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Reformism is a political tendency advocating thereform of an existing system or institution – often a political or religious establishment – as opposed to its abolition and replacement viarevolution.[1]
Within thesocialist movement, reformism is the view that gradual changes through existing institutions can eventually lead to fundamental changes in a society's political andeconomic systems. Reformism as a political tendency and hypothesis of social change grew out of opposition torevolutionary socialism, which contends that revolutionary upheaval is a necessary precondition for the structural changes necessary to transform a capitalist system into a qualitatively differentsocialist system. Responding to a pejorative conception of reformism as non-transformational, philosopherAndré Gorz conceivednon-reformist reform in 1987 to prioritize human needs over capitalist needs.[2]
As a political doctrine,centre-left reformism is distinguished[citation needed] fromcentre-right or pragmatic reform, which instead aims to safeguard and permeate thestatus quo by preventing fundamental structural changes to it. 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-daycapitalism andbureaucracy.[3]
Religious reformism has variously affected (for example)Judaism,[4][5]Christianity[6]andIslam[7]since time immemorial, sometimes occasioning heresies,sectarianschisms and entirely new denominations.
There are two types of reformism. One has no intention of bringing aboutsocialism 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 ofrevolution by popularizing the cause of socialism to theworking class.[8]
The debate on the ability ofsocial 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 ofcapitalism while trying to improve the conditions of capitalism, thereby making it appear more tolerable to society. According toRosa Luxemburg, capitalism is not overthrown, "but is on the contrary strengthened by the development of social reforms".[9] In a similar vein, Stan Parker of theSocialist Party of Great Britain argues that reforms are a diversion of energy for socialists and are limited because they must adhere to the logic of capitalism.[8]
French social theoristAndre Gorz criticized reformism by advocating a third alternative to reformism andsocial revolution that he called "non-reformist reforms", specifically focused on structural changes to capitalism as opposed toreforms to improve living conditions within capitalism or to prop it up througheconomic interventionism.[10]
In modern times, some reformists are seen ascentre-right. For example, the historicalReform Party of Canada advocated structural changes to government to counter what they believed was the disenfranchisement of Western Canadians.[11] Some social democratic parties such as the aforementionedSocial Democratic Party of Germany and the CanadianNew Democratic Party are still considered to be reformist and are seen ascentre-left.[12]
None of the initial figures that founded modern socialism in the early 19th century, such as theutopian socialistsHenri de Saint-Simon,Charles Fourier, andRobert Owen were revolutionary.[13] Instead these thinkers believed they could convince the governments and ruling classes in England and France to adopt their schemes through persuasion.[13]In 1875, theSocial Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) adopted aGotha Program that proposed "every lawful means" on a way to a "socialist society" and was criticized byKarl Marx, who considered thecommunist revolution a required step. One of the delegates to the SPD congress wasEduard Bernstein, who later expanded on the concept, proposing what he termed "evolutionary socialism". Bernstein was a leadingsocial democrat in Germany. His "revisionism" was quickly targeted byrevolutionary socialists, withRosa Luxemburg condemning Bernstein'sevolutionary socialism in her 1900 essaySocial Reform or Revolution? and byorthodox Marxists such asKarl Kautsky, who condemned its theories in his 1909 workRoad to Power.[14][15]
While Luxemburg died in theGerman Revolution, the reformists soon found themselves contending with theBolsheviks and their satellitecommunist parties for the support ofintellectuals and theworking class. In 1959, theGodesberg Program (signed at a party convention inBad Godesberg in the West German capital ofBonn) marked the shift of the SPD from anorthodox Marxist program espousing an end to thecapitalist system to a reformist one focused onsocial reform.[16]
AfterJoseph Stalin consolidated power in the Soviet Union, theComintern launched a campaign against the reformist movement by denouncing them associal fascists. According toThe God that Failed byArthur Koestler, a former member of theCommunist Party of Germany, the largest communist party in Western Europe in the interwar period,communists aligned with the Soviet Union continued to consider the SPD to be the real enemy in Germany even after theNazi Party had gotten into power.[17]
The term was applied to elements within the BritishLabour Party in the 1950s and subsequently on the party'sliberal wing.Anthony Crosland wroteThe Future of Socialism (1956) as a personal manifesto arguing for a reformulation of the term. For Crosland, the relevance ofnationalization, orpublic ownership, forsocialists was much reduced as a consequence of contemporaryfull employment,Keynesian management of the economy and reduced capitalist exploitation. After the third successive defeat of his party in the1959 general election,Hugh Gaitskell attempted to reformulate the original wording ofClause IV in theparty's constitution, but proved unsuccessful. Some of the younger followers of Gaitskell, principallyRoy Jenkins,Bill Rodgers andShirley Williams, left the Labour Party in 1981 to found theSocial Democratic Party, but the central objective of theGaitskellites was eventually achieved byTony Blair in his successful attempt to rewrite Clause IV in 1995. The use of the term is distinguished from thegradualism associated with Fabianism (the ideology of theFabian Society) which itself should not be seen as being in parallel with theMarxist reformism associated with Bernstein and the SPD as initially the Fabians had explicitly rejected orthodox Marxism.
[Reformism is] a doctrine or movement advocating reform, esp[ecially] political or religious reform, rather than abolition.
One may envisage the events according to the traditional view as follows. Ezra arrived in Jerusalem in 458 with the sole aim — and by order of the Persian king — to promulgate a religious reform. [...] Presumably, after his reforms Ezra returned to Susa. [...] During Nehemiah's twelve-year stay in Jerusalem Ezra returned and supported Nehemiah's attempts to carry through his reforms. [...] the temple had been rebuilt, the wall of Jerusalem restored, the cultic activities properly organized, and the purity of the religion preserved.
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