Marta Harnecker (1937-2019) was a Chilean journalist and Marxist intellectual. Active during Salvador Allende's government in Chile, Harnecker also advised the government of Cuba and Venezuelan President, Hugo Chávez. For issue #97 of The Internationalist, we bring to you Part 2 of our series featuring Harnecker's Estrategia y Táctica or Strategy and Tactics, co-written with Gabriela Uribe in 1973. This text was part of the volumes written by Harnecker and Uribe to promote socialist education.

In this section, Harnecker and Uribe explain how the maximum programme of proletarian parties aims to achieve socialism and end exploitation, while the minimum programme outlines immediate tasks to create conditions for socialism. The UP (popular Unity) programme is a minimum programme, and both must adapt to changing circumstances while remaining focused on the ultimate goal of socialism.

This text has been translated from Spanish to English by Maria Inés Cuervo, Translations Coordinator at the Progressive International. Click here to read Part 1 and Part 2.

It is important to clarify that the programme of the proletarian parties should not be confused with the Programme of Popular Unity. The proletarian parties defend the class interests of the proletariat and, therefore, their final strategic objective is the suppression of all exploitation, not only in our country but worldwide, through the construction of socialism.

In order to better establish the differences and the relationship between the programme of the UP and the programme of the proletarian parties, it is useful to use the concepts of "minimum programme" and "maximum programme". Lenin used these words to differentiate in the programme of the workers' party the socialist aspects, which indicate the final goal of! the proletariat, from the "immediate tasks" or "practical part" of the programme, which are the concrete steps that the proletariat must take at that moment to advance the revolutionary process. These immediate tasks vary enormously from one social reality to another.

Thus, for example, in 1899 the programme of the Russian workers' party set as its current tasks, among other things, to fight for universal suffrage, for the inviolability of the person and the home of citizens, for the freedom to strike, for the establishment of a progressive income tax, for the eight-hour working day, etc.

In 1917, a few days before the triumph of the October proletarian revolution, the tasks were very different because the situation had changed radically since the triumph of the February bourgeois revolution. Among them were the establishment of the Republic of Soviets, nationalisation of the banks and monopolies, workers' control, general obligation to work, nationalisation of the land, confiscation of the landlords' material, etc. Lenin said that these were "measures to prepare for socialism" and that victory should not be claimed prematurely, that this "minimum programme" should not be abandoned, as Bukharin and Smirnov demanded. Lenin argued: "We must advance firmly and courageously, without hesitation, towards our goal, but it is ridiculous to claim that we have already reached it, when this is clearly not the case. To abolish the minimum programme already would be the same as declaring that we have already triumphed".

We shall call the socialist programme which refers to the general tasks which make it possible to achieve the final strategic objective of the proletarian revolution the MAXIMUM PROGRAMME. We shall call the programme which refers to the immediate tasks which make it possible to achieve a certain partial strategic objective of the struggle for socialism in a country the MINIMUM PROGRAMME.

Therefore, the maximum programme of the proletarian parties is a programme of socialist content which aims to put an end to the exploitation of man by man forever, and the minimum programme brings together the tasks which must be accomplished in order to create the conditions for advancing towards socialism in a given country.

And the programme of the UP is precisely the minimum programme: it indicates the immediate present tasks that must be carried out by the working class, together with broad sectors of the people, in order to create the conditions that open the road to socialism in our country.

Finally, it is important to point out that the minimum programme is not something separate from the maximum programme, but, on the contrary, it is a part of it, which, as we saw, indicates the immediate tasks that must be accomplished so that the maximum programme can be realised. It is this relationship between the maximum programme and the minimum programme that ensures that the revolutionary process is an uninterrupted process, a march that does not stop in its advance to socialism.

It is in this sense that the proletarian parties are prepared to put their all on the line for the fulfilment of the Programme of the UP, always maintaining their political independence to continue to fight for the realisation of their ultimate goal: to establish socialism in our country and to put an end to all exploitation.

If a revolutionary party is not able to set itself a minimum programme, if it is not able to visualise what are the concrete and immediate tasks that allow it to advance towards the final strategic objective, it will not be able to become a true revolutionary vanguard since it will function with purely abstract schemes that the popular masses will find it difficult to understand. The minimum programme is the best programme for that historical situation and therefore the only truly revolutionary programme, since it is the only one that allows the process to move forward. Many programmes that are more revolutionary on paper can become a brake on the revolution if they are intended to be implemented immediately.

We think that one of the errors of some revolutionary sectors outside the UP was not to have a minimum programme, and when they claimed that the programme of the UP was not "their" programme, what they were really saying was that this programme did not correspond to their maximum programme, which was a socialist programme.

But while it is wrong not to have a minimum programme, it is also important to point out that it would be no less wrong for a proletarian party to make the minimum programme its only programme, that is, to make the minimum programme its maximum programme. It would thus abandon its duty to raise the level of consciousness of the masses, especially of the workers, so that they are ready to fight to make our country a socialist country.

The raising of the consciousness of the masses takes place in the course of the struggle itself, in their mobilisation against the enemy, in the union of the theory and practice of their struggles.

In this sense, it is important to bear in mind that the minimum programme refers to the concrete historical situation that needs to be transformed. Therefore, when major changes occur in this situation, major changes must be made to the programme.

That is why revolutionaries must continually analyse their results and the new situations that are being created. They must be attentive to the need to adapt this programme to reality, but always in the perspective of the final objective, to advance to socialism.

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