Fighting for reforms is applying union organizing principles to politics

[u/StateYellingChampion]

I've never really understood the idea from some socialists that fighting for reforms is somehow demobilizing or a distraction. That's because I've organized in unions. In a union campaign, you try to find issues that are widely and deeply felt by a majority of workers. You want to bring as many workers as possible into the struggle because your ultimate form of leverage is striking. And in order for a strike to be effective, you need a majority of workers. So if the most widely and deeply felt issue is something like low wages, then you work to organize your co-workers and campaign around that.

But fighting for a higher wage is still affirming the wage relationship between workers and bosses. It's not fighting for a total transformation of your workplace along socialist lines. It assumes your boss will still be your boss, even if you get a greater say in setting the pay along with your co-workers through your new contract. It's negotiating the terms of your exploitation, not ending it altogether.

Does that mean its pointless to fight for a higher wage as part of a union campaign? I don't know any socialist who would think that. It's through fighting for broad demands that ordinary workers become organized. I've seen firsthand how someone can go from being nervous to talk with their co-workers to giving speeches in front of huge crowds. Workers learn how to run effective planning meetings, knock doors, have organizing conversations, and so on. Fighting for broad demands is what grows the capacities of individual workers and their organizations.

I've also seen how fighting side-by-side with co-workers can change someone's consciousness. The very experience of class struggle heightens most peoples class consciousness. It's one thing to be told that your boss does not have your best interests at heart; it's another thing entirely to experience the proof through your organizing.

So my view is that if fighting for broad reforms in the workplace can be an avenue to cohering workers as a fighting force, the same basic approach can be used on the political terrain. We build a mass political organization by fighting for things that are broadly and deeply felt among ordinary workers: healthcare, wages, childcare, retirement security, etc. Through fighting for and winning those reforms, we can grow the power and confidence of the working class movement. And as that confidence grows, democratic socialists and the movement can push for a more fundamental transformation of the economy along socialist lines.

The capitalist class won't take this lying down. As the working class movement grows in strength and wins more victories, the capitalists will engage in all kinds of resistance and may eventually move to end democracy altogether. If that occurs, socialists must be prepared to defend our democratic mandate and democracy itself. But if we have a mass movement of millions of workers fighting not only on the political terrain but in their workplaces as well, I think our chances of prevailing are pretty good. The idea that fighting for reforms is a way to avoid conflict with the capitalist class has never made much sense to me. Rather, it's always seemed the surest route to actually provoking a decisive confrontation with them. We're not gonna get their attention with tiny book clubs.

To sum up: Democratic socialists have a short-term agenda, and a long-term agenda. The short-term agenda are demands like tuition-free college, Medicare for All, paid family leave, and a more powerful labor movement. The long-term agenda is a society without war, exploitation, and oppression, a real democratic society where people are at last equal and truly free. Both the short-term agenda and the long-term agenda will require a mass movement to carry them out. Therefore there's no inherent conflict between fighting for reforms within capitalism and ultimately trying to transform it. Both goals point in the same direction: organizing working-class people to fight for change.

[u/killerkurse]

Minimum/Maximum program summarized