of this socialised production into socialist production. But the bourgeoisie will never surrender its power without struggle, without being forced to do so by the revolutionary action of the masses. But if one admits with Bernstein that capitalist development does not move in the direction of its own ruin, then socialism ceases to be objectively necessary. Read the Latest Reform & Revolution Magazine - Free Download. The working class will neither unite politically, nor man the barricades, for a 10 percent rise in wages or 50,000 more council flats. Neither can it aim at the immediate realization of anticapitalist reforms that are directly incompatible with the survival of the system, such as the nationalization of all important industrial enterprises or of all sectors with monopolistic or oligopolistic structures. This touches on the strictly political conditions of a socialist strategy of reforms. We must distinguish in this outlook two things: the fundamental idea and its exterior form. Their function is to educate and unite the actually or potentially anticapitalist social forces by the struggle for undeniable social and economic objectives—above all, for a new direction for social and economic development—by initially adopting the method of peaceful and democratic reforms. This crisis—which is not merely the result of a deliberate and concerted action by the bourgeoisie, but also of the objective impossibility of making capitalism work while attacking its internal resources— finally allows the bourgeoisie to negotiate from a position of strength the revision of the government program and the postponement in time (i.e., in practice, indefinitely) of its objectives. For in their general tendency, if not in detail, these policies reflect the existing relation of forces in the given situation. If the socialist revolution is not immediately possible, neither is the realization of reforms immediately destructive of capitalism. Published by Haymarket Books.

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