DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST PERSPECTIVE

The revolutionary overthrow of capitalism is the final outcome of a process of increasing working-class consciousness, self-confidence and unity in action. Propaganda and agitation alone cannot bring about the necessary transformation of mass consciousness. Direct experience of success in mass struggles is essential, and such mass struggles are most often struggles for reforms to improve the masses' immediate conditions of life.

The struggle for reforms does not automatically lead to the erroneous view that reforms alone can solve the problems facing working people under capitalism.

Reformism, including the reformism of many who regard themselves as socialists, is a result of limiting workers' struggles to demands that are compatible with the capitalist system and to relegating the struggle for socialism to the domain of abstract propaganda. This in turn leads to abstention from the fight against the influence of capitalist ideology within the working class, failure to educate the working class in the necessity to overthrow capitalism, and failure to promote mass struggles that challenge the political power of the capitalist ruling class.

Sometimes the reaction of socialists against the reformist allies of capital within the working-class movement leads to the development of ultraleftist currents, which falsely identify class treachery with the struggle for reforms, and therefore reject participation in any such struggles. Adoption of such a position would condemn the socialist party to sectarian isolation from the masses.

The ultraleftist view implies passive acceptance of deteriorating conditions of life for working people until a moment when they might suddenly and spontaneously become capable of overthrowing the capitalist system in one concerted attack. Such an attitude is utopian. It falsely assumes that working people, increasingly divided and demoralised by their inability to defend their standard of living and democratic rights, can instantaneously acquire the unity, self-confidence and political experience necessary to defeat the capitalist class.

Effective struggle for immediate reforms must be combined with defence of the long-term interests of the working class. Emphasis on the one to the exclusion of the other can lead either to opportunist or sectarian errors. Overemphasis on the struggle for immediate reforms leads to opportunist adaptation to the existing level of consciousness of the masses, that is, to capitalist ideology. Concentration on the long-term interests of the working class separated from its immediate needs leads to sectarianism, which cannot show the way to future revolutionary struggles because it is incapable of dealing with the masses' present struggles.

While supporting, and helping to lead, struggles for immediate reforms, the party rejects the reformist illusion that the fundamental problems facing the masses can be resolved by partial solutions, including those raised in transitional demands. The fundamental problems facing working people can be resolved only through the revolutionary seizure of power and reorganisation of the economy and society along socialist lines. The party places great importance on transitional demands because they relate to the immediate problems facing the masses while being objectively linked, in the conditions for their fulfillment, to these socialist goals.