Is this Really an Era of Reform?

Reform in the sense used in political circles refers to significant changes in the legal or institutional structure of the bourgeois state that aim to resolve contradictions in the operations of capitalism. Like any other system, capitalism in its development continually produces new contradictions that call forth the need on the part of the ruling class for new reforms that enable the further development of capital. While always undertaken for the benefit of capital reforms sometimes also have a beneficial impact on the living standards of workers. As capitalism develops, the scale and complexity of the contradictions grow and the difficulties in implementing reforms that resolve any contradictions grow correspondingly. The likelihood of reforms actually benefiting workers also declines. Increasingly, capital is only able to implement what it regards as necessary reforms in the framework of sharp, even catastrophic, declines in living standards.

A string of reforms that raised living standards for the mass of the population in the US extended from the beginning of the New Deal in 1933 until mid-1970's. It began with the Civil Works Administration, which in a five month period in 1933 hired 4 million unemployed workers for public works projects and included passage of the Wagner Act, which eased the process of forming trade unions, the creation of the Social Security system, federal unemployment compensation, Medicare, and Medicaid and ended with the dismantling of the system of legal segregation in the South. The ending of this reform process coincided with the end of a growth period of US capitalism and the sliding of U.S. capitalism into an already existing second world conflict, which led to a new wave of industrialization based on militarism and its emergence as the clear leader of the imperialist wolf pack.

In recent speeches and articles, Sam Webb argues that the US is “entering an era of reforms, possibly radical reforms.” He believes that, contrary to the previous reform era, the new era may lay the political basis for a successful transition to socialism. He insists that communists must vigorously participate in spontaneous popular reform movements. Although speaking for the CPUSA, he also expresses the convictions of a much wider leftist constituency, which has struggled for reforms for decades. He bases his claim on parallels between the Great Depression and the current economic crisis, between the mass upsurge in the working class that produced industrial unionism and popular disgust with the Bush administration and enthusiasm for Obama, between the election of bourgeois reformers Roosevelt and Obama, and, finally, parallels between the Democratic sweeps in Congressional elections in 1932 and 2008.

These analogies obscure the reality that US capitalism is at a different stage in its evolution (more precisely, its decay) compared to where it was 77 years ago. US capitalism, which was then still in ascendancy, is now in decline. The industries that provided the basis for industrial unionism are shrinking rather than growing. Living standards of the US working class rose after WWII, but began to decline in the 1970's. The massive increase in the productive forces since the end of the Depression has compounded, rather than resolved, the contradictions of the system. It has become harder to generate profits through productive economic activity. Qualitatively higher levels of integration into a global economy further complicate the problems of solving contradictions.

The inherent chaos and dysfunction of the capitalist system leads to economic and political instability. In order to deal with this instability, whole layers of non-productive, parasitic consumption have been added to the system. Though parasitism is found in every element in the social system, the most prominent examples are found in the military industrial complex, the financial services industry and the health care industry. While parasitism performs valuable functions for capitalism, it, like everything else, adds its own elements of chaos and dysfunction. Moreover, the increasingly integrated, interconnected, indeed, “socialized,” character of developed capitalism means that any action in one area reverberates through the whole system with unpredictable results.

Consider, for example, the bailing out of the banking, insurance, and auto industries by the federal government and the Federal Reserve which was heralded as required to restore stability to the system. What it has produced is yet another stock market bubble and a steep decline in the value of the dollar. The latter effect has accelerated the movement away from the dollar as the sole international reserve currency as more and more countries now trade in a basket of currencies and oil producing nations move closer to demanding at least partial payment in Euros.

The military-industrial complex, which in its totality is parasitic, provides US and world capital with the means forcefully to suppress resistance to its system, while providing large sources of profit. Its activities generate more dissatisfaction with the system among victims of its violence (requiring ever more applications of force), consume increasingly scarce natural resources, create increasing environmental degradation and danger of global annihilation and create a large and potentially politically volatile force of soldiers and arms industry workers.

Reductions in consumption by the military-industrial complex cannot avoid bringing to the surface contradictions that its creation was designed to suppress. Even minor actions, such as substituting one weapon system for another, generate political turmoil. As a result, the amount of resources consumed by the military increases continually even as its threat to the economic stability of US capitalism becomes more acute.

The health care system in the US is almost as parasitic as the military industrial complex. Comparing socialist Cuba with capitalist US is revealing. With roughly equal health levels, as measured by life expectancy and infant mortality, the Cuban health care system consumes roughly $300 per capita per year versus the US system that consumes over $7000. Even allowing for differences and errors in measurement, it is clear that a high proportion of the expenditures in the US are related to the costs of capitalism.

The health care system is the current reform focus of the US left aligned behind Obama. They hope to modify the industry to increase availability of medical care and reduce parasitic expenditure particularly in its financial sector. But the administration and the leaders of Congress have placed the profits of finance capital beyond the reach of reform. It is now obvious that the administration itself cannot and will not support anything more than minor changes in the current system, which may actually increase the deficiencies of the system. Deserted by their ostensible leaders (political office holders), it is questionable whether the reform forces will achieve any progressive reforms. At the same time the economic crisis causes more and more individuals to lose even the private health insurance coverage they had.

The state system, which provides the main conscious guiding and organizing mechanism of capitalism, is itself increasingly riven by conflict and contradictions. It is becoming more difficult for the state to act to resolve contradictions in the system, even for the benefit of capital. Every effort to restore the power and authority of the state, whether it be by deepening or limiting democracy, developing more attractive political leaders, or intensifying the spread of chauvinist and religious ideologies, has failed. All efforts to strengthen the state only create new contradictions. The state continues to become more ineffectual and unstable.

Even the masses’ support of popular reform is problematic. A high level of differentiation and stratification continues to develop within the working class. Advanced workers recognize that the previous era of reform failed to resolve the contradictions of capitalism. In the US, except for a general distaste for capitalism and openness to socialism,¹ the masses display little unity around or enthusiasm for various reform schemes. Their distrust of bourgeois institutions, including the democratic state, grows steadily. They see them more clearly as instruments of bourgeois domination.

For the reasons listed above we are doubtful that a wave of reforms can occur or, if it does occur, that it will be successful in any of the ways ascribed to the New Deal reforms. However, nobody can with certainty predict the future, and it is useless to plan actions based on predictions. The real question is: what should be the line and strategy of communists, given the various possible scenarios? Should communists immerse themselves in reform struggles in expectation that reforms will deepen the basic contradictions of the system, or that the struggles themselves will somehow transform themselves into revolutionary struggles?

In the pre-revolutionary period in Russia, and even after the overthrow of the monarchy, Lenin believed that the most likely outcome of the crisis then gripping Russia would be the transition of the state from a semi-feudal autocracy to a bourgeois democracy, which would accelerate the ongoing replacement of feudalism by capitalism. However, at a certain point Lenin and his comrades recognized the possibility of making a revolutionary change and were able to switch gears politically and act successfully to bring it about. That the working class in Russia was able to take state power, and, once in power, successfully to develop society along socialist lines for 70 years was possible because the most advanced workers had been theoretically and psychologically prepared for such an eventuality by the Bolshevik Party.

We do not agree with those who insist that working for reforms is automatically a betrayal of the communist cause. Reforms that advance the progress to revolution are justified. However, we think it important for communists to explore the implications of scenarios in which crises of capitalism deepen and the avenues of reform are extremely narrow or closed. What if we are close to capitalism's day of reckoning? Are we in any way ready to step forward and fulfill our historical responsibilities? Webb's assertion that the transition to socialism is far in the future can no more be proved than that socialism is imminent. But his conclusion that no preparation for taking and exercising power is necessary is an abdication of communist responsibility.

The failure of the communist parties in the developed capitalist countries to develop the theory of revolution itself places a subjective barrier to social development. This failure disarms progressive minded people. It allows confusion and reactionary ideas to proliferate among the working class as the crisis deepens.

Socialist revolution in developed capitalism presents new challenges for communists. The crises that led to revolutions in Russia, China, and other countries were, in part, caused by the low level of development of the productive forces and incomplete development of capitalist, money/commodity relations. (The money/commodity system, i.e. capitalism, is one in which the production and distribution of material goods and services is organized through market exchange mediated by money in a legal framework of private property.) In contrast, the crises now afflicting developed capitalism are caused by the full or over-development of money/commodity relations.

Therefore, there is no possibility for resolving the crisis by further development of money/commodity relations or bourgeois institutions. Efforts along those lines will only make matters worse. There is no viable alternative to going beyond capitalism to another system not utilizing money/commodity relations – communism.

Humanity has limited experience organizing complex, social production without money/commodity relations. Communists need to analyze the factors necessary for a successful implementation of communism. We need to determine which of those factors already exist in US capitalist society and which need to be developed during a transitional, socialist phase. The socialist countries began to adopt some elements of communist relations well before they had fully developed their productive forces and exhausted the productive potential of money/commodity relations, so it should not be surprising that they encountered many difficulties and contradictions. Still, their experience, of which that of the Soviet Union is the most advanced, is unique in history. If we are to obtain the full benefits of that experience, we need to study it critically and sympathetically, without the bourgeois ignorance, narrow-mindedness, dishonesty, arrogance and condescension that pervades the Left and infects many of the remaining parties that describe themselves as communist.

Large sections of the US working class, particularly in the higher income brackets, have become bourgeoisified, not only in the sense of absorbing highly developed bourgeois ideologies. They have also become owners of capital, albeit subordinate to big capital. However, in contrast to their forebears their relation to the capitalist system is more complex and, paradoxically, much more problematic. They are much less buffered against its vagaries and are forced to develop a better understanding of its inner workings. Where once workers endured only low wages and dangerous working conditions and faced the possibility of unemployment, now they face also the confiscation of life savings – not only the destruction of current income but denial of future consumption. For these workers this last year has been something of a crash course in the true nature of capitalism that no indoctrination can obfuscate.

Working for reform, in an of itself, will never replace the responsibility communists have to interpret that experience in ways that enlighten the most advanced of these workers about the role they must play in resolving the contradictions of capitalism. Only direct education about history as it unfolds before us can win over those whose energies are required to usher in communism in the 21^st century.

We communists have four tasks:

• to prepare ourselves through self-cultivation

• to point the way to power by developing a theory of revolution

• to prepare the proletariat through education and propaganda

• to assess each opportunity in order to develop appropriate tactics that flow
  from our theory and political line and weaken the power of the democratic
  state.

In the developed capitalist countries there is only one reason for the existence of a communist party; it has only one role, one function. That is power – leading the proletariat in the conquest of political power.