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Hi John, Let's have a friendly non-sectarian non-flame war type debate about this, because it is very important.. I respect your position but I disagree with it. I will begin by trying to unpack the labels "reformist" and "reformism". These unfortunately have migrated from slow to fast thinking (See Daniel Kahneman) and have acquired both the status of curse words and a sacred sayings that have the magic power of preventing the need for critical and analytical thought i.e. slow thinking. So what did reformism originally mean? In what contexts did it originally appear.? What was its original political function? Thankfully there is a good wiki on the word and it points us towards Bernstein (reflex shudder in horror) and Rosa Luxembourg. There is also mention of the debate in the 60s within the British Labour Party around nationalization, which I am old enough to recall. Briefly, reformism seems to have meant something like a process according to the Send Law of Dialectics. Quantitative reform piled upon reform will eventually produce qualitative change in the system. I am inclined to agree with this and so that would put me in the reformist camp. But, the law or tendency if it operates in the social sphere is subject to all sorts of counter tendencies which arise from the struggle between the social classes. So, I am not naive enough to believe that we would be allowed simply to pass reform upon reform, and hey presto the workers' paradise emerges. But here, and I think this is the crucial point, if one runs up the banner of reform -say the imposition of a 35 hour week or a job guarantee along the lines advocated by Bill Mitchell of Newcastle University- then that is more likely to get public traction than a campaign build around slogans such as "One solution - Revolution", which I used to chant in the streets of Brisbane. The political point is that gaining public traction i.e. support gives one a political space to operate in. That of course does not guarantee victory but it does allow for maneuvering. The alternative is to stick with the one anti-reformist line and demand a revolution. Been there, done that for years and really it ends up as a kind of self-fulfilling irrelevancy. That might be enough for my opening salvo. Hopefully over to you comradely Gary On Wed, Jul 15, 2015 at 7:58 AM, John Passant via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > ******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > ***************************************************************** > > From reformism to struggle and regroument > > If there are two lessons I draw from the surrender of SYRIZA they are, > first, not to pursue a grand reformist project, especially an electoralist > one aimed at winning power to manage capitalism, and second to consider how > to unite those small and disparate forces now on the ground in Australia > which understand that the emancipation of the working class must be the act > of the working class. > > > http://enpassant.com.au/2015/07/14/from-reformism-to-struggle-and-regroupment/ > _________________________________________________________ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: > http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/gary.maclennan1%40gmail.com > _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
