Why do revolutionaries fight for reforms?

The 1905 revolution in Russia was killed by economic slump (Pic: Wikimedia Commons)

Some people argue that workers must be desperate before they will rise up.

Working class people who have a home, a laptop and take holidays, the argument goes, have too much to lose to become revolutionaries.

Those who hold these views often oppose all reforms which make workers’ lives better in case they reconcile workers to the system.

But this is based on a profound misconception.

It is true that Karl Marx and Frederick Engels focused on the economy when they were explaining the defeat of the revolutionary wave of 1848.

Engels wrote that while the crisis of 1847 was the mother of revolution, the boom of 1849–51 was the mother of counter-revolution.

But this did not mean that Marx and Engels believed a crisis always leads to revolutionary action while an economic boom always pacifies the working class.

Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky developed a Marxist analysis of the relationship between booms, slumps and class struggle.

Trotsky argued that capitalism was characterised by periods of rapid growth and periods of recession. As “long as capitalism remains alive, it continues to inhale and exhale,” he wrote.

It was possible for economic slumps to demoralise workers by making them fearful of losing their jobs.

Following the 1905 revolution in Russia, there were years of economic slump.

“It killed the movement completely, because the workers had suffered so greatly during the struggle that this depression could act only to dishearten them,” Trotsky wrote.

But that wasn’t inevitable. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 plunged the world into the biggest slump ever seen. But workers still fought back.

In the US in 1934, truck drivers in Minneapolis struck to demand union rights. In autumn 1933 there were 75 members of the local branch of their Teamsters union. By July 1934, it had grown to 7,000.

The strikers involved unemployed workers in their pickets and protests. This undermined bosses’ threats to sack the workers and replace them.

Trotsky understood that, “Under one set of conditions, the crisis may give a mighty impulse to the revolutionary activity of the working masses. Under a different set of circumstances, it may completely paralyse the offensive of the proletariat.”

Economic conditions did not determine whether struggle went up or down. That depended on confidence, organisation and struggle.

The same was true for times of economic boom. A boom can lead to more production, less unemployment, and the possibility of winning higher wages.

This can lead to workers realising their crucial role in production and becoming more militant.

Today’s “joyless growth” has massively increased inequality and climate catastrophe and can spark resentment against the system.

Trotsky explained, “At the moment when the factory stops discharging workers and takes on new ones, the self-confidence of the workers is strengthened—they are once again necessary. The compressed springs begin to expand again.”

Revolutionaries are the best fighters for reforms that improve life for working class people. We want life to be better in the here and now.

And the fight for reform helps to create the circumstances that generate revolutionary struggle.

Suffering does not make people revolutionary. It is fighting back collectively that encourages revolutionary ideas.

When workers don’t fight or suffer defeats, they feel powerless. If struggles increase and strikes win, workers begin to realise their own power.

Whether capitalism is booming or contracting, we have the power to fight back. Having confidence to do so depends not only on developments in the economy, but on networks of socialists who argue for the most militant tactics.

We can’t wait for things to get worse. We have to seize on every protest and strike to fan the flames of resistance today.