Our distinction between a minimum and maximum program has a great and profound meaning only under bourgeois rule. The very fact of bourgeois rule eliminates from our minimum program all demands incompatible with private ownership of the means of production. Those demands form the substance of a Socialist revolution, and they presuppose a dictatorship of the proletariat. The moment, however, a revolutionary government is dominated by a Socialist majority, the distinction between minimum and maximum programs loses its meaning both as a question of principle and as a practical policy. _Under no condition will a proletarian government be able to keep within the limits of this distinction._
Let us take the case of an eight hour workday. It is a well established fact that an eight hour workday does not contradict the capitalist order; it is, therefore, well within the limits of the Social-Democratic minimum program. Imagine, however, its realization in a revolutionary period, when all social passions are at the boiling point. An eight hour workday law would necessarily meet with stubborn and organized opposition on the part of the capitalists--let us say in the form of a lock-out and closing down of factories and plants. Hundreds of thousands of workingmen would be thrown into the streets. What ought the revolutionary government to do? A bourgeois government, however radical, would never allow matters to go as far as that. It would be powerless against the closing of factories and plants. It would be compelled to make concessions. The eight hour workday would not be put into operation; the revolts of the workingmen would be put down by force of arms....
Under the political domination of the proletariat, the introduction of an eight hour workday must have totally different consequences. The closing down of factories and plants cannot be the reason for increasing labor hours by a government which represents not capital, but labor, and which refuses to act as an "impartial" mediator, the way bourgeois democracy does. A labor government would have only one way out--to expropriate the closed factories and plants and to organize their work on a public basis.
Or let us take another example. A proletarian government must necessarily take decisive steps to solve the problem of unemployment. Representatives of labor in a revolutionary government can by no means meet the demands of the unemployed by saying that this is a bourgeois revolution. Once, however, the state ventures to eliminate unemployment--no matter how--a tremendous gain in the economic power of the proletariat is accomplished. The capitalists whose pressure on the working class was based on the existence of a reserve army of labor, will soon realize that they are powerless _economically_. It will be the task of the government to doom them also to _political_ oblivion.