WeeklyWorker

19.12.1996

Minimum, Transitional and Maximum: The revolutionary programme for today

Dave Craig of the RDG opened a CPGB ‘Programme’ seminar arguing for a new transitional politics

Revolutionary democratic communists (or ‘Leninists’) are distinguished by our application of transitional politics or the transitional method. Transitional politics forms a bridge between the spontaneous demands thrown up by the current class struggle and the final goal of a communist society. This bridge consists of intermediate demands which can connect the spontaneous movement of the class to communism.

Although the term, ‘transitional method’, is associated with Trotskyism, Lenin was the master of transitional politics. It enabled him to play a leading role in the Russian Revolution. It enabled him to focus on the next step in the chain of transition. Trotsky never considered that he invented the transitional method, but rather that he was passing on the lessons of what he called “Bolshevik-Leninism”.

The Revolutionary Democratic Group (faction of the SWP), the various Trotskyists, such as Workers Power, and the CPGB (PCC) all agree on the necessity for transitional politics. We agree about the necessity of a bridge of intermediate demands. But we differ over is what this bridge comprises of and how it can be built.

In order to clarify matters, I will divide the transition to communism into two periods - up to the dictatorship of the proletariat, and after it has been established. I am concentrating my remarks on the first period.

Imagine that we need to cross a very wide river. On the other bank is the dictatorship of the proletariat. We cannot even see the other side of the river. Fortunately we find an island in the middle of the river, called the dual power republic. Therefore we build a bridge, from our side of the river, onto the island. On reaching the island, we are then able to build another bridge over to the far side.

We call the first bridge the minimum programme, and the second bridge the transitional programme. The minimum bridge seeks to connect the pre-revolutionary period with the dual power republic. The transitional bridge connects the dual power republic to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Transitional politics is revolutionary politics because it is based on the theory of revolution. This informs the whole structure of transitional politics. It is not a shopping list of every popular demand. Neither is it a supermarket trolley, into which you throw whatever demands take your fancy. It is a carefully constructed bridge.

Minimum programme

The minimum programme goes back to the Second International, which divided its programme into minimum and maximum. This division had its origins in the classification of revolutions as either bourgeois democratic or national socialist. The minimum programme was designed for the bourgeois democratic revolution and the maximum was related to the socialist revolution. Since the highest achievement of bourgeois democratic revolution was thought to be the bourgeois republic, the minimum programme was in essence a republican programme.

The minimum programme represented a set of intermediate demands between spontaneous partial demands and the maximum programme. In this sense it was a kind of transitional politics - the transition to a bourgeois republic. Lenin’s Two tactics of social democracy in the democratic revolution developed the strategy and tactics of revolutionary republicanism.

The Bolshevik minimum programme contained two kinds of demands (leaving aside the question of the peasants). These were revolutionary democratic demands and radical social reforms. All these demands could in abstract be conceded by capitalism. Indeed most of them have been achieved in many countries today. But in the context of the class struggle in Russia, these demands were revolutionary. The central demand was the abolition of the tsarist state and, for example:

Plus

It should be remembered that German social democracy (Erfurt programme) had what was called a minimum programme. But in fact it was not a republican programme. Engels made this one of the focal points of his criticism of that programme. Without republicanism, the Erfurt programme was a programme of reforms that could be implemented within the constitutional framework of the kaiser state. It was a reformist, not a minimum revolutionary programme.

A genuine minimum programme is neither less than nor more than a bourgeois republic. These are the limits of a scientifically defined minimum. Of course, as the Bolsheviks showed, it is how this programme is fought for, not simply what it says on paper, which gives its revolutionary character.

Transitional programme

After February 1917 tsarism was overthrown and Russia became a republic (dual power republic). Because of the war and the sabotage of the capitalist class, the economy was in chaos. Lenin came out with a new kind of transitional programme in an article called ‘The impending catastrophe and how to combat it’. Joseph Hansen, the US Trotskyist, cites it as a transitional programme. He says, “It fell to the lot of the Bolsheviks to revive the concept of transitional measures.” Lenin’s article (as above), written in September 1917, illustrates this approach. Lenin proposed five measures:

Lenin was constructing the ‘second bridge’ from the dual power republic to soviet power.

This programme was essentially economic demands. These measures were presented as a practical solution, which required the transfer of power to the soviets. ‘All power to the soviets’ was the central political demand of this transitional programme.

Minimum versus transitional

Let me summarise the Bolshevik experience as follows. The Bolsheviks had a minimum revolutionary republican programme before and after February 1917. With the dual power republic they switched to another kind of transitional programme - connecting economic demands with ‘All power to the soviets’.

The ‘Leninist’ conclusion from this is that the minimum and transitional programmes are complementary. Just as parliamentary struggle and armed insurrection represent lower and higher forms of class struggle. So, in programmatic terms, the minimum is a lower form and the transitional a higher form of programme, appropriate in different circumstances.

The modern ‘Trotskyist’ conclusion is: first, that, because of the April theses, Lenin became a Trotskyist and ditched the minimum programme altogether. Second, that the transitional programme is appropriate for all circumstances, including non-revolutionary situations. Alternatively we are in a permanent revolutionary situation and therefore the transitional programme is applicable everywhere. This is the famous catastrophism for which Trotskyism was notorious.

A ‘Leninist’ and ‘Trotskyist’ view about the transitional programmes was identified by Mark Hoskis-son (Workers Power) in an article in Permanent Revolution (No6, p44). He says:

“At the heart of this problem is the question of whether transitional demands are applicable only in an acute revolutionary crisis (February-October 1917) or whether they can be used in the form of an action programme to break workers from the reformist leaders and set them on the road of revolutionary struggle in all periods during the imperialist epoch.”

The ‘Leninists’ take the first view, and the ‘Trotskyists’, like Workers Power, take the second. If the ‘Leninist’ perspective is correct, the ‘Trotskyist transitional programme’ is objectively ultra-left and puts Trotskyism in a dilemma. Either maintain a pure transitional programme, which is objectively irrelevant, and remain a small sect. Or adapt the transitional programme into a left reformist programme and gain some influence.

This latter route was taken by the Militant Tendency. They took the classic transitional demand to nationalise the top 200 companies. This would supposedly break workers from the Labour right and set them on the revolutionary road to power. The instrument of this socialist (transitional) programme would be a left Labour government. Hence ‘All power to the soviets’ was replaced by ‘All power to the Labour government’.

The ‘Leninist’ approaches the current situation using the minimum, not the transitional programme. We don’t hide the fact that we intend to nationalise the commanding heights. But it is not relevant as an immediate demand now. It has no basis in political reality. The minimum programme means that republican demands, not nationalisation of the top 200, are the essence of transitional politics now.

End of the minimum?

The Trotskyist thesis - that the minimum programme is dead - does not accord with reality. Neither Trotsky nor Lenin appear to have held that view. Trotsky is bit more ambiguous. In The transitional programme he discusses the relationship of the minimum to the transitional programme. He does not reject the idea of minimum demands. He says, “The Fourth International does not discard the programme of the old minimum demands - to the degree to which they have preserved at least part of their forcefulness.” His approach is pragmatic. He does not reject republican and democratic demands, if they are useful.

Lenin was much clearer in his defence of the minimum programme. In October 1917, just prior to the insurrection, Lenin wrote an impassioned defence of the minimum programme against Bukharin and Smirnov. It is worth looking at his arguments at length.

He asks:

“Is it possible to guarantee now that the minimum programme will not be needed any more? Of course not, for the simple reason that we have not yet won power, that socialism has not yet been realised, and that we have not yet achieved even the beginning of the world socialist revolution. We must firmly, courageously and without hesitation advance towards our goal, but it is ludicrous to declare that we have reached it when we have definitely not. Discarding the minimum programme would be equivalent to declaring, to announcing (to bragging, in simple language) that we have already won. No, dear comrades, we have not yet won.”

Unfortunately modern Trotskyism is full of this type of leftist bragging and bravado: ‘The revolution is upon us. We are about to take power any minute - we don’t need a minimum programme any more.’

Lenin continues: “It is ridiculous to discard the minimum programme, which is indispensable while we live in the framework of bourgeois society, while we have not destroyed that framework, not yet realised the basic prerequisites for a transition to socialism” (VI Lenin CW Vol 26, p171). Of course our Trotskyists don’t need a minimum because they are not living “in the framework of bourgeois society”. They are living in cloud cuckoo land.

Lenin goes on to explain how he sees the programme in relation to the actual transition taking place in Russia. He says:

“Take the minimum programme in the political sphere. This programme is limited to the bourgeois republic. We should add that we do not confine ourselves to its limits; we start immediately upon the struggle for a higher type of republic, a soviet republic. This we must do. But the minimum programme should under no circumstances be discarded, for, first of all, there is as yet no soviet republic; secondly ‘attempts at restoration’ [of the monarchy - DC] are not yet out of the question, and they will have to be experienced and vanquished; thirdly, during the transition from the old to the new there may be temporary ‘combined types’ - for instance, a soviet republic together with a constituent assembly. Let us get over all that - then it will be time to discard the minimum programme.”

Later he says:

“As Marxists advancing boldly towards the world’s greatest revolution, but at the same time taking a sober view of the facts, we have no right to abandon the minimum programme.”

Lenin is opposing the kind of ultra-leftism of Bukharin and Smirnov, represented today by Trotskyism, which is incapable of taking a “sober view of the facts”.

New minimum

This is not to argue that the old minimum programme was correct. It was not. But we do not have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The old minimum (republican) programme was based on the theory of bourgeois democratic revolution. This theory was destroyed by the Russian democratic revolution. The old-style minimum programme died with it.

We need a new theory of democratic revolution, based on the lessons of the Russian Revolution, part of a new theory of permanent revolution.

We are developing the theory of proletarian democratic revolution. The first stage of this revolution is the struggle, not for an ordinary bourgeois republic, but a “dual power republic”.

The dual power republic is the transitional republic, on the road to the dictatorship of the proletariat. The new idea of a minimum programme is based on that. The new minimum combines the fight for a republic with the struggle to build soviets or workers’ councils in the here and now. But even this new concept of the minimum programme is not very new. Trotsky argued strongly along these lines in Spain in 1930-31 when taking up republican slogans. For example he wrote a letter to Spanish communists (January 12 1931) on ‘Soviets and the constituent cortes’ (or parliament). He explained that: “The masses of the city and countryside can be united at the present time only under democratic slogans. These include the election of a constituent cortes on the basis of universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage.” At the same time he argued for the building of soviets, linking the two types of democratic demand together. He says: “It will obviously be possible to build soviets in the near future only by mobilising the masses on the basis of democratic slogans” (L Trotsky The revolution in Spain p66). Our understanding of the Russian Revolution, in which Trotsky played a leading role, concludes that Trotsky was right in his ‘new minimum’ advice to Spanish revolutionaries.