What is a Transitional Program?

[Zoroaster]

First of all, I want to apologize for lying about that strike at my school. I wanted to look cool, but in the end, I looked stupider than before, so, once again, I'm sorry.

Secondly, I hear Trotskyists talk about "Transitional Programs". What is that, exactly?

[Die Neue Zeit]

It's an expanded form of economism by stressing that political struggles grow out of economic ones. It tends to dress possible left reforms as "transitional" instead of recognizing and supporting them for what they really are.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Its a series of demands which, in and of themselves might not create socialism, but are designed to increase class consciousness and create a bridge to the socialist transformation of society.

Reading about the history of past socialist movements, Eugene Debs' SPUS or the German SPD, not to speak of socialist and communist parties after WWI , one is struck by the enormous problems they had connecting the "maximum program", creating a world beyond the control of capital, that is socialism, with their "minimum program" of bread and butter reforms designed to aid the working class. How do reforms relate to revolution?

Interestingly the German SPD shared power in a coalition government in 1930. That was when the Great Depression hit Germany.Because of a totalistic all or nothing mentality, they believed that it wasn't possible to reform capitalism and nothing could be done until capitalism was overthrown, the German socialists did nothing for unemployed workers.

Karl Kautsky, a prominent socialist theoritician and for a time the quasi-official successor to Marx, even turned to what we would call neo-liberalism, if socialists are in power in a capitalist state, they will have to run it in a capitalist fashion.

This is obviously absurd and counter productive.The refusal of the SPD to do much to aid the unemployed was one of the things which led to the rise of Hitler.

So..the Transitional Program, usually associated with Leon Trotsky, was designed to cut though this nonsense.It drew on the painful experience of the German Revolution (1919-23) and ideas worked out by Communists and Left Social Democrats. Its fully set out in Trotsky's"The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Task of the Fourth International". The main purpose was to answer the crisis in the working class movement created by the utter failure of leader ship of the Stalinists and social democrats.

The Transitional Program is open ended enough to adapt to a current situation. It generally would have reformist demands..raising the min wage, forcing corporations to open their books to public scrutiny, etc but also would call for putting the commanding heights of an economy..banks, large corporations, under workers control. Again, in and of itself it is not socialism, but capitalism itself would stretched to the breaking point.

http://www.marxist.net/trotsky/programme/index.html

[Leftsolidarity]

It's an expanded form of economism by stressing that political struggles grow out of economic ones. It tends to dress possible left reforms as "transitional" instead of recognizing and supporting them for what they really are.

Completely wrong.

----

I'm out of town and only able to jump on for a bit but this is definitely a discussion I'd like to get more in-depth with as I've led classes on this topic.

In short, transitional demands are a bridge between the traditional 'minimum program' of reforms to raise the day-to-day standards of the working class with the 'maximum program' of socialist revolution. They are demands on the bourgeoisie that every worker can view as reasonable and needed but something that the ruling class can never fully realize as it's a direct contradiction to the capitalist system. A purpose of this is that workers who are not on-board with a revolutionary program currently will struggle around these demands, organizing&mobilizing the working class, and through the struggle they learn and understand the true limits of the capitalist system and its inability to provide our class a dignified existence. An example of this would be something like "A Job is a right" which is completely reasonable to the working class as it is the most basic right that could be afforded, the right to be involved in social production and get an income. The capitalist system can never provide this, though, as it completely undermines the capitalist's right to property and exploitation of our labor. So through the struggle, in which we might even temporarily win concessions, the workers learn that the only way to achieve true liberation is socialist revolution and seizure of the means of production.

It has absolutely nothing to do with economist or the idea that the political struggle comes from the economic struggle. Transitional demands can be both political and economic.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Completely wrong.

Programmatic masks and transitional fleas (http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/649/programmatic-masks-and-transitional-fleas/)

For a minimum programme! (http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/686/for-a-minimum-programme/)

Leading workers by the nose (http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/688/leading-workers-by-the-nose/)

The Marxist programme (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFdkjFytD7Q)

[Five Year Plan]

A transitional program is a program for a workers' state transitioning from capitalism to socialism. It contains transitional measures, demands which a capitalist ruling class is objectively unable to meet, and which therefore require a workers' revolution.

As leftsolidarity pointed out, all this talk about "economism" is just more nonsense that the CPGB crowd loves to promote when its not waxing poetic about Lars Lih's latest twisting of Lenin's politics. If you think "all power to the soviets" or "peace, bread, and land" (which were a transitional demands deployed by the Bolsheviks in 1917) are "economistic," then I'm not really sure what idea of "political" you're working with.

[Thirsty Crow]

A transitional program is a program for a workers' state transitioning from capitalism to socialism. It contains transitional measures, demands which a capitalist ruling class is objectively unable to meet, and which therefore require a workers' revolution.
Some Trotskyists explicitly state that this isn't a programme for social revolution, i.e. that it doesn't represent a set of possible immediate measures, but only a way to relate to the working class and radicalize them.


As leftsolidarity pointed out, all this talk about "economism" is just more nonsense that the CPGB crowd loves to promote when its not waxing poetic about Lars Lih's latest twisting of Lenin's politics.
It's hard to tell what would economism even mean in the hands of the likes of DNZ. But that's useful, a vague label is good for slapping people around with it.

[Q]

Its a series of demands which, in and of themselves might not create socialism, but are designed to increase class consciousness and create a bridge to the socialist transformation of society.
Therein lies exactly the problem. The central premise for how the working class 'learns' about socialist politics is via struggle. This then presupposes a programme that connects to 'existing consciousness', which is always 'reformist' consciousness, outside revolutionary periods. Or, more precisely, economist consciousness, that is, political consciousness that stays within the logic of the capitalist system. Said differently, economism is that strain of working class politics that doesn't put forward the 'battle for democracy', the fight for working class political rule.


Reading about the history of past socialist movements, Eugene Debs' SPUS or the German SPD, not to speak of socialist and communist parties after WWI , one is struck by the enormous problems they had connecting the "maximum program", creating a world beyond the control of capital, that is socialism, with their "minimum program" of bread and butter reforms designed to aid the working class. How do reforms relate to revolution?
Yes, this is the eternal strawman that we hear time and again. This is however not what the minimum programme originally was, just what it became to be due to rightwing economist political influences, like from trade union leaderships. Such watering down is of course something communists ought to fight against in any and all cases.

What the minimum programme, as Marx intended it in the programme for the Parti Ouvrier for example, actually meant to be was a programme in which each demand was pointed towards strengthening the working class and undermining the existing state and ruling classes. A programme culminating into working class political rule, as Engels put it, the Democratic Republic.

So, there is no contradiction between 'reform' and 'revolution'. The question is: reforms to achieve what? If you're placing 'reforms' in the context of managing the existing state apparatus, of entering government coalitions and being responsible for executing capitalist policies, then those should obviously be condemned. The minimum programme is breaking with capitalist rule, it presupposes a principled opposition.


Interestingly the German SPD shared power in a coalition government in 1930. That was when the Great Depression hit Germany.Because of a totalistic all or nothing mentality, they believed that it wasn't possible to reform capitalism and nothing could be done until capitalism was overthrown, the German socialists did nothing for unemployed workers.
The SPD of the 1930's broke with Marxism. No one is defending that here. So, using the example is setting up another strawman.


Karl Kautsky, a prominent socialist theoritician and for a time the quasi-official successor to Marx, even turned to what we would call neo-liberalism, if socialists are in power in a capitalist state, they will have to run it in a capitalist fashion.
Agreed. He reneged from his previous Marxist politics. Hence this 'renegade' thing.

As for the transitional programme, I do recommend the links already posted by DNZ. They do explain what problems there are with this method.

[Thirsty Crow]

Said differently, economism is that strain of working class politics that doesn't put forward the 'battle for democracy', the fight for working class political rule.

Well, you managed to clarify the point.
But the issue is that the accusation doesn't simply stand - and I'm not comfortable being put in the position to defend Trots (:lol:), but in certain cases the transitional program and demands simply do not function as a way of evading the advocacy for the political struggle for working class political rule. The only way you could argue it inherently (transitional programme) works as economism is by arguing that the political means (the strategy) are faulty - thus getting entangled into all of the problems with the logic of "objective economism".

[Five Year Plan]

Some Trotskyists explicitly state that this isn't a programme for social revolution, i.e. that it doesn't represent a set of possible immediate measures, but only a way to relate to the working class and radicalize them.

Of course, but I think you may be misinterpreting why they say the program isn't a program for social revolution. The reason isn't that the transitional demands are perceived to be immediate or minimum demands. If they were, they wouldn't be transitional demands or be part of a "transitional" program. The reason is that the program doesn't explicitly advocate workers' conquest of political power. Rather, it articulates other demands which in the abstract aren't incompatible with capitalism, but which in the given period undermine the foundations of capitalist property relations (which are always both political and economic) as they exist. Such demands therefore imply a social revolution, though they are part of a program that doesn't include the demand for a social revolution.

As Trotsky said, "The draft program is not a complete program.... Also the end of the program is not complete, because we don't speak here about the social revolution, about the seizure of power by insurrection, the transformation of capitalist society into the dictatorship, the dictatorship into socialist society. This brings the reader only to the doorstep. It is a program for action from today until the beginning of the socialist revolution."

It is also important to note that the transitional program was never a cover for not talking about revolution. It's not like Trotsky ever advocated that revolutionaries go around and promote something called the "transitional program" in the abstract. Rather, it is a section of the larger program for socialist revolution that bridges daily tasks with the full transformation of society. The transitional program, as such, is something of a misnomer: it's more of a method. And the purpose of the method was to allow people who had not been won over to revolution to fight alongside revolutionaries for specific goals in a way that would win them over to revolution through the experience of struggling for those (transitional) demands, a struggle which was always to include revolutionaries talking about the need for smashing capitalism, etc, so as to make the implications of the struggle clear.

[Thirsty Crow]

Of course, but I think you may be misinterpreting why they say the program isn't a program for social revolution. The reason isn't that the transitional demands are perceived to be immediate or minimum demands.
I expressed myself poorly.
The view that transitional demands represent a part of the minimum programme (ergo possible measures strengthening the working class and our conditions of work and life within capitalism) is ruled out of court definitely.

The folks I'm referring to are a local group here so I can't really post links; the thing is that these people say that transitional demands don't even represent possible immediate measures after the overthrow of the capitalist state and the formation of working class political power.

Instead, they claim it is only a tool for organizing in the here and now.

[Five Year Plan]

Therein lies exactly the problem. The central premise for how the working class 'learns' about socialist politics is via struggle. This then presupposes a programme that connects to 'existing consciousness', which is always 'reformist' consciousness, outside revolutionary periods. Or, more precisely, economist consciousness, that is, political consciousness that stays within the logic of the capitalist system. Said differently, economism is that strain of working class politics that doesn't put forward the 'battle for democracy', the fight for working class political rule.

The transitional method doesn't jettison immediate demands; it combines them with transitional demands. As such, it doesn't conform to existing working-class consciosuness: it attempts to bridge existing working-class "economistic" consciousness with the objective conditions in the epoch of decay, conditions that are ripe for socialist revolution provided sufficient working-class revolutionary consciousness.


Yes, this is the eternal strawman that we hear time and again. This is however not what the minimum programme originally was, just what it became to be due to rightwing economist political influences, like from trade union leaderships. Such watering down is of course something communists ought to fight against in any and all cases.

What the minimum programme, as Marx intended it in the programme for the Parti Ouvrier for example, actually meant to be was a programme in which each demand was pointed towards strengthening the working class and undermining the existing state and ruling classes. A programme culminating into working class political rule, as Engels put it, the Democratic Republic.Yes, a democratic republic under workers' rule. The program you cite actually uses the transitional method. The preamble contains an eloquent statement of the need for maximum transformation (the abolition of capitalism and socialist revolution), then there is a political and an economic section laying out a mixture of minimum demands (a mimimum wage, freedom of the press, etc.) with demands that were definitely not compatible with the continued rule of the bourgeoisie ("Abolition of standing armies and the general arming of the people," and "the commune to be the master of its administration and police"). These latter demands do not call for overthrowing the bourgeoisie, but call for measures which the bourgeoisie would not be prepared to accept. (For proof of this, see the armed suppression of the Paris Commune.) As such, they are clearly transitional in nature. And political. So much for "economism."

The transitional method is that in cases where large masses of workers are mobilizing, but where a revolutionary organization is small in size, revolutionaries should agree to struggle for a full program of minimum, transitional, and maximum demands, but should be prepared to enter and accept the discipline of parties that stop short of having a fully revolutionary program, so long as those parties have a transitional program that will push them (through learning in struggle) through the doorway of socialist revolution.


So, there is no contradiction between 'reform' and 'revolution'. The question is: reforms to achieve what? If you're placing 'reforms' in the context of managing the existing state apparatus, of entering government coalitions and being responsible for executing capitalist policies, then those should obviously be condemned. The minimum programme is breaking with capitalist rule, it presupposes a principled opposition.A minimum program, by definition, contains only demands that can be realizable under capitalism and bourgeois rule. It's funny you mention above how people become revolutionaries through struggle, but if you are only struggling for demands, for programs, that do not contradict the capitalist order as such, what kind of learning do you think is going to happen in such a struggle?



The SPD of the 1930's broke with Marxism. No one is defending that here. So, using the example is setting up another strawman.


Agreed. He reneged from his previous Marxist politics. Hence this 'renegade' thing.

As for the transitional programme, I do recommend the links already posted by DNZ. They do explain what problems there are with this method.So the SPD didn't break with Marxism earlier in 1914, when in lined up behind imperialism?

[Tower of Bebel]

The only way you could argue it inherently (transitional programme) works as economism is by arguing that the political means (the strategy) are faulty - thus getting entangled into all of the problems with the logic of "objective economism".
Comrade, the crux of gaining political power is who'll be in charge.

There's a difference between politicis in general and communist politics. There's a difference between a political revolution and a communist political revolution. The former - though it is the working class that wages most of the battles with the state apparatus - is primarily bourgeois, the latter aims for a communist society.

To lure the workers, as if, into a revolution without a resolution to the question of state power ("smashing" will not do), without a patient preparation of workers' self-rule, leads to (petty) bourgeois politics and new (petty) bourgeois governments. This situation is somewhat visible in Egypt today.

When Trotsky wrote the so called Transitional Programme in 1938, he knew (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tpdiscuss.htm) that his draft was far from complete:

Also the end of the program is not complete because we don’t speak here about the social revolution, about the seizure of power by insurrection, the transformation of capitalist society into the dictatorship, the dictatorship into the socialist society. This brings the reader only to the doorstep. It is a program for action from today until the beginning of the socialist revolution.

I'd put brakets around the word "socialist", because the word is confusing and because "revolution" by itself would be a better choice. But! Isn't it so that many such action programmes of today suffer from the same shortcommings? How are we going to take power in times of revolution, how are we going to exert the so called "dictatorship of the proletariat" without a plan?

[Thirsty Crow]

I honestly don't understand how what you say here relates to what I wrote. I mean, I'm not disagreeing with anything per se (differen between politics in general and communist politics - sure; difference between political revolution and social revolution - yes; the ultimate result of petite bourgeois politics - I agree with the crux of it thougm I might formulate it differently).

What I'm talking about is how the transitional programme works in political and organizational practice of Trotskyists; I'm not disputing the unfinished nature of the draft, but the very underlying approach.
One one hand it seems to me that there's the position that the transitional demands are intimately tied to the real possibilities for such measures becoming reality under the so called "workers' state", and on the other there is the position that these aren't at all tied, or designed as possible and revolutionary measures under the "workers' state".

The thing about economism only relates to the DNZ mythology and obsession with "growing political struggles out of economic ones" or some such nonsense.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

'Transitional Stage' is a fancy way of saying class collaborationism, defeatism and tomfoolery. A bunch of nonsense really.

[Rafiq]

'Transitional Stage' is a fancy way of saying class collaborationism, defeatism and tomfoolery. A bunch of nonsense really.

Precisely, something as trivial as the entire foundations of the reproduction of life possess no need for transition, they simply change with the snap of our fingers. Historically, this can be verified by the abrupt change from feudalism to capitalism, which took one night. The masses awoke one day to find their political institutions, culture, and social completely in accordance with the new capitalist production and that was that.

Today, following the seizure of political power, the mode of production and foundations of life will simply just change automatically, without transition. Context? Who needs it! The current circumstances of life, and all the opposing classes will just dissapear through workers democracy! Reality? Poof! Gone! Such is consistent with a sophisticated insight on the nature of human social change.

Thank you Vox, for another brilliant post. You should most definitely keep at it.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Precisely, something as trivial as the entire foundations of the reproduction of life possess no need for transition, they simply change with the snap of our fingers. Historically, this can be verified by the abrupt change from feudalism to capitalism, which took one night. The masses awoke one day to find their political institutions, culture, and social completely in accordance with the new capitalist production and that was that.

What's this have to do with a transitional stage? I'm sorry is this still the 18th century? Obviously with all of 21st century knowledge of engineering, logistics, and so forth, end capitalism out right is impossible. Are you even serious right now? Is this real life? Hahaha

The transitional stage sure worked wonders in the SU, China, etc. didn't it? Oh wait it didn't. Further, I reject this "workers democracy," if historical examples can be viewed as legitimate examples thereof. I simply don't see the need or get what you're getting on about. I'm Anarchist, you disagree with me, get over it. We'll be here all night and day and you annoy me so much I can get past 3 post of yours without saying fuck it. You really are a waste of my time.

Let me make this clear for you I don't give two shits about you or some fake e-revolution bullshit, I don't, so unless you like wasting your time and dipping my hair in the proverbial ink is how you get off, you might rethink communicating with me.


Thank you Vox, for another brilliant post. You should most definitely keep at it.

Awwe thanks bae, I write everything just for you after all.<3

[Five Year Plan]

Vox: if you think there will be a period after the workers seize power in one country, but before socialism has been established, you buy into the idea of a transitional stage or process. If you think there will be no such stage, then by logical deduction you think either that socialism can exist in a single country or you think that revolution will happen around the globe at exactly the same time.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

As leftsolidarity pointed out, all this talk about "economism" is just more nonsense that the CPGB crowd loves to promote when its not waxing poetic about Lars Lih's latest twisting of Lenin's politics. If you think "all power to the soviets" or "peace, bread, and land" (which were a transitional demands deployed by the Bolsheviks in 1917) are "economistic," then I'm not really sure what idea of "political" you're working with.

Yeah, the Bolsheviks totally didn't have an actual political programme or anything, nah. It's also not like the Bolsheviks had a minimum-maximum programme, nah. Of course, Trotsky rejected the minimum-maximum programme pretty clearly so this comparison to the Bolshevik programme and the Transitional Programme is complete bloody nonsense. Of course Trotskyists want to show how they are the true followers of Lenin but since the Russian revolution failed in the end it might be a good idea to stop thinking about it as if it is an example we should follow without criticism. Instead of yelling "muh dogma" at criticism from the CPGB or Lars Lih you might want to do something more useful with your time.

[Five Year Plan]

Yeah, the Bolsheviks totally didn't have an actual political programme or anything, nah. It's also not like the Bolsheviks had a minimum-maximum programme, nah. Of course, Trotsky rejected the minimum-maximum programme pretty clearly so this comparison to the Bolshevik programme and the Transitional Programme is complete bloody nonsense. Of course Trotskyists want to show how they are the true followers of Lenin but since the Russian revolution failed in the end it might be a good idea to stop thinking about it as if it is an example we should follow without criticism. Instead of yelling "muh dogma" at criticism from the CPGB or Lars Lih you might want to do something more useful with your time.

I think debunking misrepresentations of Lenin's politics, or sloppy arguments about how there were no major political differences between Lenin and Kautsky until 1914 (at which point both claimed to be maintaining the exact political tradition as before, but in vehement opposition to one another), is worth my time. I am here to discuss revolutionary politics and revolutionary theory. Why are you here?

Well, judging from your diatribe, it seems you just want to make sweeping generalizations about "Trotskyists," which is funny in light of how the tradition has so many major internal divisions. At the very least least you could try narrowing down your condemnations to specific groups, as I have done with the bizarre ex-Stalinist CPGB-PCC, whose supporters have made a priority lately of reviving Kautsky's reputation by, first, misrepresenting Lenin's politics, then, second, misrepresenting what a transitional program and transitional demands are. (You seem to think it means not having a program at all, based on your sarcastic sniping that the "Bolsheviks didnt have an actual political programme," as if transitional means constantly changing and up in the air. Yikes!)

As to the substance of your post, the Bolsheviks employed transitional demands as a wedge to pry the rest of the working class from control by the reformists and liberals. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, "all power to the soviets" as well as withdrawal from the war were transitional demands, issued at a historical conjuncture where the Tsar and then later the bourgeois state led by the provisional government could not accede to them. The Parti Ouvrier's program contained similar demands, as did the Manifesto. Serious revolutionaries don't muck about in minimal and immediate demands as ends themselves, but use them as a bridge to innovating the struggle through more pointed concrete demands that don't seem so far off that they are essentially nothing more than diffuse propaganda slogans that cannot shape the actual struggle until well after the workers seize power (e.g., "abolition of value relations").

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Vox: if you think there will be a period after the workers seize power in one country, but before socialism has been established, you buy into the idea of a transitional stage or process. If you think there will be no such stage, then by logical deduction you think either that socialism can exist in a single country or you think that revolution will happen around the globe at exactly the same time.

Wot? You're confusing yo, lol, to be clear though obviously there would be a temporary transitionary period in which capital is in the process of being murdered aka the revolution but as for what we are talking about, this Socialism, this 'transitionary stage' and so on, no, is stupid and doesn't have a leg to stand on at this point IMO. I also want to point out that we are currently discussing hypotheticals so how does one really know exactly? Would be my immediate question. I mean, idk, tbh, if the revolution would be uneven or if it would be all at once, idk, maybe you can help me out with that.

[Tower of Bebel]

The program you cite actually uses the transitional method... there is a political and an economic section laying out a mixture of minimum demands (a mimimum wage, freedom of the press, etc.) with demands that were definitely not compatible with the continued rule of the bourgeoisie... These latter demands do not call for overthrowing the bourgeoisie, but call for measures which the bourgeoisie would not be prepared to accept. (For proof of this, see the armed suppression of the Paris Commune.) As such, they are clearly transitional in nature. And political.
Comrade, to have demands that "call for measures which [the opponent] would not be prepared to accept" is not a unique characteristic of the transitional programme. It is a characteristic of any decent political programme. Both genuine minimum demands and transitional demands contain this feature. Take this discription (http://books.google.be/books?id=pV5k-TvbSwQC&pg=PA526&lpg=PA526&dq=demands..+push+so+hard+on+the+outer+limits+of+c apital%27s+rule+that+they+appear..+as+forms+of+tra nsition&source=bl&ots=Ay8-xL7KjK&sig=MAng0R4Jou0aTjmtrRAIDvOl_GI&hl=nl&sa=X&ei=qayDU4ewB-St7Qa5iIDgDQ&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=demands..%20push%20so%20hard%20on%20the%20outer% 20limits%20of%20capital%27s%20rule%20that%20they%2 0appear..%20as%20forms%20of%20transition&f=false) of the 1905 Revolution by Rosa Luxemburg for example:

But these [minimum] demands [which are meant for bourgeois not for socialist society] at the same time push so hard on the outer limits of capital's rule that they appear likewise as forms of transition to a proletarian dictatorship.
Nor is the bridge between existing consciousness and the final goals of the programme. That too is an aspect of any genuine political programme. Both the bridge and the "transition" were featured in the classic marxist programmes developed between 1870 and 1940. (Of course I'm excluding such programmes like the Gotha programme of 1875. Those were unscientific.)

The "transitional" aspect of the transitional programme, in my opinion, is explained (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/05/backwardness.htm) by Leon Trotsky in 1938 as such:

What is this slogan [of the sliding scales of wages and hours]? In reality it is the system of work in socialist society. The total number of workers divided into the total number of hours. But if we present the whole socialist system it will appear to the average American as Utopian, as something from Europe. We present it as a solution to this crisis which must assure their right to eat, drink, and live in decent apartments. It is the program of socialism, but in very popular and simple form.

[RedMaterialist]

temporary transitionary period

Blasphemy!



in which capital is in the process of being murdered

The murder of capital. You propose to burn some dollar bills? Capital is not a thing which can be "murdered." As someone once said, capital is a social relationship.

You can murder a capitalist state or a capitalist, but you can't murder a social relation. The Critique of the Gotha Programme sets forth a program for the transitionary period. Under the dictatorship of the proletariat the economic system (whatever you call it) will retain some of the characteristics of the old capitalist system, such as unequal wage rates.

Marx uses the analogy of a new system being born with the birthmarks of the old system.

What anarchists do sometimes is demand that the old capitalist system, the pregnant mother, be killed so that the birth of the new system, communism, can happen instantaneously so that the new birth is perfect and free of all signs of the old system. A child can't be born if the mother dies too early.

It's not a stretch to compare the old capitalists as abortionists who want to keep the mother alive but only to produce more workers rather than a new society.

[Tower of Bebel]

... a mixture of minimum demands (a mimimum wage, freedom of the press, etc.) with demands that were definitely not compatible with the continued rule of the bourgeoisie ("Abolition of standing armies and the general arming of the people," and "the commune to be the master of its administration and police"). These latter demands do not call for overthrowing the bourgeoisie, but call for measures which the bourgeoisie would not be prepared to accept. (For proof of this, see the armed suppression of the Paris Commune.) As such, they are clearly transitional in nature. And political. So much for "economism."
Minimum demands, taken as a whole, are not compatible with bourgeois rule. Except for such historical cases where the working class is too weak, too small to take power.

Under certain circumstances, a bourgeois country has no need of a standing army, but taken as a whole the programme would result in the collapse of bourgeois rule under the weight of the working class and the class struggle. Indeed, these demands do not call for overthrowing the bougeoisie. The act of overthrowing itself, if need be, is a tactical matter (how, when, ...).

On top of that, the marxist minimum programme, taken as a whole, is meant to develop the most favourable conditions for workers' rule and the economic expropriation of the bourgeoisie by the workers.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

The murder of capital. You propose to burn some dollar bills? Capital is not a thing which can be "murdered." As someone once said, capital is a social relationship.

I was being poetic, let's not strip apart what to me was just a cool way to phrase things at that point in time. Why must you point I'm shit at poetry, that's not nice.


You can murder a capitalist state or a capitalist, but you can't murder a social relation. The Critique of the Gotha Programme sets forth a program for the transitionary period. Under the dictatorship of the proletariat the economic system (whatever you call it) will retain some of the characteristics of the old capitalist system, such as unequal wage rates.

Which is what I'm rejecting and asserting as being wholly unnecessary. The mother analogy is pretty morbid, tell you the truth and in my opinion, inaccurate.

[Five Year Plan]

Comrade, to have demands that "call for measures which [the opponent] would not be prepared to accept" is not a unique characteristic of the transitional programme. It is a characteristic of any decent political programme. Both genuine minimum demands and transitional demands contain this feature. Take this discription (http://books.google.be/books?id=pV5k-TvbSwQC&pg=PA526&lpg=PA526&dq=demands..+push+so+hard+on+the+outer+limits+of+c apital%27s+rule+that+they+appear..+as+forms+of+tra nsition&source=bl&ots=Ay8-xL7KjK&sig=MAng0R4Jou0aTjmtrRAIDvOl_GI&hl=nl&sa=X&ei=qayDU4ewB-St7Qa5iIDgDQ&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=demands..%20push%20so%20hard%20on%20the%20outer% 20limits%20of%20capital%27s%20rule%20that%20they%2 0appear..%20as%20forms%20of%20transition&f=false) of the 1905 Revolution by Rosa Luxemburg for example:

The problem with your quote is that Rosa Luxemburg at not point employs the terms either "minimum" or "transitional" to describe the demands, so I am not sure why you are using this quote as evidence that minimal programs, by definition, can undermine the foundations of capitalist property relations and bourgeois rule. And even if she did, that says exactly bupkis, because using the term "transitional" to mark off a discrete set of measures that might be immediately realizable, but which in the process of being realized would require the proletariat to overthrow the bourgeois state, did not emerge until after Luxemburg's death, and after the war itself.

For the sake of theoretical precision, it is very important we clarify what, exactly, we are arguing about here. A minimum demand is a demand that can be realized within the confines of capitalism because they do not pose a direct threat to the foundations of capitalist property relations. An example would be the $15 minimum wage. The bourgeoisie might fight this demand tooth-and-nail (and will), but ultimately, they will back down or offer the reform up as a sop to forestall a deeper and more broad-based challenge to the system.

A transitional demand is one that objectively cannot be realized without the (democratic) workers' struggle overstepping the bounds of bourgeois rule. An example would be, to use an example from the Sawant campaign (albeit her campaign mangled the transitional method as well by burying the call for revolution), bringing the 50 or 100 largest corporations under public ownership. Is this a call for overthrowing the state? Nope. But do you think the bourgeoisie and their state would stand for such a state of affairs, or offer it up as a sop? Of course not.

A maximum demand is a demand that directly invokes the social-revolutionary process of workers' seizing political power and completing the measures aimed directly at extinguishing class exploitation altogether (the institutionalization of democratic planning, the removal of certain industries from the circuit of capital as a guaranteed form of non-monetary compensation, etc.).

That's how these terms were used by German labor movement following the first world war, how they were used by Lenin and the Comintern in the early 1920s, and how Trotsky deployed them in his document "The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International."

So you can say, "ahh, but there are immediately realizable demands that actually require workers to overthrow the bourgeois state." And I would respond by saying: then those demands are transitional demands that are being agitated for (rather than propagandized for) because of intensely heightened class struggle. That they are immediately realizable as a result of the context makes them no more minimal than the immediate realizability of the most maximum of demands far along in the transition to socialism would make those demands "minimum" ones.

But this is exactly what I mean by people misrepresenting the meaning of transitional demands and the transitional program. CPGB posterboy Mike Macnair is notorious for this kind of confusionism, and calls all sorts of obviously transitional measures "minimum" in nature.


Nor is the bridge between existing consciousness and the final goals of the programme. That too is an aspect of any genuine political programme. Both the bridge and the "transition" were featured in the classic marxist programmes developed between 1870 and 1940. (Of course I'm excluding such programmes like the Gotha programme of 1875. Those were unscientific.)

The "transitional" aspect of the transitional programme, in my opinion, is explained (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/05/backwardness.htm) by Leon Trotsky in 1938 as such:No, the essence of the program isn't its function (which is to act as a wedge or a bridge). Nor is it, as you would have it, to be found in an offhand comment Trotsky made about one transitional demand. It's the idea that workers are won over to the call for revolution through innovations in the actual struggle, not from being preached at with abstract and diffuse theoretical formulations, and that innovations in this struggle don't leapfrog from demands that capitalism can conform to, and the outright elimination of capitalism. Rather, it is the rather obvious Marxist precept that moving from a bourgeois frame of mind to a revolutionary one has to take account of the actual process of workers coming to understand in struggle that their immediate needs (and demands: remember that "immediate" is not synonymous with "minimum") requires politically expropriating the bourgeoisie. As I said, the transitional section of any program is, effectively, the program immediately on the agenda for a workers' state leading the transition from capitalism to socialism.

[RedMaterialist]

I was being poetic, let's not strip apart what to me was just a cool way to phrase things at that point in time. Why must you point I'm shit at poetry, that's not nice.

I googled "murder of capitalism", "murder of capital." I was surprised I didn't find anything except for, maybe, Death of the Soul of Capitalism, by Ayn Rand. So your poetic observation is highly original and also sounds a lot better than Rand. Maybe it will catch on.




Which is what I'm rejecting and asserting as being wholly unnecessary. The mother analogy is pretty morbid, tell you the truth and in my opinion, inaccurate.

Before the mid 20th century, and still in most places, birth was a violent, painful and bloody process. The murder of capital, I suspect, will also be.

[Brotto Rühle]

What Luxemburg had to say in 1918 was pretty decent, in regards to the program question:

"Here, comrades, you have the general foundation of the program we are officially adopting today, whose outline you have to read in the pamphlet What Does the Spartacus League Want? Our program is deliberately opposed to the standpoint of the Erfurt Program; it is deliberately opposed to the separation of the immediate, so-called minimal demands formulated for the political and economic struggle from the socialist goal regarded as a maximal program. In this deliberate opposition [to the Erfurt Program] we liquidate the results of seventy years’ evolution and above all, the immediate results of the World War, in that we say: For us there is no minimal and no maximal program; socialism is one and the same thing: this is the minimum we have to realize today." - RL

[Rafiq]

There's constantly reproducing capitalist relations and calling it transition, and then acknowledging the persistence of the remnants of capitalism despite the active struggle to establish the total hegemony of the proletarian dictatorship. The difference is crucial.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The "transitional" aspect of the transitional programme, in my opinion, is explained (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/05/backwardness.htm) by Leon Trotsky in 1938 as such:

That's almost close to the lump of labour fallacy, comrade, particularly when placed into the context of high unemployment.

[Die Neue Zeit]

And even if she did, that says exactly bupkis, because using the term "transitional" to mark off a discrete set of measures that might be immediately realizable, but which in the process of being realized would require the proletariat to overthrow the bourgeois state, did not emerge until after Luxemburg's death, and after the war itself.

For the sake of theoretical precision, it is very important we clarify what, exactly, we are arguing about here. A minimum demand is a demand that can be realized within the confines of capitalism because they do not pose a direct threat to the foundations of capitalist property relations.

[...]

But this is exactly what I mean by people misrepresenting the meaning of transitional demands and the transitional program. CPGB posterboy Mike Macnair is notorious for this kind of confusionism, and calls all sorts of obviously transitional measures "minimum" in nature.

How would you characterize these five public policy proposals by Jesse Myerson (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/five-economic-reforms-millennials-should-be-fighting-for-20140103), then? "Minimum"? "Transitional"?

[Five Year Plan]

How would you characterize these five public policy proposals by Jesse Myerson (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/five-economic-reforms-millennials-should-be-fighting-for-20140103), then? "Minimum"? "Transitional"?

A lot of this depends on the specifics of the proposals (e.g., a guaranteed income of 3,000 dollars per annum, or of 30,000 dollars? a guaranteed job with what pay and how many hours per week?), but those demands are definitely in the neighborhood of transitional measures and can most certainly be provided their specific content approximate what I believe the author has in mind.

[Tower of Bebel]

The problem with your quote is that Rosa Luxemburg at not point employs the terms either "minimum" or "transitional" to describe the demands, so I am not sure why you are using this quote as evidence that minimal programs, by definition, can undermine the foundations of capitalist property relations and bourgeois rule. And even if she did, that says exactly bupkis, because using the term "transitional" to mark off a discrete set of measures that might be immediately realizable, but which in the process of being realized would require the proletariat to overthrow the bourgeois state, did not emerge until after Luxemburg's death, and after the war itself.

Aufheben, it should be clear from the passage that the demands are minimum (not minimal) demands. And the need for demands being transitional in nature did emerge before the First World War, the difference being that the USSR did not exist and that the specific socialist measures proposed in many a Comintern-based programme were therefor seen as utopian at that point.


A minimum demand is a demand that can be realized within the confines of capitalism because they do not pose a direct threat to the foundations of capitalist property relations. An example would be the $15 minimum wage. The bourgeoisie might fight this demand tooth-and-nail (and will), but ultimately, they will back down or offer the reform up as a sop to forestall a deeper and more broad-based challenge to the system.

A minimum wage is not a clear example of a minimum demand. Minimum demands are mainly political demands. The economic demands, though they are political in some respects, are there to support the political demands. And by political I mean: what should marxists do in order to be able to govern under workers rule (over society as a whole)?

The "suppression of the public debt", as it was formulated in the 1880 Parti Ouvrier programme for instance, was is indeed not a direct threat to capitalist property relations. But it remains a threat when regarded as only one part of a whole set of demands that threaten the rule of the bourgeoisie over society through its state. Without the suppression of public debt, a marxist government would succumb to the financial pressure of the capitalists.


A maximum demand is a demand that directly invokes the social-revolutionary process of workers' seizing political power and completing the measures aimed directly at extinguishing class exploitation altogether (the institutionalization of democratic planning, the removal of certain industries from the circuit of capital as a guaranteed form of non-monetary compensation, etc.).

A maximum demand is utopian because communist society (whether in its under- or fully developed stage) does not exist. The abolition of the family was for instance part of the maximum part of the marxist programme. But one cannot abolish the family by decree. The so called maximum programme by itself did not exist before the First World War, when the classic minimum-maximum programmes were developed, therefore the maximum was confined to a short preamble in most of the marxist programmes of that time. "Maximum programme" meant something like our final goals and did not contain concrete demands.

After the Word War, when the USSR was founded and new programmes were developed, the struggle between the proponents of keeping the minimum/immediat programme and the proponents of discarding the minimum programme was mainly one over tatics (the use of parliament, the use of trade unions, when and how to wrest power from the bourgeoisie, how to build the party, etc.) and resulted not in the development of maximum programmes versus minimum programmes but in a compromise between the left (Bukharin) and the center (Lenin). Bukharin and his comrades proposed a programme that would only indicate measures for the transition to socialism. Lenin proposed to take up these demands but to support them with minimum demands where revolutionary situations did not occure or where the revolutionaries were still badly organized.

The nationalisation of the banks was one such measure towards socialism. The idea was that the war had facilitated the development of capitalism towards monopoly capitalism and that in a period of socialist revolution this monopoly capitalism turns into socialism. I found this speech (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/06.htm) directed against Bukharin very interesting.


In a revolutionary situation, during a revolution, however, state monopoly capitalism is directly transformed into socialism. During a revolution it is impossible to move forward without moving towards socialism—this is the objective state of affairs created by war and revolution. It was taken cognisance of by our April Conference, which put forward the slogans, "a Soviet Republic" (the political form of the dictatorship of the proletariat), and the nationalisation of banks and syndicates (a basic measure in the transition towards socialism). Up to this point all the Bolsheviks unanimously agree. But Comrades Smirnov and Bukharin want to go farther, they want to discard the minimum programme in toto.

...

Is it possible to guarantee now that the minimum programme will not be needed any more? Of course not, for the simple reason that we have not yet won power, that socialism has not yet been realised, and that we have not achieved even the beginning of the world socialist revolution.


We must firmly, courageously, and without hesitation advance towards our goal, but it is ludicrous to declare that we have reached it when we definitely have not. Discarding the minimum programme would be equivalent to declaring, to announcing (to bragging, in simple language) that we have already won.



... it is the rather obvious Marxist precept that moving from a bourgeois frame of mind to a revolutionary one has to take account of the actual process of workers coming to understand in struggle that their immediate needs (and demands: remember that "immediate" is not synonymous with "minimum") requires politically expropriating the bourgeoisie.


Yet you don't define struggle. When the minimum-maximum programmes were first developed, the marxists knew that revolutionary consciousness could only arise from revolutionary conditions. Class consciousness likewise can only exist where the class struggle has developed. To be able to maintain this consciousness, one needs strong, independent, political workers' organisation - organisations of the whole class, not just parts of it - one of which is the party. To build such organisations and lead them through both revolutionary and non-revolutionary periods is a struggle, indeed. But it is not necessarily the struggle for socialist measures with which we would want to break through the limits of capitalism.



But how to build this party for instance? The answer lies partially in the political demands of the workers' movement. The minimum demands contain not only a negative claim (that taken as a whole they urge for the overthrowing of the bourgeoisie), they contain some positive claims as well such as the ability to build strong workers' organisations, and to gain influence over the labouring masses (not only the working class but large swats of the petty bourgeoisie as well). Universal suffrage is but one example.



Of course this means "innovations in the actual struggle", "that innovations in this struggle don't leapfrog from demands that capitalism can conform to" and not the idea that it's all about "being preached at with abstract and diffuse theoretical formulations". We don't need opportunism, that's a given.



As I said, the transitional section of any program is, effectively, the program immediately on the agenda for a workers' state leading the transition from capitalism to socialism.


You write workers' state, but to pose the question of power and government is not the same as solving it. What kind of workers' state do we want?



Our Party Programme—a document which the author of the ABC of Communism [Bukharin] knows very well—shows that ours is a workers’ state with a bureacratic twist to it. We have had to mark it with this dismal, shall I say, tag. There you have the reality of the transition.


The minimum programme was supposed to solve it, albeit in general. Without the principles of the minimum-maximum programme no marxist workers' government and rule is possible. Without the principles of the programme no independent, political organisations of the class are possible. Without it, either the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie or a bureaucratic degeneration would take political power and indepence out of the hands of the workers.



But while the specifically transitional demands were meant to push the class struggle of the workers through the limits of capitalism, to pose socialism on the agenda, it did not pose an answer to the question: how can we rule as a class and use the available means to transform capitalism into socialism?



The result of the discarding of the principles of the minimum programme in the USSR resulted in a bureaucratic degeneration. And the bureaucratic degeneration resulted in the discarding of the principles of the programme. They go hand in hand. The working class had never won power over the whole of Russian society in the first place. First its rule was confined to the industrial centers, while it was in need of the support of the peasants to controle the rest of society. Then immediatly came its gradual bureaucratic degeneration and eventually the transformation into a state in which the bureaucracy was actually ruling. The USSR was not capitalist, indeed it had broken through the barriers of capitalism, but it was definitily not a form of socialism that would develop into communism.


I'm not against transitional demands per se. I'm still of the opinion that they can be usefull. What I don't agree with, is the way many a "transitional programme" was written. Why do we keep discarding that minimum programme just like many on the left discard the explicit prospect of revolution and the revolutionary take-over of power?

[Tower of Bebel]

I made a second post because, due to some mistake, I cannot edit my previous post.

And even if she did, that says exactly bupkis, because using the term "transitional" to mark off a discrete set of measures that might be immediately realizable, but which in the process of being realized would require the proletariat to overthrow the bourgeois state, did not emerge until after Luxemburg's death, and after the war itself.
Comrade, I stated before that the demands, taken individually, can be realized, especially when you only realize them partially. The idea that, in order to implement the whole programme correctly, one needs a workers' party in power, did emerge before Luxemburg's death. The minimum demands are directed against the bourgeois state.

[Five Year Plan]

I made a second post because, due to some mistake, I cannot edit my previous post.

Comrade, I stated before that the demands, taken individually, can be realized, especially when you only realize them partially. The idea that, in order to implement the whole programme correctly, one needs a workers' party in power, did emerge before Luxemburg's death. The minimum demands are directed against the bourgeois state.

Every demand, no mater how minimum, is directed against the state. That is a truism, and not the profound gem of political analysis you and the rest of the weekly worker crowd here seem to think it is.

The problem here is that you are broadening the idea of a "transitional" program. A transitional program, to repeat, is a portion of a workers' revolutionary program that includes transitional demands. It's not the entire program, and revolutionary parties don't recruit on the basis of only their transitional program. It becomes "the program" only in situations of the kind I mentioned in a previous post, where a revolutionary organization is tiny, but where the mass struggle has broadened to the point where revolutionaries might suggest that the workers, who will reject the full revolutionary socialist program, adopt and fight around only the transitional measures.

A transitional program is not any program whose measures collectively add up to workers taking power. And the reason transitional demands are necessary is that the masses of workers don't agitate around entire party programs, and therefore don't learn from struggling for entire party programs, minimum, maximum, transitional, or any combination of those three. Workers agitate around and learn from struggling for specific demands and specific issues.

You are correct that in some cases an entire "minimum program" cannot be implemented without workers taking state power, but that point is highly abstract and irrelevant. In the process of mobilizing for one, two, three victories relating to the smallest of demands, the role of revolutionaries is to propagandize to the masses of workers about how those minimum demands are linked to far greater demands that they can and should make on the state as part of a revolutionary struggle to overthrow capitalism. Without workers' being won over to broader-based transitional measures, struggles invariably peter out as they are co-opted by social-democratic bourgeois workers' parties of the kind that the CPGB is unwittingly trying to resuscitate, and workers demobilize out of a strengthened conviction that the bourgeois state is perfectly capable of responding to and meeting their demands.

So there is never going to be a point where an entire program of minimum demands is, in its totality, up for struggle. The struggle will either shift into another, higher gear of transitional demands as workers gain more confidence and place greater kinds of demands on the state, or it will wither on the vine, all by the time the fourth or fifth demand becomes the focus of popular mobilization. To try to restrict the struggle of growing numbers of workers, with growing confidence in their ability to oppose the bourgeois state and growing experience in doing it, to continue to hold out just one more minimum demand, then just one more, is tantamount to strangling the movement. It's the tried and true Kautskyite method of perpetual postponement for just the right moment to have a mass strike of the kind that Luxemburg advocated. We all know that with Kautsky, the moment never comes. And neither does the struggle for second half of the minimum program.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks learned this lesson, lost upon Marxists of the Second International, but perfectly clear to Marx and Engels themselves, through the course of the Russian Revolution. It's why the Comintern's congresses gave the transitional method its official imprimatur.


A minimum wage is not a clear example of a minimum demand. Minimum demands are mainly political demands.On what basis are you arriving at this definition. I clearly explained how Marxists of the early twentieth century used these terms, and how the term "transitional demand" was developed after the war. This is just the kind of Macnair-style arbitrary setting of definitions I was talking about. It's pure confusionism with no basis in history. Nobody in the second international or third international ever defined a minimum demand as political in a way that excluded struggles around, for example, the minimum wage, from being considered "minimum." Lenin gives a succinct definition of a minimum program, and by implication a minimum demand, in his Two Tactics: "This program is the entire minimum program of our Party, the program of the immediate political and economic reforms which, on the one hand, can be fully realised on the basis of the existing social and economic relationships and, on the other hand, are requisite for the next step forward, for the achievement of Socialism."

Notice that he says "POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC REFORMS," and doesn't arbitrarily separate them out from one another.

[Tower of Bebel]

The problem here is that you are broadening the idea of a "transitional" program. A transitional program, to repeat, is a portion of a workers' revolutionary program that includes transitional demands. It's not the entire program, and revolutionary parties don't recruit on the basis of only their transitional program. It becomes "the program" only in situations of the kind I mentioned in a previous post, where a revolutionary organization is tiny, but where the mass struggle has broadened to the point where revolutionaries might suggest that the workers, who will reject the full revolutionary socialist program, adopt and fight around only the transitional measures.You left the mass organisations and the position of the "tiny revolutionary organization" within these organizations out of the equation. I don't think that demands of a tiny revolutionary organisation can ever be the guiding force in a movement of mass struggle. Except when the tiny organisation is tiny only because of police repression, not just because it's a sect or an intirely new organisation without sufficient roots. Because the revolutionaries will need to be the leaders of that mass movement well before the struggle develops in order to put the concrete transformation towards socialism on the agenda. Not because you need the workers' trust, but mainly because the workers need to train themselves to become the (temporary) ruling class. Again, that's what the minimum programme intended to do: to wrest power from the hands of the state and the bourgeoisie, to make the workers independent and to turn their class into a politically organized class. I.e. emancipation.


A transitional program is not any program whose measures collectively add up to workers taking power. And the reason transitional demands are necessary is that the masses of workers don't agitate around entire party programs, and therefore don't learn from struggling for entire party programs, minimum, maximum, transitional, or any combination of those three. Workers agitate around and learn from struggling for specific demands and specific issues.True, but the minimum programme does not exclude the use of specific demands and the development of good slogans. Transitional demands can in my opinion be necessary for other reasons, though.


You are correct that in some cases an entire "minimum program" cannot be implemented without workers taking state power, but that point is highly abstract and irrelevant.The act of taking power is a political revolution brought to its conclusion by the workers and not a political revolution taken over by either the bourgeoisie itself or the state apparatus. The minimum programme can be used to stress the need for revolution. The possibility of this prospect is bound up with succesful propaganda about our future, a task which you emphasize yourself:

In the process of mobilizing for one, two, three victories relating to the smallest of demands, the role of revolutionaries is to propagandize to the masses of workers about how those minimum demands are linked to far greater demands that they can and should make on the state as part of a revolutionary struggle to overthrow capitalism. That's something I'm willing to accept, comrade. In some cases transitional demands can useful, but I'm of the opinion that minimum demands themselves can play the same role. Something which can be explained by the quote from Luxemburg I posted above.


Without workers' being won over to broader-based transitional measures, struggles invariably peter out as they are co-opted by social-democratic bourgeois workers' parties of the kind that the CPGB is unwittingly trying to resuscitate, and workers demobilize out of a strengthened conviction that the bourgeois state is perfectly capable of responding to and meeting their demands.Some demands can be co-opted, but the transitional demands themselves are not immune to such moves. On top of that, not all minimum demands are as tollerable as it seems. Such demands like the general arming of the people or the acceptance of political rights for soldiers will disarm the bourgeoisie, something which runs counter to the goals of modern-day social democracy.


So there is never going to be a point where an entire program of minimum demands is, in its totality, up for struggle.Well no, but I think that much of the Russian social-democratic programme was up for struggle.

The struggle will either shift into another, higher gear of transitional demands as workers gain more confidence and place greater kinds of demands on the state, or it will wither on the vine, all by the time the fourth or fifth demand becomes the focus of popular mobilization.In my opinion the realization of the minimum programme as the programme for workers' power will be at the heart of the struggle. Transitional demands will come on top of that and will prompt the most conscious and organized workers to aim clearly for socialism/communism.


To try to restrict the struggle of growing numbers of workers, with growing confidence in their ability to oppose the bourgeois state and growing experience in doing it, to continue to hold out just one more minimum demand, then just one more, is tantamount to strangling the movement. It's the tried and true Kautskyite method of perpetual postponement for just the right moment to have a mass strike of the kind that Luxemburg advocated. We all know that with Kautsky, the moment never comes. And neither does the struggle for second half of the minimum program.I don't know what you mean by holding out to one more minimum demand, but I'm pretty sure that Kautsky never waited for the final mass strike of the kind that Luxemburg advocated. I don't even think that Kautsky was against the mass strike in Russia in the same way as he was against calling the mass strike in Germany because of different conditions. But I'm intirely not sure of that.


On what basis are you arriving at this definition.Comrade, I pointed out that the demand for setting the minimum wage was not a clear example and you start writing about arbitrary separation and exclusion. The main thrust of the minimum programme is the ability to take power, therefor its political section, not its economic, was always on top. Demands such as the one for universal suffrage are in my opinion far more representative than the minimum wage demand. The arbitrary separation and exclusion you mentioned have nothing to do with my reply.

But I think that we have exhausted ourselves during this exchange as much as the goal of this thread is concerned.

[Five Year Plan]

You left the mass organisations and the position of the "tiny revolutionary organization" within these organizations out of the equation. I don't think that demands of a tiny revolutionary organisation can ever be the guiding force in a movement of mass struggle. Except when the tiny organisation is tiny only because of police repression, not just because it's a sect or an intirely new organisation without sufficient roots. Because the revolutionaries will need to be the leaders of that mass movement well before the struggle develops in order to put the concrete transformation towards socialism on the agenda. Not because you need the workers' trust, but mainly because the workers need to train themselves to become the (temporary) ruling class. Again, that's what the minimum programme intended to do: to wrest power from the hands of the state and the bourgeoisie, to make the workers independent and to turn their class into a politically organized class. I.e. emancipation.

True, but the minimum programme does not exclude the use of specific demands and the development of good slogans. Transitional demands can in my opinion be necessary for other reasons, though.

The act of taking power is a political revolution brought to its conclusion by the workers and not a political revolution taken over by either the bourgeoisie itself or the state apparatus. The minimum programme can be used to stress the need for revolution. The possibility of this prospect is bound up with succesful propaganda about our future, a task which you emphasize yourself:
That's something I'm willing to accept, comrade. In some cases transitional demands can useful, but I'm of the opinion that minimum demands themselves can play the same role. Something which can be explained by the quote from Luxemburg I posted above.

Some demands can be co-opted, but the transitional demands themselves are not immune to such moves. On top of that, not all minimum demands are as tollerable as it seems. Such demands like the general arming of the people or the acceptance of political rights for soldiers will disarm the bourgeoisie, something which runs counter to the goals of modern-day social democracy.

Well no, but I think that much of the Russian social-democratic programme was up for struggle.
In my opinion the realization of the minimum programme as the programme for workers' power will be at the heart of the struggle. Transitional demands will come on top of that and will prompt the most conscious and organized workers to aim clearly for socialism/communism.

I don't know what you mean by holding out to one more minimum demand, but I'm pretty sure that Kautsky never waited for the final mass strike of the kind that Luxemburg advocated. I don't even think that Kautsky was against the mass strike in Russia in the same way as he was against calling the mass strike in Germany because of different conditions. But I'm intirely not sure of that.

Comrade, I pointed out that the demand for setting the minimum wage was not a clear example and you start writing about arbitrary separation and exclusion. The main thrust of the minimum programme is the ability to take power, therefor its political section, not its economic, was always on top. Demands such as the one for universal suffrage are in my opinion far more representative than the minimum wage demand. The arbitrary separation and exclusion you mentioned have nothing to do with my reply.

But I think that we have exhausted ourselves during this exchange as much as the goal of this thread is concerned.

In light of how you haven't clarified simple but fundamental issues, I don't think we've exhausted the realm of possibilities in this discussion at all. For starters, you have not at all explained what your justification is for distinguish the political from the economic in order to plant the first category into "minimum demands" and questioning whether the second can be a "clear example" of a minimum demand (as you say). I've seen no historical justification for it, and no analytical purchase that this distinction makes at all. Right now, it appears as nothing more than an arbitrary distinction you've borrowed from Mike Macnair, which he uses to make all sorts of wildly-off-the-mark misrepresentations of different types of demands, different types of programs, and, ultimately, the different approaches to politics represented by Kautsky and the Bolsheviks tradition, respectively.

While you have failed to address such basic issues, you falsely assert that I leave the relationship between mass organizations and tiny organizations out of the question. I have stated twice already how revolutionary organizations adopt different tactics in regards to transitional measures and the role they play in party organization, depending on the situation. In situations where a revolutionary cadre in a propaganda group (e.g., what the SWP basically represented in the late 1930s) is lagging way behind mass uprisings and agitation, the labor party tactic becomes appropriate, with the practical goal being to get the labor party to adopt the transitional measures into its program so that it becomes, effectively, the revolutionary party.

Is there some other aspect of the relationship between revolutionary cadre and mass activity that you think I am leaving out?

The rest of your post is either talking past me about points that are, at best, tangentially related to what we've discussed so far, or efforts at deflecting the main point I made in my previous post: transitional measures arise organically out of a mass workers movement making a push for power. Restricting the program to minimum demands, and viewing them only as a totality, flattens out this historical trajectory and ignores the fact that workers have to go through a process in struggle to accept or focus their attention on certain programmatic demands, be they minimal, transitional or whatever. It is a process. It doesn't happen all at once, which is why it makes no sense to look at a program all at once, when different parts will play different roles at different times.

In the process of the struggle, drawing a straight line from one set of minimum demands to the next, without ever escalating to more foundational demands, will be the quickest way to strangle the movement. Certain workers that are emboldened by previous victories will take a wider view of the system, and want to work on concrete demands that strike a bigger blow against capitalism than a minimal demand will. Not incorporating transitional demands into party-building effectively means cutting those people off and holding them back to the activity of the least advanced. And this, of course, is what Kautskyite party-of-the-whole-class organizing is all about: categories and concepts that are devised on paper, analyzed in the abstract, but fail in practice, because they do not represent the real movement.

[Q]

In light of how you haven't clarified simple but fundamental issues, I don't think we've exhausted the realm of possibilities in this discussion at all.
Given that you're now just sounding like a broken record that is stuck at a certain spot, I think it underlines the point that this discussion is over.

Just one more thing:

And this, of course, is what Kautskyite party-of-the-whole-class organizing is all about: categories and concepts that are devised on paper, analyzed in the abstract, but fail in practice, because they do not represent the real movement.Tell me comrade, what Trotskyite real movement is there? There is none. For the last 80 years, all that the Trotskyist movement has been able to accomplish is build medium sized groups, with sterile politics, often staying within the logic of the capitalist system, bureaucratically organised and completely unable to unite. And you're going to lecture others? The nerve.

[Five Year Plan]

Given that you're now just sounding like a broken record that is stuck at a certain spot, I think it underlines the point that this discussion is over.

It's the result of neither my points nor my questions being seriously addressed. One tends to repeat one's self if one thinks that one is not being heard. Surprising, isn't it? Usually in conversations, parties respond directly the things that are being said to them. It might be useful to keep this mind, since you are moderating a forum where discussions are supposed to be taking place.


Just one more thing:
Tell me comrade, what Trotskyite real movement is there? There is none. For the last 80 years, all that the Trotskyist movement has been able to accomplish is build medium sized groups, with sterile politics, often staying within the logic of the capitalist system, bureaucratically organised and completely unable to unite. And you're going to lecture others? The nerve.Your harping on and on about "Trotskyites" is a clear reminder that your love affair is with a group whose politics bear all the marks of a strong Stalinist heritage, including a middle-class bureaucratic distrust of mass workers' movements. That the cover for trying to corral and channel mass workers' movements into dead ends now takes the cover, with this particular group of people, of rehabilitating Kautsky and his politics rather than under the guise of protecting "actual existing Socialism" is a minor detail. Stalinism and social democracy are kissing cousins. Both political forms cater to a middle-class fixation on reconciling the antagonisms of capital within capitalist society.

As you put it so succinctly in another thread:


I'm not sure what is meant here exactly with 'a militant, mass labour movement'. So I don't know if I'm for or against.

If a focus is put on 'militant' and with that is meant a movement for strikes, protests and demonstrations. Then I'll have to decline.

If however a party-movement is meant that exists out of a great diversity of organisations that organise our class as a class-for-itself on a social, cultural, economic and political level... Then sure, I'm all for that.

For you, the party comes first, then the movement. One doesn't grow out of the other, and without the party, the movement is a scary thing whose militancy you'll have to decline endorsing. The Stalinist fixation on partyism rearing its head again, just under a different form.

Your cheapshot about there being no "mass Trotskyite movement" is idiotic, and even if it weren't, is totally beside the point. There are no sustained mass movements of workers anywhere in the world at this point. My argument is that building such a movement requires breaking from the tried, and totally failed, formula employed by the SPD in the early twentieth century.

[Tim Cornelis]

Your cheapshot about there being no "mass Trotskyite movement" is idiotic, and even if it weren't, is totally beside the point. There are no sustained mass movements of workers anywhere in the world at this point. My argument is that building such a movement requires breaking from the tried, and totally failed, formula employed by the SPD in the early twentieth century.

The Landless Workers' Movement is a sustained mass movement of 1.5 million members, whose strategy is largely aligned with the formula of the SPD (organising struggles, land occupations, but also healthcare, sports and cultural events, and education), not coincidentally.

[Five Year Plan]

The Landless Workers' Movement is a sustained mass movement of 1.5 million members, whose strategy is largely aligned with the formula of the SPD (organising struggles, land occupations, but also healthcare, sports and cultural events, and education), not coincidentally.

Where do you get this idea that the formula of the SPD is political activities combined with cultural activities? Wait, nevermind, I can take a pretty good guess where you got this idea. And in any event, from what I've read of the group, the movement isn't a sustained one, and is a loose and eclectic collection of affinity groups whose politics include a heavy emphasis on liberation theology. I suppose you'll find some way to tie that to Kautsky, too? Perhaps by bringing up a quote or two about the "struggle for democracy."

[Tim Cornelis]

Where do you get this idea that the formula of the SPD is political activities combined with cultural activities? Wait, nevermind, I can take a pretty good guess where you got this idea. And in any event, from what I've read of the group, the movement isn't a sustained one, and is a loose and eclectic collection of affinity groups whose politics include a heavy emphasis on liberation theology. I suppose you'll find some way to tie that to Kautsky, too? Perhaps by bringing up a quote or two about the "struggle for democracy."

:rolleyes:
While I support centrist strategy I am not an orthodox Marxist or Kautskyist.
As far as I know, the SPD 'formula' involves sports activities, papers, hobby clubs, and cultural activities, which enabled it to become a mass movement. Maybe you have some arguments to the contrary, and can posit those instead. If we look at the MST we see a similar pattern. If we look at the Abahlali baseMjondolo we see yet again a similar pattern: building sewers, housing, organising a football club, and such activities, which has enabled it to encompass some 20 to 30,000 members in Kwazulu Natal. The MST is a sort of unorthodox Stalinist movement, the AbM is a sort of autonomous communist group, with no political connection to Kautsky, yet whom both applied a centrist strategies which enabled them to grow beyond fringe sects -- they reinvented the wheel and thereby prove, I think, that a centrist strategy is the most effective method for 'party-building'.

The MST is sustained in that it is a permanent movement operating continually over the span of several decades, and is hardly a 'loose collection of affinity groups'.* It is 'eclectic', but I don't see the point in this. Ideologically it is highly flawed, but that's not really the point. Besides, surely most workers' movements are eclectic, as a workers' movement is different from a political party.

*I don't think an affinity group can look like this (but maybe we are talking at cross purposes, with a different definition of affinity group in mind):

http://www.movementgeneration.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/MST.jpg
http://www.mstbrazil.org/files/images/imce/jeff/marcha-BA_0.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-e_ukCc2wE_8/UNJiThqqQZI/AAAAAAAAGCo/Gp3_XWgjx8Q/s320/mst.jpg

[Die Neue Zeit]

Aufheben, it should be clear from the passage that the demands are minimum (not minimal) demands.

Because the words are so similar, should both words be used in the same sentence for different meanings?


A maximum demand is utopian because communist society (whether in its under- or fully developed stage) does not exist. The abolition of the family was for instance part of the maximum part of the marxist programme. But one cannot abolish the family by decree. The so called maximum programme by itself did not exist before the First World War, when the classic minimum-maximum programmes were developed, therefore the maximum was confined to a short preamble in most of the marxist programmes of that time. "Maximum programme" meant something like our final goals and did not contain concrete demands.

Nowadays too many on the left confuse the class seizure of power with the maximum program. That Trotsky quote you posted is a hallmark of that confusion, I think.


And the reason transitional demands are necessary is that the masses of workers don't agitate around entire party programs, and therefore don't learn from struggling for entire party programs, minimum, maximum, transitional, or any combination of those three. Workers agitate around and learn from struggling for specific demands and specific issues.

Therein lies another problem with your position. You discard political education with this statement of yours. Programs educate. It is platforms that agitate.

[Geiseric]

The amount of verbal masturbation in this discussion is nauseating. The transitional program isn't completely original, Marx and Engels theorized about the same ideas in Principles of Communism and the Communist Manifesto itself.

The rise of Stalinist and ultra left trends after the Russian Revolution is what necessitated a return to the materialist course, seeing as actual Marxism was abandoned by the heads of the USSR and international leftists only to land our boat where it is today. On an island, seperate wholly from the masses.

Our epoch is characterized by unexperianced socialists and labor activists whove inherited a century and a half of mistakes made by our predessesors which are being made again, and again, and again by people both in positions of authority over the labor movement and the ever so popular trends of "left intellectuals" featured on this site.