Social democracy: reformism without retorms

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Left and right alike, reformism offers workers only a blind alley through a graduai: process oi social advancement, we will move in the indefinite future to the creation of "socialism' through parliament.

In many countries, particularly in Europe, this reformist perspective • has ben and remains the main political trend within the workers' movement.

Each clection millions of workers return to the ballot boxes to tie their fates to "their" party, the party which supposedly, represents the basic interests of the working class.

Each new social democratic government leaves them disappointed, their hopes unsatisfied.

Concessions

In periods of boom or expansion social democracy-or even self-confident "moderate' bourgeois parties-may be able to offer concessions to the working class based on the desire of the capitalists to ideologically bind workers to the present system and secure the most favourable conditions for the continued extraction of profit. • But in periods of slump or recession, instead of "progressive' social reforms, workers find themselves confronted-by bourgeois parties and social democrats alike -with wage controls, attacks on trade union rights and the axing of jobs and services.

How does the ruling class view the reformist leaders and the role of social democracy?

Occasionally, in the pages of the Sunday Telegraph we get a glimpse in the column written Why is this?

For Marxists, reformism has always represented the reflection in the workers movement of ideas which in reality represent the interests of hostile class forces; idcas which though widely shared by layers of workers, are rooted not in the needs of the working class but in those of the ruling capitalist class which seeks to preserve its system.

Faced with the material reality of the capitalist system, workers have for centurics spontaneously turned towards means of struggle to lessen their own oppression through the tight for retorms-whether at the level of the workplace (trade union struggles), or on a broader level through the formation of mass parliamentary parties.

As Lenin pointed out in his definitive political brcak from the reformists, the consciousness that it is insufficient to seck to reform the system piecemeal-and that the • whole bourgeois order must be overthrown by revolutionary struggle-does not develop spontaneously on a mass level in the working class.

Revolutionary party Sections of workers can of course make great strides forward in political development in the course of their struggles: but to consolidate and extend these developments and carry them into broad layers of the class a conscious revolutionary party is needed.

Only the revolutionary party is capable of utilising the scientific theory of Marxism to analyse and consciously respond to the complex processes of the class struggle, and to offer on this basis a consistent defence of the independent interests of the working class against the material and ideological attacks of the bourgeoisie.

Science

As a developed science, and not simply a reflex response to capitalist exploitation, Marxism must be brought into the trade unions, the Labour Party and the working class as a whole in conflict with existing methods of thinking and trade union consciousness.

It is not simply a question of bombarding workers with revolutionary ideas: revolutionaries seek to concretise such ideas in tangible demands, which connect to today's problems, and to today's level of consciousness of the working class and, insofar as they are taken up and fought for in practice, lead workers in struggle to grasp the need for revolutionary action.

The fight for such dema therefore brings Marxists into conflict not only with those workers who are reluctant to break from mere trade unionism, but also with the Labour and trade union bureaucracy who consciously strive to maintain the existing balance of forces between the working class and the employers-on which their power and privileges depend.

The consequence of such leadership is that, while the Labour Party may well be a "workers' party" in terms of its social base and support, it produces not workers' governments dedicated to the independent interests of the vorking class, but bourgeois governments, which see their role as administering capitalism.

In the eyes of reformist leaders, the crisis of capitalism represents not the historical bankruptcy of a social system based on the accumulation of capital through the exploitation