Get With The Programme

A socialist party without a programme is inherently opportunist. Without a framework, day to day activism is just a fight for reforms within the current system. A serious party outlines its goals clearly stating where you mean to start fighting and where you mean to end. The Russian revolutionary Lenin argued that a party programme should have “minimum demands that point to day to day agitation on the needs of the working class but also “maximum demands” that would require a revolution to achieve. 

Immediate proposals on the housing crisis, or the demand for the abolition of the 1990 Industrial Relations Act, are minimum demands. They are things workers need to fight on immediately but they don’t require the overthrow of capitalism to achieve. But we have to be honest with our class - you can win a reform here and there but the system will always take them back. We need to win power. 

For socialists the day to day work among our class must be connected to legitimising a working class revolution. A clear programme helps you avoid the twin evils of ultra left shouting from the sidelines or reformist failure to link day to day agitation to our ultimate goal. 

This battle on two fronts (against ultra leftism and opportunism) can be assisted by a clear party programme and by merging with the advanced workers. You need to fight on both fronts - for clear politics and a working class membership. A party programme isn’t some magical master key that overcomes organisational and political deficits in the working class - those require hard work. A programme defines your intended “line of march” to the class, trains your members how to take their arguments from day to day political debates to the final goal of revolution and draws a line in the sand against ultra leftism and opportunism. It outlines the steps but the steps need to be taken in practice. Winning an argument on paper isn’t the same thing as winning an argument in reality. 

There are many programmes and principles we can take from the history of the revolutionary socialist tradition which could inform the writing of a modern programme. These can help us to understand the role of a party programme. Karl Marx and Frederich Engels published the “Manifesto of the Communist Party” in 1848, just as revolutions broke out on the streets of Paris and Berlin. The Manifesto described the growth of capitalism and the consequent growth of the working class. 

“A spectre is haunting Europe” they began the famous preamble. The year 1848 saw that spectre made flesh as workers threw up barricades in many European cities.  “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” they wrote, before outlining the developing capitalist system and the consequent growth of the working class. 

“The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones… We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange… The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.”

The capitalist class had overthrown the aristocrats and competition forced them to create more powerful machines: “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.” But the growing power of production “conjured up” the potential for crisis and for working class revolt. 

“Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells… But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons - the modern working class - the proletarians.”

They wrote that: “Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class.” The bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie were tied to the capitalist system. One would fight to defend it and although petty bourgeois layers, like peasants or the urban middle classes, would fight capitalism, they would do it with one hand tied behind their backs because they were economically rooted in the system they fought.

There were also classes that could be turned against the working class: “The “dangerous class”, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.”

After giving readers an outline of the development of the working class Marx and Engels outlined some key principles for socialist organising. The Communists “have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.” You could not set yourself against the interests of the class or isolate yourself from the working class. You always represented the movement as a whole, its past, present and future. 

“The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.”

The working class was an international class and socialists were to represent the interests of the movement as a whole. They wrote: “The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.”

Socialists needed to outline the “line of march” - the path forward. It was the duty of socialists to involve themselves in day to day struggles and use the authority they’d won from that work to point out the path ahead, all the way up to the working class taking power. The Manifesto did this by explaining where they were at that time but also why all those struggles must end in a revolution, in the “conquest of political power by the proletariat.”

In the next section they dealt with some of the objections to socialism: “It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us… According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything do not work.” By private property Marx and Engels did not mean the personal property of workers but instead private ownership of the “means of production” - the factories, offices, tools and machinery. 

The class that owned the “means of production” rarely worked and yet lectured the long suffering workers about the danger of “laziness”. The incentive to work under socialism would be increased free time, an abundance of goods and democratic control over your own destiny. If the working class took power it would use some of the following measures to begin to build a different kind of economy, Marx made the following demands:

“Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.” 

Once in power the working class “will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie.” Note the phrase “wrest, by degrees”. The day after the working class took power they would still oversee an economy that was partially capitalist. There would still be classes and money. The point was to have workers in power and then limit the market sector bit by bit. This transitional economy would forge a path to socialism proper, when other nations had taken the same path. 

Next Marx and Engels outlined their attitude to other socialist trends explaining how there was a “feudal socialism” which saw the old aristocracies complaining about capitalism, this was “half lamentation, half lampoon; half an echo of the past, half menace of the future”.

The next rival working class socialists would face was “petty bourgeois socialism”, Marx and Engels argued that: “In countries where modern civilisation has become fully developed, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie, and ever renewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society. The individual members of this class, however, are being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition”.

Like anarchism, this middle class socialism looked back to the simpler relations of the Middle Ages and was therefore: “both reactionary and Utopian.” What they called “German socialism” saw French radical ideas taken over by German thinkers without any act of “translation” demanded by the different social and economic circumstances in both countries. But because the capitalists weren’t yet in power in Germany, this socialist helped the aristocracy.

The “petty bourgeoisie” was also the class foundation of this socialism. Next they dealt with “bourgeois socialism” by which they meant those who wished “for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat.” They wanted capitalism with its “bad sides” removed. But capitalism was one integral system. Then there was “utopian socialism” which preached a better world without any connection to existing struggles: “Such fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when the proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but a fantastic conception of its own position, correspond with the first instinctive yearnings of that class for a general reconstruction of society.”

What attitude should revolutionary socialists take to these other parties and groups? The Manifesto argued that: “The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement.” They were to take part in the day to day battles of the working class for “immediate aims” but they were to “take care of the future of that movement.” 

They argued that they would support the bourgeoisie if they actually challenged the aristocracy in Germany but would “never cease, for a single instant, to instill into the working class the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat”.

“In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.” They were to push forward all movements directed against the system while they brought “to the front” the question of capitalist ownership of the factories, offices and “means of productions” i.e. the “property question”. Class was to be brought to the fore in every social movement.

The Manifesto ended with a call to always tell the truth: “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.” The Manifesto would guide future programmes which would often include a preamble explaining the development of the system, a comment on other trends, a call for revolution and a list of demands.

After the experience of the 1848 wave of European revolutions Marx could add to his picture of how the working class should organise. He gave an address to the Central Committee of the Communist League where Marx argued that “the workers’ party must go into battle with the maximum degree of organization, unity and independence, so that it is not exploited and taken in tow by the bourgeoisie as in 1848… We told you already in 1848, brothers, that the German liberal bourgeoisie would soon come to power and would immediately turn its newly won power against the workers.”

Not only in Germany but in France the bourgeoisie in power turned on the working class. But Marx warned that the middle class or “petty bourgeois” would reward workers with the same betrayal if they led the revolutionary movement: “The treacherous role that the German liberal bourgeoisie played against the people in 1848 will be assumed in the coming revolution by the democratic petty bourgeoisie.” 

These people were calling themselves “socialist” but, Marx wrote: “The republican petty bourgeois, whose ideal is a German federal republic similar to that in Switzerland and who now call themselves ‘red’ and ’social-democratic’ because they cherish the pious wish to abolish the pressure exerted by big capital on small capital, by the big bourgeoisie on the petty bourgeoisie.”

Socialists could work in social movements with the petty bourgeois but had to maintain political independence:  “The relationship of the revolutionary workers’ party to the petty-bourgeois democrats is this: it cooperates with them against the party which they aim to overthrow; it opposes them wherever they wish to secure their own position.”

The petty bourgeois would try to transform the working class movement into a movement for a few temporary and transient reforms to blind the workers to the need for revolution: “However, the democratic petty bourgeois want better wages and security for the workers, and hope to achieve this by an extension of state employment and by welfare measures; in short, they hope to bribe the workers with a more or less disguised form of alms and to break their revolutionary strength by temporarily rendering their situation tolerable.”

If the workers united in a single party with the petty bourgeois Marx argued: “The proletariat would lose all its hard-won independent position and be reduced once more to a mere appendage of official bourgeois democracy. This unity must therefore be resisted in the most decisive manner.” Working class socialists, Marx argued, “must work for the creation of an independent organization of the workers’ party, both secret and open.”

“Their battle-cry”, he wrote, “must be: The Permanent Revolution.” The party of the working class needed to define itself programmatically and in terms of the class composition of the party - it had to be a party made up of class conscious workers. When Marx wrote the Manifesto the term “party” was applied more loosely than we use it today. When he says “our party” he often meant the wider working class movement, like the Chartists, sometimes he meant his own supporters and sometimes the revolution in general. 

Political parties in the modern sense were formed in response to the extension of the vote to classes beyond a narrow ruling class. Parties had to recruit networks of supporters who would win voters and maintain their voter base. Marx left some important programmatic guidelines, although his early programmatic statements were vague, his later critiques of socialist party programmes offer us insights into his evolving views. 

The Eisenach Programme of 1869 was written for a party formed under the leadership of German socialists Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel. It wasn’t as strong as later programmes. In a couple of lines they outlined their demands, starting with the call for a “free people’s state” - an idea Marx would later criticise in his critique of the Gotha programme. This was 1869 and the uprising of Paris workers was to take place two years later in 1871. It was on the basis of the Paris Commune that Marx clarified his ideas from the Manifesto and outlined exactly how the working class should take political power. It wouldn’t be through a “free people’s state” but by dismantling the capitalist state and building real grassroots democracy. 

The Eisenach Programme continued: “The struggle for the emancipation of the working classes is not a struggle for class privileges and prerogatives, but for equal rights and duties and for the abolition of all class rule.” They wrote: “The economic dependence of the worker on the capitalist forms the basis of slavery in every form, and therefore the Social Democratic Party strives to abolish the present mode of production (wage system) and to achieve the full return on labour for every worker through cooperative work.” The full return to the worker was another idea Marx would later criticize as any functioning society would have to deduct a fund from the value created by workers for public transport, a health service and the basic running of society. 

The Eisenach Programme reminded readers the new party would operate “as a branch of the International Workingmen’s Association and joins in its efforts.” They then outlined the minimum demands they would fight on:

“Granting of universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage to all men aged 20” “Establishment of the People’s Militia in place of the standing army.” “Separation of church from state and separation of school from church.” “Abolition of all indirect taxes and introduction of a single income tax and inheritance tax.”

This party manifesto contained: a preamble that outlined the goal was the end of capitalism and then a series of immediate demands the party would fight for day to day. Marx wrote: “In Prussia and the rest of Germany, the past year was distinguished by the formation of trades unions all over the country. At the recent Eisenach Congress the delegates of 150,000 German workmen, from Germany proper, Austria, and Switzerland, have organised a new democratic social party, with a programme literally embodying the leading principles of our Statutes. Debarred by law from forming sections of our Association, they have, nevertheless, formally entered it by resolving to take individual cards of membership “ 

Later the “Eisenachers” agreed to unite with the party of Ferdinand Lassalle. He was a strange character with peculiar ideas. He had formed a party called the “German Workers Association” in 1863 and it had 15,000 members. William Liebknecht had been a member for a while but quit when the party agreed to cooperate with tyrant Otto von Bismark, who Lassalle had made secret deals with.

Lassalle thought that aristocratic criticism of the capitalists put them on the same side as the workers. This was stupid. The workers had an interest in overthrowing feudalism and clearing the way for the battle against capitalism. Lassalle also expressed reformist views arguing the state was an expression of the people. He died in a duel leaving a directionless party with no clear programme. But in a few short years Lassalle had built a working class party of thousands, the first workers’ party in the world. 

Marx and Engels were against amalgamating the adherents of Lassalle with the Eisenachers, They argued the political platform for this unification was not only ambiguous, but also theoretically incorrect. Marx expressed this in his letter to Bracke dated May 5, 1875:

“Apart from this, it is my duty not to give recognition, even by diplomatic silence, to what in my opinion is a thoroughly objectionable programme that demoralises the Party. Every step of an actual movement is more important than a dozen programmes. If it was thus not possible - and contemporary circumstances do not permit this—to go beyond the Eisenach programme, then there should have been concluded an agreement for action against the common enemy. But if a programme of principles is drawn up (instead of postponing this until it has been prepared for by prolonged joint activity), a landmark is erected before the whole world by which it can measure the extent of the party movement.”

The highlighted sentence is often misused by contemporary socialists to indicate opposition to party programmes in general - but in the context of the entire paragraph Marx is revealed as actually saying: unity for a practical end would have been preferable to a bad party programme. He argued that the Marxists and Lassaleans should have engaged in cooperation in united front social movements until a moment arose where political unity could be won on the basis of Marxist principles.

“For the rest, the programme is no good” Marx wrote. His critique of the Gotha Programme of 1875 was hidden by Engels until 1891. Yet Engels wrote in a letter to Bebel explaining his own negative reaction to the unity programme: “To begin with, they adopt the high-sounding but historically false Lassallean dictum: in relation to the working class all other classes are only one reactionary mass. This proposition is true only in certain exceptional instances, for example in the case of a revolution by the proletariat, e.g. the Commune, or in a country in which not only has the bourgeoisie constructed state and society after its own image but the democratic petty bourgeoisie, in its wake, has already carried that reconstruction to its logical conclusion.”

Engels was against those who disregarded divisions between the aristocracy and capitalists, between ruling class reformists and reactionaries. Of course, the working class was the only revolutionary class, but that didn’t mean that every other class, or faction of a class, was equally reactionary. He argued that they should not have dropped “the principle that the workers’ movement is an international one” and “at the very least there should have been no going back on the programme of 1869”. 

Engels wrote: “there is absolutely no mention of the organisation of the working class as a class through the medium of trade unions”. It was vital socialists undertook such work. Engels also took on the concept of “free people’s state” writing that: “All the palaver about the state ought to be dropped, especially after the Commune, which had ceased to be a state in the true sense of the term.” 

He was clear that they were furious with the new programme: “It is such that, should it be adopted, Marx and I could never recognise a new party set up on that basis and shall have to consider most seriously what attitude - public as well as private - we should adopt towards it.” They weren’t willing to sacrifice the programme for numbers. 

Engels wrote: “Generally speaking, less importance attaches to the official programme of a party than to what it does. But a new programme is after all a banner planted in public, and the outside world judges the party by it. Hence, whatever happens there should be no going-back, as there is here, on the Eisenach programme. It should further be considered what the workers of other countries will think of this programme; what impression will be created by this genuflection on the part of the entire German socialist proletariat before Lassalleanism.”

Engels argued that action was always important but a programme was an outline of your party’s intentions and that the Gotha programme had got down on its knees before reformist “Lassalleanism”. Marx’s precise and detailed critique of the Gotha programme showed his passionate opposition to opportunist politics. He started with the programme’s statement that: “Labour is the source of all wealth and all culture.”

Marx replied: “Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labour, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labour power.” The Gotha programme repeated the mistaken words of the Eisenach offering to return the full proceeds of work to the individual worker. Marx explained how this was impossible: “Let us take, first of all, the words “proceeds of labour” in the sense of the product of labour; then the co-operative proceeds of labour are the total social product.” 

Socialist society would need a fund to cover: ”First, cover for replacement of the means of production used up. Second, additional portion for expansion of production. Third, reserve or insurance funds to provide against accidents, dislocations caused by natural calamities.” But socialism would also have to provide education and care for the sick:

“There remains the other part of the total product, intended to serve as means of consumption. Before this is divided among the individuals, there has to be deducted again, from it: First, the general costs of administration not belonging to production… Second, that which is intended for the common satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health services… Third, funds for those unable to work, etc., in short, for what is included under so-called official poor relief today.”

Marx then made an important point about the transitional economy that would exist after a workers’ revolution: “What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.”

The Communist Manifesto had argued that workers would need to rule and then “wrest by degrees” capital from the capitalists. There would be a mixed economy for a time where the workers’ state would encroach on the capitalists and expand the socialist sector. The difference between this economic model and social democratic talk of a mixed economy was the political rule of the working class. Next Marx dealt with the question of tactics. 

The working class was the only truly revolutionary class but that didn’t mean ignoring conflict between the capitalists and aristocrats. The fight for democracy was of interest to workers because it was the most open field upon which to organise: “The bourgeoisie is here conceived as a revolutionary class – as the bearer of large-scale industry – relative to the feudal lords and the lower middle class, who desire to maintain all social positions that are the creation of obsolete modes of production. Thus, they do not form together with the bourgeoisie “only one reactionary mass”.

“On the other hand, the proletariat is revolutionary relative to the bourgeoisie because, having itself grown up on the basis of large-scale industry, it strives to strip off from production the capitalist character that the bourgeoisie seeks to perpetuate. But the Manifesto adds that the “lower middle class” is becoming revolutionary “in view of [its] impending transfer to the proletariat”. From this point of view, therefore, it is again nonsense to say that it, together with the bourgeoisie, and with the feudal lords into the bargain, “form only one reactionary mass” relative to the working class.”

The Gotha programme was eclectic, it was opportunist and ultra left at the same time. Marx mocked the idea that they “proclaimed to the artisan, small manufacturers, etc., and peasants during the last elections: Relative to us, you, together with the bourgeoisie and feudal lords, form one reactionary mass?” It was stupid to group the petty bourgeois peasant, who may on occasion rise against the landlord, in the same category as their landlord. The working class was the truly revolutionary class, but workers needed to learn to exploit divisions between the other classes. 

The programme spoke of brotherhood, which as Marx noted: “stands even infinitely below that of the Free Trade party. “ It didn’t clearly state that German workers were one battalion of a great international worker army. Lassalle also believed in the “iron law of wages” - which said that as the population of workers increased their wages would fall. This was reactionary and based on the population theories of Malthus. It shifted blame for low wages from capitalism to population and was utterly reactionary and is still used by right wingers and fascists to this day.

Marx next mocked the idea that the capitalist state could give aid to co-operatives and that this was a path to socialism: “Instead of arising from the revolutionary process of transformation of society, the “socialist organization of the total labour” “arises” from the “state aid” that the state gives to the producers’ co-operative societies and which the state, not the workers, “calls into being”. It is worthy of Lassalle’s imagination that with state loans one can build a new society just as well as a new railway!”

The next section saw Marx cut down the lack of clarity around the nature of the capitalist state: “The German Workers’ party strives for “the free state” said the programme. Marx asked: “Free state - what is this?” He wrote: “The German Workers’ party - at least if it adopts the program - shows that its socialist ideas are not even skin-deep… “Present-day society” is capitalist society… the “present-day state” changes with a country’s frontier. It is different in the Prusso-German Empire from what it is in Switzerland, and different in England from what it is in the United States. The “present-day state” is therefore a fiction… in spite of their motley diversity of form, all have this in common: that they are based on modern bourgeois society, only one more or less capitalistically developed. They have, therefore, also certain essential characteristics in common.”

The capitalist state was a machine for the suppression of the working class. It had to be broken before workers could rule and implement the maximum programme. Marx was explicit in stating that the revolution would see democratic mass assemblies of workers take power and dictate to the rich, holding down counter revolutions by force. This rule of the workers’ assemblies he called the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” This phrase meant real democracy, mass assemblies of workers would elect delegates to a workers’ parliament and through emergency laws hold down any attempt at counter revolution by the rich minority. 

Marx wrote: “Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Today, writing after the experience of 20th century dictatorships, we should use different ways of outlining the concept of a workers’ state. But Marx complained that there was no mention of this at all in the party’s programme: “Now the program does not deal with this nor with the future state of communist society” and wrote how many the “political demands contain nothing beyond the old democratic litany familiar to all: universal suffrage, direct legislation, popular rights, a people’s militia, etc. They are a mere echo of the bourgeois People’s party, of the League of Peace and Freedom. They are all demands which, insofar as they are not exaggerated in fantastic presentation, have already been realized.”

Why demand democratic reforms that only a workers’ republic could deliver and yet not mention the workers’ republic? A party programme shouldn’t sew illusions or call for the impossible. Only the overthrow of the German state could deliver those demands. 

“Since one has not the courage - and wisely so, for the circumstances demand caution - to demand the democratic republic, as the French workers’ programs under Louis Philippe and under Louis Napoleon did, one should not have resorted, either, to the subterfuge, neither “honest” nor decent, of demanding things which have meaning only in a democratic republic from a state which is nothing but a police-guarded military despotism, embellished with parliamentary forms, alloyed with a feudal admixture, already influenced by the bourgeoisie, and bureaucratically carpentered, and then to assure this state into the bargain that one imagines one will be able to force such things upon it “by legal means”.

Marx ended with the phrase: “Dixi et salvavi animam meam. [I have spoken and saved my soul.]” The critique of the Gotha programme was a master class in detailed criticism of a party programme and showed how Marx passionately opposed theoretical looseness. He would soon get a chance to write a party programme - he wrote the programme of the French Social Democrats. 

This document was drawn up in May 1880, when French workers’ leader Jules Guesde came to visit Marx in London. The Preamble was dictated by Marx, while the other two parts of minimum political and economic demands were formulated by Marx and Guesde together, with assistance from Engels and French socialist Paul Lafargue

The programme was adopted, with a few amendments, by the founding congress of the “Parti Ouvrier” at Le Havre in November 1880. Marx saw the minimum part of the programme as a practical means of agitation around demands that were achievable within the framework of capitalism but which won socialists authority within the working class. Without this authority the maximum demands would mean nothing. 

The ultra left Jules Guesde opposed the inclusion of the minimum demands and wanted only maximum demands. This was foolish. If socialists stood aside from the everyday battles of the working class they would lose all credibility and their call for revolution would become abstract. They would fail to build a path, or illustrate a “line of march”, from the minimum demands to the maximum. Marx accused Guesde and Lafargue of “revolutionary phrase-mongering” and of denying the value of struggles for reforms as a path to revolution, Marx made his famous remark that, if their politics represented Marxism then: “ce qu’il y a de certain c’est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste” (“what is certain is that I myself am not a Marxist”).

Without action on minimum demands workers would think that these socialists were all talk. Marx’s short programme started with a preamble that said: 

“Considering, That the emancipation of the productive class is that of all human beings without distinction of sex or race; That the producers can be free only when they are in possession of the means of production. That there are only two forms under which the means of production can belong to them:

ONE: The individual form which has never existed in a general state and which is increasingly eliminated by industrial progress;

TWO: The collective form the material and intellectual elements of which are constituted by the very development of capitalist society;

Considering, That this collective appropriation can arise only from the revolutionary action of the productive class - or proletariat - organized in a distinct political party; That a such an organization must be pursued by all the means the proletariat has at its disposal including universal suffrage which will thus be transformed from the instrument of deception that it has been until now into an instrument of emancipation”

In a few lines Marx has stated that the working class needed to take over the “means of production” and that that could only be done through “revolutionary action” by the working class organised in a “distinct political party.” Engels described this section as “a masterpiece of cogent argumentation rarely encountered, clearly and succinctly written for the masses; I myself was astonished by this concise formulation”. 

The French programme continued: “The French socialist workers, in adopting as the aim of their efforts the political and economic expropriation of the capitalist class and the return to the community of all the means of production, have decided, as a means of organization and struggle, to enter the elections with the following immediate demands”. The programme argued for minimum political demands such as:

“Abolition of all laws over the press, meetings and associations and above all the law against the International Working Men’s Association.

Removal of the budget of the religious orders and the return to the nation of the ‘goods said to be mortmain, movable and immovable’ (decree by the Commune of 2 April 1871), including all the industrial and commercial annexes of these corporations; Suppression of the public debt; Abolition of standing armies and the general arming of the people; The Commune to be master of its administration and its police.”

The demand to abolish the army and for the arming of the people featured in many minimum socialist programmes and seems very radical to us today. The call to use the wealth of the Church for public good resonated with French workers as it would with workers in Ireland today. After this political section the economic section of the minimum demands then followed which included the following:

“A reduction of the working day from eight to six hours; Legal minimum wage, determined each year according to the local price of food, by a workers’ statistical commission; Equal pay for equal work, for workers of both sexes; Responsibility of society for the old and the disabled; Responsibility of the bosses in the matter of accidents; Annulment of all the contracts that have alienated public property (banks, railways, mines, etc.), and the exploitation of all state-owned workshops to be entrusted to the workers who work there; Abolition of all indirect taxes and transformation of all direct taxes into a progressive tax on incomes.”

That was it. The whole programme could have been printed on one A4 page and distributed to workers across France. It laid out the need for revolution, the ultimate goal of the socialists and had clear minimum demands that were the starting point of the fight against the system. Marx was laying out a method, later utilised by Lenin, to rouse workers by engaging in immediate day to day struggles in order to then promote the maximum demands, to fight for the abolition of capitalism. 

“That this collective appropriation can arise only from the revolutionary action of the productive class – or proletariat” Marx wrote in the preamble. There was no doubt that the list of reforms called for by the minimum section could only be secured by the fight to make the working class the world’s first majority ruling class and that that could only happen through revolution. The French programme became a template to follow for subsequent party programmes. As Social Democratic parties grew so did their opportunist wings. The opportunists were trying to water down the party programmes. 

In June 1891 it was the turn of Engels to criticize the new Erfurt Programme of the German Social Democrats, he wrote: “In general it suffers from the attempt to combine two things that are uncombinable: a programme and a commentary on the programme as well… To my view the programme should be as short and precise as possible.” The programme was evasive on key questions like the necessity of a revolution to put the working class in charge. “The political demands of the draft have one great fault. It lacks precisely what should have been said”, Engels wrote. 

Without talking about workers’ power many of the demands made no sense: “It is an obvious absurdity to wish “to transform all the instruments of labour into common property” on the basis of this constitution and the system of small states sanctioned by it, on the basis of the “union” between Prussia and Reuss-Greiz-Schleiz-Lobenstein, in which one has as many square miles as the other has square inches.”

You could only “transform all the instruments of labour into common property” after a revolution. If you didn’t define the nature of the revolutionary workers’ state then it was actually ridiculous to talk about “common property” under the reactionary Prussian state, or any capitalist state for that matter. Engels understood the call for a workers’ republic was illegal and wrote: “To touch on that is dangerous, however. Nevertheless, somehow or other, the thing has to be attacked. How necessary this is is shown precisely at the present time by opportunism, which is gaining ground in a large section of the Social-Democratic press.”

The programme was a chance to define the party’s political line and to set boundaries. Engels wanted a programme that fought opportunism: “These are attempts to convince oneself and the party that “present-day society is developing towards socialism” without asking oneself whether it does not thereby just as necessarily outgrow the old social order and whether it will not have to burst this old shell by force, as a crab breaks its shell.”

When the German party did talk about socialism it was kept vague. Engels argued against this: “In the long run such a policy can only lead one’s own party astray. They push general, abstract political questions into the foreground, thereby concealing the immediate concrete questions, which at the moment of the first great events, the first political crisis automatically pose themselves. What can result from this except that at the decisive moment the party suddenly proves helpless and that uncertainty and discord on the most decisive issues reign in it because these issues have never been discussed?”

Revolution was a concrete question - if it was never discussed it would just lead to confusion and defeat when the revolution came along. Marx and Engels had long argued Communists had to be ahead of the class and understand the “line of march” - the programme was a chance to illustrate that line of march and educate the working class. Engels was for explaining the Paris Commune of 1871 to German workers as “the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat”, he wrote: “First. If one thing is certain it is that our party and the working class can only come to power under the form of a democratic republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the Great French Revolution has already shown.”

Despite the illegality of such a call Engels argued they should have found a way to suggest that a revolution was required that would put all power in the hands of the people: “However, the question of the republic could possibly be passed by. What, however, in my opinion should and could be included is the demand for the concentration of all political power in the hands of the people’s representatives. That would suffice for the time being if it is impossible to go any further.”

If you couldn’t talk about workers’ power directly then they should have used a different phrase that represented the same concept. But if you were free to talk about it directly then you should. The omission of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” even in a disguised form (as suggested by Engels) was “no accident” Lenin later noted, writing: “The Erfurt Programme says nothing about the dictatorship of the proletariat and history has proved that this was not due to chance.” The opportunists wanted to make sure the programme was vague on this point. The final draft of the Erfurt Programme started with a preamble which outlined the general development of capitalism, the formation of the working class and the role of the socialists:

“Ever greater becomes the number of proletarians, ever more massive the army of excess workers, ever more stark the opposition between exploiters and the exploited, ever more bitter the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, which divides modern society into two hostile camps… For the proletariat and the sinking middle classes - petty bourgeoisie and farmers – an increase in the insecurity of their existence, of misery, of pressure, of oppression, of degradation, of exploitation.

Only the transformation of the capitalist private ownership of the means of production – land and soil, pits and mines, raw materials, tools, machines, means of transportation – into social property and the transformation of the production of goods into socialist production carried on by and for society can cause the large enterprise and the constantly growing productivity of social labor to change for the hitherto exploited classes from a source of misery and oppression into a source of the greatest welfare.”

It was longer than the French programme but shorter than the Manifesto. The programme argued against anyone who would limit the development of the consciousness of the working class: “It is the task of the Social Democratic Party to shape the struggle of the working class into a conscious and unified one and to point out the inherent necessity of its goals.”

This was an important point. It was the duty of socialists to bring the rest of the working class movement to consciousness of its goals. Anything that stood in the way of developing working class consciousness was to be fought. It was on this basis that Lenin took on opportunist trends in Russia when they argued that strikes and struggle alone would automatically develop working class consciousness. Lenin could point to the party programme and state that those trends had placed themselves outside the party with their arguments. The Erfurt Programme continued, listing immediate demands:

“Proceeding from these principles, the German Social Democratic Party demands, first of all: Universal, equal, and direct suffrage with secret ballot in all elections

Education of all to bear arms. Militia in the place of the standing army. Determination by the popular assembly on questions of war and peace. Abolition of all laws that place women at a disadvantage Abolition of all laws that limit or suppress the free expression of opinion”

Any suppression of freedom of speech could be turned against the socialists. They also demanded “Free medical care”, “taxation” of the rich and for “a normal working day not to exceed eight hours.” In 1899 when Lenin drafted a party programme for Russian socialists he outlined why it was necessary to have a clear programme: 

“It goes without saying that “every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programmes,” as Karl Marx said. But neither Marx nor any other theoretician or practical worker in the Social-Democratic movement has ever denied the tremendous importance of a programme for the consolidation and consistent activity of a political party.”

A party programme, Lenin wrote, “must formulate our basic views; precisely establish our immediate political tasks; point out the immediate demands that must show the area of agitational activity; give unity to the agitational work, expand and deepen it, thus raising it from fragmentary partial agitation for petty, isolated demands to the status of agitation for the sum total of Social-Democratic demands.”

The programme would unite all their partial campaigning into a coherent political whole. It would also illustrate their politics to the masses: “Lastly, a programme is urgently necessary because Russian public opinion is very often most profoundly mistaken in respect of the real tasks and methods of action of the Russian Social-Democrats.” 

“A Draft Programme of the Russian Social-Democrats,” was published by the Emancipation of Labour group as early as 1885. Lenin wrote about this draft programme: “Despite the fact that it was published almost 15 years ago, it is our opinion that, by and large, it adequately serves its   purpose and is on the level of present-day Social-Democratic theory.”

Lenin then explained exactly what aspects of the old draft were useful: “The draft designates precisely that class which alone, in Russia as in other countries, is capable of being an independent fighter for socialism - the working class, the “industrial proletariat”; it states the aim which this class must set itself - “the conversion of all means and objects of production into social property,” “the abolition of commodity production” and “its replacement by a new system of social production” - “the communist revolution””.

The draft explained that the working class was the only class to be trusted, set out the aims of the working class - “the abolition of commodity production” - and called for “communist revolution”. The old draft programme also indicated the need for a party and that the Russians had to overthrow the Tsar. The programme “indicates the necessity for the formation of “a revolutionary working-class party” and specifies “its first political task” - “the overthrow of absolutism”; it shows the “means of political struggle” and formulates its basic demands… All these elements are, in our opinion, absolutely essential to a programme of the Social- Democratic working-class party” wrote Lenin.  

There needed to be some slight changes in the structural character of the programme. “Let us try to note which of these changes of detail we deem advisable”. Lenin wanted to emphasize that the working class was growing in power: “to bring into the foreground and emphasise more strongly the process of economic development that is engendering the material and spiritual conditions for the Social-Democratic working-class movement, and the class struggle of the proletariat which the Social-Democratic Party sets itself the aim of organising.”

The development of giant factories was strengthening the class, as was the growing strike movement. The party set itself the task of organising this power. The working class weren’t just victims - the working class was the revolutionary class, the working class was strong, the workers would overthrow the Tsar and capitalism. The workers weren’t victims to be pitied - they were the class that would liberate all.

Lenin next argued that the preamble should contain: “an outline of the fundamental tendency of capitalism - the splitting of the people into a bourgeoisie and a proletariat, the growth of ‘the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation.’ These famous words of Marx are repeated in the second paragraph of the Erfurt Programme of the German Social - Democratic Party, and the critics that are grouped about Bernstein have recently made particularly violent attacks precisely against this point.”

The programme should contain the points most unpalatable to the German reformists, argued Lenin. On the Erfurt Programme as a whole Lenin wrote: “From what has been said above it is clear to everyone that we consider it necessary to make changes in the draft of the Emancipation of Labour group that will bring the programme of the Russian Social-Democrats closer to that of the German. We are not in the least afraid to say that we want to imitate the Erfurt Programme: there is nothing bad in imitating what is good”.

Questions of day to day tactics and campaigning should not be included in the programme, Lenin argued. He wrote: “The programme should leave the question of means open, allowing the choice of means to the militant organisations and to Party congresses that determine the tactics of the Party. Questions of tactics, however, can hardly be introduced into the programme (with the exception of the most important questions, questions of principle, such as our attitude to other fighters against the autocracy). Questions of tactics will be discussed by the Party newspaper as they arise and will be eventually decided at Party congresses.”

The need to regularly discuss tactics wasn’t an excuse to constantly re-open debates about principles. The programme was there to outline socialist principles and the line of march from current agitation to the coming revolution. Lenin’s draft began with an overview of Russian capitalism:  “Big factories are developing in Russia with ever-growing rapidity, ruining the small handicraftsman and peasants, turning them into propertyless workers… the big factories are creating a special class of workers which is enabled to wage a struggle against capital.”

This growing worker movement in Russia was defined as part of an international army of workers: “The movement of the Russian working class is, according to its character and aims, part of the international (Social Democratic) movement of the working class of all countries”.

Lenin wrote that the aim of the party was to “assist this struggle of the Russian working class by developing the class consciousness of the workers.” Lenin was loyal to the party programme when he wrote “What Is To Be Done?” as a polemic against all those who would play down the need to create worker leaders and to bring politics to the everyday struggles of the working class. Those who refused to develop the class consciousness of the working class had put themselves outside the programme. Lenin’s later proposal on membership of the party stated that: “A member of the RSDLP is one who accepts its programme”. 

In later years when Lenin was put on trial by the Menshevik dominated central committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party he argued that his polemics against them were justified because they had placed themselves outside the party programme. Lenin argued that: “Criticism within the limits of the principles of the Party Programme must be quite free… not only at party meetings, but also at public meetings… Such criticism, or such “agitation”… cannot be prohibited.” The party programme set the limits of debate but within those limits public debate was to be freely undertaken, as long as it didn’t disrupt the unity of a particular call to action.

For the workers Lenin’s minimum demands included: “1) An eight-hour working day; 2) prohibition of night-work and prohibition of the employment of children under 14 years of age; 3) uninterrupted rest periods, for every worker, of no less than 36 hours a week; 4) extension of factory legislation” For the peasants the demands included the abolition of land redemption payments (the Tsar had forced the poor peasants to pay landlords for the allotments assigned to them - often at vastly inflated prices!)

In election campaigns the Bolsheviks took 3 demands from the programme and made them their “three whales” - the demands were: the 8 hour day for the workers, land for the peasants and a Constituent Assembly. The connected these immediate demands to the necessity of overthrowing the Tsar.

Lenin explained the structure of his programme draft: “Part one sets forth all the tenets from which the remaining parts follow”, this was an overview of the position of the working class in society and the need for a revolution. He wrote: “Part two sets forth the party’s aim and indicates the party’s relation to other political trends in Russia” and “Part three contains the party’s minimum demands”. 

He started with an overview, then listed the party’s aim and relation to other political groupings and finally listed their minimum demands grouped in three sections: for democratic reforms, for the workers and for the peasants. Lenin later returned to the draft programme to criticise a draft made by veteran Russian socialist Plekhanov. Lenin made sure this draft didn’t omit the need for revolution writing: “To effect this social revolution the proletariat must win political power, which will make it master of the situation and enable it to remove all obstacles along the road to its great goal. In this sense the dictatorship of the proletariat is an essential political condition of the social revolution.” 

Without political power reforms would be rolled back by any ruling class. Socialists had to be honest with the working class and clarify that reforms were only secure when the workers took power. Lenin criticised Plekhanov for removing this from his draft: “The recognition of the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat is most closely and inseparably bound up with the thesis of the Communist Manifesto that the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class.” 

Plekhanov’s draft was “not a programme of a party engaged in a practical struggle… it is rather a programme for students.” It was too “abstract” and seemed intended “for a series of lectures” not as the programme of a militant party. At the end of the 1890s James Connolly also sat down to write a programme. The Irish Socialist Republican Party’s programme began with a call for rebellion: “The great appear great to us only because we are on our knees; LET US RISE.”

Connolly first outlined the overall aim of the party was the establishment of a socialist republic where all the factories, offices, farms, tools and machinery were democratically run by workers and agricultural workers: “Establishment of AN IRISH SOCIALIST REPUBLIC based upon the public ownership by the Irish people of the land, and instruments of production, distribution and exchange. Agriculture to be administered as a public function, under boards of management elected by the agricultural population and responsible to them and to the nation at large. All other forms of labour necessary to the well-being of the community to be conducted on the same principles.”

Next Connolly listed the immediate minimum demands the party would campaign on, he wrote: “As a means of organising the forces of the Democracy in preparation for any struggle which may precede the realisation of our ideal, of paving the way for its realisation, of restricting the tide of emigration by providing employment at home, and finally of palliating the evils of our present social system, we work by political means to secure the following measures:

1. Nationalisation of railways and canals.
2. Abolition of private banks and money-lending institutions and establishments of state banks, under popularly elected boards of directors, issuing loans at cost.
3. Establishment at public expense of rural depots for the most improved agricultural machinery, to be lent out to the agricultural population at a rent covering cost and management alone.
4. Graduated income tax on all incomes over #400 per annum in order to provide funds for pensions to the aged, infirm and widows and orphans.
5. Legislative restriction of hours of labour to 48 per week and establishment of a minimum wage.
6. Free maintenance for all children.
7. Gradual extension of the principle of public ownership and supply to all the necessaries of life.
8. Public control and management of National schools by boards elected by popular ballot for that purpose alone.
9. Free education up to the highest university grades.
10. Universal suffrage.”

The socialist republic would also end the rule of the Empire: “That the subjection of one nation to another, as of Ireland to the authority of the British Crown, is a barrier to the free political and economic development of the subjected nation, and can only serve the interests of the exploiting classes of both nations. That, therefore, the national and economic freedom of the Irish people must be sought in the same direction, viz., the establishment of an Irish Socialist Republic.”

He ended with a call to use parliamentary influence to organise, educate and discipline the revolutionary forces of the working class: “That the conquest by the Social Democracy of political power in Parliament, and on all public bodies in Ireland, is the readiest and most effective means whereby the revolutionary forces may be organised and disciplined to attain that end.”

Engels and Lenin would have demanded more precise definitions in a programme but Connolly’s revolutionary intentions still come through. The whole programme and listed demands took up one side of a small sheet of paper. Like Lenin and Marx, Connolly knew it had to be simple and clear to reach a working class audience. It wasn’t a lecture for students, it was a programme that called workers to action. Just before the 1917 October Revolution Lenin’s Bolsheviks discussed a new party programme, Lenin outlined the points that had been made in the preamble to the old programme:

1. The labour movement has long since become international. We are one of its contingents.

2. The final goal of the movement is determined by the course of development of bourgeois society. The point of departure is that the means of production are privately owned and the proletariat is propertyless.

3. The growth of capitalism. The crowding out of the small producers.

4. The growth of exploitation (female labour, the reserve labour army, etc.).

5. Crises.

6. The progress of technology; the growth of inequality.

7. Growing struggle on the part of the proletariat. Material conditions for the replacement of capitalism by socialism.

8. The proletarian social revolution.

9. Its premise - the dictatorship of the proletariat.

10. The task of the Party - to lead the struggle of the proletariat for the social revolution.”

He wanted an additional point, he wrote: “I add another point: 11. Capitalism has developed to its highest stage (imperialism), and the era of the proletarian revolution has now set in… We must draw our conclusions on the chief question which should, according to the unanimous decision of all Bolsheviks, be primarily dealt with and assessed in the new programme—the question of imperialism.”

Lenin rejected the call to remove the minimum programme: “Here we at once encounter the ostensibly “very radical” but really very groundless proposal of Comrades N. Bukharin and V. Smirnov to discard the minimum programme in toto. The division into maximum and minimum programmes is out of date, they claim. Since we speak of a transition to socialism there is no need for it. No minimum programmes; our programme must indicate measures for the transition to socialism.”

“But we must not boast when riding to battle, we must not discard the minimum programme, for this would be an empty boast: we do not wish to “demand anything from the bourgeoisie”, we wish to realise everything ourselves, we do not wish to work on petty details within the framework of bourgeois society. This would be an empty boast, because first of all we must win power, which has not yet been done. We must first carry out the measures of transition to socialism, we must continue our revolution until the world socialist revolution is victorious, and only then, “returning from battle “, may we discard the minimum programme as of no further   use.”

The requirement to fight on minimum demands was an obligation that every socialist needed to take seriously until socialism had conquered the world. Only then, Lenin argued, was the minimum programme “of no further use”. Lenin was in full agreement with Marx on that.

In 1920 the rules for a party’s entry into the Communist International also offered programmatic guidance, insisting that: “Day-by-day propaganda and agitation must be genuinely communist in character… The dictatorship of the proletariat should not be discussed merely as a stock phrase to be learned by rote; it should be popularised in such a way that the practical facts systematically dealt with in our press day by day will drive home to every rank-and-file working man and working woman, every soldier and peasant, that it is indispensable to them.”

The need for a revolutionary workers’ state “should not be discussed merely as a stock phrase” but had to be “popularised” to drive it home to every “rank-and-file working man and working woman.” All parties were required to draw up a new Communist programme: “It is the duty of parties which have still kept their old Social-Democratic programmes to revise them as speedily as possible and draw up new communist programmes in conformity with the specific conditions in their respective countries, and in the spirit of Communist International decisions.”

The Russian revolution was isolated and no revolutionary breakthrough came in the economically advanced nations like Germany. When Russian socialist Leon Trotsky was exiled from Russia and fled to Mexico he was isolated from the working class and this weakened his politics. His famous “transitional programme” suffered from this weakness. 

Leon Trotsky wrote in 1938: “It is necessary to help the masses in the process of daily struggle to find the bridge between present demands and the socialist programme of the revolution.” This is obviously a task that all revolutionaries should be engaged in – “building a bridge” from today’s struggles to the future revolution. Lenin did this though the minimum maximum method. The bridge was an organisation of workers armed with a clear programme.

But Lenin also fiercely argued against those who implied that merely fighting on day to day issues would automatically bring workers to a revolutionary consciousness. This raises a clear problem with Trotsky’s approach – the implication of the transitional demand method was that the demand itself would be enough, combined with the force of apocalyptic circumstances, to create a conscious minority of workers.

Trotsky wrote: “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.”

The conscious revolutionary minority should find demands that are compatible with the consciousness of “wide layers of the working class” but at the same time “unalterably” lead to revolutionary conclusions? Demands that are compatible with “wide layers” of the working class are going to inevitably be minimum demands, reformist demands – as Karl Marx pointed out: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.”

How could a demand be popular with “wide layers” and “unalterably” lead to revolution at the same time? Trotsky wrote that the transitional demands were necessary because of the “maturity of the objective revolutionary conditions” and there was a contrast between this and the “immaturity of the proletariat and its vanguard”. So he admitted that even the leading sections of the workers did not yet have a socialist consciousness and that the transitional demand was supposed to build a bridge between this confused and fractured vanguard and the even more confused masses. 

The whole scenario smacked of desperation – he wrote that transitional demands themselves would inevitably “lead to revolution but also to the masses”. Trotsky even admitted that the transitional programme didn’t remove the necessity of the minimum programme saying: “The Fourth International does not discard the program of the old “minimal” demands to the degree to which these have preserved at least part of their vital forcefulness. Indefatigably, it defends the democratic rights and social conquests of the workers.”

So we must have a minimum programme, a halfway house transitional programme and the need to articulate our maximum programme! What a mess he created! Rather than building a bridge from present demands to the future the transitional method obscured the path ahead. Minimum demands are put to the capitalist system. Maximum demands are implemented by the workers in power (and illustrate those plans to workers before we get there). There is a clear path from one to the other. We fight the system but no minimum demands are secure until the workers are in power. Once in power we implement the maximum programme. 

Trotsky proposed a “sliding scale of wages” – certainly popular among the masses but in a US economy booming during New Deal pre-war mobilisations, something that was not exactly unrealisable. A moderate demand. Next he proposed “factory committees” – he said that these would lead to the establishment of workplace soviets - workers’ councils. Not a bad demand but realisation would depend on the specific circumstances of the country in question and full realisation – transforming factory committees into soviets would only take place in a revolution and at the call of revolutionaries. 

Trotsky had written back in 1924 that: “It must not be forgotten that in our country the soviets grew up in the “democratic” stage of the revolution, becoming legalized, as it were, at that stage, and subsequently being inherited and utilized by us. This will not be repeated in the proletarian revolutions of the West. There, in most cases, the soviets will be created in response to the call of the communists; and they will consequently be created as the direct organs of proletarian insurrection.”

Other transitional demands he made, like the nationalisation of key industries and the formation of one state bank, are part of the standard minimum demand toolbox of most left parties. They hold no special power. They would not “unalterably” lead to revolution. Then he called for the formation of worker militias! Was this a demand that was really popular among broad masses? It had formed the minimum demands of many Social Democratic parties, particularly in countries like France and Germany. 

It certainly would have brought Trotsky’ supporters into conflict with the state. Even at the time of writing in 1938 the left arming groups of workers would have been seen as a prelude to socialist revolution and so it did not fulfil Trotsky’s own criteria for a “transitional” demand – one that was “acceptable to broad masses” and also led to revolution. In Russia in 1917 the call to arm the workers was a very different call to saying the same thing in the USA of the 1930s. The question of when to raise such a call was a tactical one. 

Another demand he wanted his followers to put out was the call for a “workers and farmers government” – similar to current calls for a left government. But he makes some highly problematic formulations to justify this demand. He says: “If the Mensheviks (Russian reformists) and SRs (radical peasant party) had actually broken with the Kadets (bourgeois liberals) and with foreign imperialism then the workers and peasant’s government created by them could only have hastened and facilitated the dictatorship of the proletariat”

If the petty bourgeois reformists in Russia hadn’t been reformists then the reformists wouldn’t have done what they, as reformists, did? This is just plain stupid. The Provisional Government in Russia needed to be overthrown and replaced by the workers’ assemblies. The Mensheviks in the Provisional Government couldn’t have been forced to be something other than what they were - petty bourgeois tailists of the rich. No amount of external pressure can turn wafers into the body of Christ or wine into blood. Trotsky was calling for miracles.

In “completely exceptional circumstances the petty bourgeois parties may go further than they wish” Trotsky argued in the 1930s. The job of socialists was to elect a government with petty bourgeois elements and force them to go further than they’d wish to? Rubbish. This shows how Trotsky’s transitional demands were based not just on an automatic progression from reformist demand to revolutionary consciousness but also on a false theory of how reformist leaders act in a revolutionary situation. The petty bourgeois would stab the revolution in the back, as the Mensheviks in Russia did. They moved to the right under the impact of the revolution, not to the left. 

The now defunct International Socialist Organisation of the US claimed that the Greek left party Syriza were the fulfilment of Trotsky’s transitional method: “Syriza’s programme recalls what Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky described as “transitional politics” – when, in a period of prolonged economic crisis, serious demands of the working class can lead to a major confrontation with the capitalist class”. That didn’t happen. Syriza implemented austerity and the far left inside the party did nothing to stop them. 

It wasn’t new either. The forerunners of the Socialist Party in Ireland and in Britain, the Militant Tendency, had called for a Labour Party government to take power in Britain and “nationalise the commanding heights” and that such a government, made up of Labour Party hacks and union bureaucrats, would trigger a revolution. The “League for the 5th International”  is still pushing the transitional method to this day, as is the Rise network in People Before Profit. This allows Rise to call for a left government and pretend that they’re really calling for a revolution. 

The 5th international’s “Manifesto For Socialist Revolution” contains many demands, like Trotsky’s “sliding scale of wages”, which are minimum demands. They also criticize those who “stood aside” and didn’t join Syriza. For all the good that would have done. They call to “expropriate the rich” - great but who is to do this? Are they demanding that current capitalist governments do it? Because none will. Their demands are a hodge podge of minimum and maximum demands mixed together and they blur the distinction between capitalist power and workers’ power with talk of a “workers and farmers government”. 

The dominant tendency in People Before Profit, the Socialist Workers Network, have traditionally rejected the transitional method. But their alternative is just as fatalistic. They engage in programmatic nihilism. They say programmes don’t matter, action does. While groups like the Socialist Party made a fetish out of the transitional programme, the SWN rejected all programmes. One said “this map made in 1938 is perfect!” while the other said “we reject all maps! This means that they engage in day to day work but don’t link that work to a Marxist framework. 

They often talk about linking community work with “the big picture” but by that they mean the social movement capturing attention at any given moment. Community work on minimum demands linked with the tailing of this week’s global issue is not the same as connecting minimum actions and demands to the real “big picture” - the need for a revolution. As I wrote at the start - a party without a programme is inherently opportunist because the lack of framework allows the tailing of anything that comes along. 

We have to actively set about winning a class conscious minority to socialism by taking an active approach to articulating programmatic demands within broader movements. To do this both the transitional method and the programmatic nihilism of the SWN fail. A party programme outlines our intentions, illustrates the line of march and delimits the boundaries of the party. The boundaries of a socialist organisation should be set programmatically and by the class make up of the party. You need to fight on both fronts, form and content. 

A programme also trains every member in articulating the minimum and maximum demands. Social Democratic parties have made false promises to workers for decades. That’s no excuse to make no promises. We need to say “we mean to start here and march here!” Only the Red Network wants to return to the working class methods of Marx, Engels and Lenin - but make them relevant for the working class in 21st Century Ireland. If you agree then join us. There’s work to be done.