reformism

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The terms reformism or legality tactics denote the endeavor of a party to reform the existing political system of a country , i. H. while completely renouncing revolutionary modes of action , to convert into another, often completely different. Here it is essential that both the political system to be replaced and the one to be created can be autocratic .

Although the term reformism itself was originally used only within Marxism , it is also used today in relation to liberalism and fascism .

Subspecies

socialism

Although reformist-socialist organizations already existed in Great Britain with the Chartists and the Fabian Society , Eduard Bernstein is considered the founder of theoretical reformism in Germany and Austria . In his work The Requirements of Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy , he subjected the existing Marxian theory to a radical criticism and advocated the transformation of the SPD into an exclusively reformist party.

As a result, a reformist right wing of the party formed, which accepted these demands, which initially faced a centrist majority. The revolutionary wing of the party around Rosa Luxemburg remained meaningless until the creation of the Spartakusbund .

After 1918, reformism became the predominant trend within social democracy , so the terms are largely used synonymously in the present.

liberalism

The majority of all liberal movements in Europe in the 19th century were reformist in the sense that they sought to transform the absolute monarchies of the time into constitutional monarchies through reforms. However, there was no formation of a term to designate reformist liberals in contrast to revolutionary liberals. B. the socialists had no common parties. - The revolutionary liberals described themselves as “Republicans” ( France ), “Radicals” ( Great Britain and Switzerland ) or “Democrats” (Germany). The term "liberal", however, implicitly included a reformist attitude. This traditional terminology has been retained in the respective countries.

In Prussia , reformist and revolutionary liberals temporarily formed a common party, the DFP . However, on the question of whether Otto von Bismarck's unification policy should be supported or opposed, this should split into the right-liberal reformist NLP and the left-liberal, at the beginning (still) revolutionary-minded DtVP .

fascism

After the failure of the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch in 1923, Adolf Hitler decided to follow the example of Benito Mussolini and to abandon his original plans for a violent seizure of power by means of the NSDAP's Sturmabteilung . He expressed this attitude in 1930 as follows:

“The National Socialist movement will try to achieve its goal in this state with the constitutional means. The constitution only tells us the methods, not the goal. In this constitutional way we will try to obtain the decisive majorities in the legislative bodies in order to, at the moment when we succeed in pouring the state into the forms that correspond to our ideas. "

As a result, a party wing based on Hitler's legality tactics was formed around the same and Joseph Goebbels, as well as a revolutionary party wing around Ernst Röhm and Gregor Strasser .

In the same way, the Italian PNF had previously reorganized itself reformistically. The Japanese Kōdō-ha was supposed to realign its behavior in a reformist way as a reaction to the failure of the "Ni-niroku jiken" putsch .

See also

literature

  • E. Deuerlein: The rise of the NSDAP 1919-1933 in eyewitness reports. Karl Rauch Verlag, Düsseldorf 1968, DNB 455579636 .
  • Peter Glotz , Rainer-Olaf Schultze: Reformism. In: Dieter Nohlen , Rainer-Olaf Schultze (Ed.): Political Theories. Munich 1995, ISBN 3-406-36905-7 .
  • VI Lenin: Marxism and Revisionism. 1908.
  • Klaus Schönhoven: Reformism and Radicalism. dtv, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-423-04511-6 .
  • BJ Wendt: Germany 1933–1945. The Third Empire. Hanover 1995, ISBN 3-7716-2209-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quoted from: BJ Wendt: Deutschland 1933–1945. The Third Empire. Hannover 1995, pp. 68-71.