Reform or Revolution

The classical and no doubt the greatest reform ever implemented in the was the Social Security act by FDR.

However even that program reveal the essential quality of all reforms and that is dividing the working class whether within the country or from their foreign comrades.

When Social Security was rolled it specifically was design to demographically exclude most African American males. Who did not live long enough to enjoy the benefits that their long suffering lives of tax paying and exploitation paid for. It was taxed regressively which meant that the upper classes did not pay their fair share of the taxes supporting the system while the working class overpaid. Similar tricks are built into the design of all reforms. What these design tricks don't do the implementation of which completes the job.

What you have left is the greasing of the squeakiest wheel creating a new constituency supporting the capitalists.

If there was a reform that did not favor one group over another then no Socialist with be against this reform.

The $15 a month movement is example of this divide and rule tactic. Instead of a National movement to raise all minimum wages all at once without any restrictions. The most militant are bought off with local oases like in Seattle. These workers now enjoy these higher wages and live in fear of losing them. They have a subclass interest to ignore their fellow comrades or at least be less militant. Workers in the South for example, Trump supporters resent these comrades and their privileges. These divisions in the working class is deadly.

I might add that the $15 law in Seattle had exclusions built into it.

"The FAS Director shall have the authority to issue a special certificate authorizing an employer to pay a wage less than the Seattle minimum wage but above the Washington State minimum wage."

Workers in small companies suffer from discrimination in the law with respect to those in Larger companies.

So even within the pseudo Leftist oasis of Seattle, workers divided against each other.

Finally even if all Americans were to receive this benefit of these minimum $15 an hour wages it would only divide them against their foreign comrades. It would also motivate the capitalists to export their constant capital to the low wage countries and eventually drive the American workers to demand that their salaries be lowered to have any job at all. Hunger will drive any political opinions of a desperate class., even ones that violated their long term interests. For the great bourgeois economist Keynes one said, "But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task"

The rising tide of reform cannot be allowed to sink the smaller and less privileged oppressed.

The problem with real reform is that the capitalists will not concede it. This is what transforms reform into revolution.

Another point is noticing how reforms that are over a hundred years old are being overthrown? Child Labor law restrictions is the current project for the Trump administration.

Isn't time we stop playing the Capitalist "game of whack-a-mole"? We need Permanent Reform and that means Permanent Revolution"!