Where we are and where we could be: transitional
demands and actions
Len
Arthur for Transform Journal edition 2 July 2017
As radical socialists we have
confidence in the potential of people to act together to create a society where
wealth is collectively owned and used for need and not profit; is free from
oppression; is just; is democratic and addresses climate change. It is
seemingly a tall order when seen from our current neo liberal predicament where
the world’s richest 8 people have the same wealth as the poorest 50%; a
misogynist and racist elected as US President and who has pulled out of the
modest Paris Climate agreement. Yet here we are, with big ambitions for us
humans and the planet, protesting on the sidelines as the world moves in a
different direction.
How can we bridge the gap between
where we are and where we know we could be? How do we contest the power and
strategies of capital saying no, yet at the same time, as constructive
socialists, do something to make the world a better place? It reminds me of
when I was teaching what was then called liberal studies to day release
apprentices and one of them replied, after I had explained the unequal
distribution of wealth, “Yes sir, we agree with you but what can we do about
it?”
This, of course, is not a new issue
for socialists and debate has raged about a maximum or minimum programme;
‘standing on our principles’; offense or defence; or the apparently esoteric
need for ‘transitional demands’ for at least the last 200 years. It will
continue and you will be relieved to know that this article is not going to
claim, eureka like, to finally come up with an answer. More modestly, it is
just going to suggest that actually there might be something of use in the
debate about transitional demands, with ‘transitional action’ added on.
Transitional demands
‘Fools rush in where angels fear to
tread’, Pope’s entreaty needs consideration when talking about transitional
demands bearing in mind the 150 years plus of debate that lies behind the idea.
So some caveats. There is not a list of transitional demands that suit all circumstances;
the term is better seen as signifying a continuous process of development,
changing with the shifting balance of contextual forces or terrain of struggle.
The processes offer a method of prioritising certain strategies and tactics,
linking current grievances and concerns with a challenge to the power of
capital over, say charitable concerns that are helpful and needed but are
contained in relation to changing the way wealth is used and allocated in our
society. Thus the argument is that not all demands of radical socialists should
be transitional but that their development should be emphasised in practice.
So what does a transitional demand
look like? Take the current fight against the politics and policies of
austerity. Behind these cut backs, wage restrictions, privatisation and
deregulation lies a neoliberal strategy of making the working class pay for the
2007-08 banking crisis. The state bailed out the banks by pouring money into
them, the bill for the resulting increase in government spending and deficit
has been foisted onto workers, the very people who did nothing to create the
crisis. These policies have resulted in the almost overwhelming destruction and
degradation of public services and social welfare, across the UK and globally
and lie at the heart of the criminal decisions that led to the fire and
avoidable deaths at Grenfell Tower.
Mobilising to challenge the whole
policy direction is daunting yet has been attempted by organisations such as
the People’s Assembly and now perhaps the movement against the Tory government.
Certainly the overall challenge has been reflected in the successful Corbyn led
Labour Party campaign. Up until this time the effects of austerity have been
experienced by people sectionally and locally have consequently often responded
at this level. The ability and desire to help locally has resulted in foodbanks
being established; local hospital closures have been fought ferociously; the
bedroom tax was mobilised against across the UK. Socialists are often usually
involved in these campaigns and action but for us there is an additional task:
mobilising to challenge the politics of austerity. So, instead of demanding
that a particular local hospital stays open with the risk of pushing the cut on
to another community, we would argue to link up with other campaigns demanding
that NHS cuts are reversed with local trade unions and health boards in
support. This would be a transitional demand linking the local with the
national. Similarly with council cuts, involvement in a campaign to, say, keep
meals on wheels would need to be linked to the transitional demand that cuts do
not take place in any other service and councillors should vote against a cuts
budget. Again with benefits, whilst those involved with running food banks will
understand that many people have to use them because they have been sanctioned;
a transitional demand would be to place the priority on fighting the changes
that have led to sanctioning.
The radical socialist case is that
all of these attacks on the working class are unnecessary and avoidable and are
only taking place because the Tory government wishes to prop up the
profitability of the capitalist system they represent. So it is for us to find
ways of challenging and blocking that strategy and arguing an alternative
economic case. Transitional demands start the process of blocking the
capitalist strategy, act as a basis for generalising resistance through the
experience of solidarity, allow wider access to the narrative against austerity
and open up the logic that leads to legitimating a radical alternative: they
act as a bridge between where we are and where we need to be.
Of course the question could be
asked, “Well this already happened in fighting austerity, so what’s all the
fuss with a name?” Well, actually a lot of it didn’t happen and where it did it
was largely the result of socialists making the case. We need to be better and
more systematic at naming the process as ‘developing transitional
demands’.
There is a reluctance to use the
term which is difficult to explain. Colin Barker and colleagues
[1]
have produced a superb book called
Marxism
and Social Movements that really deserves to be widely read. In this long
quote they seem to come close to arguing the case for transitional demands but
shy away from the actual words:
In this view,
existing forms of activity and organisation (and of passivity and
disorganisation) need to be understood as transitory, inwardly contradictory,
and open to large- or small-scale transformation. The real problems for Marx-
ists concern how precisely to grasp this in a given situation, and what to
propose
doing about it. For – as a theory of and for movements – Marxism is only of
value as a contribution to the processes of argumentation and transformation
within those movements, as an engaged practice that itself develops and learns
alongside those with whom it participates in the effort to change the world. It
is
necessarily ‘critical’, always looking at the distance between what a movement
is doing and whom it is mobilising and for what, and the potential to which it
might realistically aspire.
Similarly Marina Prentoulis and
Lasse Thomassen
[2]
writing in the first edition of this Journal
Transform about ‘left populism’ argue that
What we have
found is that, for something like a left populist movement to gain traction, it
is necessary to connect the anti-system demands with the particular demands.
Transitional demands are closely
associated with Leon Trotsky and his 1938
Transitional
Programme[3]
where he succinctly stated the case:
It is necessary to help the masses
in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demand
and the socialist program of the revolution. 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.
Possibly due to the peremptory
wording of the last phrase and the way some followers raised the status of the
demands in the programme from relevancy within the context of the time to
serving all circumstances, socialists have tried to steer clear of being caught
up in a sectarian mess.
However, it is important to realise
that transitional demands have a long and rich socialist history which is
relevant to our current needs.
Marx railed against what he called
‘indifferentism’ in 1873,
[4]
when defending workers fights for wage increases and lessening the working day
against anarchists and utopian socialists, who said socialists should be
indifferent to these struggles as they did not overthrow capital. It is worth a
read just for the invective. Similarly Marx argued that the Ten Hours Bill
which limited the hours of work for women and children in British factories was
a great victory, Roberto 2015.
Engels, in 1891 in his criticism of
the political demands in the German Social and Democratic Party’s Erfurt programme,
[5]
argued that many of the demands were ‘opportunistic’ as they failed to relate
to the need to overthrow the monarchist government pretending that change could
come through peaceful reforms. Engels pointed out the danger and in doing so
made the argument for transitional demands:
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?
The Third International, following
the recognition that the revolutionary moment had ebbed at the third and fourth
congresses in 1921 and 1922, started to support the use of transitional demands
and slogans as a way of continuing to build the communists parties in a more
difficult situation. August Thalheim, then leader of the German Communist Party
writing in 1928,
[6]
reflected on the importance of transitional slogans (same meaning as demands in
this text) whilst at the same time giving a potted history of the development
of the term. He was using this to argue for a process of developing
transitional demands:
Moreover, one
must see that this period of struggle must be prepared agitationally, propagandistically, organisationally, that is, that
the transitional slogans must be propagated before the struggle for power has
begun, until and so that become slogans
of action in the struggle for power.
When and which specific transitional slogans are
agitated for and propagated before the immediate struggle for power, depends on
the concrete conditions, but must be investigated in each single case. In other
words, that is the task of leading the
masses to the struggle for power.
Finally, a more
recent assessment of the relevance of the process of developing transitional
demands, together with an update of historical references has been produced by
Ed Rooksby
[7]
where he concludes:
Indeed, I have argued that once
the necessity of transitional demands is admitted – and it is hard to think of
any other method of bridging the gap between day-to-day struggles and
revolution – the strategic perspective that emerges also implies the necessity
of some sort of left government. This need not be a problem, however, for those
operating within the Leninist tradition because, as we saw, the workers’
government perspective of the early Comintern seems to provide the
justification of historical precedent in this regard.
Transitional demands summary
Transitional demands are about
offering political leadership within campaigns. It is not a dishonest or
parasitical process as it involves openly making a bridging link between the
problems people are experiencing and a trajectory toward a socialist
alternative. Radical socialist parties need to consider adopting the process of
developing transitional demands to try to ensure the arguments about the need
for socialism are put. However the process is just that and is free and open to
all to use.
The possibility of transitional
actions
Transitional demands are about a
processual trajectory to helping develop resistance against the power and
strategies of capital; shifting the balance of forces in our direction. The
intention is to grow the mobilisation to such an intensity that there is an
actual possibility of taking power collectively and transforming society in a
socialist direction. The demands are directed at those who currently have power
to changing direction and, if they don’t, developing sufficient countervailing
power to remove them.
Gramsci
in his writings between 1929 and 1935, later
collected in the Prison Notebooks,[8]
developed a useful distinction between the ‘war of movement’ where the
capitalist state is under direct revolutionary threat and the ‘war of position’
where, like siege warfare, neither the working class nor the capitalist state,
can strike decisively against each other. Transitional demands thus relate very
much to collective organisations and campaigns that rely for their
effectiveness on generalisation and mobilisation such as trade unions, anti war
and anti cuts campaigns.
Historically
the working class, and people drawn to resist the power and oppression of
capital, have also developed broader forms of ‘repertoires of contention’ that
rely more on developing power now and prefiguratively, creating alternative and
possibly radical social space, which by their very survival, can come to
challenge the power of capital. Classically, workers and consumers cooperatives
are an example and as Roberto indicates[9]
were praised by Marx in his address to the First International in 1864. Both
Marx and Engels continued to recognise the role of cooperatives and, similarly,
their role was recognised in the early first congresses of the Communist
International in the early 1920s.
Since the
1960s social movements that emphasise building alternative power, now ‘building
the future in the present’ have taken many forms and have been theorised as
‘autonomism’, ‘horizontalism’ and ‘intersectionality’. All three emphasise non
hierarchical flat organisation, which is a political and social alternative
both to capitalism and traditional working class structures such as parties and
trade unions. They emphasise the links between different exploited, oppressed,
and excluded groups and their unity in acting directly to address these problems
as opposed to relying on representative democracy. Acting and organising in
this way these alternative spaces developing clear boundaries between
themselves and the capitalist state. That such resistance is happening and
being organised in this way has been seen by some as a sufficient end political
endpoint in itself such as by Gibson-Graham[10].
Prefigurative
politics have attracted criticism from the left largely in that they create
‘islands in a sea of capitalism’ that they exist but are contained by the
overwhelming power that surrounds them. An article on John Holloway (a
supporter of prefigurative politics), by Paul Blackledge[11],
recognises that Holloway usefully places an emphasis on the link between
socialism and human self-activity and criticises the idea that the capitalist
state can be used to bring about socialist change. Blackledge agrees with
Holloway, and, indirectly with the autonomist and horizontalist case, about the
necessity of having a criterion of what a change to an alternative – socialist
– society means. Blackledge goes on, however, to identify serious flaws in
Holloway’s arguments by exploring his central idea of the “scream”, making the
case that there is a real limitation to just producing ‘use values’ and
attempting to separate these from their marketable ‘exchange values’, as a way
of overcoming alienation. Blackledge argues that, under capitalism, the need
for capitalists to realise surplus value as money – ‘exchange value’ – through
sales of products as commodities in the market, feeds back and determines what
is produced as ‘use values’, thus blocking the scope for alternative spaces to
exist. Holloway, in turn argues, that the outcome of trade union struggles just
perpetuates the exploitative and alienated relationships.
So out of
this debate a dichotomy has developed between socialists who argue for the
privileging of collective generalisation and mobilisation against social
movement type organisations that emphasise prefigurative alternative space.
This is an unhelpful dichotomy that tends to divide the opposition to capitalism,
does not fully recognise the role that alternative social movements can, and
could play, and actually goes against the grain of the history of socialist
practice. The core problem seems to be a conflation of organisational form with
the political agency, debate and self activity of the people who make up these
different forms of resistance. So it is not that a cooperative, as such,
challenges capital but the political and strategic trajectory that it may take
- either toward being an integrated business or an alternative and mutual
social space. Similarly with trade unions. A union is not by virtue of its
organisational existence anti capitalist, it is the outcome of the internal
political debates that make it more or less so. In both types of organised
resistance there can either be a trajectory toward being contained or one
toward transgression and socialism. The key in both is whether there is
leadership present in the organisation to argue for the left trajectory. In the
case of forms of resistance that depend on collective mobilisation the key
bridge is the process of developing transitional demands. In the case of social
movement prefigurative forms of resistance the key bridge, it is argued here,
is the process of developing transitional actions.
Comrades
in Transform Europe in early 2016 held a Production and Commons workshop
covering similar issues. Roberto Morea[12]
in summing up made this observation:
The
interventions dealt with the question how, nowadays, workers’ takeovers of
companies are always taking place from a defensive position: they happen to
save jobs. However, these recuperations show that working without bosses and
shareholders is not an utopia. In addition, worker's co-ops are more resilient
than other companies, and, on average have greater success. This presents an
immediate possibility to bypass capitalism. Therefore, we should see these
takeovers as a practical way to get rid of capitalist companies. But the question remains: how to move from a
defensive mode to an offensive one to end capitalism? [my emphasis].
What is proposed now is
to explore the role transitional actions could play in addressing the question
asked in the final sentence.
Transitional
actions then are about using the collective power we already have to take
forward decisions that challenge the strategies and power of capital. They are
about making that island in the sea of capitalism bigger and linking up with
other islands. So, in the case of cooperatives instead of competing on the same
basis as a business in a market, the emphasis is on trading with other
cooperatives; on Fair Trade; on sharing control and resources with the local
community, using green energy and joining in consumer boycotts. Ultimately the
aim should be to link transitional demands and actions together in a movement
of movements. That, in Gramsci’s terminology, they can also move from being
part of the shift from a war of position to a war of movement.
The
interconnection between movements of mobilisation and social movements and the
dangers of drawing a dichotomy between them is increasingly being recognised in
academic studies in this area such as in Barker et al op.cit.. Hence, whilst the difference between
making demands on someone with power, as opposed to implementing changes with
the power that people currently control remains, transitional demands and
actions, the trajectory toward a socialist transformation, needs to be embedded
in both. Some more examples about how this has and can work more effectively
helps to make this point.
First
there are actually organisational similarities between movements based on
collective mobilisation and those on alternative space. Tarrow[13] recognised
that there are cycles of contention where some types of resistance predominate
over others; where movements build and go forward and then reach the maximum of
their power and fall back. In some ways echoing Gramsci wars of position and
manoeuvre. As Gramsci suggests alternative forms of hegemony, in terms of both
ideas and organisation, are required to sustain the ‘war of position’, and
critically he points to both Italian history and revolutionary history more
generally, to indicate how difficult it is to move back from a ‘war of
movement’ to one of ‘position’. Moreover, he argues that a war of position is
not easy to sustain and ‘is concentrated,
difficult, and requires exceptional qualities of patience and inventiveness’
[my emphasis]. In a trade union context, for example, going forward and
developing the momentum of a struggle is easy compared with having to
compromise and fall back. The latter part of the struggle is always difficult,
with accusations of selling out. Two key aims are essential in assessing
whether a compromise needs to be reached with the employers. First: are the
members affected fully and truthfully informed of the current state of play in
the negotiation and level of resistance, and are they in democratic control of
the decision making process? Second, do the terms of the proposed agreement
take forward the benefits and the control of the members over their work and
contracts and, if not, does the agreement still allow for a resumption of the
struggle at a later date?
An example
from my own experience relates to the early 1990s when, at the end of a
two-year struggle to sustain our existing contract in higher education, the
employers wanted all members to sign individually to accept the new contract.
As a union branch we argued that we would sign on behalf of the members and
they would just sign to say they had received it. Making the point that the
agreement remained a collective and not an individual one. This may seem like a
small point and some representatives, keen to get an agreement, couldn’t see
the problem but it would have meant that the employer could argue,
disingenuously, that the members had signed– not us, as a union. However, what
was at stake was the chance to come back: by signing as a trade union, we preserved
the collective agreement and retained our collective control over policing and
interpretation. It was clear that we could have re-started the dispute over the
principled issue of recognition and under this threat the employers backed
down. Small, difficult but important in the longer run, and the argument came
from our wider socialist understanding of the longer-term strategy and the
balance of forces.
Goodrich,
writing in 1920[14], described such an
outcome as a ‘frontier of control’: the line at which the battle had
temporarily stopped. In the case cited above, the collective agreement and
contract described in detail the terms of employment and associated procedures,
forming a boundary between the rights of the employer and those of the workers.
In this case, the boundary, or frontier of control, is another way of
expressing what is meant by the ‘war of position’. It represents a temporary
outcome of an ongoing process of resistance, struggle and contention. It forms
an essential part of sustaining the possibility of a war of movement and
transformation and in many respects resembles an alternative space covered by a
collective agreement where the power of management can continually be
challenged. The agreement represents the frontier and the boundary between the
area of control and no control but a process of developing transitional actions
and demands can re-start a trajectory toward challenging the employer's power.
Second,
within workers cooperatives, especially where all workers are members, alternative
democratic power can be seen to exist, survive and be a radical example of what
is possible. I was involved in a research project for four years at Tower Colliery
in South Wales[15], where we were able to
show just how alternative this experience was. The colliery was the last deep
mine in South Wales and as a cooperative was under worker control of the 300
miners from 1996 through to 2011 when accessible reserves ran out. In that time
a profit was made every year, the miners had the best pensions and pay in the
UK, there was not one fatal accident, the six directors, two had to stand for
election each year, so democracy was continuous, there was 100% trade union
membership and collective bargaining continued. Solidarity donations were and
still are made, to groups in the local community and the example of this
colliery became internationally famous with weekly visits from people around
the world and even a French film and an opera being inspired by the experience.
Ownership of the land together with the minerals and no external debt
obligations meant that the workers truly owned and controlled all the
income.
Transitional
actions having the strategic political trajectory towards developing the
collective power we already have and finding ways of increasingly challenging
the strategies and power of capital can, in practice, help to unite different
forms of social movement. The key is not downgrading these forms of resistance
due to their organisational form but recognising that the internal political debate
has a critical influence on whether the resistance becomes contained or has a
trajectory toward being part of a socialist transformation. Transitional
actions act as a bridge between where organisations like cooperative are and
could be; they need to be part of these internal debates. For this to happen
requires socialist leadership and intervention in the same way as taking
forward transitional demands. In turn that requires radical socialists to
reject the prioritisation of one form of struggle over the other and return to
the socialist tradition of working within a wide range of repertoires of
contention.
Conclusion
Hopefully
the case has been put sufficiently for socialists to start to take the the
process of developing transitional demands and actions seriously again. The
issue of how could a transition to socialism take place cannot any longer be
discarded with ‘we don't agree with blueprints’ type quips. For many people,
particularly the young, being hammered by austerity, losing their EU citizenship,
facing a world where racism is constantly being legitimated by the media, how
we bridge the gap between where we all are and a viable, meaningful and radical
socialist alternative, is a pressing need. The trajectory toward this aim needs
to be built into the campaigns and actions that people care about.
Putting
into practice the process of developing transitional demands and actions is
simply providing leadership in trying to ensure the appropriate questions are
asked. When developing the aims of a campaign the question needs to be asked:
what demands do people care about and how can they be worded so they appeal
beyond the campaign and directly challenge the power and strategies of capital?
Then in terms of transitional actions the question needs to be asked: how best
can we use the power and resources currently available to us to create an
alternative and radical space that similarly challenges the power and
strategies of capital and at the time same inspires others to do the same?
Basically, the answer to the question, if I were a rich Tory what would really
get up my nose and worry me.
Finally
sustaining such a political process and trajectory does require a socialist
party to prioritise the process of developing transitional demands and actions.
Moreover, a radical socialist party is required to develop a manifesto
incorporating these demands and actions and help to coordinate the transition
to power at all levels and through electoral and direct action strategies.
Notes
[2] Prentoulis, P, and Thomassen, L, 2017 Left Populism: The challenges from
grassroots to electoral politics in Transform: a journal of the radical
left: 2017:1 PRRUK, London, p114.
[8]
Gramsci, A 1971 Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Lawrence & Wishart,
London, p239.
[10]
Gibson-Graham J & K, 2006 Postcapitalist Politics,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
[13] Tarrow, S,G, 2011 (updated) Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
[14]
Goodrich, C, 1975
Frontiers of Control: A
Study of British Workshop Politics, Pluto, London.
