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R‚formisme
La Bibliotheque Connexions (Editon francais)

Clicking on the title of an item takes you to the bibliographic reference for the resource, which will typically also contain an abstract, a link to the full text if it is available online, and links to related topics in the subject index. Particularly recommended items have a red Connexions logo beside the title.

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  1. The Abolition of the State
    Anarchist & Marxist Perspectives

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2007
    Both Anarchists and Marxists believe that it will be possible to do away with the state. But what do they mean by that? What is the state, after all? What institutions, if any, would be necessary to replace its functions? Would a transitional “dictatorship of the proletariat” be needed or will it be possible to immediately abolish the state? Does modern technology require a centralized institution such as the state? Throughout the history of revolutions, the people have created workplace councils and neighborhood assemblies--how could these replace the state?
  2. American Socialists and Evolutionary Thought, 1870-1920
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1993
    While Pittenger does not provide us with an explanation for the evolutionist degradation of socialism his book is a most insightful rediscovery of a forgotten chapter of U.S. socialism.
  3. An Anti-Capitalist Manifesto 
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2003
    An extended argument about what the anti-capitalist movement should stand for.
  4. Bernstein and the Marxism of the Second International
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1969   Published: 1972
    An essay from the collection entitled From Rouseau to Lenin: Studies in Ideology and Society, First published as Ideologia e Societá by Editori Laterza, Rome, Italy.
  5. Canadian Socialism
    Essays on the CCF and the NDP

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1993
  6. The City and Radical Social Change 
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1982
    A collection of essays dealing with the dynamics of the new forces for social change in our urban milieu, discussing how new ideas are contributing to an urban insurgency which could lead to a new city and a new concept of citizenship.
  7. Classical Marxism and the Question of Reformism
    Gluckstein, Donny

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2014
    A central issue for our movement is whether to work towards a complete revolutionary overturning of capitalism and the state that protects it, or rely on partial methods of struggle. This choice is obvious in places such as Egypt or Greece, but applies with equal force to Britain where defence of the welfare state and living standards can mean waiting for the next election or relying on self-activity from below. This article will focus on the response of Marxists during the first quarter of the 20th century to this question.
  8. Coming Home to the Struggle
    Against The Current vol. 134

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2008
    I became a political activist at the age of 12, when I marched for open housing in Evanston, Illinois. We lived next to the Black community in Evanston; African-American students made up 40% of my grade school. At the local YWCA girls club my sister and I were the only whites. The young Black women I became close to helped me overcome painful shyness. Later my father, a Methodist minister, was arrested trying to integrate churches in Jackson, Mississippi.
  9. A comment on Greece and Syriza
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2012
    This analysis is a rebuke to the notion that there is nothing between the far left and social democracy. That diagnosis may have been appropriate in the period of revolutionary growth beginning in 1968. This period, marked by the long-term decomposition of once dominant social democratic parties, is quite different.
  10. A Dictionary of Marxist Thought
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1983
  11. The End of Parliamentary Socialism
    From New Left to New Labour

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1997
    Argues against the assertion that there is no alternative to neo-liberalism. This account of the British Labour Party's recent history argues that Tony Blair's modernizing tendency was profoundly mistaken in asserting that the only alternative to traditional social democracy and narrow parliamentarianism was an acceptance of neo-liberalism.
  12. The Evil of the Lesser Evil
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2008
    Lesser-evilism as a progressive strategy has succeeded -- succeeded in making American politics progressively more and more right-wing.
  13. Evolutionary Socialism
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1899
  14. For Communism: Propositions on a Strategy for Revolution in the Advanced Capitalist Countries
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1970
    A series of 100 propositions addressing the strategic vacuum on the Italian and European left at the end of the 1960s.
  15. Fragments of a Reformist Anarchism
    A review of David Graeber (2004), Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2007
    A collection of scattered thoughts about anarchism, anthropology, and academic studies. David Graeber argues against the need for a revolutionary confrontation with the state or its eventual overthrow. Instead, he favors a gradualist approach which leaves the state alone.
  16. Gramsci's Marxism
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1976
    Carl Boggs introduces Gramsci as one of the first marxist theorists to grapple with the problems of revolutionary change in advanced capitalist society and as the first to identify the importance of the ideological-cultural struggle against bourgeois values.
  17. Hallas, Duncas - Writings - Index
    Resource Type: Article
    Writings of Duncas Hallas (1925-2002).
  18. Imagine Democracy 
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2000
    Rebick calls for the transformation of fundamental institutions in Canada: the economy, the media and the electoral system.
  19. The Impossibilities of Reformism
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2012
    We would like to use this text to begin a dialogue with those comrades within social democracy who contend that the last 25, 15 or 5 years of bleak development is the result of a series of coincidences – poor leadership, international pressure, mistakes, cunning opponents, etc. – and we would instead propose a more fundamental explanation. The problems we face are problems that are inherent and unavoidable in the very reformist strategy that social democracy is built upon – in both its successes and its failures.
  20. Introduction to Social Revolution
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1976
    A Short Introduction to Social Revolutionary Politics, with short articles on ""Capitalism," "War," "State Capitalism," "National Liberation and Imperialism," "Racism," "Sex Roles," "Education," and "Reform and Revolution."
  21. IPPN Standing Strong in the Storm
    Against The Current vol. 88

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2000
    If I were asked to name the one virtue that best describes the political left in America, I would say “perseverance.” As we know all too well, the long history of the left in our country is a history of frustration, betrayal and defeat, yet also of hope, vigor and determination despite many setbacks and our repeated failure to win any real political power.
  22. Irish Communist Policy
    Letter to Sylvia Pankhurst

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1922
    The belief that some foreign power, the State, may accomplish it for the workers by decrees and laws is a social-democratic belief - nay, only the most narrow-minded social democrats believe it; most social democrats in former times knew quite well that the chief force of transformation must come from below. The programme of the Communist Party of Ireland is not only non-Communist because it appeals to the State for everything, but also because it asks from this State only reforms.
  23. Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution 
    Volume I: State and Bureaucracy

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1977
    A wide-ranging and thorough exposition of Marx's views on democracy.
  24. Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution 
    Volume II: The Politics of Social Classes

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1978
    Draper ranges through the development of the thought of Marx and Engels on the role of classes in society.
  25. Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution
    Volume III: The Dictatorship of the Proletariat

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1986
    Hal Draper examines how Marx and Marxism dealt with the issue of dictatorship in relation to the revolutionary use of force and repression, particularly as this debate has centered on the use of the term "dictatorship of the proletariat." Draper strips away the layers of misinterpretation and misinformation that have accumulated over the years to show what Marx and Engels themselves meant by the term.
  26. Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution 
    Volume IV: Critique of Other Socialisms

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1990
    Much of Karl Marx's most important work came out of his critique of other thinkers, including many socialists who differed significantly in their conceptions of socialism. Draper looks at these critiques to illuminate what Marx's socialism was, as well as what it was not.
  27. Klein vs. Klein
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2015
    This Changes Everything is a book capacious enough to allow Naomi Klein two positions at once. But a real climate-justice movement will at some point have to make choices.
  28. The "Labor Aristocracy" and Working-Class Struggles: Consciousness in Flux, Part 2
    Against The Current vol. 124

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2006
    Whatever the theoretical and empirical problems with the economics of the labor aristocracy thesis, its defenders still claim that well paid workers have generally been more reformist and conservative in their politics than lower paid workers. They point to the example of mostly white New York City construction workers ("hardhats") attacking antiwar demonstrators in the Spring of 1970; and contrast them with the militancy and progressive politics of some of the recent "Justice for Janitors" campaigns.
  29. The Leap Manifesto
    A Call for a Canada Based on Caring for the Earth and One Another

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2015
    We start from the premise that Canada is facing the deepest crisis in recent memory. so we need to Leap.
  30. "Left Reformism" and socialist strategy
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2013
    Rooksby talks about the renewed interest in radical left "big picture" questions of socialist strategy that represents a return to "important debates of the left largely absent over the last three decades." The major factors driving this are several years of deep capitalist crisis together with the almost total capitulation of social democratic parties across Europe to the austerity agenda, opening up a clear space to the left of these organisations.
  31. Left reformism, the state and the problem of socialist politics today
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2017
    The recent calls for the British left either to “reclaim Labour” (Len McCluskey) or to build a new party capable of emulating Syriza’s successes in Greece (Ken Loach) demand serious consideration on these pages. At their core these proposals reflect a widespread desire, shared by members of the Socialist Workers Party, to fight the cuts, alongside revulsion at the Labour Party’s failure to do so. They also reflect a genuine excitement across the left about the prospects for new left formations such as Syriza and France’s similar Front de Gauche.
  32. Left reformism, the state and the problem of socialist politics today
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2013
    Blackledge claims that, while it is of the first importance that revolutionaries welcome and work alongside these coalitions, it is also imperative that we maintain our political independence from them so that we are better able to struggle for an alternative beyond the limitations of their politics. This perspective demands a clear analysis of the nature of reformism.
  33. Luxemburg, Rosa - Writings - Index
    Resource Type: Article
    Writings of Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919).
  34. Manoeuvres from above, movements from below: Greece under Tsipras
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2015
    The Syriza left is at a crossroads. For all the belief that Syriza is a different kind of party, one that transcends the division between reform and revolution and therefore should be the home for the entire left, its left faces exactly the same problem as the reformist left in social democracy -- the trap of impotence. This article is written in the spirit of offering an alternative, around which the left as a whole can unite.
  35. A Marxist History of the World part 100: 1968-1975: the workers' revolt
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2012
    As the crisis of capitalism spread around the world, the working class took centre stage – but the revolt did not result in successful revolution anywhere.
  36. A Marxist History of the World part 67: Reform or Revolution?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2012
    The world Socialist movement was blown apart as its members supported the First World War. Neil Faulkner looks at how the question of reform or revolution lay behind the split.
  37. Mattick, Paul - Writings - Index
    Resource Type: Article
    Writings of Paul Mattick (1904-1981).
  38. The Meaning of Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution
    Against The Current vol. 113

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2004
    A feature of revolutions is that they keep coming around in unexpected ways and in unexpected places. Who would have dared predict the eruption that was Seattle in November 1999, when the powers behind neoliberal globalization seemed completely incontestable?
  39. The Myth of the Labor Aristocracy, Part 1
    Against The Current vol. 123

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2006
    The persistence of reformism and outright conservatism among workers, especially in the imperialist centers of North America, Western Europe and Japan, has long confounded revolutionary socialists. The broadest outlines of Marxist theory tell us that capitalism creates it own "gravediggers" - a class of collective producers with no interest in the maintenance of private ownership of the means of production. The capitalist system's drive to maximize profits should force workers to struggle against their employers, progressively broaden their struggle and eventually overthrow the system and replace it with their democratic self-rule.
  40. New Democracy Internet site
    Resource Type: Website
    Supports a democratic revolution to overthrow corporate capitalism, but opposes socialism. Features short articles on labour issues, the deficit, education.
  41. A New View of Society
    Or, Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character, and the Application of the Principle to Practice

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1816
  42. Once more on left reformism: A reply to Ed Rooksby
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2014
    Paul Blackledge replies to Ed Rooksby’s arguements about left reformism.
  43. Opportunism and the art of the possible
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1898
    Opportunism is a political game which can be lost in two ways: not only basic principles but also practical success may be forfeited.
  44. Our Generation
    Volume 13 Number 12

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
  45. Pannekoek, Anton - Writings - Index
    Resource Type: Article
    Writings of Anton Pannekoek (1873-1960).
  46. Parecon and the nature of reformism
    A review of Robin Hahnel (2005). Economic Justice and Democracy; From Competition to Cooperation. NY

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2005
    The concept of participatory economics, as developed by Hahnel and Albert, is worth exploring. They are inspired by the tradition of libertarian, councilist, socialism. They share the values of revolutionary class struggle anarchism. Even in disagreeing with them, there is much to be learned from reading their work, since they are t houghtful people who are dealing with important issues. Yet they demonstrate, in spite of themselves, that it is not enough to attempt to not be reformist. It is necessary to be revolutionary.
  47. Privilege politics is reformism
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2012
    A critique of privilege politics, which the author sees as a demobilizing force that boils down issues of oppression into what happens between individuals.
  48. Ralph Nader and the Legacy of Revolt (Part 2)
    Against The Current vol. 89

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2000
    Our electoral dilemma today derives from a political realignment a hundred years ago, when a faction of populists joined in fusion with William Jennings Bryan and the “Free Silver” Democratic Party. After 1896 the two major parties evolved into what they have remained, electoral machines organized from the top down, from elites to ward heelers and courthouse gangs, as vote-catching operations for factions of big business.
  49. Red Rosa 
    A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2015
    A giant of the political left, Rosa Luxemburg is one of the foremost minds in the canon of revolutionary socialist thought. Red Rosa gives Luxemburg her due as a radical and human being. In this beautifully drawn work of graphic biography, writer and artist Kate Evans has opened up her subject’s intellectual world to a new audience, grounding Luxemburg’s ideas in the realities of an inspirational and deeply affecting life.
  50. Reform or Revolution 
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1983
    The reformists had no principles to 'betray.' They remained what they had been all along, but they were now obliged first of all to safeguard the system in which their cherished practice could continue. The revolution had to be reduced to a mere reform, so as to satisfy their deepest convictions and, incidentally, secure their political existence.
  51. Reform or Revolution?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1896
    Socialism knows that revolutionary upheavals and transformations proceed from the rock bed of material needs.
  52. Reform and Revolution 
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1967   Published: 1968
    An essay taken from Andre Gorz's Le Socialisme Difficile in which he discusses how socialist strategy can aim to crate the objective and subjective conditions which will make mass revolutionary action and engagement in a successful trail of strength with the bourgeoise possible.
  53. Reformism - Social Democracy: Ulli Diemer - Selected snippets & quotes from Radical Digressions
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2018
  54. Revolution Re-Assessed 
    Politics of Human Liberation

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1980
    The political objectives and beliefs of the Australian-based Libertarian Socialist Organisation.
  55. Revolutionary Centennial: Guyana's 1905 Rebellion
    Against The Current vol. 114

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2005
    1905 was a landmark year in the history of Guyana, as it was for several places around the world. In Russia, the Tsar and his troops shot workers delivering a petition in St. Petersburg. In Bengal there were communal shootings; in South West Africa the German massacre of the Herero people was in full progress.
  56. Rosa Luxemburg 
    Selected Political Writings

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1972
    A selection of Rosa Luxemburg's writings which highlight her outstanding contributions to the theory and practice of revolutionary socialism.
  57. The Rosa Luxemburg Reader 
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2004
    A definitive one-volume collection of Luxemburg's writings.
  58. Rosa Luxemburg Speaks
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1970
    A selection of speeches and writings by Rosa Luxemburg.
  59. Rosa Luxemburg: Speech to the Hanover Congress
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1899
    In its struggle, the working class has no greater enemy than its own illusions -- and those who foster illusions.
  60. Rosa Luxemburg: Speeches to Stuttgart Congress
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1898
    Luxenburg criticizes Eduard Bernstein's comment: "The final goal, whatever it may be, is nothing to me: the movement is everything!" with the reply "Anyone who says that does not stand for the necessity of seizing political power. You see that some comrades in the Party do not stand for the final goals of our movement, and that it is necessary to express that fact unambiguously."
  61. Rosa Luxemburg's Reform or Revolution in the Twenty-first Century
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2010
    Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform and Revolution, written at a high point of socialist struggle, contains invaluable lessons for today's new generation of activists as they confront the political and organizational challenges of the day.
  62. Social Democracy and Parliamentarism
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1904
    Parliamentarism is far from being an absolute product of democratic development, of the progress of the human species, and of such nice things. It is, rather, the historically determined form of the class rule of the bourgeoisie and – what is only the reverse of this rule – of its struggle against feudalism.
  63. Social Reform or Revolution 
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1900   Published: 1908
    Rosa Luxemburg's attack on reformism.
  64. Socialism and Revolution 
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1967   Published: 1973
    Representative democracy in every industrially advanced country is in a state of profound crisis. But we have been accustomed for so long to accept democracy in the form of its outward appearances and parliamentary institutions that its decay often does not become apparent to us until those institutions have been either brushed aside or reduced to a purely decorative role.
  65. The Socialist Crisis in France
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1901
    "The Republic is in danger! That is why it was necessary for a socialist to become the bourgeois Minister of Commerce. The Republic is in danger! That is why the socialist had to remain in the cabinet even after the massacre of the striking workers on the Island of Martinique and in Chalon. The Republic is in danger! As a result, inquiries into the massacres had to be blocked, the parliamentary investigations of the horrors perpetrated in the colonies had to be discarded, and the amnesty law accepted."
  66. Socialist Reformism and "Evolutionary" Debate
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1997
    While Pittenger does not provide us with an explanation for the evolutionist degradation of socialism--which is of course not an exclusively American phenomena--his book is a most insightful rediscovery of a forgotten chapter of U.S. socialism.
  67. The Socialist Register 1970
    Volume 7: A Survey of Movements & Ideas

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1970
  68. The Socialist Register 1980
    Volume 17: A Survey of Movements & Ideas

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1980
  69. The Socialist Register 1982
    Volume 19: A Survey of Movements & Ideas

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1982
  70. The Socialist Register 1985/1986
    Volume 22: Social Democracy and After

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1986
  71. Socialist Register 1991
    Volume 27: Communist Regimes the Aftermath

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1991
  72. Socialist Thought
    A Documentary History

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1964
    An anthology of important documents in the history of European socialist thought, from pre-revolutionary France to the 1950s.
  73. The Story of Fabian Socialism
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1961
    A history of the Fabian Society and the organizations and individuals who were part of the Fabian milieu.
  74. There are Reforms and There are Reforms 
    Or, Two Sorts of Reforms

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1908
    Those who believe that we will manage to gradually realize socialism by social reform within the current regime misunderstand the class antagonisms that determine reforms. Current social reform, having as a goal the preservation of the capitalist system, finds itself in opposition to the proletarian reform of tomorrow, which will have the contrary goal: the suppression of the system. The organic connection that exists today between reform and revolution is completely different. In fighting for reform the working class develops and makes itself strong. It ends by conquering political power. This is the unity of reform and revolution.
  75. Why changing our diets won't save the Earth
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2016
    Received wisdom says that to save the planet we have to change our eating habits. Elaine Graham-Leigh explains why the received wisdom isn't just wrong, it blames working people for a crisis they didn’t cause.

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