When transitional demands come true

[bricolage]

So I don't care for this boring threads normally but I actually was curious about this.

By chance I ended up on an old thread about Seattle, Sawant and the $15 minimum wage. The consensus seemed to be (from CWI supporters as well as critics) that this was a transitional demand and it wouldn't actually happen or wasn't likely to happen. So I understand transitional demands essentially as things which the state will not be able to provide and so by placing the demand you can bring about a crisis point or at least strengthen the working class movement. However, I know see that Seattle will be bringing in an (albeit staggered) $15 minimum wage. So it won't actually be in place completely until, what, 2021? So that's a bit shit, but anyway if this was a transitional demand and the state has in a way been able to meet it and there hasn't been a crisis and the working class movement doesn't seem necessarily much stronger, what does that say of the theory itself? Were the calculations just wrong on this one?

So hopefully some dyed-in-the-wool trotskyists can help me out here. Also anyone who wants to just go ha ha trots are wrong is probably welcome as well.

[Lily Briscoe]

I actually don't think a lot of the rank-and-file Socialist Alternative members even understood that it was supposed to be a 'transitional demand' in the first place.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I think the only consensus was that the SA/CWI intended this to be a transitional demand. Now, whether it actually was transitional is another thing entirely.

But yes, individual transitional demands get fulfilled from time to time. The sliding scale of wages that was in place in France at one point is a good example. But these demands were understood, by the Fourth International at the time, as a whole. And taken as such, they can't be fulfilled by any bourgeois state.

The point, however, is not to trick people into class consciousness, which is how many critics and not a few ostensible Trotskyists portray the transitional program. The point isn't to bug people to support a $15 minimum wage and then AHA! you fell into my clever trap, you're actually supporting socialism. The point is to explain why these demands are impossible under a bourgeois state, but still struggle alongside people who might still have reformist illusions, to draw them into revolutionary activity. It was conceived as the primary means of struggle in an era when there were large concentrations of class-conscious, militant workers, stuck with a Stalinist or even social-democratic (as not a few of those who fled from Stalinism found their way back to the rotten Second International and its satellites and imitators) leadership. There are no such concentrations of workers today (both Stalinism and social-democracy dying a slow death over the last decade or so), so to transpose mechanically the method of "The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International" to the modern period would be, well, just daft, really.

[VivalaCuarta]

A demand or slogan is transitional by being part of the transitional program:


It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demand and the socialist program of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat.Now it should be obvious that SAlt's activity, its agitation, propaganda, etc., and that of its imitators, do not lead to such a conclusion, in any sense of the term. Not practically, not explicitly, not logically, not even implicitly. Aside from the fact that their official position is that "a peaceful transition to socialism" would be possible by legislative means. They are practically allergic to the "r" word.

As far as the relevance of the Transitional Program goes, I think 870 here expresses the profound disorientation of the ex-Trotskyist Spartacist tendency. More than once Trotsky commented, particularly to his American co-thinkers, that the program was the expression of the objective tasks facing the workers. For example here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tpdiscuss.htm):


We have repeated many times that the scientific character of our activity consists in the fact that we adapt our program not to political conjunctures or the thought or mood of the masses as this mood is today, but we adapt our program to the objective situation as it is represented by the economic class structure of society. The mentality can be backward; then the political task of the party is to bring the mentality into harmony with the objective facts, to make the workers understand the objective task. But we cannot adapt the program to the backward mentality of the workers, the mentality, the mood is a secondary factor – the prime factor is the objective situation. That is why we have heard these criticisms or these appreciations that some parts of the program do not conform to the situation.It's not as if the time when the TP was adopted -- with Stalinist political reaction triumphant in the USSR, the fascists in power in Germany and Italy, the Spanish revolution strangled, etc. -- was a time of universal working class upsurge, revolutionary class-consciousness, and immediate revolutionary prospects everywhere. Most leftists adapted their programs, such as they were, to the defeats and the defeatist moods engendered. They betrayed.

[The Idler]

The transitional program theory here failed.

[BITW434]

Isn't calling for a $15 minimum wage something that would be the feature of a minimum programme, as opposed to a transitional programme? I was under the impression that traditional demands were calls for things that would be impossible for the bourgeoisie to deliver under capitalism, like full employment, as we all know unemployment is structural in bourgeois society. However, raising the minimum wage to $15 is a reform that could be granted with little or no detriment to the capitalist class. The logical conclusion to make would not be that transitional programmes are useless, but rather that Socialist Alternative are a social democratic party.

[bricolage]

Isn't calling for a $15 minimum wage something that would be the feature of a minimum programme, as opposed to a transitional programme?
I was thinking about the last two pages of this thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/seattle-socialist-face-t182513/index7.html), in which both supporters and opponents seemed to come to some sort of agreement that this was a transitional demand.

[Creative Destruction]

Isn't calling for a $15 minimum wage something that would be the feature of a minimum programme, as opposed to a transitional programme? I was under the impression that traditional demands were calls for things that would be impossible for the bourgeoisie to deliver under capitalism, like full employment, as we all know unemployment is structural in bourgeois society. However, raising the minimum wage to $15 is a reform that could be granted with little or no detriment to the capitalist class. The logical conclusion to make would not be that transitional programmes are useless, but rather that Socialist Alternative are a social democratic party.

In a somewhat weak defense of SA: they include the 15/hr demand as a minimum program, not a transitional program. The organizers (like the ones I met with) they sent out after Sawant was elected made this clear.

The problem with the SA's platform is that they're falling into the same trap as other "revolutionary" parties who have electioneering as their strategy. Once they win, or come close to winning, they snip the revolutionary message from the program and start focusing on reforms. When Sawant was running, she initially said, in her rallies and interviews, that there is a need for revolution and not just reforms. After she was elected, though, she started slowly acting more and more like a politician. This last election that they participated in, with Jess Spear, forewent the revolutionary message at all and focused almost solely on the 15 an hour right, and other reforms.

If they continue down this path, then they will solidly be just another social democratic party, though.

[bricolage]

In a somewhat weak defense of SA: they include the 15/hr demand as a minimum program, not a transitional program. The organizers (like the ones I met with) they sent out after Sawant was elected made this clear.
This does kind of make more sense.
Are there any written examples of this you can share?

[Creative Destruction]

This does kind of make more sense.
Are there any written examples of this you can share?

There's a binder of stuff they gave me when I met with them. It included their program and ideological stances and what not. If I can find it, I'll post it.