Social Reform

One of the modes of social movement, refers to the gradual and slow political reform measures taken by the ruling class from part to the whole to maintain its rule and correspond to the requirements of social progress without touching the fundamental system of the existing society. Commonly refers to bourgeois and petty-bourgeois political movements opposite to Marxist social revolution, i.e., the claim within the workers’ movement to leave the fundamental system of capitalism untouched and to pursue a partial and subtle mode of revolutionizing society.

Social reforms are social movements launched under certain social conditions. When the revolutionary conditions are not yet fully mature, the proletariat should, under the guidance of proletarian revolutionary tactics, make use of the ameliorations the ruling class is compelled to make, as a means of accumulating revolutionary forces and developing the revolutionary situation, and serve the revolution. When the subjective and objective conditions of the revolution are mature, the proletariat should lose no time in developing the reform into revolution in order to overthrow the reactionary class and win revolutionary victory. After the proletariat gains power and establishes the public property of means of production, it normally and consciously relies on the masses to carry out social reforms, which is the basic mode of self-perfection of the socialist system. China’s and other socialist countries’ reform of the concrete systems inappropriate to the development of the productive forces on the premise of upholding the basic socialist system are such kind of social reforms. Such social reforms are fundamentally different from the social reforms which the ruling class are compelled to carry out under the system of exploitation.

In different historical periods and countries, social reforms had different forms of appearance. For example, at the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century, Peter I, through the serfdom reform, gradually got rid of the backward situation and Russia gradually became a feudal military world power. In the Meiji Restoration of 1868–1873, Japan adopted a series of reform measures of bourgeois character, fortified the new regime established by the anti-Shogunate faction (Tōbaku), and enabled Japan to get rid of the old isolated, feudal and backward state of affairs, and quickly embarked on the path of a developing capitalist economy. In the middle of the 19th century, the George Odger and Thomas Burt of England advocated the collaboration of labor and capital and class reconciliation, put forth the slogan of “a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work”, advised workers to “be fair and restrain themselves”, and advocated an improvement of the conditions of labor and life within the framework of capitalism. In the 1880s, British Fabian socialism held that for achieving socialism, it was necessary to disseminate faith in democracy and the democratic election of county councils, the municipal organs of local self-government, and gradually expand its property of some public utility sectors, and through such minor ameliorations, capitalism could transition to socialism. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the German Bernstein, as the chief representative of revisionism, advocated that the Social Democratic Party should change from a party that advocated social revolution to a party that advocated social reform, worshipped the spontaneous economic struggle, opposed political struggle aiming at seizing power, and held that state capitalism, workers’ co-operatives, democratic self-government, etc., in the capitalist countries were all partial realizations of socialism, and that capitalism was growing peacefully into socialism.

Social reforms are a means of the working class for carrying out class struggle, not an ultimate aim. Although both social reforms and social revolution can further social progress, they are essentially different. Social revolution is the highest manifestation of class struggle and the struggle of one class to overthrow the political rule of another; social reforms are carried out under the condition of maintaining the existing basic social system, instead of revolutionizing the old social system, the ruling class often carries out some measures from above to adjust it. Harmonizing and moderating social contradictions and responding to the requirements of social progress are the quantitative and gradual forms taken by the social movement. Social revolution does not exclude social reforms. Before the social revolution, social reforms are often a step towards revolution, a preparation, a harbinger and a forerunner of revolution; in the social revolution, social reforms are often a supplement and “auxiliary means” of revolution. Only advocating social reforms and abandoning social revolution is essentially the “petty-bourgeois nature of the workers’ movement”, which will surely ruin the cause of proletarian revolution. As Lenin said, “The concept ‘reform’, is undoubtedly the opposite of the concept ‘revolution’. Failure to remember this contrast, failure to remember the line that divides these two concepts, constantly leads to very serious mistakes in all historical discussions. But this contrast is not something absolute, this line is not something dead, but alive and changing, and one must be able to define it in each particular case.” There is a principled difference between social reform and reformism, which is a bourgeois and petty-bourgeois current against proletarian revolution in the international communist movement. As the self-perfection of socialist system, socialist reform is a new type of social reform. Generally speaking, social reforms are necessary. Marxism does not generally oppose reform but opposes reformism that replaces revolution with reforms. For “reformism, in general, means that people confine themselves to agitating for changes which do not require the removal of the main foundations of the old ruling class, changes that are compatible with the preservation of these foundations”. Marxism criticizes and denies reformism, which is contrary to the fundamental interests of the proletariat, but does not reject any proposition for and measure of amelioration that is conducive to the improvement of the economic, political and cultural conditions of the working class.

Social reforms are an objective phenomenon of social development, the main mode of change under circumstances that the relations of production of society and the development of the productive forces basically correspond to each other, and it is also a form of progressive movement of the human society. In social development, although social reforms do not bring about a global, rapid and qualitative leap of the society, but a partial, slow and slight progress of the society, they push forward the social progress after all. No matter forced, spontaneous or conscious, social reforms have real significance. Social reforms can improve and perfect partial or individual aspects of maladjustment, defects in the society. Therefore, Marxism does not reject social reforms under certain conditions, nor does it deny the significance of social reforms under the capitalist system to improve the economic, political and cultural conditions of the working class. The question is how to make use of the reforms.