[PEN-L:28266] Re: struggle for reforms and reformism

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 7/21/02 3:56:05 AM Pacific Daylight Time, j.bendien@xxxxxxxxxx writes:


> The Bretton-Woods Agreement would be an example of a bourgeois reform, a
> reform of the mode of functioning of the capitalist system.
>
> J.


>The Bretton-Woods Agreement would be an example of a bourgeois reform, a
>reform of the mode of functioning of the capitalist system.

J.



Reply

There is reform and "reform." In my opinion the Bretton-Woods Agreement is an excellent example of a reform within capitalist production relations. Fighting to get a "Stop Sign" put up so that our children are not killed crossing the street is not the meaning of reform. We speak of "Stop sign movements" as citizen movements to change or reform their conditions, but this is not the meaning of reform on the level of systemic change. The Taft-Hartley Act was a reform.

People engage in a multiplicity of activity in society to change and improve the conditions of their life as individuals and social groups. Fighting as part of the body citizen is normal activity and should not be attached to reform or revolution outside of examining the totality of systemic change. Individuals from all walks of life have fought on every front in our country, with revolutionaries believing that such activity is not only morally correct but also lay the basis for further activity when systemic change is possible.  

Social revolution cannot take place in ay society until there are new productive forces that can compel society to reorganize on the basis of that, which is new in the productive forces. We have arrived as such a juncture in history.

Reform movements are objective impulses that alter the relationship between and within classes without changing property relations in their fundamentality.  The mechanization of agriculture was the objective basis for a historic reform movement that alters relations between and within classes without disrupting property relations. Bretton-Wood and Taft-Hartley did the same thing. Those who understood these structural reforms as the goal of the working class movement were called reformist; not because they took part in these social movements, but because that was the limit of their vision and striving.  In history the calling card of the reformist is "the movement is everything, the final goal nothing."

Reform movements as objective impulses are govern by something and consequently can be defined on the basis of discernible boundaries. There are no more reforms left in capitalism means that the quantitative introduction of qualitatively new means of production was stopping the development of electromechanical means of production, which was the basis for the reform of capital during the era of industrial development.

Once development of the old means of production stop, reform stops. There are no more reforms left in capitalism means that society is undergoing a transition to a new mode of production driving by a qualitatively different technology that cannot be bounded by old relations of production. This is the revolution.

The revolutionary changes in the economy begin to destroy the society built on the old foundations. No reform is possible. A transition to a new law system of production is called forth for the further development of the new qualities of the productive forces. This call for the "new" is called the "leap." The leap is a transition to something else and by definition is governed by the subjective factors - thinking. The leap is not based in or governed by the productive forces since the leap means transition based on changes that have already taken place.

Society has to be taught what is taking place or rather what is taking place is the first _expression_ of the dialectic of societal change, which appears as the shifting from the objective realm of life to the subjective realm of life. That is to say, from spontaneous development of the productive forces to the need for the development through consciousness.

Since there has been a qualitative leap in the production forces there is bound to be a corresponding leap from one base to another. This means from one political base to another and this process is entirely subjective. What kind of change is needed? How shall society be organized to utilize the new technology? On what basis will distribution of the social product take place? These ideas cannot arise from the spontaneous movement of the productive forces by definition, but must be worked out and introduced from outside the spontaneous movement and that is the task of scientific socialism or rather communism or better yet the revolutionaries fighting for a society of associated producers.  

Reformism is to belittle and disregard the need to fight for a society of associated producers, where the distribution of the social product is not based on ones contribution of labor in the societal production process. Teaching our working class the word "class" and how different social groups fight for their material survival will constitute a historical era.

I really did not think I would live this long and earnestly believed I would get at least ten years pension without a glitch. "We" have "beat each other up" for two decades over value and details of capital only to wake up one morning and everyone is talking about what we are talking about.  Damn.

Things are going to get interesting from here. The old category of "left" and "right" are going to merge into one another. The reason is that these are categories that arose on the basis of the epoch of bourgeois revolutions. This process may take a decade or 50 years - I don't know, but have an understanding of process as abstraction.

We have entered the epoch of the proletarian social revolution. Reform or revolution means on what basis we teach the class its material interest and relationship to other classes in the act of survival.


Melvin P.