Subject: Re: M-I: Lenin on reforms and revolution From: jschulman-AT-juno.com (Jason A Schulman) Date: Sat, 05 Apr 1997 13:36:45 EST "Unlike the anarchists, the Marxists recognize struggle for reforms, i.e., for measures that improve the conditions of working people without destroying the power of the ruling class. At the same time, however, the Marxists wage a most resolute struggle against the reformists, who, directly or indirectly, restrict the aims and activities of the working class to the winning of reforms. Reformism is bourgeois deception of the workers, who, despite individual improvements, will always remain wage-slaves, as long as there is the domination of capital. "The liberal bourgeoisie grant reforms with one hand, and with the other always take them back, reduce them to nought, use them to enslave the workers, to divide them into separate groups and perpetutate wage-slavery. For that reason reformism, even when quite sincere, becomes a weapon by means of which the bourgeoisie corrupt and weaken the workers. The experience of all countries shows that the workers who put their trust in the reformists are always fooled. "And conversely, workers who have assimilated Marx's theory, i.e., realied the inevitability of wage-slavery so long as capitalist rule remains, will not be fooled by any bourgeois reforms. Understanding that where capitalism continues to exist reforms cannot either be enuring or far-reaching, the workers fight for better conditions and use then to intensify the fight against wage-slavery. The reformists try to divide and decieve the workers, to divert them from the class struggle by petty concessions. But the workers, having seen through the falsity of reformism, utilise reforms to develop and broaden their class struggle." Lenin, "Marxism and Reformism," Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 372. -- Jason ______ "Experience has taught me that the shallowest of communist platitudes contains more of a hierarchy of meaning than contemporary bourgeois profundity." Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), German critic, philosopher. Letter, 7 March 1931. --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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