  From a political perspective, Luxemburg maintained, work for reforms should not be understood as “a drawn-out revolution,” and revolution should not be understood as “a condensed series of reforms.” Historically, legal reform, she explaned, has served the purpose of consolidating an emerging social class until the balance of political forces is such that the existing juridical relations can be eventually dismantled in favor of new ones. Every legal order, she maintained, emerges out of a social and political revolution: “revolution is the act of political creation while legislation is the political expression of a society that has already come into being” (Luxemburg 1900 [RLR: 156]). This is precisely what the terms “reform” and “revolution” mean: they suggest a radical change in the content of fundamental legal dispositions rather than in the manner of their realization. Legal reform and revolution are not different methods of historical progress that “can be picked out from the counter of history as one picks out hot or cold sausages” (Luxemburg 1900 [RLR: 156]). Those who oppose the method of legal reform to the goal of conquering political power by the workers do not oppose “a more tranquil, calmer and slower method to the same goal”; they choose “a different goal” (Luxemburg 1900 [RLR: 157]). They choose to operate within the legal framework dictated by the old order instead of committing to establish a new one. The political analysis of revisionism produces a similar outcome to its economic analysis: it abandons the commitment to socialism in favour of the preservation of capitalism, and tries to reduce abuses in the system rather than eliminating the system itself. To achieve the more radical outcome, it is essential for the proletariat to have access to political power. The fate of democracy, Luxemburg insisted, is “bound up with the fate of the labour movement”. While the advocacy of reforms via parliamentary and trade union mechanisms would prepare the working classes for the exercise of political power, the fact that these demands were inscribed in a liberal institutional framework made it impossible to overcome capitalism from within. The reformist method ended up pitting socialism against democracy without understanding the nature of legal revolutions. In turning the dispute from one of content of legal dispositions to one of style of execution, it ended up losing sight of both.