Previous installments in this series have focused on both the positive aspects of Daniel De Leon's political legacy, and the central political and economic incomprehensions of the De Leonist political tendency. This final article will discuss De Leonism's tragic response to the Russian Revolution and the dire political consequences of this tendency's theoretical shortcomings.

De Leon’s opposition to reformism, a central element in his ideological perspective, superficially resembles the position defended today by the ICC and the rest of the Communist Left. However, De Leon’s views, originally formulated as early as the 1890s, were based on a total confusion on the operation of capitalist economy and were actually incorrect for the period in which he lived. Here it is important to differentiate clearly between reformism and reforms. As we pointed out in Internationalism, #21, "Reformism has always meant the theory and practice of a peaceful transition to socialism, whose hallmarks have been a commitment to parliamentarism, legalism, and pacificism. This theory and practice of reformism…has always been antithetical to the interests of the working class and has represented the invasion of bourgeois ideology into the ranks of the proletariat." On the other hand the struggle for reforms – for durable improvements in the conditions of the working class, i.e., the end of child labor, the eight hour day, etc – "in the ascendant phase of capitalism when it was pse of capitalism when it was possible for the working class to win durable reforms from the bourgeoisie…occurred on the class terrain of the proletariat and was a manifestation of the fundamental antagonism between capital and the wage-working class." Thus in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the struggle for reforms was correctly supported by Marxist revolutionaries. De Leon on the other hand did not support that struggle. Instead he denounced the struggle for reforms as synonymous with the counter-revolutionary practice of reformism.