Reformism

Reformism is a bourgeois and petty-bourgeois current that emerged in the workers’ movement in the mid-19th century. The vigorous rise of the workers’ movement and the emergence of “labor aristocracy” in some relatively developed capitalist countries have provided a social basis for the prospering of reformism. Reformists advocated partial social reform without touching the capitalist system, advocated reconciliation and collaboration of classes, denied and abolished the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, beautified the capitalist system, and covered the class essence of the capitalist states in an attempt to analyze the revolutionary will of the broad masses of the people and maintain and consolidate the capitalist system through minor reforms.

In the historical stage of peaceful development of European capitalism, movements such as trade unionism, municipal socialism and Fabianism—all of which belonged to the trend of reformism had surged. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, with the development of liberal capitalism to its highest stage—imperialism, reformism has increasingly expanded its influence, echoing the revisionist current in the Communist movement by both attacking Marxism and being criticized by Marxism. Marxism does not oppose all struggles for reforms in a general manner, nor does it deny the necessity of struggling to improve the economic, political and cultural conditions of the working class under the capitalist system, the question lies in how to treat and apply reforms. In the eyes of reformists, reforms are the ultimate goal of struggle, and the revolutionary work is only a trivial matter, in fact the real purpose of reformists is to prevent, weaken and exterminate the proletarian revolutionary struggle. Marxists hold that reforms are both a supplementary means and a by-product of revolution, and always attach great importance to use reforms for the development of revolution, and have always resolutely opposed the reformist policies and slogans that seek to abolish revolution and deny it.