IMO the very distinction between "reform" and "revolution" is essentialist metaphysics, and confuses words with things. It's as pointless as asking whether the systemic transition from feudalism to capitalism was "reformist" or "revolutionary." https://twitter.com/LucasOfSunshine/status/1390322449791787014

The main shortcoming of Bernstein's position was not "reformism" as such, but his failure to acknowledge that capitalism was a system with a historic arc from birth to death, that would eventually succumb to terminal crises.

Capitalism is a system in crisis, that's structurally unsustainable in all sorts of ways, and is in process of being supplanted by a qualitatively different successor system.

Some of the internal things going on in that transition process look like "reform" -- especially Gorzian non-reformist reforms. Some look like interstitial development, as people develop work-arounds to a system increasingly incapable of meeting basic needs.

Some of the old institutions retain the old names, but gradually change in character as their relation to the larger system they're embedded in changes over time.

And yes, there's a punctuated equilibrium process in which things that look like insurrection -- Occupy, NoDAPL, BLM -- periodically recur. They may even feature prominently in the tail end of the transition process, when the dying system fights a rearguard action.

But they will not drive the systemic transition on a coordinated macro level, any more than the transition from the classical slave economy to feudalism or from feudalism to capitalism was driven by some one homogenous model of change.

Trying to reduce all this into a "reform" vs. "revolution" debate is just wankery.

And framing the question as whether "capitalism can be reformed," or this or that thing can be done "under capitalism," is especially essentialist wankery. Imagine saying everything from 1380-1600 was either "under capitalism" or "under feudalism," and that institutions could ...

...not become less feudal, or more capitalist in character "under feudalism," but rather that structural change awaited some decisive revolutionary rupture where everything went from being "under feudalism" to "under capitalism" in one big spurt.

So what does this mean in practice?
1. Primarily interstitial counter-institutions of the sort Holloway, De Angelis, Federici, Gibson-Graham et al talk about, that suck labor and resources from the old capitalist economy and shift the correlation of forces.

2. If we can force non-reformist reforms through electoral politics that shift the ground structurally -- UBI, card check unionism, scaling back or abolishing intellectual property, land trusts and community broadband, etc. -- then good.

3. If insurrectionary action in the streets on the Occupy or BLM model forces structural concessions, or creates more breathing room for institutional counter-institutions, also good.

But the overall model will be evolutionary change with No. 1 as the primary driver. There will never be a big ruptural event where everybody's in the same Party or One Big Union, and it's capitalism one week and socialism the next.