Every major strike contains the seeds of the ultimate objective of the class struggle, which is to contest the power of the capitalist in industry, and of the capitalist class in society and the State. If that battle is to develop its ultimate logic, there must be a favourable relationship of forces. But Marxists are not purely commentators on social and political life. They are not content simply to note the relationship of forces as something given and immutable or to estimate the chances of change in the future. They act in a precise way: they try to alter the relationship of forces between Capital and Labour, by stimulating the workers’ confidence in their own strength, raising their class consciousness, widening their political horizon, reinforcing their organization and unity, and creating a revolutionary vanguard capable of leading them to fight and win.

This does not, of course, mean that Marxists are unaware of the limitations imposed by conditions which, in a given situation, may be unfavourable to transforming the workers’ self-organization and self-defence bodies into real organs of dual power. It was stirring to see how, after more than twenty-five years of fascism and a senile military dictatorship, the Spanish workers instinctively returned to a form of organization on the factory floor which linked up with the finest traditions of the Spanish revolution: the comisiones obreras (workers’ commissions). The moderate and opportunist leaders of the underground Spanish workers’ movement (especially those of the Spanish C.P.) tried to transform those commissions into semi-legal trade unions, which was of course precisely what would have suited the book of the employers. But the workers understood instinctively that in a situation of direct political dictatorship by Capital, to limit the activities of their commissions to wage claims and other purely economic functions was out of the question. The comisiones obreras saw the logic of the situation as demanding that they try to become representative self-defence bodies for workers, dealing with all sorts of problems arising from the specific situation in Spain. They fought for democratic rights as well as material ones, for the defence of victims of repression and class justice as much as for the recognition of their rights to negotiate in the name of all their fellow-workers. But they could not become real organs of dual power as long as the dictatorship was not on the point of being overthrown by a strong revolutionary upsurge of the mass of the people.

The revolutionary Marxist vanguard cannot ‘provoke pre-revolutionary situations, still less revolutions. These can only come about through the coincidence of a large number of ‘molecular’ or ‘underground’ changes. Some of these changes can of course be directly influenced by conscious revolutionary action; others can at least be foreseen; but there are some which are quite outside the realm of accurate prediction, at least in the present state of our knowledge. On the other hand, what the revolutionary vanguard can and must do is to prepare favourable conditions for the workers to make a breakthrough towards socialism, by establishing organs of dual power at the height of a pre-revolutionary period, and by making sure that the revolutionary period culminates in the conquest of power. Four major elements are involved in that preparatory work. First comes the tireless propagation among the working class of the kind of programmatic ideas which will enable the masses to react in a certain, objectively revolutionary direction once a generalized struggle breaks out. Next is the training of a vanguard of militants inside factories, shops, offices, docks, etc., who will interpret this programme to their fellow-workers and will gain enough hearing and authority among them to enable them to compete for the leadership of the masses once a generalized struggle begins. Next is the grouping of these militants into a national and international organization, in which they are united with manual and intellectual workers, students, revolutionary poor peasants from other factories, districts and countries. This will overcome the narrowness of horizon inevitable in any worker with only a limited experience of struggle, and will neutralize the effects of the fragmentation of work and the incomplete- and therefore false- consciousness arising from it. It will thus, by way of a universal revolutionary praxis, give the worker access to a theory which sees the problems of imperialism and the socialist revolution as a totality, and thereby enable him to advance his practical struggle and bring it to a far higher level of co-ordination and effectiveness. Finally, this vanguard organization (or at least sections of it) must move beyond the stage of propaganda and verbal criticism, and become capable of launching exemplary actions, showing the workers in a concrete way the purpose of the revolutionary socialist strategy which Marxists stand for, as against the reformism and neo-reformism of the traditional, bureaucratized organizations of the workers’ movement.

This strategy of transitional demands-which we in Belgium know as ‘anti-capitalist structural reforms’ – is directed to extricating the actions of the workers from a contradiction which has been inherent in the workers movement, at least in the imperialist countries, since mass organizations first came into being. Inevitably, workers actions are always directed to immediate objectives (material demands; social legislation; political rights; resistance to repressive regimes or reactionary coups d’Etat, etc.). Therefore the activities of organizations claiming to belong to the workers’ movement have always centred on these immediate objectives, sometimes (though not always) combining these concrete activities with abstract propaganda for ‘socialism’ (or the ‘socialist revolution’ or the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, or whatever).

In this way, the historical goal of the labour movement has always been divorced from the practical, day-today struggle. This is true as much for the reformists, whether old-style or new-to whom, to paraphrase Eduard Bernstein, the movement for immediate objectives is everything, and the final goal nothing-as for the ‘leftwing extremists’, who disdain the struggle for immediate objectives and will only accept as worthwhile the struggle for ‘the conquest of power’ (or ‘workers’ power’, or ‘the destruction of the State’ or some such high-sounding aim). In practice, the two attitudes both have the same effect, that of consolidating a radical divorce between the concrete everyday struggles of the workers and the ‘final goal’ of overthrowing capitalism.

The strategy of transitional demands is an attempt to overcome this dualism. With that in mind, it begins by recognizing a basic ‘fact of life’ about modern capitalism: what has up to now facilitated the survival of that regime is the fact that all immediate demands, however radical they may seem, can always be integrated into that regime as long as they do not question the very basis of capitalism: the domination by Capital of both machines and labour, as well as of the State.

Of course, whether the capitalist will, at a given moment, resist rather than grant an increase in wages, allow once again a free exercise of the right to strike or a free negotiation of rates of pay, will depend on the economic conjuncture and on the seriousness of the structural crisis threatening a declining capitalism. But however serious its internal problems, none of these claims is ultimately too much for the regime to assimilate, none is fatal to it. And when the system faces a really large-scale movement with a serious revolutionary potential, it will always find it preferable to grant those demands rather than risk losing its power altogether. In point of fact it has many means at its disposal for de-fusing any element in those concessions that could become explosive to the capitalist economy, as long as it preserves real power.

If, however, starting with the immediate concerns of the workers, we formulate demands which cannot be assimilated by the regime, and if the workers become convinced of the need to fight for those demands, then we shall have made a decisive step towards welding together the struggle for immediate demands and the long term struggle to overthrow Capital. For in such a situation, the struggle for transitional demands is bound to become a struggle which shakes the very foundations of capitalism, and Capital will be forced to contest it fiercely. The most typical example of the struggle for transitional demands is the struggle for workers’ control.”