Hence It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demand and the socialist program of the revolution.
This meant that "every serious demand of the proletariat" reached beyond the limits of what the capitalist and the bourgeois state were prepared to willingly give.
The Fourth International, Trotsky writes, does not discard the program of the old “minimal” demands "to the degree to which these have preserved at least part of their vital forcefulness."
Transitional demands therefore do not draw back in the face of the contingencies of capitalist economics, but on the contrary, it is proposed, they continually challenge the logic of the capitalist system, expose it in the eyes of the workers, and thus help them draw towards a fully rounded out socialist consciousness - an acceptance and adoption of the "maximum programme" which the socialist leaders kept for their holiday speechifying, as an immediate and realistic necessity.
[6] Trotsky urges that transitional demands should include the call for the expropriation of various groups of capitalists[7] - sometimes translated in modern terms into the nationalisation of various sectors[a] - under the control and management of the workers.
The program was developed through discussions between Leon Trotsky, who did much of the drafting of the document, and leaders of the SWP such as James P. Cannon.
However, Trotskyist currents that have departed the Fourth International tend to present the Program as a work authored by Trotsky individually.