I know it works in practice, but will it work in THEORY?

[The Teacher]

It seems to be that one of the idealogicaly crippling problems with the revolutionary left is the fact that nothing is ever good enough for some people, that is, no real world reform or action will ever conform to the purists among the various -isms throughout the left.

Is concrete action and realistic goal setting superior to endless intellectual posturing?

[pluckedflowers]

Saying revolutionary leftists aren't satisfied by reform is kind of a tautology, isn't it?

[The Teacher]

Just to give an example to clarify:

One group demands a living wage for all workers.

Another group demands the end of the wage system, complete abolishment of private property, etc.

Which one has a better chance of improving the lives of working families in the near term? Is the other idea even acheivable or desirable? To many people would dismiss the first idea without even considering how much impact it could have on the lives of real people?

[The Teacher]

Saying revolutionary leftists aren't satisfied by reform is kind of a tautology, isn't it?

Its one thing not to be satisfied, its another thing to criticize people who are heading in the same direction as you are just because they aren't going as far, especially when you're just standing there.

[Kamos]

Who cares what the "near term" (sic) brings? Unless you have a way to achieve worldwide socialism in 10 years, please forget the short term. And what do you mean, is the other idea even desirable? That's a trick question, isn't it?

There is nothing wrong in itself with small reforms - indeed, in the short term, every bit helps. But we cannot achieve any acceptable change in capitalism overall, only what the revolution brings matters. Whatever small improvements we achieve now will become irrelevant when it comes.


Its one thing not to be satisfied, its another thing to criticize people who are heading in the same direction as you are just because they aren't going as far, especially when you're just standing there.

Social democrats aren't heading in the same direction as us, if that's what you're implying. And if you mean centrist parties who somehow need to use the voting system to do their revolution - I'm certain we (as a whole, not as individuals) are going further than them. We're recruiting people for the revolution, while they're waiting for a miracle.

[The Teacher]

Who cares about the near term? Working families with kids to feed. And what if your vaunted revolution never comes? Its been "coming" for a few centuries now, hasn't it? So instead of waiting around for "the revolution" lets do something. If you want idealogical purity then you'll never have enough people to accomplish anything. You can have your intellectual conformity and still expect to create a mass movement. Building a large movement means tolerating dissent and diverse opinions, not criticizing the people who have actual goals and are working toward them.

[Kamos]

And what if your vaunted revolution never comes? Its been "coming" for a few centuries now, hasn't it?

Then we're screwed. Society won't get any better if said revolution doesn't happen. Capitalism will waste away Earth's resources and eventually the whole system will collapse due to the fact that overpopulation will happen, hunger will increase, vital resources will go missing, hate and racism will increase further (as is "normal" in a crisis - someone needs to be blamed) and so on. That's the way I see it, anyway. Question is, could this be avoided by increasing the minimum wage?


Building a large movement means tolerating dissent and diverse opinions, not criticizing the people who have actual goals and are working toward them.

Kim Jong Il has actual goals in the name of communism. Would you not criticise him then?

[The Teacher]

I would criticize Kim Jong for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with ability to self-motivate.

[The Teacher]

Raising the minimum wage would help because most of the people I know would make more money, a condition that has been known to releive symptoms of hunger, lack of medical care, shabby clothes, automobiles that don't run and basically makes being a cog in the capitalist machine less unbearable.

[Kamos]

Raising the minimum wage would help because most of the people I know would make more money, a condition that has been known to releive symptoms of hunger, lack of medical care, shabby clothes, automobiles that don't run and basically makes being a cog in the capitalist machine less unbearable.

Refer to post #26 in the other thread we were debating in.

[ZeroNowhere]

We don't advocate 'bettering' capitalism, even if at the cost of the independence of the workers' movement, because we are communists and know that higher wages lower the rate of profit and hence any advocacy of such on the premise of 'getting something under capitalism' is simply short-term thinking. We have no interest in following chimeras, but only in the rule of the working class, and we take no reforms for principles.

[The Teacher]

Isn't a well-fed working class better able to have a revolution? At the very least you must consider that.

[ZeroNowhere]

I'm pretty sure that the working class is less well-fed during crises, yet it's the crisis tendency which makes working class interests clearly revolutionary in the first place. On the other hand, an independent working class may be better able to have a revolution, and this is ignored if we simply support 'reforms' or 'making things better' in the abstract.

[Manic Impressive]

We should support the proletariat in every working class struggle even if the struggle is not revolutionary it is still a working class struggle.

and before someone says "what if the struggle the working class undertake is a reactionary struggle?"

Behind every reactionary struggle is a petit bourgeois or bourgeois agenda. Whether the BNP, T Party, fascism, etc the basis of the struggle is not driven by the proletariat even if large sections of them support it.

We should always support progressive reform and fight for it if they try to retract it. It is reactionary not to fight for better conditions for the working class but we should never be satisfied by them. The idea that things need to get worse before they can get better is reactionary, it costs workers lives.

[Leftsolidarity]

Just to give an example to clarify:

One group demands a living wage for all workers.

Another group demands the end of the wage system, complete abolishment of private property, etc.

Which one has a better chance of improving the lives of working families in the near term? Is the other idea even acheivable or desirable? To many people would dismiss the first idea without even considering how much impact it could have on the lives of real people?

So do you only work for short term gains without ever looking at the big picture? The one that is not very acheivable or desirable is the first one. I think this quote fits well, "Finally, to say that "the most favorable condition for wage-labour is the fastest possible growth of productive capital", is the same as to say: the quicker the working class multiplies and augments the power inimical to it – the wealth of another which lords over that class – the more favorable will be the conditions under which it will be permitted to toil anew at the multiplication of bourgeois wealth, at the enlargement of the power of capital, content thus to forge for itself the golden chains by which the bourgeoisie drags it in its train." (it is either from Marx or Lenin it was just saved in a place where I keep quotes I like)

I don't want to just live in better slave conditions. I want to destroy the capitalist system and be in control of my own life.

[Zanthorus]

Is concrete action and realistic goal setting superior to endless intellectual posturing?

First of all this is a loaded question posted in bad faith which no sensible person would even attempt to give an answer to. No-one is going to be able to debate with you civilly and constructively if your pose problematics like 'Do you support increasing the minimum wage or are you just a heartless dogmatic puritan stuck in the realm of abstract theory?'.

Aside from that it's not clear exactly who you're attacking. Most of the so-called left groups are in fact involved in various immediate struggles. Even a group which is usually derided as being exactly the kind of ideologically dogmatic stereotype you present like the ICC has participated in strike action in Turkey, mass movements in France etc. In fact, the situation on the left is probably exactly the opposite - most of the big socialist and communist groups currently tail every kind of activisty/reformist struggle they can get their hands on.

[Zombie Jesus]

The problem is that raising the minimum wage would only help workers in the very short term. Under the current system, if you increase the purchasing power of the population, you stimulate inflation, which negates the increases you have provided. Raising the minimum wage is cosmetic help. It's one of those things that looks and sounds nice but does nothing really. The whole capitalist system has to come down to really help.

Having said that, programs like free health care and education (along with the abolition of private interests in these areas) is a reform that would be helpful to the working class. But even that, by freeing up more of their money would have a similar effect to raising the minimum wage. The main difference would be that health and education would be more secure for workers, than it otherwise would be.

Social reforms (like free healthcare and education) work better than economic ones(like lowering working class tax rates or increasing wages), but in the end revolution is the only true solution.

[Sensible Socialist]

We should focus on short-term gains that help the working class survive. Anyone who completely disregards the day-to-day lives of the working class needs to get their head out of their "revolutionary" asses and realize that the construction worker down the street or the hotdog vendor on the corner doesn't care what Trotsky said about a certain event, but how they are going to pay their next bill and feed their children. We need to help protect the lives of all people, day to day.

That said, it would be foolish not to think long-term (which people tend to do too much, especially here). That way, when the time comes, people have a base for getting involved and begining to strip away the edifices of our crumbling economic system.

[Common_Means]

You cannot have a well-fed working class, that's kinda the problem...The notion of capitalism "with a face" is a bankrupt ideology. The rise of wages was attempted and ended under Thatcher and Reagan due, in part, to slowing rates of accumulation.

[Rusty Shackleford]

capitalism is inherently about an individual having personal ownership of commodities and capital and has all the rights. At the very same time, there is an individual who ends up selling their labor, has no ownership of what they produce and has all the duties.

It is not in the interest of the capitalist who is seeking higher rates of profit, to pay more in wages than what is required to maintain their source of labor and allow it to reproduce itself. At the same time, it is in the interest of the capitalist for there to be a mass reserve army of the unemployed as a threat to those workers who even dare to ask for higher wages.

We have seen the effects of your beloved social democracies. Still rampant with racism, classism, and imperialism. These reforms have provided benefits for the local workign class but at the expense of other sectors of the local working class, and sectors of the world working class. In france, you have vast slums where Arabs and Africans are basically second class citizens. In Sweden you have something close to the same situation as France. At the same time, Denmark, France, Sweden, Germany, the UK, Canada, and so on are actively participating in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and Libya, but also in other colonial projects like Israel or recently Cote d'Ivoire.

Now in Sweden, there are groups like the Swedish Democrats gettign elected in the south that are racist.

Sure, the short term reforms may help the working class to a slight degree but this is not the end goal. We dont want to simply make capitalist more tolerable. What we here in the west (which is most of us on this website, which includes you, The Teacher) experience though is very different than what those in occupied countries, or countries under constant thread of imperialism experience. The US working class and lumpen-proletariat en masse have access to things like cell phones not because capitalism is exceptionally good at providing for the needy, but because it is exceptionally good at globalizing production for local markets. though the continent is rich in natural resources, much of what we use today is the result of open robbery of whole continents. Reforming capitalism in the US may help the US working class, but only at a greater expense to the working class of neo-colonies. If capitalism is destroyed, can true progress be made for the working class in the US be made, and also for the world working class.


Also, Mr. Troll, you arent really aware of the current campaigns communists participate in that demand reforms do you? We dont just sit idly by. Every demand for reform is a manifestation of class struggle. and every instance of class struggle is a part of the class war. It is out jobs to demand both reforms and revolution. We demand reforms knowing full well it is both bad and good for the working class. It is good for it in the immediate, but it is bad in the historical sense. regardless, we still demand them. Along with demanding reforms that may be part of a singular movement, it is out job to connect them with other movements and demands and build a real movement that is truly a working class movement.

When workers participate in a broad, multi-issue movement, they realize they power they have as a class and learn to wield it.

that is the issue of reforms.

Saying that you are there demanding reforms, as if you were the guiding light for the working class while we armchair revolutionaries sit by fantasizing about revolution is asinine. once we get the reforms, if that was all you were after knowing full well that you wont go any further while the working class moves forward, you become a conservative and soon a reactionary. but, if you are defending the reforms from the onslaught of austerity measures, you are still a progressive to an extent.

[Olentzero]

Short and sweet, fighting for reforms is the school in which the working class learns how to organize and fight for its own interests, and gains both political awareness and self-confidence. It is that political awareness and self-confidence that will make workers more open to revolutionary politics, and fighting for revolution, when the crises of capitalism finally put those issues on the table.

[Nofuture]

I am hungry. I know I have no money, no real living situation and no hope of a real job. The thing is, while reforms might get me these things..I *know* that it is not enough.

[A.R.Amistad]

I highly doubt revolutionary Marxists are against reforms, we just don't see them as an ends. The best thing that comes from demanding reforms and organizing the working class to do so is that it shows the working class that it has power, it excersizes the inertia of the class struggle and helps build confidence in the class as a whole, bringing the masses closer to revolution. Demanding reforms builds class consciousness, but only as an end for a workers revolution.

Winning reforms that are beneficial to the working class in the short term isn't a bad thing, but its safe to say almost none of these last and you'll have to re-demand them again in a few years time.

[The Teacher]

Ever notice how if you say something controversial on this site people start making assumptions about what you know, what you understand, and what you believe?

I started this post because (in my experience) every time someone posts something pro-reform on this site it is immediately attacked as "liberal." There are far more shouts of "Why even bother?" than there are of "Hey, that's a good first step!" That gives me the impression that the posters on this site are less than enthusiastic about things that can actually help people feed their families near term.

Is the end of capitalism the only answer? Maybe. But just because I havent reached that conclussion doesn't mean I'm an idiot. I have an opinion which I have every right to express. You can disagree and you have every right to call me an idiot but that doesn't make it true.

[ZeroNowhere]

If you haven't reached that conclusion, then that doesn't make you an idiot, but it would mean that we have a special board all for you.

To be honest, though, the general framework in which you ask your questions does implicitly suggest what you know and understand.

[The Teacher]

Again, having a different point over makes no statement about what I understand. What if I understand something and dismiss it as foolish?

[Olentzero]

Then you need to be explicit about that. If people's reactions make you feel you're not being understood, which is more constructive? Complaining about them putting words in your mouth, or trying to explain yourself more clearly?

[The Teacher]

Then you need to be explicit about that. If people's reactions make you feel you're not being understood, which is more constructive? Complaining about them putting words in your mouth, or trying to explain yourself more clearly?

In general thats good advice. However, when someone draws conclusions that are vastly different from your actually words or tells you that you "just don't understand" then explaining yourself seems like it just drags on an argument.

[Leftsolidarity]

Ever notice how if you say something controversial on this site people start making assumptions about what you know, what you understand, and what you believe?

I started this post because (in my experience) every time someone posts something pro-reform on this site it is immediately attacked as "liberal." There are far more shouts of "Why even bother?" than there are of "Hey, that's a good first step!" That gives me the impression that the posters on this site are less than enthusiastic about things that can actually help people feed their families near term.

Is the end of capitalism the only answer? Maybe. But just because I havent reached that conclussion doesn't mean I'm an idiot. I have an opinion which I have every right to express. You can disagree and you have every right to call me an idiot but that doesn't make it true.

You are right about the fact that it seems that many on Revleft have a negative attitude but you do have some very good and legit responses.

[Zombie Jesus]

I agree that reforms can be helpful in the short term. But we need to acknowledge that in the end they are merely bandages on a wound that never heals. Eventually they get sodden and have to replaced. In the end, major surgery is needed cut out the parasite infecting the wound.

In the short term the bandages alleviate the problems somewhat, but until the parasites are cut out and crushed, it will not get better.

[The Teacher]

Here's the thing. I don't think of revolutionary struggle as a battle that is "won" and never has to be fought again. We're talking about pushing back the tide of human misery. We will never get to stop pushing. The point is to push harder, not sit around talking about how great it'll be when the tide goes out.

[Leftsolidarity]

Here's the thing. I don't think of revolutionary struggle as a battle that is "won" and never has to be fought again. We're talking about pushing back the tide of human misery. We will never get to stop pushing. The point is to push harder, not sit around talking about how great it'll be when the tide goes out.

The response I posted on your other thread fits here too

[Jimmie Higgins]

It seems to be that one of the idealogicaly crippling problems with the revolutionary left is the fact that nothing is ever good enough for some people, that is, no real world reform or action will ever conform to the purists among the various -isms throughout the left.

Is concrete action and realistic goal setting superior to endless intellectual posturing?

Yes it is superior, we need to have a unity in our theory and action for either to be worth anything. But I don't think that this problem with the left that you observed is due to some simple drive for theoretical purity or whatever, I think it comes from an even deeper problem of the left being marginal. Not having any real connections to the working class in a lot of places since WWII has meant that left-groups have more ideas than they have ways to test these ideas in practice. So this causes some people, IMO, to fetishize certain theories... "if X group would only do this or that, then the struggle would move forward". So in my view, not being able to really put ideas into practice has caused a lot of sectarianism and the sort of ridged dogmatism that you are talking about.

But we live in a different time now that we have for the last generation and so it will be more possible for radicals to put their money where their mouths are and the induviduals, groups, and ideas, that are actually adaptable and attractive to people and effective in practice will be the ones that lead the way and others who disagree will have to follow that lead, figure out an alternative, or get left in the dust.

[Jose Gracchus]

capitalism is inherently about an individual having personal ownership of commodities and capital and has all the rights. At the very same time, there is an individual who ends up selling their labor, has no ownership of what they produce and has all the duties.

Actually, Marx's analysis of capitalism is based on a conception of it as a holistic system, with classes and intrinsically understood in terms of their relations to one another; not by cherry picking individuals, and subjecting them to an empirical check-list of characteristics and behaviors vis-a-vis commodities. That's basically a moralist approach to capitalism.

[Dogs On Acid]

Increasing wages has a high chance to increase prices. So reforms might be good short-term, but that's why they are called "short-term" in the first place.

No matter how many reforms you make to Capitalism, oppression and poverty will continue to exist within it.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

The Teacher you know this site is called Revleft which stands for Revolutionary Left right? It's increasingly become clear that you're a reformist, not a revolutionary IMO, why are you here?

Anyways revolutionary leftists aren't opposed to reforms, as revolutionary leftists we just know that these reforms can, and probably will, be scrapped and thrown away when the capitalists feel they can take away reforms the working class fought hard for. Workers can fight for wages only for the factory to close down and move over the border, workers can fight for Social Security only for it to get gutted and privatized years later, workers can fight for universal healthcare only to have it taken away when the crisis hits. You don't see any of us here saying we should have no minimum wage but we recognize the fact that sooner or later we're going to have to get rid of the whole wage system. We're not against reforms, hell I'll be pretty happy when we can get some reformists to try and give capitalism a "human face" because chances are it will help me out a lot. We just know that's not as far as it should go and can see that the reformists are just fine with capitalism.