Reform or Revolution: How real change is won PDF Print E-mail
Friday, 30 October 2009 00:14

All of us are here because we recognise that there’s a lot of bad stuff in the world, and that something has to be done to fix it. Socialism as a whole provides a goal, if you wish, but the greatest source of controversy amongst those on the left is how this goal is to be reached. The strongest competition has always been between those on the left who believe that we can work within the existing system to try and gradually morph it into the fair and equal society we all desire, and those who believe that the very nature of the existing system makes this ‘slowly slowly’ approach to socialism impossible. Our group was formed by members of the later persuasion.
Despite what is often the very best of intentions in people who join the Labour party or Alliance, rather than being two different routes to the same goal, the very form of their solution means that we in fact desire two different goals. This talk will address not only why reformism is a dead end in the long term, but also argue that  revolutionary methods are far superior in winning change in the short term too.


At first glance the Parliamentary road seems to make a lot of sense.  After all, it is the government in Parliament that passes all the laws, and says what is legal and what is not.  So why can’t we simply enact laws prohibiting the bullying of workers and establishing other rights? Ultimately the answer is because the real power actually lies outside of Parliament.  In a similar way that individual bosses are subject to the pressures of economic competition regardless of whether they are ‘nice guys’ or not, every political party that wants to run the government is subject to certain pressures.

The sad reality of parliamentary politics is that a government’s effectiveness rests on its ability to make and spend money – to manage capitalism. Parties compete for favour from the various elements of the capitalist class, each claiming that they are best able to ensure the continued survival of the profit system. Even the most ideologically pure parties – those who claim to represent workers in their struggle against capitalism – are required to work within the existing structures for now. That requires maintaining a strong and stable economy. Just looking around the world now it is clear how far governments will go to maintain economic stability. This isn’t Just due to the parties ‘being in the back pocket of business’ or other similar mantras that get thrown around by anti-establishment types, but comes down to the simple fact that a government with no money may as well not exist.
If a government were to come into power that decided, for example, they wanted to raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour, large companies have the option of just packing up and leaving. In the modern globalised economy, capital is free to flow from country to country. People, not so. Argentina is an interesting case where businesses did exactly that. One night in December 2001, in the face of an economic crisis, dozens of yellow trucks full of money rolled through the center of town leaving the majority of the citizens and the government bankrupt.
As long as the country continues to embrace capitalism, big business as a whole has the ability to turn prospering first world nations literally overnight into poverty stricken cauldrons of fury and fear.
In the face of this incredible influence, any party in any government is required to do what is necessary to maintain a strong economic base.

Venezuela is another interesting case where the bulk of the money comes from oil, and a lot of the companies are either nationally owned or beholden to government dispensation to drill. It is one of the incredibly rare situations where the government can call the shots, and has leeway for supposedly beneficent acts by the leaders. But in the rest of the world, first and third alike, this approach is impossible. Even with all the wealth at the fingertips of those in power, and little to no dependency on big business, the reluctance of the powerful to give up their own power has proven a hindrance to the institution of “socialist” policies.
 
The alternative situation is when businesses themselves face harrowing collapse. Again the drive for governments to do everything necessary to maintain the profit system comes to the fore, but this time the potential isn’t for capital to flee, it’s merely gone.
We’re seeing in the states at the moment, huge amounts of money being thrown at the American International Group (AIG) – nearly 180 billion so far. This is one of the largest insurance and investment firms on the planet. While I have my deep doubts about the worker friendly nature of Baraak Obama and his administration, he’s not pouring billions of tax payer dollars into the company because he has buddies in the bank. Its collapse would be absolutely devastating for the already struggling American economy. As has already been in evidence in Europe of late, collapsing economies tend to get people stirred up. If workers collectively start to rock the boat too much, governments get very nervous. It’s bad for business. In every single case in history where workers have decided to take things into their own hands, they have had to clash with the state.

In light of these facts, what role do the parliamentary parties play in the struggle between workers and bosses?

Reformist leaders in the Labour Party, the Greens and whatnot will object that the election of Labour governments shows me wrong, that it is not impossible for parties fighting for workers’ interests to be elected.  But all this really shows is that it is possible for the bosses to hide under a sort of ‘left-cover’ if you like.  In encouraging people to vote for Labour, or by the same token for the Greens or the Alliance, the bosses tactic is to prevent serious opposition from gaining traction by conceding a few milder reforms. ‘Let them have an extra 2 cents per hour, it’ll stop them complaining when they get fired’ could be the slogan of the bosses.

What reformism and parliamentarianism really entails is that workers give up their power to the control of their ‘elected representatives’.  The sole job of these elected officials, under capitalism, is to provide a channel for workers struggle that does not threaten the profit system on which it rests. If reformists cannot control the struggle, be it through the liberal application of bureaucratic unions or through promises of reforms, if they cannot call the workers off and stop the strikes, then they are left with nothing to bargain with and the capitalists will just throw them out, or worse still replace them with leaders who can put down the working class ‘by any means necessary’.  

Revolutionaries take a fundamentally different approach.  Rather than asking workers in struggle to ‘give up’ their power, revolutionaries urge workers to keep it in their own hands.  When it comes down to the crunch, the only way to be sure that the power we give to reformist leaders will be used to genuinely further our interests is not to give it up in the first place.  This is why revolutionaries tell workers to stay on strike until they are happy with the outcome, and to help other workers to do the same.  If the bosses know that we will strike until we have everything we ask for, then they will be forced to back down and grant concessions.  Furthermore, there is no way these concessions will be mere tokens – if they don’t have any substance, the strikes will simply start all over again. If companies try to fire everybody and flee overseas, we argue for workers to occupy the workplaces and to run them in their own interests. I spoke before about Argentina, how their economy essentially collapsed under capital flight. Factory occupations and worker run factories was exactly how many workers chose to respond, many with considerable success.

But we aim for more than just a few extra dollars an hour or a dental plan. What we ultimately argue for is a complete restructuring of society. However, the key concepts that make life under capitalism so untenable – war, racism, sexism, homophobia, and ultimately the exploitation of the profit system – are firmly entrenched concepts in most people’s minds. It is often argued that these so called aspects of human nature ensure that socialism will forever remain a utopian pipedream.

This is the real crux point in our argument. Participation in representative democracy as it stands at the moment is extremely passive. You vote every three or four years and whoever wins does their thing until next time elections roll up. There is almost no engagement with politics at the parliamentary level, so simply passing laws has very little on most people’s consciousness. Passing laws allowing gay marriage in several states in America, essentially stating the equal nature of straight and gay couples and by extension the equal status of straight and gay individuals, actually increased the instances of attacks on gay individuals. It also meant that they could be undone with very little backlash – who remembers proposition 8 in California recently? This is a prime example of concession which was taken back, because it was given, not taken. Trying to change the society without changing the culture in which that society arose is futile. Yes, there’s an interplay between society and culture, but a radical change in one requires a radical change in the other.
When Mao Zedong and his band of merry men introduced so called communism to China, it was a thoroughly top down approach. Guerrilla warriors fought their way to the capital and declared that china was now magically communist. The average peasant looked up from his rice paddy and said ‘sure, whatever’ and went back to work. Nothing had ultimately changed. Any racism or sexism or homophobia remained, the essential nature of the state changed very little. Sure, there was a fair bit of restructuring done at the very top of Chinese society but the vast majority of people were not involved in this and so their conceptions of the world and how things could or should be changed very little.

Our concept of a revolution is essentially a massively scaled up version of a strike. When workers go on strike, they have to undergo some pretty radical changes of consciousness. For starters, when you’re striking to defend your livelihood, it is a struggle you hold in common with every other member of your strike. When it comes to defending or improving your quality of life, it doesn’t matter if the person next to you is an old gay jewish woman, or if they’re a middle aged straight white guy – unfortunately I know people who would find each of those equally offensive. No, the best outcome will always be attained if those differences are put aside and the true nature of the struggle – the struggle between worker and boss, between oppressors and oppressed – are focused upon. These ideas arise spontaneously in nearly every successful workers struggle. It is in this way that we argue it is possible to overcome the supposedly *natural* prejudices which exist in people.

Another idea which commonly arises in these situations is a fundamental lesson of class conflict: the fact that what we want and what the bosses want are fundamentally irreconcilable. The unions would often have us believe differently (and Unite is a rare exception in this, as those of you who heard Mike Treen the other day will know), and a compromise is often reached, but the simple fact is that a win for the workers is pretty much always a loss for the bosses and vice versa. We want higher wages, job security, benefits and overall a higher standard of living. The boss wants ever greater profits. But their profit comes from the exploitation and usurpation of our labour, so never shall the two forces be in harmony. While most struggles are directed into bureaucratic diversions like union negotiations before this level of consciousness arises, when it does the power that is unleashed means that one the one hand, much greater, concrete, concessions can be demanded, and on the other, the necessity of overthrowing capitalism entirely becomes obvious.

Finally, the ultimate advantage of revolution over reformism is the realisation that real change can come from below. Being involved in a strike or a demonstration bestows an incredible sense of power on all those involved. A win by striking workers can lead them to say ‘well, if we can win this small improvement, why can’t we demand greater improvements.’ It comes with the marked realisation that workers do have the power to make real change, but our strength lies in our collective action. Again I say, concessions which are *taken* cannot be undone as easily as those which are given. I spoke briefly before about gay marriage laws in the States, but to bring it closer to home, ACC was introduced in NZ in 1974 after an extended campaign by a wide variety of unions to get a decent accident compensation scheme introduced. It was something that had to be fought long and hard for, and something which the ‘Free market’ idealouges who came in in the 80s were always unhappy with. However, despite 20 years of free market dominance, very little damage was able to be done to the system. Only recently, 35 years down the track, have National had the courage to start undermining ACC, and even now they have had to launch a subtle, but all out media campaign against it to quell public backlash. This was a benefit that we took, and now they are having to fight tooth and nail to claw it away from us.


To sum up, it isn’t simply ‘bad bosses’ that trample on the rights of workers.  Capitalists are forced to do so whether they like it or not.  Politicians in government are required to do the same thing for essentially the same reasons. It is easy to spout fire and brimstone, calling for the downfall of the capitalist class and so on and so forth from outside government, but as long as capitalism remains, every party in parliament has the same mission – to merely manage the existing system. This leaves workers disillusioned but also disengaged.
Revolutions and revolutionaries, on the other hand, actively involve as many people as humanly possible, not just to change how things are but how people view themselves, each other and what their role is and can be in society.

I emphasize that this is not just abject theory, devised by some old codger sitting in his basement in the 19th century. These statements about the changes that occur in revolutionary situations are based on the countless observations of workers and socialists throughout modern history from all over the world. When we make revolutionary demands, and back them up with strikes and other forms of workers resistance, those in power will provide the reforms, if only to keep us from taking more. If you want to see change in the present, the *most effective* way to do this is to fight towards the goal of revolution in the future. Revolutionary methods can achieve everything that reformists fight for, but have the ability to take it so, so much further. So if you want to see the best world possible come into being, then you don’t join the labour party, or the greens, or even the alliance. You should join the ISO. Revolutionaries make the best fighters for reform, because we don’t aim for half way – every reform granted is just another way of boosting worker confidence. A British Tory Quintin Hogg once said “If we don’t give the people reform, they will give us revolution”. Yes. Yes we will.

 

 

Delivered at the branch meeting 29/10/09

by Kevin H