Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

practice, a maximum programme consists of a series of demands aiming to achieve

socialism Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...

. The concept of a maximum programme comes from the 1891

Erfurt Programme The Erfurt Program was adopted by the Social Democratic Party of Germany during the SPD Congress at Erfurt in 1891. Formulated under the political guidance of Eduard Bernstein, August Bebel, and Karl Kautsky, it superseded the earlier Gotha Pr ...

of the German

SPD The Social Democratic Party of Germany (german: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, ; SPD, ) is a centre-left social democratic political party in Germany. It is one of the major parties of contemporary Germany. Saskia Esken has been the ...

, later mirrored by much of the

Socialist International The Socialist International (SI) is a political international or worldwide organisation of political parties which seek to establish democratic socialism. It consists mostly of socialist and labour-oriented political parties and organisations. ...

of 1889–1916. The maximalist line is contrasted with a

minimum programme In Marxist practice, a minimum programme consists of a series of demands for immediate reforms and, in far fewer and less orthodox cases, also consists of a series of political demands which, taken as a whole, realise key democratic-republican mea ...

of immediate social demands. In the short term, Marxist parties were to pursue only the minimum programme of achievable demands, which would improve the lives of workers until the inevitable collapse of

capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for Profit (economics), profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, pric ...

. "Minimalist" groups believed that the achievement of a minimum programme would enable them to become mass parties and pursue the maximum programme. The

Communist International The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by a ...

(Comintern) of 1919–1943 initially developed the alternative idea of transitional slogans, seeing the minimum/maximum division as leaving

social democratic Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocating economic and social interventions to promote soci ...

parties always campaigning only for their minimum programme and not clearly planning a route to achieve their maximum programme, though the eventual programme of the 1928

6th World Congress of the Comintern The Sixth Congress of the Communist International was held in Moscow from July 17 to September 1, 1928. The Congress was attended by 515 delegates from 65 organizations (including 50 Communist Parties) from 57 countries. Adopting the theory of the ...

was more in line with a maximum programme than with transitional slogans.

References

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External links

The Erfurt Programme Explained In Its Basic Part

Marxist theory

See also

References

External links