Minimalist and Maximust programme

The difference between a minimalist and a maximualist program has separated Marxist parties for as long as it has existed. The difference between fighting for reforms under capitalism and offering your full programme for full power of a communist or socialist type are hugely different. Leon Trotsky outlined in his transitional programme the death agony of capitalism which I’m still studying to bring out conclusions and to reach an understanding as the current one I understand is the one lead by the vanguard party leading by the nose the workers to the final conclusion that society needs to be changed and that can only be carried out with mass independent socialite consciousness and the working class gaining power. I’ve been trying to get my head around this Trotskyist idea and I may be getting there but I still don’t quite understand how the fighting for better wages and better conditions under a trade union struggle eventually leads you to realising the need to over throw the current system. As I can see those who are the most militant in the trade unions fight very hard for their members and for themselves but ultimately does this lead to socialist or Marxist ideas? I don’t think so personally. As Lenin correctly stated trade union contiousness ness can only lead you so far. A revolutionary party a Marxist party is still needed to give workers those revolutionary ideas to change society which trade unions will never give. As Trotsky correctly writes in his chapter on The Minimum Program and the Transitional Program The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat. The economic prerequisite for the proletarian revolution has already in general achieved the highest point of fruition that can be reached under capitalism. Mankind’s productive forces stagnate. Already new inventions and improvements fail to raise the level of material wealth. Conjunctural crises under the conditions of the social crisis of the whole capitalist system inflict ever heavier deprivations and sufferings upon the masses. Growing unemployment, in its turn, deepens the financial crisis of the state and undermines the unstable monetary systems. Democratic regimes, as well as fascist, stagger on from one bankruptcy to another. The bourgeoisie itself sees no way out. In countries where it has already been forced to stake its last upon the card of fascism, it now toboggans with closed eyes toward an economic and military catastrophe. In the historically privileged countries, i.e., in those where the bourgeoisie can still for a certain period permit itself the luxury of democracy at the expense of national accumulations (Great Britain, France, United States, etc.), all of capital’s traditional parties are in a state of perplexity bordering on a paralysis of will. The “New Deal,” despite its first period of pretentious resoluteness, represents but a special form of political perplexity, possible only in a country where the bourgeoisie succeeded in accumulating incalculable wealth. The present crisis, far from having run its full course, has already succeeded in showing that “New Deal” politics, like Popular Front politics in France, opens no new exit from the economic blind alley. International relations present no better picture. Under the increasing tension of capitalist disintegration, imperialist antagonisms reach an impasse at the height of which separate clashes and bloody local disturbances (Ethiopia, Spain, the Far East, and Central Europe) must inevitably coalesce into a conflagration of world dimensions. The bourgeoisie, of course, is aware of the mortal danger to its domination represented by a new war. But that class is now immeasurably less capable of averting war than on the eve of 1914. All talk to the effect that historical conditions have not yet “ripened” for socialism is the product of ignorance or conscious deception. The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only “ripened”; they have begun to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period at that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind. The turn is now to the proletariat, i.e., chiefly to its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership. Of course Trotsky writes this on the verge of a world war and is right to write this but today in 2013 ? Are we on the verge of capitalist decay ? In some regards yes but in others no. In the East for example China has a opportunity to save capitalism if it wish’s it may not do and plunge the system into a huge long decline but the opportunities to save the system are there for sure. Reform or revolution the famous piece by Rosa Luxemburg is key to our understanding the ability for capitalism to survive is under estimated in my view. It cannot go on forever but it to out live its life and its ability to evolve cannot be under estimated eater. Mainly due to the lack of leadership in the working class but also the unprepared nature of the revolutionary Marxist movement. We cannot catch up history is already here. We must hastily learn from history in order not to make the same mistakes again.

What did Lenin mean when he talked of trade union contiousness and social democratic contiousness ?

As marxists we are constantly asking ourselves which state of the class struggle are we passing through. As dialectic thinkers we do not see a situation as a stationary one something has happened for us to get to where we are and something is currently happening that will impact on where we go next. We are constantly looking at the working class movements and seeing where if anywhere they are heading.

Lenin was no different in the early part of the 20th centruy when he posed in his excelent pamphlett "what is to be done ?" Lenin formulated that the spontinaity of workers when struggle arises can be bracketed into diffeernt contious and non contious thinking. Lenin explains to us that trade union contiousness is simply workers using the collective power of the trade unions to fight for better pay, conditions and a shorter working day etc. These struggles which are limited to fighting within the existing system of capitalism are key as they do raise contiousness as we well know. But lenin clearly pointed out these struggles are not social democratic as they do not look to challenge the system as yet.
In this piece below from Lenin's what is to be done he makes a excellent point taht on their own the working class cannot draw the conclusions that to fully imancipate themselves as the marxist term goes that the system of explitation and greed needs to be over thrown. Only by the intelligencia and more academic thinkers who understand marxism who can be workers too of course can influence the mass's to convince them that a change of the system is needed. As socialists we have already drawn these conclusions but convincing other workers that there is the need to change the system is our daily task. Showing the inequalities and exposing the capitalist system for what it is is a daily task of a revolutionary.

"A. The Beginning of the Spontaneous Upsurge
In the previous chapter we pointed out how universally absorbed the educated youth of Russia was in the theories of Marxism in the middle of the nineties. In the same period the strikes that followed the famous St. Petersburg industrial war of 1896 assumed a similar general character. Their spread over the whole of Russia clearly showed the depth of the newly awakening popular movement, and if we are to speak of the “spontaneous element” then, of course, it is this strike movement which, first and foremost, must be regarded as spontaneous. But there is spontaneity and spontaneity. Strikes occurred in Russia in the seventies and sixties (and even in the first half of the nineteenth century), and they were accompanied by the “spontaneous” destruction of machinery, etc. Compared with these “revolts”, the strikes of the nineties might even be described as “conscious”, to such an extent do they mark the progress which the working-class movement made in that period. This shows that the “spontaneous element”, in essence, represents nothing more nor less than. consciousness in an embryonic form. Even the primitive revolts expressed the awakening of consciousness to a certain extent. The workers were losing their age-long faith in the permanence of the system which oppressed them and began... I shall not say to understand, but to sense the necessity for collective resistance, definitely abandoning their slavish submission to the authorities. But this was, nevertheless, more in the nature of outbursts of desperation and vengeance than of struggle. The strikes of the nineties revealed far greater flashes of consciousness; definite demands were advanced, the strike was carefully timed, known cases and instances in other places were discussed, etc. The revolts were simply the resistance of the oppressed, whereas the systematic strikes represented the class struggle in embryo, but only in embryo. Taken by themselves, these strikes were simply trade union struggles, not yet Social Democratic struggles. They marked the awakening antagonisms between workers and employers; but the workers, were not, and could not be, conscious of the irreconcilable antagonism of their interests to the whole of the modern political and social system, i.e., theirs was not yet Social-Democratic consciousness. In this sense, the strikes of the nineties, despite the enormous progress they represented as compared with the “revolts”, remained a purely spontaneous movement.

We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc.[2] The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals. By their social status the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy arose altogether independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of thought among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia. In the period under discussion, the middle nineties, this doctrine not only represented the completely formulated programme of the Emancipation of Labour group, but had already won over to its side the majority of the revolutionary youth in Russia.

Hence, we had both the spontaneous awakening of the working masses, their awakening to conscious life and conscious struggle, and a revolutionary youth, armed with Social-Democratic theory and straining towards the workers. In this connection it is particularly important to state the oft-forgotten (and comparatively little-known) fact that, although the early Social-Democrats of that period zealously carried on economic agitation (being guided in this activity by the truly useful indications contained in the pamphlet On Agitation,"


So what i myself draw from all this is that the role of a revolutionary party involved in the day to day struggles of the workers and inside the unions fighting day to day against the boss's who look to push down their living standards to increase their own profits. We must be alongside workers to explain that that this doesnt have to be this way. There is an alternative and we can achieve this through agitation first and foremost awaking the workers to the task in hand.