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Contents <http://www.agmarxismus.net/english/english.htm> Principles of Arbeitsgruppe Marxismus forward <http://www.agmarxismus.net/english/english5.htm> <http://www.agmarxismus.net/english/english5.htm> * 3. Reform or Revolution? * At present, the working class movement is clearly dominated by reformist forces, trade unions and social-democratic parties that are not oriented towards a revolutionary overcoming of capitalism. Their aims are reforms within the framework of capitalism (frequently even only the prevention of unduly harsh bourgeois counter-reforms). Formally, some of those parties may still - detached from their political practice - have the long-term objective of socialism. As the policies of the reformist tendencies does not point beyond the capitalist property and production relations, but concentrates on their sound and fair functioning, it constitutes a sort of bourgeois policy. The distinction of reformist and open bourgeois parties is the fact, that it depends on its roots in and connections with the working class. Contrary to classic bourgeois parties, such as the US-Democrats, the German CDU (*Christian Democratic Party*), or the Austrian ÖVP (*Austrian Peoples Party*), the social democratic parties do not just incidentally maintain a trade union or workers wing. The British Labour Party, the German SPD and the Austrian SPÖ base their existence on the connections with the working class, mostly mediated through the trade unions. It is exactly this connection which is the reason why the reformist parties are interesting for the capitalist class. With them a political integration of the working class into the system is possible. Due to their bourgeois policies and being organically anchored in the working class, the reformist parties can be called *bourgeois worker's parties*. The reformism of social democratic parties and trade unions is based on the needs of the workers for an immediate improvement of their living conditions in and outside the companies, for the successful sale of their labour power. This call for reforms is not a necessary contradiction to a revolutionary orientation of the working class movement. It only becomes a contradiction through the organisation and containment through reformist parties. Only the politically organised reformism is tied to the capitalist system. It expresses the short-sighted interest of those workers which are privileged and corrupted by imperialism by means of some concessions. Those workers (sometimes called *labour aristocracy*) developed out of its own a layer of bureaucrats who do not want to endanger their *social partnership *with capital by revolutionary activities. Reformist organisations play an important role for the capitalist class. They help to propagate bourgeois ideology among the proletariat and to implement bourgeois interests. They politically tie the working class to the prospering of their *own *capital and their *own *national state – up to the defence of the *fatherland*. While reformists usually support imperialistic /nationalistic wars led by the capitalist class, they immediately become pacifists as soon as an anti-capitalist revolution or even a more militant class struggle takes place. Of course reformist parties repeatedly took part in the bloody suppression of worker's fights and revolutions. This demonstrates their bourgeois nature in the clearest way. The bureaucracies of reformist parties and trade unions fear their privileges threatened through revolutionary developments. Hence they propagate - if they formally still cling to a socialist perspective - a stepwise and peaceful (mostly parliamentarian) way towards socialism. To present this has always proven disastrous. Bourgeoisie will not give up their wealth and power without fight. Depending on the situation, they will use their full instrumentarium of state repression, reactionary gangs of assassins, and nationalistic inciting to maintain their rule. Hence, a working class movement oriented towards a gradual and peaceful reform of capitalism can only capitulate or it will be suppressed by the capitalist class. The overcoming of capitalist barbarism will only be possible through revolution. And this revolution will be the more unbloody the more the working class and, in particular, the revolutionary forces are prepared for a violent fight with the suppression instruments of the capital. A counter-revolution of the bourgeoisie can only be prevented if the revolution destroys the bourgeois state, hence the police, the judiciary, the army, and the bureaucracy. To that end the working class needs its own organisational structures: Firstly, a revolutionary organisation that usually has already been set up before the revolution, that organises the most conscious parts of the working class and can give the revolution a political perspective. Secondly, workers's councils (Soviets) or worker's committees which are not arbitrary inventions of some revolutionaries but emerge „naturally" in every proletarian revolution due to the immediate needs in the struggle. The worker's councils or committees include the majority of the working class and organise the class struggle on local and company's level. Those committees are regionally and nationally (and if possible internationally) connected with each other. In these structures, workers can decide in a democratic way on further measures regarding the struggle. Thirdly, worker's militias that are subordinated to the committees, which result immediately from the need to defend demonstrations, strikes, factories and districts, and, finally, the revolution against reactionary attacks. Committees and militias of workers are not only instruments for the struggle during the revolution, they also constitute instruments of power to organise (production, distribution, social welfare etc.) and defend the new society. Contrary to class societies, these institutions are not separated from the majority of the people. The delegates in the Soviets on company's, local, regional, and national level are accountable and can be voted out of office at any time. Their income does not exceed the average income of a trained worker. The militia is immediately tied to the working class. As the power of the working class means greatest possible democracy for workers and poor peasants but at the same time the supression of the exploiter classes (that fight to regain their privileges), there still exist, to some extent, state structures, which may be called proletarian * semi-state*. This *dictatorship of the proletariat* will be necessary as long as the world bourgeoisie still has means of power to organise a counter-revolution, as long as the revolution is extended to an international level and stabilised. The semi-state structures will continue to exist until most goods have lost their commodity nature, until the scarcity of resources (regarding human needs on an international level) is pushed back successfully by means of human and technical productive forces. Then the administration of scarcity is less and less necessary. Therefore classes and the proletarian semi-state cannot simply be abolished, they wither away together with the production of commodities. The basis for this development is the post-capitalist mode of production, which is determined by a plan democratically developed by the working class. It is only possible to speak of socialism, if commodity production, classes and state have mainly disappeared. Already in the transitional society and even more so in socialism, the organisation of production will be changed considerably and modified to the workers´ needs. Material security and the withering away of petty family structures* *will create the basis for women´s liberation. However, social oppression does not automatically disappear during the building of socialism. Therefore it is necessary - even in the revolutionary transitional society - to fight conservative ideologies and push them back in a politically conscious way. However, to win over the majority of the working class for the revolutionary overcoming of capitalism, mere measures of enlightenment and propaganda for socialism and revolution will not be sufficient. The proletariat does not automatically develop a socialist consciousness from its class struggles. But struggles (whether inside or outside the sphere of production) can reach the limits of the capitalist system. Either they are smashed to pieces at these limits (because of their helplessness in view of capitalist *Sachzwänge* or because of the state instruments of repression), or they develop a system-overcoming perspective through the combination of their own experience and the deliberate intervention of revolutionaries. For such a successful intervention the use of *transitional demands* is important. They cling on the (often fragmentary) economical and political daily struggles of the working class, trying to unite them and to push them forward, to give them a central perspective, to internationalise them and, finally, to combine them with the take over of power by the working class. In a strike, for instance, the demand for worker's control of the production can be important because it leads to the question of who is in power in economy, hence in society: the capitalists and their state or the proletariat and their organisations. This compellingly demands the overcoming of reformism as dominating political force within the working class movement. The influence of reformism will not diminish „on its own'' - even in periods of revolutionary upheavals. On the contrary, reformist organisations can play a key role (because of their traditional roots within the working class) in appeasing and preventing revolutions. This implies that, in the process of building revolutionary parties, reformist mass organisations must not be ignored or simply „unmasked''. Ways and means have to be found to influence the political development in the reformist parties - not with the illusionary goal of reforming those parties, but to separate the basis from the reformist party bureaucrats and reformism altogether. To that purpose revolutionaries use the tactic of the united front. Its aim is to push reformist organisations that are under the pressure of their basis into a united struggle for specific urgent interests of the working class and, at the same time, to convince the members and followers of these organisations in the concrete struggle about the inconsequence and/or treason practiced by its leaders. These united fronts can have different shapes: Alliances for demonstrations or strikes; critical support for reformist parties running in elections for the bourgeois parliament; the entry of revolutionaries into reformist parties (entrism). In all those forms, it is crucial that the political independence of the revolutionary forces is maintained and that this tactic of building a revolutionary organisation is not mixed up with a political adjustment towards reformism. In particular in the case of entrism it is important that there exist lines of rupture inside the reformist parties, that a respective mood among the rank and file of the party allows an open dissemination of revolutionary positions. Of course, the prerequisite for the realization of united fronts is a certain strength of the revolutionary organisation which usually guarantees the freedom of revolutionary propaganda. <http://www.agmarxismus.net/english/english3.htm> back<http://www.agmarxismus.net/english/english3.htm> Contents <http://www.agmarxismus.net/english/english.htm> forward <http://www.agmarxismus.net/english/english5.htm> <http://www.agmarxismus.net/english/english5.htm> -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. 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