#reformism

[thatdiabolicalfeminist]

CONSERVATIVE, OR BOURGEOIS, SOCIALISM A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances, in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society. To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind. ... The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie. A second and more practical, but less systematic, form of this Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class, by showing that no mere political reform, but only a change in the material conditions of existence, in economic relations, could be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be effected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations; reforms, therefore, that in no respect affect the relations between capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and simplify the administrative work, of bourgeois government. Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression, when, and only when, it becomes a mere figure of speech. Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties: for the benefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for the benefit of the working class. This is the last word and the only seriously meant word of bourgeois Socialism. It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois—for the benefit of the working class.

-The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Frederich Engels

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

By Sam Marcy

While carrying out the struggle here with the deepest-felt sympathy for all victims of the coup, it is also the responsibility of the working class leaders to explain to the advanced elements the disastrous consequences of the policies of Allende and the parties in the Popular Unity (UP) coalition, particularly the Communist Party.

The revolutionary cadres in Chile must rebuild, reconstitute themselves, and create a transition to socialism built on reality, on the armed working class. We look forward and pledge ourselves to building a movement in solidarity with the resistance movement in Chile. In the heartland of the imperialist culprits, that is our duty.

[anarchistin]

The reality is that the future never comes, but is rather the ideological justification for the suppression of our desires and revolutionary change today. Tomorrow becomes just the romantic notion of accepting subjugation today.

— Bryan Hill

[biologusputrifier777-blog]

Many Tumblr users are Arch Conservatives in their mindset

I have frequently encountered Tumblr users who are reactionaries, and this is frankly not uncommon. In general, we live in a reactionary era and many workers are divorced from their movement, but what I have encountered on this site frequently goes beyond the base ignorance that the capitalist class inflicts upon the proletariat. Namely, a mindset that is defined by two factors, One, a single-minded focus on making one's own position in Capital as comfortable as possible at the expense of all else, and two, an overwhelming belief that the inevitable self-emancipation of the working class represents some biblical apocalypse. That last part has two meanings, as those who spew it often hurl it as a slur against the real movement, claiming that Communists are simply religious fanatics who seek some mythical purification of the world. The second meaning is less complex, they imagine the means by which the self-emancipation will occur, class war, as an outright apocalyptically violent event. This feeds into their first delusion, allowing them to further slander the real movement by claiming that the imagined pseudo-christian fanatic communist who has done nothing but trade in the bible for "some leftist book" craves an orgy of violence and murder, allowing them to relive the liberal glory days of the red scare and cold war.

The first one is simple, the activism proposed by the average Tumblr liberal represents not an attack on Capital, but an attempt to carve out a place within Capital. It is often very 1st wave feminist in its approach, focused less on empowering the whole of the working class, and more on allowing members of their group to become part of high society and function more freely within the Capitalist status quo. This manifests on Tumblr in a few ways, feminists who prickle at mentions of misandry (ie mostly just mfers figuring out how the capitalist system exploits masc proletariats), trans femmes who wax poetically of the inherent moral superiority they have gained through their transition and brave fight against the gender binary (Lexi if you see this just know that I am 100% talking about you) and god knows how many liberal feminists whose toxic ideas about the superiority of women over le evil, predatory men have morphed into the outright fascism of Terfism. Of course, while the examples I highlighted are pretty fucked up, in most cases I sympathize with this desire, and this part of the post is not the one where I am calling out everyone who acts like this as arch-reactionaries. Trans people should be able to secure steadier employment, black people should not face hiring discrimination, etc. This is not even in and of itself a bad mindset, it is simply the prereq for a bad mindset, but I will point out some of the flaws with it. The push for Black Capitalism failed to secure liberation for African Americans, and businesses such as "Your Black Muslim Bakery" have proven that you can't just fix the impacts capitalism has on marginalized groups by ensuring the existence of capitalists from within those groups. Secondly, on the more political side, Feminism has shown how even the most historically progressive liberal movement, one aimed at the liberation of women from bondage, can go on to become a reactionary tool of the capitalist state and even complicit in its abuses of women. For more on that, read "In an Abusive State" by K. Bumiller. But on the whole, this mindset alone, while inferior to a revolutionary mindset, which I highly suggest you cultivate (This reading list has worked wonders for me and I would suggest giving it a shot), isn't any more reactionary than the mindset of just wanting a job that lets you buy a house, which is to say barely reactionary at all.

On the other hand, the second thing we will be talking about is so reactionary that if you altered the words a bit you could slot it into Mein Kampf's section about "godless eastern bolshevism" and not change the meaning much. Namely, the idea that revolution serves some function as a biblical apocalypse that vile, bloodthirsty communists want to do out of a sick desire to purify the world with blood. To these truly, staggering titans of intellect, Class war is both impossible and undesirable, and if it were to happen, it would only serve to destroy the world, kill untold millions, and put some imagined dictator on the throne. I'm sure that many of you reading this have seen that godawful post with a pornographic depiction of kids dying because power to a hospital got cut, trying to scare readers into thinking that class war is bad because people might suffer as a result. After all, Capitalism is famous for how rarely it kills sick kids. Regardless, it's rather stupid to engage with this on the terms of the reactionary. I will not attempt to philosophically prove that morally speaking, class war is justified, moralism is counterproductive if material reality itself informs and guides your views about the world. Namely, Class war is not some imagined future, it's actually happened. The Paris Commune and the 1918 World revolutions happened. The desire for and the belief that a successful self-emancipation of the proletariat could exist is not driven by mysticism, it's driven by actual historical evidence at this point, backed up by scientific study, and kept relevant by the fact that the needs of the working class are not being met. The people who spout the "Revolution = Revelations" myth are simply refusing to engage with reality or the needs of the working class, and instead take refuge in an imagined world in which their enemies are simply morally bad and desire the end of the world by virtue of them being morally bad. The fact that dissenters from outside their camp disagree with this is simply proof of their fanaticism. In this sense, these goobers are the very model of an idealist.

Secondly, these people ironically enough, are very much hypocrites, as they often are the ones who most plainly view the revolution in apocalyptic terms. They will hue and cry about the millions of people who will certainly die if the class war is started. Who will feed us (they do not seem to understand that the workers would have seized the farms if the revolution is successful), who will give us power (they seem to not understand that the workers would seize the means of producing power), and etc. The fact that the violence will likely flow from the state trying to suppress the workers (as it already does), is also disregarded, the communist is blamed because they suggested the revolution, as if that alone is what willed violence into the world. No, we must accept the status quo and work within it to create non violent change! The non violence of a status quo in which 9 million people die each year of hunger must be preserved. The status quo under which half the worlds population does not have access to quality healthcare, in which half a million people die a year in imperialist wars, in which almost 2 million die of easily curable diseases, and in which billions are exploited every day until they die in lives made barren and empty by the crushing demands of Capital. But no, we must never think of revolution, it's violent and could kill people!

It's deeply stupid, born of sheer ignorance and comfort. They care only that the deaths that might occur in a class war would happen within their earshot, and it does not matter that it would be to end the system that currently kills over 10 million people a year in the pursuit of profits, if that class war would force them to give up their comfort. That they imagine the turmoil such change would bring as an apocalyptic orgy of violence and project it onto evil communists who clearly must desire it not for legitimate change or a better world, but simply wanting to kill lots of people for no reason other than some abstract lack of morality renders them arch conservatives of the highest order, and a flock which McCarthy himself would be proud to shepherd.

[ivie-online]

for some reason tidbits from liberal social justice books (democratic party expanded universe fix-it fics) just pop into my head like that’s so raven visions but anyway i’m now thinking about the author who advocated for increasing the salaries of certain public servants significantly, so they’d be less vulnerable to bribes/corporate interests.

as if making ~$400k (current highest-paid federal public office in the US) would be enough to stop actual billionaires & trillionaire corporations from buying handfuls of congresspeople with the ease & general air of an 1880’s fisherman picking up salt taffies to take home to a favorite niece

[bluepecanpie]

as a retrospective, occupy wall street was the endpoint of the kind of ‘horizontalist’ politics that was popularized with the anti-globalization movement. the involvement of adbusters in establishing the initial ows is more than enough to show us how direct this influence is. underpinning the anti-globalization movement in the global north was a reliance on the framework consecrated by liberalism, and idealist notions that democracy had been distorted from its optimal function by the presence of trans-national corporations bypassing the power of the state. the idea that in the first instance, the state is an instrument of class power - specifically the power of the bourgeoisie, in the capitalist epoch.

occupy’s failure, is the shared failure of that anti-globalization movement, and in between - that of the arab spring, which had seemingly exhausted imagination for another kind of social modality other than one informed by neoliberalism - islamist or not. even the anti-globalization movement came to fore as a sort of post-cold war rebuke of state socialism and the vanguardist politics used to set it up, only to fumble once confronted with the hard power of the state and especially great power conflicts - in a way that ‘actual existing socialist’ states could not do. the occupy movement also forgoed the kind of deep organising that could actually build class consciousness and galvanise the working class into making demands.

i’m not saying that the occupy movement was bad, or counterproductive: it politicized a generation of people, and broke out of this anhedonic, apathetic morose typical of atomised subjects under neoliberalism. I’m just saying that it was no threat to the ruling class, to any corporations, to anyone wearing the robes of institutional power. pro-ows assessment would rather we think how well ows spread and that was the real victory, like there wasn’t a demand for the neoliberal epoch - whether it was explicity stated or otherwise.

[liberashen]

“The mechanics of political democracy works in the same direction. Nothing in our times can be done without elections; nothing can be done without the masses. And in this era of printing and parliamentarism it is impossible to gain the following of the masses without a widely ramified, systematically managed, well-equipped system of flattery, lies, fraud, juggling with fashionable and popular catchwords, and promising all manner of reforms and blessings to the workers right and left—as long as they renounce the revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of bourgeoisie.”

— Lenin.

[aronarchy]

https://twitter.com/butchanarchy/status/1441502919291858946

It’s not that the individual people who choose to try to change the system from within just uniformly have bad intentions from the start, it’s that the nature of the SYSTEM is to require a thousand compromises on any counter-hegemonic values to succeed within it at all.

People who go in the political system with good intentions are either spat back out disillusioned, kept in minor bureaucratic positions with no real power, or so completely compromise on their initial values in order to succeed that they totally betray those intentions.

This is what makes it a system! It’s not about bad individuals, it’s the very nature of centralized power to organize itself in a way that protects its existence as centralized power. It’s a network of social relations that require a new level of buy-in for each level of power.

Someone could genuinely approach that system with good intentions, goals, and values, and it won’t matter. The political system isn’t a singular, passive machine that operates solely at the behest of whoever is at the helm, it has a massive and complex ecosystem of its own.

Success and failure in that ecosystem, like all ecosystems, is absolutely dependent on one’s ability to adapt and acquiesce to the demands of that system. It requires compromise on values that should never be compromised on and the stakes are people’s lives.

The calculus in that system, regardless of initial intentions, will ALWAYS go from “how do I work to promote this value?” to “how to I keep my power?” It does so by necessity. Anyone in the political system not prioritizing the latter question will not succeed within it. Period.

Nearly all people are masters of self-deception, and it is entirely likely that some politicians who are prioritizing their own power believe that doing so is what will allow them to stay in the game long enough to promote a value in some form or another, but it IS a deception.

In that situation, people then just equate their ability to keep power with advocating for values. Power, regardless of the rhetoric employed to obfuscate it, becomes the end in and of itself. It becomes the primary value to which all else is subordinate.

For clarity: I think that anyone who makes those compromises in order to prioritize their own power is a fucking bastard who is, rightfully, our enemy. And many certainly don’t even start with good intentions. My point is to illustrate that corruption is a feature of the system.

[redsolon]

A reform is only radical if it shifts the balance of power. Does it seize and collectivize capital? If not, does it make it easier to seize and collectivize capital? If not, does it make it easier to argue for the seizure and collectivization of capital? If not, then it's not revolutionary.

[importantangeldefendor]

After great political thought I've decided I'm a reformist

A revolution is both tremendously unlikely, would be incredibly negative and might not even be worth it

And also very likely to *lose*

As sad as it is, you and your polycule of socially anxious jrpg nerds would not be able to do shit in a violent conflict against the government (which is what a revolution... is)

This isn't an endorsement of the current system in any way shape or form but it is an acceptance of the reality of the situation- that violence will be pointless and that boring shit like "voting" and "organizing" will do infinitely more then saying "wow I hate the us senate ):"

Finally Hopefully your beef with the government and capitalism or whatever is that it denies the dignity of human life- and I truly hope that a conflict where you have to take life is something you *dread* not hope for

[roxyandtheroxies]

Honestly, this is such a lacking description of Fascism, fascism is so much more and so many other things can lead to it!

Conservatism obviously leads to fascism, but so does Liberalism, the support of a bourgeois system will always tend to nationalism and authoritarianism by definition; Social Democracy also leads to fascism, by making it so during crises of capital, cheap foreign labor increases and local unemployment increases, as well as creating a fixation on protecting democratic/progressive values from regressive minorities and still having an inherently bourgeois top-down structure of government, and of course with the natural weakness of "left-wing economics" it will inevitably have, it sets up the working class to arrive at ultranationalist far-right economic and social conclusions, a fascist movement always emerges from social democracies! And Democratic Socialism, there is no actual way to have socialism be democratically enacted using a bourgeois electoral system, it will just lead to imperialism and fascist reactionaries taking over. Syndicalism and Reformism both suffer from the same set of faults, they make the working class still inherently dependant on the bourgeoisie, and generates an attitude of "oh, the capitalists are so nice! Compromise with them is mutually benefitial, we are all in this together :D we just have to work like a team!" Which destroys revolutionary consciousness and creates an atmosphere of class collaboration, essential for fascism. Center Marxism is also at fault, less so as it hasn't caused fascism per se, but its ineffectual.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

By Iroel Sánchez

The people are risking their skins to bullets in the streets for a president who was not up to his task. Will this struggle result in the end of the oligarchic control over the politics and resources of Peru? Hopefully, but there does not seem to be an organized political force capable of doing so, and only a radical change in the rules of the game could allow it.

Trying to change something while not bothering those who control the media and those from the North who have been removing and installing governments in many Latin American countries for more than a century always ends in the same place: defeat.

[ilona-mushroom]

Not socialist in a “I won’t have to work” type of way but socialist in a “I’ll still be working but I won’t be worried I won’t make the rent” type of way. In a “billions won’t be hoarded by one person” type of way. In a “janitors, fast-food workers, child care workers, preschool teachers, hotel clerks, personal care and home health aides, and grocery store cashiers, will live comfortably” type of way. In a “the sick and elderly will be cared for” type of way. In a “no child should work” type of way.

[prontaentrega]

the vaticans multicultural anime girls are wearing the racism rosary 💀

[creed-of-cats]

"If voting changed anything they wouldn't let people do it-" grabs your face THEY DIDN'T JUST "LET" PEOPLE DO IT, MOST PEOPLE COULDN'T VOTE FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS. PEOPLE OF COLOR ONLY GOT THE FULL RIGHT TO VOTE 50 YEARS AGO IN THE US, THATS BARELY A GENERATION.

IF IT DIDNT MATTER AT ALL WHY WOULD THEY SPEND SO MUCH TIME GERRYMANDERING THE SHIT OUT OF EVERYWHERE?? WHY CAN'T FELONS VOTE?? WHY CANT PUERTO RICO VOTE? WHY DO THEY KEEP SWITCHING DATES AND LAWS AND TIMES AND WHATEVER THEY POSSIBLY CAN TO STOP PEOPLE FROM VOTING?? WHY DO THEY MAKE EFFORT AT ALL??

BEING DISILLUSIONED IS A REASONABLE RESPONSE. BUT PEOPLE FOUGHT AND DIED AND ARE STILL FUCKING DYING FOR THAT RIGHT, DONT SPIT IN THEIR FACE.

[symphonyofsilence]

Let the poor man rest.