Revolutionary
Humanism

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Reformism

Reformism refers to methods for curtailing unwanted effects of the capitalist system by changing particular practices or introducing regulations, without changing the capitalist system as a whole. Reformism and reformists tend to deal with single aspects of the socio-economic system. They attempt to outlaw, change or improve certain negative aspects of capitalism on a ‘single issue’ basis. Reformists are made up of two distinct but related groups of people. There are those who predominantly support the capitalist system (pro-capitalists) but are against certain aspects or practices within the system and so wish to change or modify those particular practices. At the same time there are people who are anti-capitalists but who think that the social domination of capital can be reformed in one area after another until it has been transformed into something which is not capitalism. However, only the first form of reformism has any chance of succeeding and only then if it is seen as being in the interests of the capitalist system itself.

It is a fact that some types of educational reforms can succeed, because an educated population and workforce is necessary to modern forms of capitalist exploitation. Particular public health reforms can be implemented because it is in the general interest of capitalists that people are healthy enough to continue working sufficiently long in order to produce surplus value and thus profits. Certain infrastructure reforms are attainable because the evolution of capitalist commodity production requires changing communication, transport and sales systems. All these aspects have been reformed and reformed over again, during the period of social and economic domination of capital, but only because they have been needed for capitalist competition and development. On the other hand, long working hours, low pay, bad housing, ecological destruction, safe working conditions, poverty, injustice, armed aggression by the powerful, and a host of other negative features of capitalist based production, have not been reformed away despite long exhausting efforts and campaigns around the world to do so. Such negative features, which are part and parcel of the rule of capital have remained constants since the capitalist system began to dominate the world economy.

Because the capitalist system has a means of discussing and delivering the reforms it needs (via Parliaments, Congresses, Assemblies, Chambers, etc.) it creates the illusion that other types of reforms are possible. The capitalist class and its supporters have a vested interest in promoting this illusion among those people opposed to some or all of the capitalist system. This is because it engages the time, divides the struggle against capital into single issues and saps away the energy of each new generation of anti-capitalist activists, deflecting them away from a more unified and radical opposition. Even those activists normally adopting a radical critique of the capitalist system can be drawn into the reformist treadmill by a comforting delusion. It is often hoped that even if a reformist campaign will not stop a particular nasty activity, it will at least increase the campaigners’ influence among the oppressed masses. It is also frequently hoped that a single-issue campaign will, by itself, transform normally passive citizens into anti-capitalist activists or even, if the campaign is big enough, precipitate a revolution. The anti-capitalist reformist path is strewn with such illusions and self-delusions. The global history of reformist struggles is a long, exhausting, tapestry of utter failure to create any lasting benefits to the world’s working classes. Even the few measly reforms in North America and Europe during the second half of the 20^th Century were short-lived and were paid for by the increased exploitation of Third World working people. One worker's new house at one side of the world, can be the other side of the coin to another worker's relegation to a tin shack somewhere distant. One worker's pension can be provided by the extreme exploitation and shortened life of another worker at the other side of the continent. In this way reformist campaigns, divorced from the task of increasing awareness and commitment to overthrow the system of capital, can turn out to be quite reactionary.

The rare instances of struggles to reform being transformed into revolutionary possibilities is when they occur at or during the culmination of a period of severe crisis and struggle among the ruling strata of a given society. Examples of such instances are: the reforms demanded of King Charles by the English Parliament in the 17^th century, which led to the English Revolution; custom duty reforms by the American colonists, culminating in the American Revolution; the attempt to reform voting procedures in the French Estates General developing into the French Revolution; and the Peace, Bread and Land reforms demanded by the Russian population in 1917, leading to the Russian Revolution. (See button on ‘revolution’ or Chapter 12. For more on reformism see Chapter 11.)