Reform Is Insufficient & An Illusion

We have to stick together. Understanding that attempting reform will only doom us to failure is the first real step forward. Realizing that our survival is dependent on working together to overthrow this cruel and oppressive society is the next.

The idea that we can build and leverage enough electoral power to end our oppression and reverse our descent into oligarchic fascism is a fallacy that saps our strength by diverting our time and energy into a game that bosses will always control. That isn’t to say that there haven’t been significant victories won through electoral politics that have directly improved our lives.

Paid sick leave at the local and state level, Social Security and Medicare, minimum wage, FMLA, the National Labor Relations Act, and many other laws were won, at least in part, at the ballot box. But all of those victories did not fundamentally alter a society where housing is out of reach for more and more people everyday, where a for-profit medical system causes death, suffering, and crippling debt, where inequality & discrimination is an integral part of the economic system, and where authoritarian politics are a constant threat. The machinery of oppression is unaltered.

It isn’t just that our system is prone to crisis, it is that it is like this because it’s the method by which rich people maintain their power and privilege over everyone else. Voting under capitalism is insufficient because it is their game, and when they need to they will take it away from us.

“Everything that we claim as an accomplishment through machinery that our oppressors control can ultimately be undone.” – William C. Anderson from The Nation On No Map

Liberation will not come through reform, and the current deepening crisis of climate, fascism, and widening income inequality is quickly stripping away any remaining utility that it can offer. Today in 2025 it is like the electoral victory of 2020 never happened. No progress was gained from that, and it seems to be little more than a brief rest stop as we descend into hell.

It is past time that we look at how we gain power differently. It is time to understand that the rich can’t do anything without our work. Without work all economic activity ceases and not only are there too few of them to do it, they also don’t have the skills and inclination to do it right (the rich are lazy as fuck).

It is time that we come to see that those that beat, jail, and murder us aren’t heroes; but instead traitors to human survival. Their institutions do not offer protection from the tyranny of the so-called “majority,” rather they serve to legitimize theft, genocide, and the primacy of capitalism. It is time to see that bigotry and fear do nothing but build power for the ruling classes who are our true enemies.

It is time to abandon reform of these things and abolish them.