Transitional Demands

[Post-Something]

Can a Trotskyist, or anyone for that matter explain to me why Capitalism can't do something like ensure everyone housing? What are the basic things that Capitalism just can't provide? I understand that employment is out of the question, but what about other things?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Transitional Demands and Directional Demands

“Such a perspective is necessary so that when a struggle is waging around initial demands and is finding the ear of wider layers of workers and building a fight, then other, more ambitious, demands can be raised. Then, when these are being fought for, other, still more ambitious, proposals can be put. Eventually such a ‘step-by-step’ approach might lead to the raising of transitional measures if the necessary pre-conditions are present. Trotskyists claim that transitional demands provide the bridge between immediate struggles and socialist revolution; in fact they will rarely provide any such connection. Instead we will usually need a bridge, or a series of bridges, to the bridge. Only then can we cross it.” (Alistair Mitchell)

In my earlier work, I deemed Leon Trotsky’s specific “transitional” approach to be very problematic, to say the least. When formulating The Transitional Program, Trotsky had two questions in mind, not one:

1) How can the gulf between the minimum demands and the maximum demands be overcome?
2) What is the best approach to bridge the gulf between the minimum demands and the maximum demands?

Less than two decades earlier, Rosa Luxemburg offered a similar answer to the first question:

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.

Unfortunately, Trotsky’s answer to the second question that he had in mind was, at best, rather mixed. He proposed numerous reforms of a primarily economic nature such that, to quote his remarks on the sliding scale of wages, it would be “easier to overthrow capitalism than to realise this demand under capitalism. Not one of our demands will be realised under capitalism. That is why we are calling them transitional demands." Nowadays, however, many businesses offer pay raises on the basis of some sort of cost-of-living adjustment. On the other hand, the call to abolish “business secrets” and information asymmetry more generally may (in a very qualified sense) still be valid, simply because of the competitive business environment and because of bourgeoisie-worker relations.

[Note: From my own perspective, I would like to link this demand to both the efficient capital market hypothesis and definition of “fair market value” as applied to bourgeoisie-worker relations. In regards to the former link, the efficient capital market hypothesis states that no one can “outperform the market” (relative to share prices) on a consistent basis by using financial and other information already known to the broader capital markets. In broader terms, this hypothesis deals with the relationship between financial information and share price (hence “efficiency”). Numerous studies have suggested problems with this hypothesis, particularly with stronger assertions of efficiency, namely due to the issue of insider trading. In regards to the latter link, the lengthy legal definition of “fair market value,” as applied to bourgeoisie-worker relations, is… the highest price available, expressed in terms of cash or cash equivalent, for an arm’s length transaction on an open, unrestricted market between informed, prudent parties, with none of the parties acting under compulsion. Of course, there is a pro-bourgeoisie information asymmetry regarding the value of labour, and most workers are compelled to work in order to earn a living.]

Very recently, various “anti-capitalist” social movements have suggested going past Trotsky’s transitional demands (which included threshold demands), using instead just “directional” demands. One post-modernist radical, Ben Trott (the similarity of his surname to Trotsky’s being coincidental), has followed the line of thinking presented by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in their excessively post-modernist book Empire, which is rife with academic jargon. These directional demands, either individually or combined, would necessitate a revolutionary departure from capitalist social relations – at least according to Trott. Consider, for example, the popular post-modernist call for unconditional basic income, which should not depend on legal status and which requires global implementation in sufficient monetary quantities “to ensure that income becomes permanently de-linked from productivity.” Undoubtedly this is inspired by the communist axiom “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” that has been raised since 1875, but this demand can indeed be implemented under any form of capitalism – at the expense of driving down wages and salary/contract equivalents! Said Paul Cockshott, a co-author of Towards a New Socialism:

At present in most capitalist countries unemployed workers get social security payments which are set at around the bare subsistence minimum. This sets a floor below which wages can not fall, since unemployed people are not going to be willing to give up a subsistence dole for a less than subsistence wage.

If a basic income scheme were introduced in a capitalist economy the basic income provided would again be a bare subsistence minimum. Then, however, it would be worthwhile for a worker to take on a job that paid half the subsistence wage since she would still be getting her basic income and would end up with somewhere between 1 and 1 and a half times the subsistence minimum after tax. But if the employers could hire labour at a net cost to themselves of half subsistence, this would be used to drive down the wages of those already in work.

The net result would be to drive wages lower than the minimum to which they can at present be driven.

All in all it is a very dangerous proposition for the working class but makes good sense from the standpoint of capitalist liberalism.

What, then, of other demands that should necessitate a revolutionary departure from capitalist social relations? Hardt, Negri, and Trott suggested another directional demand worth considering in the sphere of freedom of movement:

Further examples of directional demands could focus on migration, its movements and struggles: ‘For the Right to Remain’, ‘For the Right to Legalisation’, ‘Close All Detention Centres’, or even ‘For the Right to (Equal) Rights’.

This is a very timely directional demand, when considering the scapegoating of immigrants that arises as a result of the increased mobility of labour on a global level, the overly lengthy processing of immigration documents by the various states, and the frequent underemployment of immigrants (if not illegal compensation below subsistence levels). Since the aforementioned “anti-capitalist” social movements have not fully developed the directional programmatic development, a few more directional demands will be considered, both raised (thankfully) by Marxists.

Given the recent hysterical fuss being made in the various bourgeois-capitalist media outlets about corporate welfare measures aimed at the financial measures industry, with many going to the point of reciting “Step Five: centralization of credit in the hands of the state” (quoting the Communist Manifesto in a woefully ignorant manner), it is timely indeed to revisit a similar demand made in The Transitional Program:

In order to create a unified system of investments and credits, along a rational plan corresponding to the interests of the entire people, it is necessary to merge all the banks into a single national institution. Only the expropriation of the private banks and the concentration of the entire credit system in the hands of the state will provide the latter with the necessary actual, i.e., material resources – and not merely paper and bureaucratic resources – for economic planning.

The expropriation of the banks in no case implies the expropriation of bank deposits. On the contrary, the single state bank will be able to create much more favorable conditions for the small depositors than could the private banks. In the same way, only the state bank can establish for farmers, tradesmen and small merchants conditions of favorable, that is, cheap credit. Even more important, however, is the circumstance that the entire economy – first and foremost large-scale industry and transport directed by a single financial staff, will serve the vital interests of the workers and all other toilers.

However, the state-ization of the banks will produce these favorable results only if the state power itself passes completely from the hands of the exploiters into the hands of the toilers.

For this demand to become directional, it should be extended to the transnational level. The monopolization of all central, commercial, and consumer credit in the hands of a single transnational bank under absolute public ownership, while directional, also facilitates the fulfillment of at least two other directional demands (one more obvious than the other): the suppression of all public debts and the end to imperialist conflicts (not just wars) as vehicles for capital accumulation.

[Note: The aforementioned monopolization also precludes acts of legalized predatory lending to the working class. However, I am not sure if this preclusion is something directional or in fact something achievable under bourgeois capitalism.]

One more directional demand should be considered, and this absolutely necessitates a revolutionary departure from even petty-capitalist social relations: The recognition in law that human labour, both manual and manual, and its technological, labour-saving equivalent are the only non-natural sources of value production (as established by Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx) – through the extension of litigation rights to include class-action lawsuits and speedy judgements against all private employers who extract any sort of surplus value and related surplus labour from their workers. Ironically, it was the market-socialist Oskar Lange who stated that, if workers do not move immediately to transform the economy, society would become socialist only in name. This is especially true when workers as a future ruling class consider dealing with the petit-bourgeoisie, as Lenin noted in 1918:

The petty bourgeoisie oppose every kind of state interference, accounting and control, whether it be state capitalist or state socialist. This is an absolutely unquestionable fact of reality, and the root of the economic mistake of the “Left Communists” is that they have failed to understand it. The profiteer, the commercial racketeer, the disrupter of monopoly – these are our principal “internal” enemies, the enemies of the economic measures of Soviet power […] We know that the million tentacles of this petty-bourgeois hydra now and again encircle various sections of the workers, that […] profiteering forces its way into every pore of our social and economic organism. Those who fail to see this show by their blindness that they are slaves of petty-bourgeois prejudices.



REFERENCES:

Transitional Demands Reconsidered by Alistair Mitchell [http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages/Newint/Tranprog.html]

Our Program and the Political Situation by Rosa Luxemburg [http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/12/31.htm]

Walking in the right direction? by Ben Trott [http://www.turbulence.org.uk/index.php?s=fumagali]

Basic income proposal by Paul Cockshott [http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/1994m03/msg00330.htm]

Das Kapital, Volume I by Karl Marx
[http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htm]

Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm]

The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International by Leon Trotsky [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/index.htm]

Programmatic objectives of socialism today by Paul Cockshott [http://21stcenturysocialism.blogspot.com/2008/08/programmatic-objectives-of-socialism.html]

“Left-Wing” Childishness by Vladimir Lenin [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/may/09.htm]

[Yehuda Stern]

There's little point in deciding on transitional demands in general. Transitional demands must be decided on through analyzing what the capitalists can or can't give the workers at any given moment. The original transitional program should only be used as a blueprint from which to learn how to decide on new demands, not as a set of demands applicable at any time.

[mikelepore]

Can a Trotskyist, or anyone for that matter explain to me why Capitalism can't do something like ensure everyone housing? What are the basic things that Capitalism just can't provide? I understand that employment is out of the question, but what about other things?

Capitalism doesn't have any department or function called providing things, much less ensuring important things to everybody. Capitalism is just a pattern of behaviors where some people spend x to buy labor power, spend y to buy tools and materials, have a product made, and sell it for z. if they can arrange situations so that z will exceed x plus y, then they have made a profit. That's the only thing they showed up to do. There was no other objective. Every other outcome is considered irrelevant.

[Post-Something]

There's little point in deciding on transitional demands in general. Transitional demands must be decided on through analyzing what the capitalists can or can't give the workers at any given moment. The original transitional program should only be used as a blueprint from which to learn how to decide on new demands, not as a set of demands applicable at any time.

Thanks, that's all I needed to know :).

Have any Trotskyist groups come up with something for the 21st century?

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ What I have written above shows that, contrary to the hopes of Yehuda Stern, I have yet to hear of any activist-laden Trotskyist group that has actually come up with transitional demands for the 21st century. :(

[BobKKKindle$]

Housing is perhaps not the best example of a transitional demand, as there have been examples of capitalist states which have provided a basic standard of housing for everyone, if only for a short period of time. A better example would be full employment, which could never be attained under capitalism, because the capitalist system is prone to crises which give rise to job shortages, and unemployment also serves a useful purpose for employers as it allows them to maintain downwards pressure on wages by using the threat of scab labour.

Obviously Trotskyist groups do change their transitional demands, because many of the demands that Trotsky originally put forward in the transitional program are no longer relevant to the the current state of capitalism, and conversely there are new demands which Trotsky did not raise. Modern transitional demands include unrestricted abortion access which is unlikely to be granted within the framework of capitalism due to the influence of sexist ideology and the interest of the bourgeoisie in preserving the nuclear family, as well as open borders.

[Yehuda Stern]

What you have written above shows nothing other than the fact that while Marxists would never dream to decide on minimum or transitional demands without them having any real context, neo-Katuskyists do, which fits just fine with their habit of never taking practice into account.

[KC]

neo-Kautskyists? You mean there's more than one?:lol:

[Yehuda Stern]

I think chegitz is another one.

[redguard2009]

I think there is too much focus on transitional demands, and I think pursuit of those demands can in a way "steal the spotlight" from the necessary issue of actual change and transformation. Transitional demands are, in a way, a form of reformism; they can lead to the attainment of a few choice liberties, yes, but they can also detract from the big picture of creating a movement for grandiose, permanent change. Asking for abortion rights, or lower taxes, or better social security, or more jobs, does not equal revolutionary change, and it can lead people to believe on a basic level that capitalism can be "humanified"; as they believe their lives are getting better by making small-scale demands, the need for a single large-scale demand lessens.

However, living in Canada, I see the benefit of small-scale demands. I am very grateful for universal healthcare (a transitional demand of the social democrat movement during the 70s) and wouldn't give it up for a second. I am greatful that schooling here is much cheaper than in the US, though I'm not too happy about the enormous level of taxation we get for these "benefits"..

[Yehuda Stern]

Well, no. Exactly the goal of transitional demands is to raise demands that appeal to the consciousness of struggling workers, and the debate between them and the revolutionary workers would be if they can be achieved without a revolution. Proving that the answer is meant to encourage the workers to support the revolutionary party. This is exactly the way in which transitional demands are supposed to move us from reformist slogans to revolutionary ones. In this sense, it makes no sense to offer better social security as a transitional demand.

[Die Neue Zeit]

What you have written above shows nothing other than the fact that while Marxists would never dream to decide on minimum or transitional demands without them having any real context, neo-Kautskyists do, which fits just fine with their habit of never taking practice into account.

Actually, I was VERY unoriginal with those "directional demands."

The first one, raised by various "social movements" more aggressively than by Trotskyists, goes beyond Bobkindles's remarks on "open borders." "Open borders" are nothing if immigrants (especially skilled ones) get nothing more than underemployment.

The second one, regarding a global-superstate financial monopoly, is merely pushing what has been stated earlier by Marx (and by an oh-so-isolated-in-Mexico Trotsky :rolleyes: ).

The third one has been raised in Venezuela by Heinz Dietrich and his supporters there and abroad, including Paul Cockshott (PM me if you're interested in the e-mail, since for some reason it's not online).



"The program adopted by the German Social Democracy at Erfurt in 1891 divides itself into two parts. In the first place it outlines the fundamental principles on which Socialism is based, and in the second it enumerates the demands which the Social Democracy makes of present day society. The first part tells what Socialists believe; the second how they propose to make their belief effective." (Karl Kautsky, Das Erfurter Programm)