Reform or Revolution

Summary

‘Reform or Revolution’, also titled ‘Social Reform or Revolution?’ is an 1899 pamphlet by Polish-German Marxist theorist Rosa Luxemburg, in which she argues that trade unions, reformist political parties and the expansion of social democracy would not create a socialist society as Eduard Bernstein, among others, argued. She contends from a historical materialist perspective that capitalism, being economically unsustainable, would eventually collapse. She believed that a revolution was necessary to transform capitalism into socialism. The pamphlet was influential in revolutionary socialist circles and an important precursor to left communist theory.