Revolution and Reform

Abstract

In this chapter, both the historic controversy over the revolutionary and reformist paths to socialism and more recent theories of the development of the welfare state will be reviewed and examined in the light of the theory laid out in the previous chapter. We will begin with the debate which ensued in the generation after Marx’s death carried on by four leading theorists writing in the Marxist tradition: Karl Kautsky, Edward Bernstein, Rosa Luxemburg and V. I. Lenin. This debate involved not only the question of revolution and reform but also a number of other problems related to the transition from capitalism to socialism, such as the pace of change, the need for violence, the problem of dictatorship, the form of party organisation, the development of class consciousness and the changes in the class structure.