03.04.2025

Minimum demands are maximal

Let us not understate our radicalism or drive ourselves into sterile propagandism. Mike Macnair reports on the latest meeting of Forging Communist Unity

Forging Communist Unity met online on March 30, for a fairly short meeting. Ed Potts and Nick Wrack attended for Talking About Socialism, Jack Conrad and myself for the CPGB, and Sam Turner for the pro-talks wing of Prometheus. Comrade Farzad Kamangar took notes for the CPGB.

The main subject of the meeting was a continuation of our discussion at the March 8 meeting of the possible programmatic basis for unity. We had already identified at this meeting that both the length of the CPGB’s Draft programme and indeed the need for a minimum programme as such, as opposed to a general statement of aims, were contentious issues.

Comrade Conrad gave a brief introduction to the CPGB’s conception. We follow the approach of classical social democracy, in combining demands for political democracy with immediate economic and social demands. These are not minimum, in the sense of the minimum that can be achieved under capitalism: they are rather the maximum that can be achieved under capitalism. We distinguish this from the trade unionist/workplace/sectional approach, on the one hand, and the idea that the party urges only the taking of political power, on the other. It is vital to prepare the working class as a future ruling class - not just fighting for proletarian interests, but also addressing the state it lives under and its place in global politics. We also aim to neutralise or win over sections of the middle classes. As far as the design of the minimum economic demands is concerned, these aim neither for current popularity nor for ‘affordability’. They pose the question of workers having the right under capitalism to a real life and cultural development. They are in this respect demands for minimum based on needs.

Questions

Comrade Turner raised two short questions. The problem is how to decide what goes in to a minimum programme. On the one hand, he thought that the role of lobbyists in capitalist rule was an absence; on the other, reading the CPGB’s Draft programme tended to lead to suggestions to add things (though we had in previous discussions thought it was too long).

Comrade Wrack made a much longer contribution against the CPGB’s minimum programme. In the first place, he argued that it was unclear what was meant by ‘minimum programme’. On the one hand, Marc Mulholland in the Why Marx series on partyism had said that it was the programme on which the working class took power. This seemed (in comrade Wrack’s view) to be close to Trotsky’s idea of the transitional programme as a programme of revolution, though not to subsequent Trotskyists’ use of the idea of the ‘transitional method’ as a mere reason to adopt currently popular ideas. On the other hand, Marx had said that the demands of the 1880 Programme of the Parti Ouvrier had emerged from the workers’ movement itself. (The quotation is actually “the economic section of this very short document consists … solely of demands that have, in fact, arisen spontaneously out of the workers’ movement itself”¹: “the economic section”, not the political section.)

The terminology is, he argued, inherently confusing; thus my own argument in the article, ‘Trans liberation and Marxism’, that some aspects of trans liberation relate to the maximum, not the minimum, programme² would be an obstacle to “a clear idea of what a communist party stands for”.

The same issue, he argued, arises in relation to “winning the battle for democracy” - it obscures our aim. We seek the means of production being held in common, not some sort of capitalist state holding them on trust for the workers. The general weakness of communist ideas means that we have to focus on this point. The question of ‘democracy’ is posed rather to show that we do not propose to repeat Stalinism.

On the other hand, the substantive demands of the CPGB’s minimum programme in comrade Wrack’s view “look like they are sucked out of our thumbs”. Proposals for life under capitalism, he argued, should not be put in the programme. Rather, what we fight for is for the working class to expropriate the means of production generally. We should merely say that in the here and now communists will fight for every improvement that can be wrested from the capitalist class against their wishes.

In his view we should reject the argument that I made in 2007 that (to quote it more precisely than he did in the meeting) “between the working class seizing political power and the disappearance of classes, supersession of state, nation, family, etc is a substantial period of transition. The transition, and the communist outcome, will be shaped by the choices made by the working class when it has attained political power.”³ The development of science and technology since Marx’s time means that in his view this is false: we should not suggest a “substantial” period of transition.

Comrade Potts added that the political strength of the working class is very closely linked to its industrial strength. Periods of extreme militancy show factory occupations, which amount to the expropriation of the means of production. It is a mistake to suppose that the working class can attain full political power without the socialisation of the economy.

The CPGB’s approach to minimum demands is in his view mistaken because of this error of method: thus, the idea that the minimum wage should be set at the reproduction needs of the worker and one child in the Draft programme, or the call for a maximum five-day working week and seven-hour day, with reduction to four days and six hours for dangerous or unusually demanding jobs, are both too minimalist relative to what is presently possible.

The Draft programme also in his view contains a ‘stages’ schema. If the minimum programme is implemented as a whole, that tells us nothing about what we would do about the economy; it displays an excessive focus on the political. It thus leaves open the possibility that the transition period would be indefinitely prolonged.

Transition

In response to these points, Jack Conrad accepted comrade Turner’s point that there were very many issues not included in the Draft programme. On these we adopt separate theses - as, for example, on Labour, the Arab Spring and Israel-Palestine.⁴ We are currently working on drafting theses on trans liberation. The general principle of the Draft programme is - as short as possible, as long as necessary.

On comrade Wrack’s points, he argued that in the first place, the minimum programme (as a whole) is the minimum basis for participating in a government. But that does not imply that we do not fight for the individual demands of the programme prior to coming to power. Leaving aside Trotsky, the ‘transitional method’ has become the ‘common sense’ of much of the left in Britain.

Both comrades Wrack and Potts had raised the issue of the economic demands. Hopefully, comrade Conrad said, this was just a misunderstanding. The Draft programme does not start with what UK capitalism can afford, but with what workers need in order to have a full life - determined culturally: thus, for example, overseas holidays were once a prerogative of the upper classes, but are now a need for a full life. Equally, on the question of state ownership, the Draft programme calls for the nationalisation of the natural monopolies and of big pharma. Also we fight immediately for workers’ control measures.

Socialism emerges in the form of working class gains under capitalism, like limits on working hours or public health services. When the working class takes political power, this transition continues in a more accelerated form towards the self-abolition of the class, towards labour as a form of human self-fulfilment. There is still a transition: as quickly as possible, but nonetheless involving continued class struggle under conditions of democracy (as opposed to today’s plutocracy).

Comrade Turner asked if it was really the case that TAS imagined immediate collectivisation and no period of transition to communism? On this point, he agreed with the CPGB that workers’ power does not equal communism, and there would still need to be a transition.

I said in response to comrade Turner’s earlier point that in my own view the issue of lobbying was an important one; we should argue for payments for private access to public officials to be treated as bribes, and for the funding of media by commercial advertising to be banned. But this is merely my own view. The Draft programme was not “sucked out of our thumbs”, but came from two discussion processes in the 1990s and in 2008-11, leading to extensive debate and votes on amendments; the minimum demands drew to a considerable extent on demands already raised in the labour movement. The primary point of its being a ‘minimum’ is to refuse to take governmental office without a commitment to implement the whole.

There does nonetheless have to be a transition. To take the example of the trans question, state oppression, like the requirement to put sex/gender on official documents, could be abolished immediately (minimum programme). Queer-bashing, on the other hand, is a performance of competitive heterosexual masculinity, which is driven, in turn, by the dynamics of relationship formation as a competitive market, resulting from market society as such (in contrast to family formation under feudalism); it will only disappear under whatever mode of relationship formation develops under full communism.

Lenin made the point in 1917 that, as long as capital is still in power, the minimum programme is necessary.⁵ It is a mistake to argue for immediate socialisation in Britain alone: this would be rapidly strangled by sanctions. On a European scale, we could take power and defeat sanctions - but would need to take account of the substantial subsisting peasantry and petty bourgeoisie. Before that point, we will need to continue to fight for minimum demands.

Fudge?

Comrade Potts responded to comrade Turner on the issue of transition, that there is a danger of being too cautious. The working class has gained skills and capabilities that allow dispensing with the middle classes. Comrade Wrack argued that the idea of a transition “as quickly as possible”, as comrade Conrad put it, fudged the differences between us. The question of coming to power will only be posed when conditions have ripened for the mass of the working class to impose its will on society. In this context, it would be unacceptable to create political democracy, but still accept tyranny in the workplace. The CPGB’s emphasis on neutralising the petty bourgeoisie amounts to popular frontism: in contrast, he argued, we can only take political power when we have won over the vast majority to immediate general collectivisation.

We agreed that this discussion will inevitably continue, both at the next meeting and at Communist University in the summer.

In that context, it was reported that the Prometheus editorial board as a whole has agreed to co-organise; comrade Cat Rylance is to be the ‘point person’. For TAS, comrade Potts is the ‘point person’ and for the CPGB comrade Carla Roberts. We also reported that we now have confirmation of a booking in central London where the event will be held.

This was a friendly discussion in spite of the significance of the differences. However, I think - and this is merely my own opinion - that there is some danger of a ‘negative dialectic’ in which we in the CPGB understate the radicalism of our Draft programme, while, on the other hand, the TAS comrades drive themselves, in opposition to it, towards the position of the Socialist Party of Great Britain that all that can be done is to make propaganda for socialism until there is a clear majority for immediate general collectivisation. We need at least to try to avoid this dynamic.

1. Marx to Sorge, November 5 1880: K Marx CW Vol 46. In the same letter is the first use (that I am aware of) of the expression, ‘minimum programme’.↩︎

2. sWeekly Worker November 14 2024: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1515/trans-liberation-and-marxism.↩︎

3. ‘For a minimum programme’ Weekly Worker August 30 2007: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/686/for-a-minimum-programme.↩︎

4. Several can be seen at communistparty.co.uk/resources/theses-resolutions.↩︎

5. www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/RPP17.html.↩︎