Reform means to change something, usually for the better. It can be used to describe a variety of social movements that seek to bring a society closer to the ideals that they believe it should embody.
For example, juvenile delinquents are often sent to reform schools to try and make them ‘better people’. Reform can also be used to refer to a change in a person’s morals or habits, such as someone who is trying to overcome alcoholism. It can even be used in the context of science: in chemistry, you can reform molecules by breaking them apart.
The Enlightenment, a period of intellectual thought in the 17th and 18th centuries, championed ideas like reason, liberty, and equality and encouraged critiques of traditional authority. This intellectual movement influenced various reform movements throughout Europe and helped shape modern democratic ideals.
In the 19th century, British liberals like Earl Grey and William Ewart Gladstone pushed for parliamentary reform, abolition of slavery in the British Empire, and poor law reform. The American labor movement also sought to reform the work day, with campaigns led by Mother Jones and Lewis Hine. Other examples of reform include the development of a distinct American style of art with the Hudson River School, and the development of the Oneida Commune, which promoted eugenics, complex marriage, and communal living.
Non-reformist reforms, on the other hand, seek to undermine the prevailing political, economic, and social order, construct an essentially different one, and build democratic power toward emancipatory horizons. They require a horizon beyond legality, embrace antagonism and conflict rather than neoliberal depoliticization and neutrality, shift the balance of power, build mass organization, and prepare the masses to govern.
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