Transitional Demands
The Socialist Party's demand for nationalisation and its longstanding practice of running in elections, has led some critics to label the Socialist Party as reformist, though the party argues that its method is based on Trotsky's Transitional Programme, and that this demand would lead to the socialist transformation of society, with a "socialist plan of production... to meet the needs of all" whilst "protecting our environment."
Critics from within the Trotskyist tradition have sometimes argued that the Socialist Party misunderstands Trotsky's Transitional Programme. Since 'transitional demands' are an attempt to link today's struggles with the struggle for socialism, critics argue that Trotsky's transitional demand regarding the need for strike committees should be raised, and that the Socialist Party should argue for these strike committees to take control of the workplaces. They argue that this is preferable to arguing for nationalisation since nationalisation does not show how workers would reach workers' control of the workplaces.
The Socialist Party argues that the sections of Trotsky's Transitional Programme which argue for the 'expropriation of separate groups of capitalists' and of the 'private banks' can be represented as nationalisation, as long the demand includes workers' control and management of the nationalised industries. For this reason, the Socialist Party's call for public ownership in the 'What We Stand For' column in 'The Socialist' newspaper, is followed by the demand for democratic working class control and management, as well as "Compensation to be paid on the basis of proven need", as judged by the workers once in control and management of the industry in question.
The Socialist Party criticises what it terms the "lavish" compensation given to the bosses of nationalised industries in the past, and links up the demand for nationalisation to demands for the workers to rely on their own control and management of the nationalised industries, and to the need for the socialist transformation of society itself. It argues that this is a valid modern interpretation of the Transitional Programme's conception.
At the outset of the 'Name change' debate which led to the establishment of the Socialist Party, Taaffe argued in 1995: "To merely repeat statements and formulas, drawn up at one period, but which events have overtaken, is clearly wrong" and that it would be fatal "to put forward abstract formulas as a substitute for concrete demands, clear slogans, which arise from the experiences of the masses themselves". Briefly discussing Trotsky's demands regarding factory committees, Taaffe comments that: "The shop stewards committees embody the very idea of 'factory committees' advocated by Trotsky."
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