If you’re in the majority, you have the votes to be able to accomplish something with reform. It’s not like we live in a monarchy, reform is possible under our system.
If reform isn’t working to bring about your goals, either your goals aren’t popular enough, or they are popular but the people lack the will and organization to vote for them.
If the people lack the will and organization to vote effectively, they certainly lack the will and organization to topple the government.
My area of expertise is managing complex systems and change implementation. I sincerely don’t understand how revolution is supposed to work where reform doesn’t. No one has been able to give me an answer that doesn’t bill down to idealistic hope. How is this revolution supposed to be implemented, and why can’t we build the foundation for revolution while simultaneously using the tools we have for reform? Wouldn’t widespread support for reform be the best possible proof of consensus?
Other commenter gave a good answer but I can provide some alternative answers and/or fill gaps. First, I recommend reading Reform or Revolution by Rosa Luxembourg as this discussion has been had for over a century. The main issue is that you cannot reform into socialism, you can only reform to a point. There are people who’s positions of power entirely depend on the domination of the working class, on their ownership of production. They won’t give that up just because the workers vote for it, even if it is very popular. Why would they? They control the military, the food, the water, the electricity, our communication, even the information we receive. Reform can get you concessions, but it will never grant you freedom from the shackels of wage slavery because the capitalists depend on your servitude for their wealth and power.
As for how viable revolution is in the imperial core. It isn’t. We don’t stand a chance of revolting anytime soon as things stand. Its foolish of us to think the workers revolutions will begin here anyway. They will start in the periphery, especially Africa imo but also Latin America and Asia. Our goal here is to prepare a organization for when our revolutionary moment occurs, when the people have been made desperate by the loss of their portion of the imperial plunder. We should build trust by working closely with unions for workers rights, we should feed the homeless, provide financial assistance to the poor and fight for social equality so that people know who will actually assist them in a crisis. We should also prepare our organization to function as an interim government when the time comes.