Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. — Albert Einstein.
Minimalism isn’t about being ascetic. For me, it stems from the desire to create something holistically beautiful. This encompasses more than visual design: the goal is to build an elegant system. In a beautiful system, every material—CSS, XHTML and Server-side templating—works together, each doing what it is best at.
These system-building ideals very quickly meet with demanding realities: time constraints, browser support, load times, etc. It is the designer’s job to carefully make compromises while balancing the desired end results. For some this means a wrapping div, for others a presentational table.
The minimalist chooses to compromise by reducing scope, because it is the most holistically beautiful option.
See also: “Minimalism isn’t about doing less as much as it is about doing as little as needed”.