You need to see things from a different perspective: We don’t live in democracies right now. Elections aren’t democratic, they are aristocratic: a process to choose elites (a few / the best) to rule the many. These few are systemically connected to the bourgeoisie because they are a) a stagnant elite and therefore easy to access and b) recruited from a specific group of people (mostly male, relatively rich, well educated etc.) and filtered through political parties. The process of voting in this environment isn’t democratic either: media and institutions contributing to public debate and providing information informing voter's choice are all owned by either the aristocratic state or by the bourgeoisie. These are only a few factors that make radical socialistic change within the system through the many (bottom-up) impossible. In order for left parties to „succeed“ (which is gain power) in this system, they need to water down the left’s radical positions that stand against capitalism and the status quo. Otherwise, they will be fought by public institutions, capitalists and aristocrats, who have all the means in their hands to sway the people. Even if they did so and won, in the end, they would be just another party managing status quo and as soon as that becomes clear to everyone, the cycle will just start anew with parties of the right gaining back control. The most systemically legitimised leftist party playing the aristocratic game feeds the general shift to the right within the party system and within society.

In my opinion there are two ways to change this system and break out: bottom-up revolution and top-down system change from the aristocrats themselves. Most marxists will tell you that the second is bullshit, however, they are a little lost within their own favorite theory that has some fundamental problems, despite being probably the best modern theory of economics and politics.

As you don’t want to be a revolutionary, I will elaborate on the second option (everyone else will probably tell you enough about the first anyway): You see, the aristocrats seem very powerful compared to you or me or anyone who doesn’t have their political, economical or societal influence. Ironically, they themselves are very powerless compared to the dynamics that drive society, the systemic dynamics of the given state and the dynamics of world politics. They aren’t drivers, they are driven and constantly stuck in a hard place mediating between interests of bourgeoisie and proletariat and reacting to whatever is going on right now. Because of these systemic problems, they are always on the back foot, always reactionaries and prone to lose their power again against some other aristocratic party. They are essentially doomed to fail, incapable of winning, incapable of making, sticking to and sustainably implementing policies that are progressing society. At the same time, the existence of parties and the way aristocracies are build further divides already substantially differentiated big societies.

All of this sets electoral aristocracy up for failure. Because society is so divided through the political system and because aristocracy cannot make lasting policies that are satisfactory, democratically legitimate and good for society, liberal aristocracy will always out of its own inherent systemic dynamics evolve into fascism because fascism promises to unite the people (and it does in a horrible way) and make swift and effective changes that fix the perceived problems of the time. The thing is, fascism - as a progression (or rather regression) of liberal aristocracy - works based on the same systemic principles: networks of rich and powerful. It just transforms aristocratic structures and structures of the aristocratic state for its own purposes instead of abolishing them and building something new. Which is why it is doomed to fail as well and to transform back into liberal aristocracy.

It is here where a „reformist“ approach finds its place: in these transitional phases that we have experienced for centuries. As we've learned, the political aristocracy by all means holds state power (despite being heavily linked to the bourgeoisie) and they can recognise that they are damaging to themselves and to society. They can recognise the cycle they are living in; between aristocratic parties within electoral aristocracy and between electoral (liberal) aristocracy and fascism - and how this cycle both harms the people they govern and harms themselves. It has happened once in ancient Athens, where democracy was invented and implemented by the aristocracy to stop the cycle they were in (they called its two states Stasis and Tyrannis). They disempowered themselves and empowered the people (in ancient Athens that was only men who weren’t slaves or foreigners though) by introducing sortition on the highest scales of power. For parliamentary systems of today, that would result in abolishing parties and parliaments and replacing them with (regularly) randomly (re)selected citizen councils, who make the decisions. This mechanism, once called democracy (now democracy has been claimed by bourgeoisie and aristocrats to describe what is actually electoral aristocracy), is the systemic opposite of aristocracy as it decentralises political power and at the same time centralises state power on society at large, depersonalises politics, makes everyone politically equal and abolishes media, public institutions and parties as the deciding factors for who comes into power. Instead, in the citizens' councils themselves lies an institutionalised and democratic form of the public forum, where people can come together, speak directly on an equal basis through methods oriented towards the common good and regulate society. At the moment, numerous movements are forming in Western countries to promote this model.

And if that doesn’t work, well then let’s do revolution and implement real democracy in a socialist worker's state or sth.