50 Years Ago: Socialism or Reform?

(From the SOCIALIST STANDARD, October 1907).

To put . . . a long list of “palliatives” before the workers not only excites derision and scatters the workers’ energies, but leaves the cause of evil unchecked, confines the workers’ attention to fruitless efforts at reform within the present system, serves capitalist interests and starves and hinders the only forward movement, thus postponing indefinitely both the removal of the cause and the healing of the wounds.

Any genuine reform that takes a bite out of capitalist interests (and no reform can be genuine that does not) can only be obtained in opposition to the capitalist class by the workers capturing political power. Thus, to obtain even reforms would require what is essentially a revolution. But the working class cannot be united upon a measure that can only doubtfully benefit a small number of them; while the number of evil effects of capitalism is so vast that scarcely any two workers can be united upon all the innumerable palliatives called for, and as to which are the most pressing.

By having their attention directed to effects only the efforts of the workers are made mutually antagonistic, and are scattered and nullified by being directed to all points of the compass upon the myriad effects of capitalism, instead of being focussed on the cause.

Finally, even regarding such inadequate and restricted measures of alleviation that may be possible within the capitalist system, and even supposing the ruling class could be induced to grant them, we direct attention to the following incontrovertible proposition: That the only effective way to induce the ruling class to attempt to palliate the evils of their system is to organise the workers for the overthrow of that system.

(Extracts from an article “Socialism and Reform”).