The three Rs: Reform, revolution, and resistance
Pablo Abufom, Camilo Ernesto MejĂa, Jorge MĂşjica, Antonio RosellĂł
Platypus Review 184 | March 2026
On July 13, 2025, the Platypus Affiliated Society organized a panel discussion on reform, revolution, and resistance. The panelists were Pablo Abufom (Coordinator for Palestine in Chile; Solidarity Movement), Camilo Ernesto MejĂa (Sandinista and anti-war activist), Jorge MĂşjica (MORENA), and Antonio RosellĂł (Partido Obrero in Argentina). The panel was moderated and transcribed by Platypus member Francisco Sánchez Acosta. An edited transcript follows, which was translated into English and edited by Platypus members Octavio Hernandez and Tobias Kohlberger.1
Opening remarks
Pablo Abufom: The period from the 1990s to the mid-2000s is characterized by a distinct pessimism. After the 2008 crisis came the significant rise of the so-called “progressive cycle” in Latin America, and the wave of uprisings that began in 2011 worldwide. The notion of “resistance” took on a more concrete character. The Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street are always remembered, but Chile, and other places around the world, also had their 2011.
This remains relevant, especially under Trump’s second term and the electoral shifts in Europe — not only in Latin America. In this cycle of capitalism, the crisis reaches almost absolute proportions, with the limits on the rate of profit and national growth driving the dominant sectors of the global economy to seek territorial expansion. We can see this in Russia’s incursion into Ukraine and in Israel’s expansion not only in Palestine but also in Syria, Lebanon, and potentially Egypt. We also see it in a non-territorial form as a relative inward expansion in countries where states deepen the precarization of the working class, driving down the value of labor power and increasing capital’s profit-making capacity. This is reflected in a series of public policies that destroy social rights and access to public services, tending toward privatization.
There is an uneven and combined development of resistance in the context of neoliberal capitalism worldwide. From the perspective of the Chilean working class, resistance primarily means resisting the dictatorship2 and the transformation of the state that we had in Chile from the 1930s to the 1970s. Therefore, it has a combative character and even involves armed struggle. But once we reach post-dictatorship, the notion of resistance becomes secondary — fundamentally, because there is no longer much to resist. Once everything is privatized, once the system encompasses everything — politically, in the organization of labor, in lifestyle, and in the development of new uses of the territory — resistance no longer has a place.
It’s interesting that today resistance is taking place in countries where there remain certain public systems with guaranteed rights — where there’s something to lose — for example, New Zealand, Spain, France, or the United States. Therefore, the associated notions of reform and revolution are presented as complementary, not mutually exclusive, possibilities for resistance against a new order of work and social relations.
The most powerful aspiration the Chilean working class has had in recent years is the 2021 constituent process.3 The aim is to inaugurate a new political period through a constitutional change that would lay the foundations for a new era of struggle. Unfortunately, prior to this cycle of uprisings, revolutionary capacities were destroyed. We find ourselves without a party, without a program, and without a strategy. With a fragmented subject and a popular uprising that lacks partisan programmatic support, organized force, cohesion, a memory of past struggles, and a concrete strategy or path to confront the enemy, it is an uprising that, at its core, is doomed to failure. Therefore, the relationship between resistance and reform is much closer, at least in Chile and Latin America, than the relationship between either of those categories and revolution, since the conditions necessary for a revolution — both subjective and objective — seem distant. The category of revolution at a time like this appears utopian to the working class as a whole; useless to a pragmatic Left seeking certain concrete reforms; and a kind of inescapable ideal for the rest of the Left, which calls itself “revolutionary” without having a party, a program, or a revolutionary strategy.
Camilo Ernesto MejĂa: The Western hegemonic order is on its way down; it’s dying. At the same time, a new multipolar geopolitical order is emerging with increasing force. We are seeing the rise of major non-Western powers such as China, Russia, and, on a smaller scale, countries like India. In the economic sphere, we have BRICS.4 At the regional level, we have other actors, such as Iran recently, but more importantly Yemen. Yemen was the first nation to tell the United States, “You can’t just come here and do whatever you please,” and the U.S. effectively withdrew from there.
This world order has prevailed for a long time — perhaps since the supposed discovery of America by European colonialism. The fall of that Western hegemonic power, coupled with the rise of this new world order, means resistance for us in Latin America. For me, it means returning to the past, rediscovering our roots and the greatness of our civilizations. Not to pretend that we are better or superior to anyone, but to find ourselves and, on the basis of our identity, our past, and our greatness, to build a new system that fits within this new multipolar order, which is not governed by European colonial powers.
Resistance is found in Latin America, especially in three countries: Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Unlike other Left-wing democracies — soft, neoliberal Lefts, such as those in Chile or Colombia — in these three countries the Left doesn’t depend solely on a presidency or a bourgeois electoral democratic system. These countries have revolutions — with their virtues and their flaws — that put popular power in the hands of the people. In Chile, Fidel told Allende, “Take up arms, take the army.” In these three countries we have weapons, institutions, education, healthcare, and housing. Absolutely all institutions were destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up. A presidential revolutionary Left cannot be removed when institutional power is in the hands of the people. Resistance means that: seizing institutional power and making changes that go beyond politics. It implies an ideological, philosophical, even metaphysical shift.
The Western imagination begins with the conception of existence as the individual: Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am.” In contrast, indigenous America comes from a more collective and communal culture. We have to return to those roots in order to rebuild a new Left. At this moment, there is no Left in the world. The Left is in crisis because it allowed itself to be co-opted by Western neoliberalism, which lured social movements through foundations and the nonprofit industrial complex. There are feminist, student, environmental, labor, and other movements around the world that have been co-opted by big money, by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy, George Soros, and so on.
On the other hand, the Right has a movement in Europe. It’s not the same as the traditional Right, either in Europe or in the U.S., but it’s well defined. It has its philosophers, social and cultural movements. We don’t have that on the Left.
There is no room for reform at this political moment. Within this framework, we must once again redefine what the Left is. Once the new Left has been defined, we must define what revolution and resistance mean to us.
Jorge Mújica: An oppressive, dictatorial system is being imposed at an accelerated pace in the United States, and it’s heading toward fascism. The consolidation of power in a single, personal, presidential dictator in the White House, with the absolute loyalty of his Gestapo and his SS. These far-Right activists, who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021 — the Proud Boys, the Ku Klux Klan — serve as auxiliaries to arrest immigrants. There is a parallel army created to attack an eminently vulnerable population with little capacity for resistance, yet which is nevertheless trying to resist and defend the little we have. In the U.S., the working class has traditionally been repressed, suppressed, and oppressed. And within this working class, the immigrant sector is even worse off.
In 2006, they were trying to implement the system that is now being implemented in the United States, and we marched by the millions. On May 1, 2006, it is estimated that between 14 and 16 million people marched simultaneously across the U.S. It was an uprising. It didn’t even lead to reform, because the two parties in power aren’t interested in empowering that segment of the oppressed working class. If you’re an undocumented immigrant worker, they can exploit you more easily than they can citizen workers.
Donald Trump’s entire campaign was based precisely on equating immigrants with criminals. Analysts say it’s part of what brought him to power: a racist and xenophobic discourse, but one that resonates. In Europe, the same thing happens with all anti-immigrant parties. “Divide and conquer.”
There have been advances and reforms that, while not profound, are worth mentioning. At the state level, there have been immense advances. It’s a world of difference between the Republican state of Georgia and the Democratic state of Illinois — for example, the Democratic city of Chicago. We have a Left-wing mayor, we have more socialists on the Chicago City Council than any other city council in the U.S., but the limit is the administration of the system. There is no possibility of achieving much deeper reforms. Of course, all of that is within capitalism and doesn’t change a single letter of the system we live in.
There are small steps, and ultimately that’s reflected in the communities. The vast majority of the socialist city councilors are Latino. That’s where, little by little, we’re allowed to talk about Left-wing politics, about revolutions, and to use revolutionary icons, i.e., to present at least one discourse that opposes the paranoid and xenophobic rhetoric of the current far-Right administration with data and facts.
Antonio Roselló: It’s tough to talk about reform, revolution, and resistance. It is a discussion that has not only been settled more than a century ago but also demonstrates daily which course the international working class and oppressed peoples must take to bring about the change we need. That old phrase from Rosa Luxemburg’s “Reform or Revolution?” (1900) remains highly relevant theoretically: “socialism or barbarism.” For example, in 1902 in Belgium, Rosa denounced the entire Social Democratic leadership for its alliance with the liberals — even with the clericalists — in response to a general strike that the Social Democratic Party had called off in order to reach parliamentary agreements. For Rosa, it is clear that the general strike is the way, even to achieve reforms.
If there has been any change after October 18 in Chile, it’s because it wasn’t just a popular uprising; the working masses took to the streets, and prevailed against the repression of the police and the full force of the bourgeois regime. It ended with the current reformist government, which is reformist in the worst sense of the word: a liberal socialist government. And if there’s one thing Rosa opposes — as did Lenin in 1906, after the experience of the 1905 Russian Revolution at the Fifth Congress of the Unified Russian Social Democratic Party, in opposition to Kautsky — it’s supporting the liberal bourgeoisie to achieve parliamentary reforms. Class independence must guide us all on this. This does not deny that we make pacts with the devil — as Leon Trotsky said — whether in a war or in a concrete class struggle. It doesn’t impede any tactical alliance on the streets in order to strike fascist governments like a fist. We have a fascist formation in government in Argentina, Italy, and Hungary. Trump is a fascist. Whether he can impose a fascist regime or not will depend on the class struggle and the people’s resistance.
The recent Los Angeles uprising5 sets a path of resistance for us, as Hamas showed us on October 7, 2023. Because we stand unconditionally in support of the resistance of the Palestinian, Lebanese, and Iranian peoples, regardless of their theocratic parties. We stand with fascist Brazil against democratic England because there is no democracy in imperialism. Those that call themselves Left-wing, such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC) in the U.S. or the Democratic Party in Italy — supposedly the heir to the PCI6 — try to dilute us into a democratizing Left that believes the solution will come through voting. Trump still hasn’t managed to surpass a man named Barack Obama — the son of immigrants and black — in the number of migrants expelled. We cannot trust any liberal wing of the bourgeoisie. The very parties of this so-called liberal Left are suffering the same crisis as the bourgeois parties, because they can do nothing but align themselves with the manifest interests of international financial capital.
What we need today in the face of imperialist war and fascist advances is to return to the old traditions. It is to reconsider the need for a new Zimmerwald7 and a new international formation. The Ukrainian and Russian peoples are enduring a fratricidal war. NATO and Putin are responsible. We call ourselves “revolutionary defeatists,” a term first used in Zimmerwald as a trial run. We disperse mobilization and struggles, because the enemy is also within. It is social democracy, bourgeois nationalism, and former Stalinists who have betrayed the workers’ struggles, and who, by forming popular fronts with sectors of the bourgeoisie, inevitably lead us to defeat.
Responses
PA: Beyond the low expectations one might have about the actual transformations that a communist presidency under Jara8 could bring to Chile, it has had a significant subjective effect at the popular level. It’s similar to the effect that Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York Democratic primary has had on progressive or Left-wing circles. This coalition, which is less reformist — almost pseudo-reformist — at least manages to change the mood of the political moment.
After the disappointment generated by the constituent defeat and the vote for Boric, the victory of Jara, a Communist Party candidate, has shifted the mood from utter defeat to enthusiasm for mobilization, whether by campaigning for that presidential candidacy or by considering what scenarios and possibilities would open up if she were to succeed.
JM: Anyone who thinks the Democratic Party is Left-wing is completely confused. It’s a Center-Right party. In the U.S., there are midterm elections in November 2026, which opens the possibility of countering the current trend: the Democratic Party could regain a majority in the House of Representatives or the Senate and thus balance the power of Capitol Hill against the White House.
Mamdani’s victory in New York opens up a new possibility. The Democratic Party primary elections will be more interesting than the U.S. midterm general elections. Perhaps we’ll see Center-Left candidates, or socialists of any stripe, competing against Right-wing Democrats.
AR: Fascist tendencies are a product of the crisis of leadership facing the working class and oppressed peoples. Once again, workers cling to whatever is at hand and consider it the “lesser evil.” Jara was the labor minister who, with her signature, endorsed the continuation of the AFP,9 the Pinochet-era pension system; Yolanda DĂaz in Spain, leader of the PCE10 and Sumar,11 drawn from the Comisiones Obreras,12 is the labor minister who imprisoned the six comrades in Asturias,13 and, just this week, is repressing metalworkers in Cádiz.14 The Popular Front’s policy will surely lead us to the grave.
I agree with Jorge that the Democratic primaries are going to be lively, but if the Squad — especially AOC — are the ones leading the change, we’re headed for the grave. The AFL-CIO15 is a group of strikebreaking gangsters and part of the imperialist establishment, as is the entire Democratic Party leadership.
The mood can change in a mass movement. We must be cautious with that movement, without breaking with it; we need to explain to them that they’re the ones who will break with their program, not us who will break with them. No trust and full support for the mass movement in its development and its changing mood.
Q&A
There is a current of thought that views capitalism as something we must resist through pre-capitalist forms. For example, movements such as the Zapatistas in Mexico resist the advance of capital based on an “anti-capitalist” community model. On the other hand, there is a Marxist perspective that argues that all modern life exists on the terrain of capitalism, which is not inherently “bad” but is rather the foundation on which the workers’ struggle for socialism emerges. What are your opinions on capitalism? Should we resist capitalism and neoliberalism? Or should we go through capitalism by intensifying or sharpening its contradictions?
CM: Capitalism can be seen as a dominant political system in a nation or in the world, and it can also be viewed as an economic tool, as is the case in China. China proclaims itself a communist country and has lifted 800 million people out of poverty. This is recognition from the World Bank.16 Capitalism does not lift 800 million people out of poverty; this is contrary to capitalism. China made capitalism, a political-economic system, into a tool of socialism, or at least of a pro-socialist system. This is not necessarily as conceived by Marx and Lenin; it’s their own kind of communism.
It’s important that our countries return to their roots. That means we have to break free from these communism-vs-capitalism, liberalism-vs-conservatism, Left-vs-Right dichotomies to build a new ideology tailored to our countries, with their histories and cultures.
In Nicaragua, today we have something similar to what once existed before the Spanish arrived on our lands: a popular, market-based economy. We have achieved food sovereignty by returning to that identity rooted in agriculture, in the land, in the food we grow and harvest ourselves, with our own hands. This is an economy that goes from the bottom up, contrary to what the West calls a trickle-down economy. Instead, in Nicaragua there are private companies supported by the government with capital, land, seeds, farm animals, and technical assistance. Food sovereignty is an act of resistance in a capitalist world. It has features of capitalism but isn’t necessarily capitalist; rather, it uses capitalism as an economic tool.
PA: Capitalism is a system or mode of production that has managed to occupy the entire world. Even in countries that internally may generate dynamics that run counter to some global capitalist trends, externally they all have to operate within a global market framework and according to the logic of the dollar.
In Latin America, we have been assigned the role, in the context of the global market, of extracting and exporting raw materials. Overcoming that role isn’t something we can define sovereignly, even if we seized power with direct representation of the working class in a government or revolutionary process; we’d still have to grapple with the problem of what to do with our main source of income. We cannot carry out a revolution that entails the generalized impoverishment of society simply by breaking with that dynamic individually.
One thing we learned from Marx is that if there is private property, if there are wages and therefore a dynamic of labor exploitation by a highly concentrated private or public sector, and if society is divided into classes, it’s problematic not to call it capitalist just because its leadership calls itself something else.
I agree with Antonio about Chile. The actual movement of the collective spirit may lead to supporting, for example, a Communist Party candidate, but there is no expectation that this could usher in a progressive period. In Latin America, this has been our problem: what do we do in the context of a self-proclaimed progressive government? This puts us in a bind.
AR: Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism and has dominated the planet since the early 20th century, to be precise according to the theory. The loss of rights, colonial exploitation, etc., are the agenda of imperialism and forever wars. Here there were no golden 30 years, and the class struggle took an armed form. In the Sandinista revolution, we Trotskyists participated with our own column, the SimĂłn BolĂvar Brigade on the Southern Front, despite any differences we might have with the Sandinista Front, because they had to be liberated. We believe that Cuba is a workers’ state, but I think China is a capitalist state. We are in favor of lifting the blockade against Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and against imperialist intervention in Iran, Lebanon, or Palestine. We must forge a new direction in the daily struggle that will earn the masses’ trust in us. We will achieve that through resistance and revolutionary positions. If we adopt a reformist program, we will be a pale imitation of the social liberals and former Stalinists.
Traditional working-class constituencies around the world voted for fascist parties. We must say this. The problem is ours, not that of the workers who voted the wrong way. The mistake is ours: we can’t unite the struggles of migrants, minority communities, and indigenous peoples — led and spearheaded by the working class, women, and youth — to defeat this imperialist system that only wants to exploit us even more.
Resistance, according to Moishe Postone, is not a dialectical category, which could perpetuate the intellectual absence on the Left. By continuing to propagate the idea of resistance, are we contributing to the lack of possibilities for the Left? Are we reinforcing that intellectual absence? Why continue with the category of resistance within the Left’s tactics, policies, and action programs?
PA: I’m not sure if “dialectical” can be applied to a category or a concept. Resistance doesn’t have a single definition. Like any category, it is defined by the context in which it appears and, above all, by the concrete experience of class struggle. I understand that at its core the critique targets the logic of micro-resistance, of autonomy outside the system, which seeks to create a kind of parallel reality. The problem with those visions is that they assume in their discourse that resistance is equivalent to revolution, or they render it irrelevant. So they say, “the only thing left for us is to create cooperatives and live outside the system.” Our task is not to theoretically assign a category like “non-dialectical,” as if it were wrong, but rather to identify the challenge for the revolutionary Left with respect to those popular, working-class sectors that find no other way to respond to the crisis than to start a community garden to access cheaper food. We can’t just wash our hands of it and say: “That’s no good because it’s not dialectical.” We must show the inadequacy of those cooperative forms, but not deny the place they have. Marx himself spoke of cooperatives as a school where workers identify their potential.
We talked about imperialism and anti-imperialism, and how some states, such as the U.S. or Israel, are seen as more imperialist than others. We also talked about Lenin and his famous pamphlet Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). When Lenin spoke of imperialism, he understood social democracy as a constituent part of that phenomenon. It was the great advance of social democracy over decades as a destabilizing political movement that forced certain states to export their capital beyond national borders. It was that very workers’ movement that generated the condition of “imperialism,” which created the scenario in which the proletariat’s seizure of power was imminent. Revolution and the seizure of power were an immediate necessity for the international proletariat at that historical moment, coinciding with the First World War. Imperialism contained the necessity for the proletariat to seize power, given its historical and political maturity, which should not be wasted. Nowadays, instead, imperialism is spoken of as an alien thing to be opposed, as if we weren’t part of it: “those are the imperialists, and we are against imperialism.” Instead of understanding it as a historical era of revolutionary transition, how has the concept of imperialism been transformed over the past century?
AR: We do not oppose reform with revolution; we are saying that the program should not be reformist. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t win reforms within the system — the fight for wages and jobs is the first of those.
The pandemic showed that the crisis is that of the regime of accumulation. Current trends toward war are not the same as they used to be — those of early 20th-century militarism, or the controversies that arose within the Second International. When Lenin describes imperialism in 1917, he bases it on the greatest upsurge of the working class in the struggle for power. Let us remember not only the Russian Revolution, but also the Hungarian and German Revolutions, the latter of which was definitively crushed in 1923. But when there was a setback, Lenin called for a united front of workers’ organizations beyond their leaderships. Today we are in a united front of struggle in the streets, with a concrete program of action, regardless of whether it is “minimum” or “maximum.”
Here in Argentina, we have no choice but to kick Javier Milei out.17 We can’t wait until 2027. We’re going to form a united front with everyone. We will form a distinct front with anyone to defend an attack on Nicaragua like the one against the Contras, a blockade of Venezuela, the Cuban workers’ state, or the Iranian theocracy. We’ll be on the military side of Hezbollah and Hamas. Does that mean a political agreement with their bourgeois leaderships? No! With their theocratic leadership? No! We have our own program.
What Lenin called the “era of wars and revolutions” is more relevant than ever. We must organize the workers and found revolutionary parties, a revolutionary international. What for? To regain the unions and win the elections. The creation of new “ultra-red” unions was also criticized by Lenin. We do not advocate for a purely red international where only our friends are included and no one else.
PA: The role of the American working class is fundamental. The mobilization of many Latin American or Global South countries for Palestine doesn’t have the same impact as when students at U.S. universities occupy campuses and put the issue of Palestine on the table, especially if they’re anti-Zionist Jews. Obviously, core countries have more power, and we have to accept that.
Regardless of the traditional conception of imperialism, we are experiencing a moment of capital expansion both outward and inward. An absolute expansion of territory, for example Russia’s over Ukraine, or China’s over Taiwan. It’s also seen in Israel’s expansion into the rest of the Middle East, and there are countries like Iran that we should defend, as Antonio said. But internally, Iran and Assad’s Syria also maintain a logic of total oppression and exploitation of their people. We oppose imperialist aggression, but we defend the right of peoples and the working class to defend themselves against their own regimes.
It’s better to think in fresh categories than to revive the same old formulas. |P
1 Video of the panel is available at <https://youtu.be/dL0fCtUqqNE>.
2 Chilean dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–90).
3 Following a wave of mass protests over economic discontent that began on October 18, 2019 and lasted roughly through 2020 (known as the Estallido Social), the incumbent Chilean government held a national plebiscite in October 2020, resulting in a vote in favor of drafting a new constitution by an elected representative body. A second vote was held in 2021 to elect members to the Constitutional Convention.
4 BRICS (acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) is an inter-governmental
organization that claims to cooperate on economic development.
5 There were riots in Los Angeles in the summer of 2025 in response to Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids aimed at deporting undocumented workers.
6 Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist Party), founded in 1921 and dissolved in 1991.
7 The Zimmerwald Conference (September 1915) was a meeting of socialist leaders from various European countries held in Zimmerwald, Switzerland, during World War I. It sought to restore international socialist cooperation and oppose the war, leading to the formation of the Zimmerwald Left, which later influenced revolutionary groups like the Bolsheviks.
8 Jeanette Jara is the former Chilean Minister of Labor and Welfare (2022–25) under the Gabriel Boric administration, leader of the Unity for Chile coalition, and the Communist Party of Chile’s presidential candidate in the 2025 general election.
9 Established in Chile since 1981, Administradoras de Fondos de Pensiones are private financial institutions responsible for managing individual workers’ pension funds in capitalization systems.
10 Partido Comunista de España (Communist Party of Spain), founded in 1921.
11 Founded in 2022 by Yolanda DĂaz, Sumar is an electoral platform in Spain. It registered as a political party under the name Movimiento Sumar, and then as an electoral alliance which other parties have joined.
12 Founded in 1976, the Comisiones Obreras (Workers’ Commissions) is the largest trade union in Spain.
13 “A prisión 6 sindicalistas: Contra los que explotan y reprimen, lucha obrera,” Voz Obrera (June 30, 2024), <https://vozobrera.org/periodico/a-prision-6-sindicalistas-contra-los-que-explotan-y-reprimen-lucha-obrera/>.
14 “La larga lucha del metal en Cádiz,” Voz Obrera (July 2, 2025), <https://vozobrera.org/periodico/la-larga-lucha-del-metal-en-cadiz/>.
15 The AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) is an American labor federation of affiliated unions created in 1955 after the merger of the AFL and the CIO.
16 The World Bank is an international financial institution created in 1944, as a part of the Bretton Woods accord, whose main objective is to provide financing and technical assistance to developing countries.
17 Milei became President of Argentina in 2023.
