Women in the Welfare Rights Movement: Reform or Revolution?

Abstract

The traditional dualism of reform or revolution has been used to rank, in hierarchical terms, how much change is accomplished by a certain collective political struggle during a particular period of time. Reform generally refers to minor and temporary changes in the laws or legal/legislative system; revolution, in contrast, generally refers to a more radical and permanent political change in the political/economic structures of a society. Thus, if we mobilize and struggle to change educational policies or health policies by lobbying for new laws, we would be labeled reformers. If, however, we organize to change our democratic form of government to a monarchy, a dictatorship, or an oligarchy—or shift from a socialist economy controlled by the government to a free enterprise system—our efforts, if successful, would be called a revolution. It is clear that the American, French, Russian, Chinese, and Spanish revolutions brought about dramatic transformations in the political systems of their respective countries.