Constitutional Reform to Socialism?

[El Rojo]

I refer to the United Kindgom, but due to the EU and the similarity of most democracies systems of government, I believe that this theory is widely applicable.

I believe a revolution would be the most beautiful thing I would ever see, and if sufficently populist, also the most democratic. But the UK and America have had the same institutions for centuries, are the most stable States on the planet, have the best police forces, strongest armies and would move quickly to crush any violent insurrection anywhere else in the 1st world. I don't wont to rule out revolution as impossible, especially in the current economic curcumstances, and think that if the State becomes anymore unjust, violent insurrection is justifiable, but doesn't a progamme of Constitutional reform with an end product totally different from the origional (19th century British parliamentary reform comes to mind) seem much more achieveable? It's arguable that EU social legislation is already beginning the process.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Historically, this is a road well traveled... it is also a road that never leads to socialism. It's a detour that just to another section of Capitalistville.

It's the very institutions you mention that make this impossible. Generally, socialist groups who travel this road and get any influence become wedded to capitalism rather than moving it forward. The Labor party or the Socialist Party in France are good examples. If you are a socialist and you feel that you need the current capitalist state in order to move to socialism, it puts you in the position of defending and preserving the capitalist state (in order to also protect the reforms you have made or plan to make).

On the other hand, if there is a lot of popular pressure, socialists in the system may actually push for major changes - this is rare, but it has happened. However, capitalists can fight back against this too. When Chavez tried to nationalize some industries, the bosses shut down and had a "boss strike". When there was the people's front in France in the 20s, the capitalists just took their money out of the country and crippled the new radical reform government.

If poor merchants and pesants can overthrow something as well as French and English Kings (appointed by God) who had all sorts of repressive instruments at their disposal, then I think a large and confident working class can occupy the factories, paralyze the military by calling on their fellow working class brothers and sisters in the military to put down their weapons when called to stop the movement (or better yet, turn their weapons around and point them at the bosses and the cops) and take power themselves.

[Hoxhaist]

the parliamentary route is one made in compromises and compromises can never totally make the shift to socialism because socialism requires bold steps forward in progress not a thousand halfsteps and half measures as the parliamentary route takes

[Die Neue Zeit]

As a rebuttal to the first two responses above, constitutional reform is separate from mere parliamentarism. Nevertheless, unlike the value placed on both by DeLeonists and the WSM, it should be a tactic and not a strategy. The general idea is that you build mass support for your constitutional reform proposals in opposition. Once there's enough support, the grassroots then pressure the bourgeois legislators to push the proposals forward. Since those legislators won't, extra-legal means come into play. :)

[Schrödinger's Cat]

I'm weary of the term "constitutional reform," because I think a government would have to remove most of its laws for socialism to come into fruition, not create more.