The early socialist struggles in the 1800s gave rise to the concept of minimum and maximum demands. Karl Marx and others wrote a program for the French Workers’ Party which contained a series of immediate demands. These were demands that could, in theory, be accommodated in a capitalist economy. The preamble to the program, outlining the goal of a full transition to socialism or communism, contained maximum demands.
Minimum programs generally consisted mainly of demands for workers’ rights and universal suffrage, and were electoral platforms for working class parties. Although these look tame in today’s world, at the time they represented a radical opposition to reactionary states.
Early socialist organization in Germany
The Social Democratic Party (SPD) of Germany attracted enormous support with its Erfurt program, a relatively radical minimum program adopted in 1891. But after the start of the First World War in 1912, the party lurched to the right, effectively supporting the ruling capitalist Progressive People’s Party in Germany’s war effort.
Left opposition to SPD leadership (led by Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht) were critical of minimum-maximum program. They saw the focus on short term minimum demands as an excuse for inaction, a platform for restricting the program to the reforming of capitalism.
Russia and the USSR
The Russian revolution in 1917 was led by the relatively small Bolshevik party, but supported by the large majority of workers in the two main industrial cities of Moscow and Petrograd. The taking of power by the Bolsheviks was not the result of any plan or strategic program, but rather the result of the determination of the Bolsheviks in the midst of the social and political chaos that in Russia at the time.
In the aftermath of the First World War which had devastated Russian society, the Bolshevik government was in the throes of almost perpetual crisis. The control of key industries by the state was vital to the survival of the new government and the defeat of the White Army in the civil war that followed the world war.
The policies followed by the Soviet bloc during the Stalin era generally followed the needs of the USSR. When the USSR Communist Party was eliminating all opposition (especially the relatively wealthy farming Kulaks), they instructed other communist parties around the world to adopt maximalist revolutionary policies and programs. This was effectively an abandonment of any minimum program. After the outbreak of the second world war, the policy reversed completely to those of the “popular front” – alliances with capitalist parties against fascism.
Trotsky and the transitional program
Trotsky was expelled from the Bolshevik party in 1927 and exiled from Russia two years later. He formed the Fourth International, an global organization of socialist parties opposed to the “orthodox” communism of Stalin.
Trotsky believed that capitalism was in its death throes, and in 1938 advocated the idea of a transitional program. While including demands for democratic reforms, transitional programs also included changes that the capitalist state was unable to provide. The basis of this was a belief that capitalism had outlived its progressive phase, and was unable to allow meaningful reforms. These transitional demands have been central to the platforms of various Trotskyist parties and groups over the past 80 years.
Non reformist reforms
By the 1960s, it was clear that capitalism was much more resilient than Marx, Lenin or Trotsky had believed. Andre Gorz, linked to the “New left” of the radical politics of the 60s, advanced the theory of non-reformist reforms. These reforms, similar to transitional programmes, do not assume the immediate overthrow of capitalism, but rather advocate for radical shifts in political power and the advancement of socialist forces.
It is precisely these kinds of reforms that ecosocialists need to support in order to ensure that any transition is one that benefits the planet and all humankind, and is not just driven by the needs of the rich and wealthy.