Keywords: Reformism

by Angus Theours


Some lefties use “reformist” as a term of abuse, to dismiss people and organizations that are less radical than they might like. That is a big mistake. Revolutionaries need the political skills and the patience to work with people who are less radical than them. Furthermore, debasing valuable political concepts like “reformism” makes it much harder to analyze the actual state of the class struggle.

When Marxists talk about reformism, we are actually talking about three different things. First there are certain organizations (and the people who are members of them) that we call reformist, like the NDP. Second, reformism also refers to a conscious political strategy for dealing with capitalism that some people advocate. In that sense, reformism refers to a specific political ideology that shapes the behavior of some people. Finally, reformism also refers to a complex social and political process by which some organizations broker compromises between capital and labour, in other words, a social process of class collaboration.

Class Collaboration

For most of the last 200 years, the capitalist class has ruled through a pretty naked use of force, including economic coercion, state repression and ideological manipulation. Until the 1940s, they relied primarily on a strategy of class confrontation, employing their power quite openly.

However, for the past 50 years, Canadian capitalists have relied far more upon class collaboration to maintain their rule. The ruling class was forced to shift strategies because the combined impact of the Great Depression, World War II, the growth of the working class and labour militancy in the 1940s shifted the balance of power between capital and labour.

Softening the old methods of rule with new mechanisms of class collaboration required the creation of new laws and institutions (labour laws, labour boards, etc.). Employers and the state also had to find new ways to transform unions, which grew enormously in the 1940s, into dependable intermediaries between capital and labour.

Class collaboration depends upon the existence of organizations that cut deals to determine the terms of the continued exploitation and oppression of workers. With such arrangements, a tiny ruling class can continue to exploit and oppress a large and potentially powerful working class, without the constant fear of facing a fight to the finish by the entire working class. Class collaboration places a whole layer of union officials and other professional reformists - people with a real stake in making capitalism work, even when it means presiding over diminished living standards - between capitalists and the working class. They become experts at brokering “compromises” between capital and labour.

Unions

Today, trade unions provide the classic example of a reformist organization. But that was not always true. When they first developed, trade unions were small, local organizations that expressed the need for workers to combine in their own defence. However, over time, unions became much larger and more bureaucratic organizations whose officials were increasingly removed from the everyday experience of workers. When unions became a real threat, the ruling class sought to neutralize them by enmeshing them in complex and legalistic processes of class collaboration.

Canadian capitalists adopted a strategy of class collaboration in the 1940s, using new labour laws to promote the bureaucratization of unions, and to compel them to engage in class collaboration. The new social arrangement encouraged union officials to prevent militancy (except when it was tightly controlled by them) and cooperate with employers and the state.

Today, unions negotiate over the conditions of the continued exploitation of workers by capital. They do not question the necessity for capitalism or the desirability of cooperation between capital and labour. Indeed, as bureaucratic organizations with large incomes from membership dues collected by order of the labour laws, unions are highly dependent upon collaboration. As a consequence, union leaders are preoccupied with strengthening the process of class collaboration and convincing both employers and workers of its continued value.

The loyalty of most trade union officials to class collaboration and capitalism is reinforced by the privileges (like high salaries and better jobs) that come with their jobs. This makes them highly unreliable allies for workers in any real struggle with capital.

Despite all this, trade unions sometimes provide a framework within which workers can rebel against class collaboration and fight their exploitation. For that reason, while today’s unions can give workers a greater potential to engage in collective strggle, they most often demobilize workers before the struggle becomes militant or radical.

Social Democratic Parties

When working-class political parties first emerged in the 19th century, they contained advocates of both class collaboration and class struggle. By the 1920s, the advocates of revolution had formed their own parties, leaving behind parties whose leaders sought collaboration between capital and labour. Today, the NDP’s politics are class collaborationist.

But the membership of social democratic parties has always included many workers who did not share their leaders’ absolute commitment to class collaboration. Many trade unionists and rank and file NDPers believe that workers need their own organizations to defend their interests. That does not mean they automatically accept the goal of class collaboration.

Reformist Consciousness

Social democratic politicians and union officials practice class collaboration as the solution to the problems facing workers and the oppressed. Their commitment is expressed in a reformist ideology they seek to promote through the media, conventions, and union or party literature.

Reformist ideology is based on a belief that capitalist society can be made more fair, equitable and democratic without a revolution. All that is required are reformist organizations with leaders skilled enough to make use of institutions of class collaboration. In that way, reformist organizations can strengthen their ability to negotiate compromises between capital and labour. Class collaboration is not merely a means to some other end, but an end in itself. It is the epitome of capitalism made more humane and civilized.

There is also a more left-wing version of reformist ideology. It holds that struggles are necessary to change society, but sets limits on them. It always rules out revolution, no matter how radical its rhetoric.

Although class collaboration is actively promoted by reformist leaders, most trade unionists and community activists and many NDP members are not unconditional adherents of reformism. Their acceptance of it as the best way to change things depends upon the ability of class collaborationist organizations to deliver the goods and on the absence of compelling evidence that struggle works better. When faced with clear evidence that collaborating with bosses and the state doesn’t work and that their own struggles are an alternative, many will begin to abandon class collaboration.

Mixed Consciousness

Beyond labour and community activists, the working class is not homogeneous. There are sections of it with quite different experiences of the system they live under, the organizations and movements they are part of, and their own capacities to change the world. While some workers may conditionally accept the claims of union leaders and NDP politicians about the values of class collaboration, many more do not even think about such issues most of the time.

Many workers are too alienated from the system and have too little experience of their potential power to concern themselves with large-scale political issues – things that seem well beyond their influence or control. Jaded by their own experience of powerlessness, “politics” disgusts them. They neither accept nor reject class collaboration, regarding such big issues as far less important than the personal matters they can actually influence. Thus, most workers are neither advocates nor opponents of reformism.

Brainwashed?

This understanding of reformism enables us to understand what is wrong with seemingly radical arguments about why most workers are not revolutionary. For example, many activists are influenced by an argument that has been popularized by US writer Noam Chomsky. He argues that workers’ consciousness is so dominated by ruling-class media that they are brainwashed into compliance. This makes it difficult to see how the mass of workers could ever revolt.

However, Chomsky’s viewpoint sees workers as passive receptacles for the ruling-class ideas that rain down on us from on high. It ignores the fact that people are always engaged in making sense of the world around them, based on their own experience. Because that understanding is sometimes based on experiences of solidarity and struggle, workers are sometimes able to construct alternative views about the world, despite the ideological views being promoted by the ruling class and reformists.

Most workers, most of the time, have a mixture of often contradictory ideas about the world around them. That mixture often combines elements of capitalist and reformist ideology with a willingness to engage in collective struggle in the right circumstances, and a pragmatic day to day willingness to comply with things that seem unchangeable. In other words, workers have not been brainwashed in any simplistic sense. That is why it is so important to create situations where people can experience their collective power to change things.

It is much easier to do that if we understand the complex nature of reformism as a social phenomenon. Such an understanding requires us to avoid reducing the term from a concept of political analysis to a mere insult.