Question 11: What separates a change in policy from a change in power?
Scientific socialists are deeply involved in organizing for policy changes within the current exploitative framework while still fundamentally pursuing revolutionary change. We do this because, while revolutionary change is important, the process of building up the capacities of a scientifically socialist organization and popular power necessitates that the masses of the people have had their independence, creativity, and consciousness elevated in such a way that revolution becomes feasible. There are conditions for revolution and they must be met in order for the contradiction between the masses and the imperialists to be fully and radically transformed.
To begin, we ask again what separates the change in policy from the ultimate restructuring of power. Fundamentally, a change in policy is a change in the conditions under which socialists organize and the people live; however, the underlying structures of exploitation and imperial plunder remain. Certain policies may resolve or transform contradictions within one arena of life, but the totality of the contradictions that make up the current system of imperialism can only be fully abolished or transformed following a qualitative and revolutionary change in the organization of society.
For example, there is a mass organization, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NAARPR) that by-and-large fights for community control over policing and Community Police Accountability Councils (CPACs) that have the authority to investigate and discipline law enforcement and are composed of community members. The introduction of a CPAC in a community would be a policy change and a significant victory in the establishment of popular power in said community; however, the institution of policing still fundamentally occurs with the understanding that they exist to protect capitalists interests and suppress oppressed peoples rather than to truly serve and protect the masses of the people. A law enforcement agency under the authority of such a council is still charged with defending and enforcing unjust laws. The contradiction between police and the community continues to exist, but in this particular environment, the community may be more dominant. The contradiction has been changed but not transformed.
A change in the structures of power is fundamentally different from a simple change in the policies that continue to exist under pre-dominant power structures. A radical change in the structures of power would completely transform the contradiction previously described. A law-enforcement agency under a socialist system would not only be accountable to the masses of the people, the system under which they operate would be completely transformed. Rather than an elite class of capitalists forming and adjudicating the law that the police are charged with enforcing, the law would represent the best interest of the masses of the people as decided on a truly popular and democratic basis. Under a socialist system, the conditions that create many of the petty (and largely economically driven) crimes that the police are currently charged with enforcing would cease to exist.
For another example take the overarching contradictions between university students and their administrations. At present, this contradiction is largely informed by student demands for protection against an exploitative state, and the university’s desire to remain prestigious, exclusive, and out of the eye of said state. Students can, have, and will continue to agitate their administrations to value them over the interests of the state and the current bourgeois iteration of higher academia, but a fundamental restructuring of power would completely transform this contradiction as the system of academia would be structured in such a way that the bourgeois interests of the university no longer exist
So given this we may ask ourselves, why do we continue to fight for reforms? We continue to fight for reforms because as scientific socialists we are in a long and arduous march rather than a brief sprint. We are not accelerationists, and we believe in materially elevating the independent, creative, and conscious capacities of the people in all arenas. Furthermore, not only do successful campaigns materially protect people from the increasingly rogue bourgeois state, the presence of a popular struggle serves to elevate the overall consciousness of the conditions of the United States and increase party-building throughout scientific socialist organization. We must not sit idly by waiting for a mythical revolution to occur; we must dare to struggle every day to materially change the relations of power, before the structures of exploitative power are abolished altogether.
