Marxism contains a language, a set of terms accepted as short cuts in describing society and movement. Problems arise with words and terms that mean different things to different folks and groups using this language. "Reform" and "concession" is a case in point. When "reform" - as a logic or society motion, is reduced to subjective dimensions detached from the "object" being reformed or "reform of society structures" confusion ensue. Reform - rather than reformism, is a material relation. Reformism is political and ideological. The dictionary states that reform is "an improvement or amendment of what is wrong." Reform means to restructure. Restructuring changes something material; the social relations between and within in classes. Social relations express and correspond to material relations of the economy. Reform and concession is not the same. Wrestling greater shares of the social product and expanded political liberties from the state or employer is the content of most social struggle. Concessions do not change the material relations within and between classes. Concessions can be taken based on political will. Reforms are more than less permanent and cannot be taken away based on political will alone. Something must change within the structure of society for a reform of the system to become unraveled. Reforms do not change the property relations. Reform can be defined as "change in relations between and within classes, without changing the property relations." The structure of society and the contradiction that is the unity of primary classes as the process of production is the environment - context. Society is the totality of the relations between classes and groups in a community. The creation of wealth depends on the state of development of the productive forces. The form of this wealth and mode of accumulation is the meaning of property relations. The means of production are always developing as incremental quantitative inputs until a qualitative leap is underway. As involuntary promoter of industry, the privileged ruling classes, economic and political layers in society have a stake in keeping the system the same because that is how their wealth, power, privilege and life experiences are realized. As the means of production evolve, a corresponding deepening change and contradictions widens with the static immobile property relations expressed as corporations, organizations and civic structures. As favorable condition emerges the social struggle ends with a quantitative leap in the social relations, which brings a reformed society more into correspondence with improved or new means of production. Our generations have witnessed, lived and recorded the epochal movement of a mode of production and how it reformed itself until all the space in the industrial system was exhausted. At each juncture - quantitative boundary of our developing production relations, the subjective question of revolution emerged as the cutting edge of reform. The impulse for reform arises from the spontaneous development of means of production. Henry Ford's factory system accelerated restructuring of production relations and changes the in the form of the working class destroying the structural basis of craft/skilled labor of the historic artisan. Assembly line production restructured the industrial work process driving transition from craft to industrial trade unionism. This motion logic was genuine reform of the system. Assembly line auto production nail the coffin shut on the "company town" and laid the basis for suburbia; expanded the cement and housing industry and fifty years later resulted in our nationwide Interstate system. There are thousands of incremental changes to society brought about by the Henry ford system. The growth of the industrial union movement was a subjective/political reform of the system, expressing a material reform as the system passed from one quantitative boundary of growth to another. Reform of the system is a big thing and in all cases gushes forth as based on continuous quantitative growth of a distinct "quality" defined as state of development of the means of production. As the proletarian masses and labor movement in its totality spontaneously fought to reform the system in their favor, communists fought the revolutionary struggle for reform during every leap between quantitative boundaries of the industrial system. The most recent memory of the reform movement is that of the African American freedom struggles. African Americans have always fought and struggled for freedom and equality. This critical subjective factor of fighting gives shape to the outcome of reform. Yet, we are confronted with a living dynamic screaming for unraveling. No matter how heroic their struggle and sacrifice, they could not gain any freedom as a mass so long as a certain part of the economy was tied to the backwards means of production in labor intensive Southern agriculture. Mechanization of Southern agriculture was the bed rock foundation for corresponding change in the relations between and within classes, short of changing the property relations. With this objective logic of change underway, more was needed in the disposition of the subjective forces - people, to drive and give shape to the reform of the system. Many factors converged. Over a million Black soldiers served in the war for democracy and against fascism. They came home imbued with military organizational principles and determined not to be treated in the same old way. This subjective disposition was also the case in post WW 1 America, but a different result occurred known as the "Red Summers" of "race bating" and slaughter of the black. The system was not yet undergoing sufficient quantitative change, although such change was accelerating. Post WW II was different. The rebuilding of Europe drove production and finance during an era of destruction of the sharecropping system, whose necessity grew out of mechanization of agriculture. Cold War was also an environment interactive with upsurge of the colonial revolutions world wide. These major and many lesser events converged as the gigantic Freedom Movement that began restructuring of America. Legal Jim Crow - constructed as a political form of rule riveted to Southern agriculture, had to go. The quantitative development of the means of production was central and key to this quantitative development - reform, of society. Some people and organizations take the position that reform comes when enough people demand it. They place the subjective factor of "fight back" first and at the expense of accumulative change in the means of production and then the social consequence of such change. Upon closer examination "enough people" shaping the outcome of change has to be fought for and organized to give specific shape to the social consequence of a leap already underway. During the early phase of this quantitative leap reforming America the struggle of the black was most difficult. Early in June 1943, 25,000 Packard plant workers, who produced engines for bombers and PT boats, stopped work in protest of the promotion of three blacks. This was under conditions of war during a period of the "no strike agreement" and not one single worker was disciplined. Thousands upon thousands of proletarians protested in favor of segregation, lynch rope rule and continued exclusion of blacks. It would not be until the outbreak of Montgomery Alabama a decade or so later, then the massive struggle struggles of the 1960's and 1970's that the relations within between classes were reformed sufficient to begin regulating legal segregation to the dustbin of history. Countless examples exist of our lived experience with the dialectic of reform and revolution. Capitalism cannot be reformed because of the gigantic and qualitative leap in the means of production. All quantitative boundaries of the industrial system as a system have been exhausted; brought to an end by emergence of a new technology regime and its application to production. No field of endeavor is being reproduced and expanded based on old industrial technology. The industrial system was founded based on electro-mechanical production and automation, whose growth and development was the basis of reform of the system. Our modern means of production are in a qualitative leap from electro mechanical to electronics and advanced biogenetics. We are at the end of an epoch and any social reform to come will be based on the objective logic of further destruction of property relations tied to and corresponding to the old technology regime. Capitalism is a mode of accumulation or a property relation. This mode of accumulation stands in antagonism with a new economy - production and distribution increasingly driven based on a new technology regime. WL.
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