Critically consider the view that reform is the best means of achieving a socialist society.

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Critically consider the view that reform is the best means of achieving a socialist society

Socialism is a word which conjures up several thoughts and images. From Middle Age ‘ Diggers’ in small farming communities, Russian revolutionaries running riot in the streets of Moscow and Scruffy students proclaiming the inherent evil of Margaret Thatcher. Socialism is also a word difficult to pin down to any rigid definition as Anthony Wright writes, “There is no shortage of available definitions of what socialism is, but there is a shortage of agreed definitions.” Classically socialism is about fighting capitalism and the bourgeois. These are the main themes of the struggle taken on by continental Marxists. Writing at the time known as the second international Marxist thinkers believed that capitalism would inevitably collapse in upon itself owing to its internal contradictions. The factory owner would stop milking the workers for every penny and swift social revolution would follow leading to the establishment of a classless society. Marxism focused heavily on economics and for this reason is often referred to as scientific socialism. The first major split in the Marxist movement was prompted by Eduard Bernstein. The crux of Bernstein’s argument was that Capitalism would develop the means to support its internal contradictions and that therefore there would be no social revolution at the point of capitalist collapse. He proposed the policy of reform and famously stated that to him the end did not matter, the movement was everything. Bernstein’s revisionism caused a split in Marxist thinking and in time the pro reform revisionists have become the most prominent socialists. The British Labour Party and The German SPD are two of Europe’s leading social democratic parties, both of whom have adopted the policy of reform as opposed to revolution. Both have held power in the 21st century. At first glance the prospects of reform as the best means of achieving socialist society look good.

        RN Berki highlights four tendencies of socialism in his work; these are Egalitarianism, Rationalism, Moralism and Libertarianism. Whilst Berki focuses in his four tendencies on society, Crosland fuses society with economics spelling out 5 aims of socialism in his keynote book The future of socialism he highlights the absolution of poverty and squalor, development of social welfare, promotion of equality, the removal of competitive antagonism and the halt to the economic ‘x-inefficiencies’ as the key aims of socialism. Drawing on the overriding Marxist principle of removing capitalism we can almost encompass the aims of socialism. As a movement it aims to establish a fair society with equal access for all to everything, where labour and the fruits of labour belong to all those who expend them and no one section of society is clearly better off than another. This would constitute a socialist society.

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        So is reform the best means of achieving all these aspects of the socialist society. Rosa Luxembourg puts forward the best known argument that it is not in her work social reform vs. revolution. Writing at the turn of the 19th century Luxembourg criticises the work of Bernstein and argues that his notion of capitalism overcoming its internal contradictions is wrong. In her work Luxembourg maintains that social revolution is the only path to the socialist state. Proponents of revolution can also find support in the works of Berki, for he argues that the achievement of both egalitarianism and Libertarianism can ...

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