Minimum programme

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In Marxist theory, a minimum programme consists of a series of demands for immediate reforms.

The concept of a minimum programme comes from the Erfurt Programme of the SPD, later mirrored by much of the Socialist International. The minimum is contrasted with a maximum programme, which will achieve socialism. In the short term, parties were to pursue only the minimum programme of achievable demands, which would improve workers' lives until the inevitable collapse of capitalism. Other groups believed that the achievement of a minimum programme enabling them to become mass parties and pursue their maximum programme.

The Communist International developed the alternative idea of a transitional programme, seeing the minimum/maximum division as leaving social democratic parties always campaigning only for their minimum programme and not clearly planning a route to achieve their maximum programme.