No Reformism

What we see today is a wholesale embrace of the anti-working-class policies to replace the old discredited ones. The leftists are now attempting to build or support openly class collaborationist populist parties. It is not coincidental that this patching up the capitalist political system is occurring just when this system is once again proving itself to be unreformable. Temporary ups and downs cannot hide the fact that the global economy constantly founders where exploitation is rampant. The gap between the capitalists and the increasingly impoverished working class is widening, and the so-called middle class are disintegrating. Reformism is a proven failure and  that the mainstream parties are moving to the right. The left’s rehashed reformism has even less viability. Its programme is worse than illusory: it is dangerously misleading. Reformism reactionary policies dressed up with progressive terminology. Reformism by its very nature means class collaboration. This is, of course, not the first time in history for the left when the gradualists preached the utopian dream where capitalism would be made humane by legislative measures supported by our class enemy. Today another act of class treason is being advocated by supposed friends of labour. Capitalism is eating away at past gains made by the working class.

As the struggles accelerate and consciousness grows, the left reformists are capable of misleading workers creating obstacles to the formation of the world party of socialist revolution. The Labour and Trotskyist parties tried to derail the workers’ struggles. The cynicism they leave  contribute to the steady decline in their ability to resist capitalist assaults. Reformist parties may retain their electoral strength but rarely do they retain workers’ committed loyalty as they jettison even their past paper-thin claim to “socialism” and the working class. Aware of the looming danger of credibility gap they gravitate even more closely to the power of the big business. The vacuum created leads to new formations and electoral blocs such as Left Unity and the  Green Party to replace the former leaders.  They use the terms “socialist” and “radical” to  in order to disguise their own flavour of palliatives that won’t trouble the capitalist class despite the hackneyed use of the description “anti-capitalist” to offer the impression of some revolutionary content. These radical reformists draw to them people who are not yet politically aware to understand the concept of socialism and class struggle which helps to perpetrate illusions in  capitalism and its state.

The emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself; it is a task it must carry out in opposition to the vanguard cadres offering themselves as our “condescending saviors.” Reformism is not a moderate or slow way to achieve socialism, but a barrier to reaching it.