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Concept
Reformism
Summary
Reformism is a political doctrine advocating the reform of an existing system or institution instead of its abolition and replacement via revolution.
Within the socialist movement, reformism is the view that gradual changes through existing institutions can eventually lead to fundamental changes in a society's political and economic systems. Reformism as a political tendency and hypothesis of social change grew out of opposition to revolutionary socialism, which contends that revolutionary upheaval is a necessary precondition for the structural changes necessary to transform a capitalist system to a qualitatively different socialist system. Responding to a pejorative conception of reformism as non-transformational, non-reformist reform was conceived to prioritize human needs over capitalist needs.
As a doctrine, centre-left reformism is distinguished from centre-right or pragmatic reform, which instead aims to safeguard and permeate the status quo by preventing fundamental structural changes to it whereas leftist reformism posits that an accumulation of reforms can eventually lead to the emergence of entirely different economic and political systems than those of present-day capitalism and bureaucracy.
There are two types of reformism. One has no intention of bringing about socialism or fundamental economic change to society and is used to oppose such structural changes. The other is based on the assumption that while reforms are not socialist in themselves, they can help rally supporters to the cause of revolution by popularizing the cause of socialism to the working class.
The debate on the ability of social democratic reformism to lead to a socialist transformation of society is over a century old. Reformism is criticized for being paradoxical as it seeks to overcome the existing economic system of capitalism while trying to improve the conditions of capitalism, thereby making it appear more tolerable to society. According to Rosa Luxemburg, capitalism is not overthrown, "but is on the contrary strengthened by the development of social reforms".
Official source
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