Establishing A Socialist State By Reformism or Revolution
Reformist socialists and Marxists, exemplified by Eduard Bernstein, take the view that a socialist state will evolve out of political reforms won by the struggle of the socialists. "The socialist movement is everything to me while what people commonly call the goal of Socialism is nothing." These views are considered a "revision" of Marxist thought.
Revolutionary Marxists, following Marx, take the view that, on the one hand, the working class grows stronger through its battle for reforms, (such as, in Marx's time, the ten-hours bill):
"Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers... it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the ten-hours’ bill in England was carried." —Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Chapter I. Bourgeois and ProletariansHowever, on the other hand, in the orthodox Marxist conception, these battles of the workers reach a point at which a revolutionary movement arises. A revolutionary movement is required, in the view of Marxists, to sweep away the capitalist state, which must be smashed, so as to begin to construct a socialist society:
"In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat." —Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Chapter I. Bourgeois and ProletariansIn this view, only in this way can a socialist state be established.
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