Uploaded February 2020 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This video is my take on the old question "Reform or revolution". I explain the up and downsides of both of them and end the video by explaining what my goal is and how I think we can achieve it.
Reading on Reform vs Revolution: marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/index.htm
Discord: discord.gg/63shun
NOTE: The discord link will only be working for a few hours after each upload. Subscribe and hit the bell to be notified as fast as possible after each upload.
Twitter: twitter.com/Viki1999Yt
Transcript:
Intro
Hey Everybody,
in my last video I talked about the UBI and it attracted a bunch of centrists to my channel so I though I’d do the only natural thing and scare them off by talking about a violent revolution to overthrow EVERYTHING.
I think on this channel we can all agree that capitalism has more downsides than upsides and that the time has come to look at establishing a better system for us to live in. How exactly that better system would look like is not yet clear and up for debate.
As it should be, we can’t just pretend that our favourite system is flawless and that all others are bad. That OUR system will fix literally every problem on earth with some niche mechanic which barely makes sense in theory. We are socialists not neoliberals. So, how exactly a post-capitalist society would look like has yet to be established. If you are curious about some of the options, my series called Ideology explained goes into a few of them.
But in this video, we will not look at how the society after capitalism will work but at the question of how to get there in the first place. The two main ways are reform and revolution. Of course, that’s a simplification since both an Anarchist and a Marxist-Leninist might use a revolution but they would go about it in very different ways. But let’s stick with the simplified version.
There is only reform and revolution. Naturally I will have to speak about them quite broadly since your ideology or what you want the post-capitalist world to look like will influence how you go about establishing it. If you are a syndicalist you will use different methods than an eco-Marxist would.
In this video I will go over the ideas behind as well as the up- and downsides of both reform and revolution and at the end I’ll give you my opinion on the question and what I think the best thing to do right now it. Let’s start with reform because alphabetically that’s first.
Reform
The biggest upside of reform is that it’s relatively easy to do. You can get yourself elected and begin to establish worker co-ops or to nationalize important industries. That’s a whole lot easier than somehow persuading thousands of people to join your leftist militia and then arming them and somehow defeating an actual standing army while being slandered as terrorists by… well everyone.
The biggest advantage really is that it is legal. You can run for election, usually with whatever base you choose to go with. Most of us live in neoliberal democracies which means we, theoretically, have freedom of speech and freedom of thought and expression. I say theoretically because of course if let’s say you form a socialist party and you want to use reform to establish worker co-ops or similar you will have a lot of trouble getting your message to the people.
Newspapers and TV shows may simply choose not to mention your party. That is of course because you are probably anti-big business so you won’t take donations from the super-rich and the big media corporations may dislike you since you threaten their profits. That means you have no advertisement budget and no free exposure. Seems like a challenge.
But let’s say you get over that and you get a whole lot of votes. At some point your voters will expect you to do something. If you get 40% of the votes what do you do? Do you go into a coalition working with other parties to have a part in how the country is run? It would allow you some power, but you’d have to make compromises with the other parties.
And if you don’t you may lose voters since they’d prefer to vote for a party that actually governs when it has the chance. That’s an important decision. Do you work with the neoliberal parties? And while we are at it, do you fuse your party with similar socialist parties?
That way you could create a united leftist party like the “Socialist Unity Party of Germany” which was in power in the GDR? How will you deal with the far-right parties that get funded by the rich as they are afraid of loosing their privilege? Those are questions you need to deal with. Questions that can be answered but not easy questions.
In the end you will have to achieve change but that’s actually harder than it seems. For the kind of big structural changes, we want to achieve you will not only have to change a few laws. You will need to change the structure, the foundations of a country. The constitution.
This video is my take on the old question "Reform or revolution". I explain the up and downsides of both of them and end the video by explaining what my goal is and how I think we can achieve it.
Reading on Reform vs Revolution: marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/index.htm
Discord: discord.gg/63shun
NOTE: The discord link will only be working for a few hours after each upload. Subscribe and hit the bell to be notified as fast as possible after each upload.
Twitter: twitter.com/Viki1999Yt
Transcript:
Intro
Hey Everybody,
in my last video I talked about the UBI and it attracted a bunch of centrists to my channel so I though I’d do the only natural thing and scare them off by talking about a violent revolution to overthrow EVERYTHING.
I think on this channel we can all agree that capitalism has more downsides than upsides and that the time has come to look at establishing a better system for us to live in. How exactly that better system would look like is not yet clear and up for debate.
As it should be, we can’t just pretend that our favourite system is flawless and that all others are bad. That OUR system will fix literally every problem on earth with some niche mechanic which barely makes sense in theory. We are socialists not neoliberals. So, how exactly a post-capitalist society would look like has yet to be established. If you are curious about some of the options, my series called Ideology explained goes into a few of them.
But in this video, we will not look at how the society after capitalism will work but at the question of how to get there in the first place. The two main ways are reform and revolution. Of course, that’s a simplification since both an Anarchist and a Marxist-Leninist might use a revolution but they would go about it in very different ways. But let’s stick with the simplified version.
There is only reform and revolution. Naturally I will have to speak about them quite broadly since your ideology or what you want the post-capitalist world to look like will influence how you go about establishing it. If you are a syndicalist you will use different methods than an eco-Marxist would.
In this video I will go over the ideas behind as well as the up- and downsides of both reform and revolution and at the end I’ll give you my opinion on the question and what I think the best thing to do right now it. Let’s start with reform because alphabetically that’s first.
Reform
The biggest upside of reform is that it’s relatively easy to do. You can get yourself elected and begin to establish worker co-ops or to nationalize important industries. That’s a whole lot easier than somehow persuading thousands of people to join your leftist militia and then arming them and somehow defeating an actual standing army while being slandered as terrorists by… well everyone.
The biggest advantage really is that it is legal. You can run for election, usually with whatever base you choose to go with. Most of us live in neoliberal democracies which means we, theoretically, have freedom of speech and freedom of thought and expression. I say theoretically because of course if let’s say you form a socialist party and you want to use reform to establish worker co-ops or similar you will have a lot of trouble getting your message to the people.
Newspapers and TV shows may simply choose not to mention your party. That is of course because you are probably anti-big business so you won’t take donations from the super-rich and the big media corporations may dislike you since you threaten their profits. That means you have no advertisement budget and no free exposure. Seems like a challenge.
But let’s say you get over that and you get a whole lot of votes. At some point your voters will expect you to do something. If you get 40% of the votes what do you do? Do you go into a coalition working with other parties to have a part in how the country is run? It would allow you some power, but you’d have to make compromises with the other parties.
And if you don’t you may lose voters since they’d prefer to vote for a party that actually governs when it has the chance. That’s an important decision. Do you work with the neoliberal parties? And while we are at it, do you fuse your party with similar socialist parties?
That way you could create a united leftist party like the “Socialist Unity Party of Germany” which was in power in the GDR? How will you deal with the far-right parties that get funded by the rich as they are afraid of loosing their privilege? Those are questions you need to deal with. Questions that can be answered but not easy questions.
In the end you will have to achieve change but that’s actually harder than it seems. For the kind of big structural changes, we want to achieve you will not only have to change a few laws. You will need to change the structure, the foundations of a country. The constitution.
