Reformism, in political economy, a school of vulgar bourgeois and pettybourgeois economic thought which claims that a series of reforms can eliminate the antagonistic contradictions of capitalism, turn it into manageable economy, into a society where social justice reigns ( bourgeois reformism), or ensure, within the framework of the bourgeois social system, that the latter will evolve into socialism (social reformism in the working-class movement). Reformism in bourgeois economics dates back to the time when the deeply rooted antagonisms of the capitalist way of production became obvious, and the bourgeoisie was forced by the workingclass movement to compromise and make reforms (such as the introduction of legal limits to the working day) to preserve its rule. The founding father of bourgeois reformism in political economy was John 305 Stuart Mill, the 19th century British economist. He "tried to harmonise the Political Economy of capital with the claims, no longer to be ignored, of the proletariat" (Karl Marx, Capital, Vol.1, p. 25). Reformist trade unionist ideology emerged in the early stages of the Working-class movement when it was spontaneous and could not go beyond the struggle to improve the conditions of the working class within the capitalist system. Since the advent of Marxism, the bourgeoisie has employed reformism in the working-class movement to combat the surging revolutionary movement of the proletariat. In unmasking the essence of reformism in the period of imperialism, Lenin revealed the inseparable links between bourgeois and socialdemocratic reformism. "Reformism versus socialist revolution—is the formula of the modern, ‘advanced’, educated bourgeoisie" (V.I.Lenin, Collected Works, Vol.17, p. 229). In the era of the general crisis of capitalism reformism pervades all basic schools of bourgeois economic thought. This is a result of the extreme intensification of the principal contradiction of capitalist society, the development of statemonopoly capitalism, the formation of the world socialist economic system, and the sharper struggle by the international working class allied with other working people against monopoly oppression and capitalist exploitation. The bourgeoisie who fear that the class struggle will be transformed into a mass revolutionary movement, have to resort to social manoeuvring on an unprecedented scale, to introduce partial reforms to keep the masses under their ideological and political control. Reformism in economics is a manifestation of the necessity of state intervention in the capitalist economy because, in particular, the market mechanism of automatic regulation has ceased to work. Since the 1930s the theoretical foundation of reformism has been Keynesianism and subsequent theories of state-monopoly regulation. The strengthening of reformism today is chiefly attributable to the fact that the building of real socialism in the USSR and other socialist countries and the non-capitalist orientation of many newly-free countries have forever ended the myth that capitalism is eternal. In this context, non- proletarian socio-economic thought tries to vindicate capitalism by exploring the conceptions of transformation of capitalism (see Theory of Transformation of Capitalism), of its "evolutionary transformation" into “neo-capitalism” (theories of organised capitalism, people’s capitalism, democratisation of capital, managerial revolution, etc.) and even into non- capitalism (Theory of Market Socialism, the theory of consumer society, Theory of Industrial Society, theories of post- industrial, technetronic, and post-bourgeois societies, "democratic socialism”, "national socialism" etc.). Their advocates reject socialist revolution, socialism, and communism as the historical future of the social development of the world, and instead postulate some "third way" which is in fact the further development of state- monopoly capitalism in the context of the scientific and technological revolution. While bourgeois reformism, which criticises individual vices of capitalist society advocates the rectification, evolution and improvement of capitalism, reformism in the working-class movement puts forward opportunist concepts of capitalism that will peacefully evolve into socialism (see Opportunism; Revisionism). The admission, essentially declarative, of the need to replace capitalism by socialism is a specific feature of right-wing socialist reformism, which is, in class terms, a pettybourgeois school of socio-economic thought which is dominant in the socialist and Social-Democratic parties of the Socialist International. This social reformism (labourism in Britain, reformist socialism in France, Austromarxism, etc.) glosses over the conflicts of capitalism and equates the growth of the public sector in the economy of the imperialist countries to growth of social property; presuming that the state is "above classes”, it proclaims that state-monopoly regulation of the capitalist economy is socialist or, at least, leads to socialism; it represents state-monopoly capitalism as a "mixed economy" which develops in the direction of democratic and humane socialism. The technological 306 revolution is said to lead, without class struggle or socialist revolution, to the gradual elimination of socio-economic inequality, to a society of "equal opportunity" and universal prosperity. History shows, however, that wherever reformist Social- Democratic parties have been in power, nothing has been done to crack the foundations of capitalism. A left wing is evolving in the reformist social-democratic movement which, in the context of the heightened contradictions of capitalism and under the pressure of revolutionary working class demands, gradually abandons anti- communist approaches inherent in reformism, making conditions ripe for joint action by communists and socialists against monopoly capital, for peace, democracy, and socialism. The revolutionary working-class movement and Marxist-Leninist political economy favour the struggle of the working class for economic reforms aimed at improving its labour conditions under capitalism; but they are against reformist illusions and reconciliation with the bourgeoisie, against opportunism. Communists see reforms as creating better conditions for the struggle of the working people, led by the proletariat, for the revolutionary overthrow of bourgeois power and the building of socialist society.