Critique of the Gotha Programme

See also: Gotha Programme

The Critique of the Gotha Programme (German: Kritik des Gothaer Programms) is a document based on a letter by Karl Marx written in early May 1875 to the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (SDAP), with whom Marx and Friedrich Engels were in close association.^[1]

Karl Marx in 1875

Offering perhaps Marx's most detailed pronouncement on programmatic matters of revolutionary strategy, the document discusses the "dictatorship of the proletariat", the period of transition from capitalism to communism, proletarian internationalism and the party of the working class. It is notable also for elucidating the principles of "To each according to his contribution" as the basis for a "lower phase" of communist society directly following the transition from capitalism and "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" as the basis for a future "higher phase" of communist society. In describing the lower phase, he states that "the individual receives from society exactly what he gives to it" and advocates remuneration in the form of non-transferable labour vouchers as opposed to money.

Background

The Critique of the Gotha Programme, published after his death, was among Marx's last major writings. The letter is named after the Gotha Programme, a proposed party platform manifesto for a forthcoming party congress that was to take place in the town of Gotha. At the party congress, the SDAP ("Eisenachers", based in Eisenach) planned to unite with the General German Workers' Association (ADAV, "Lassalleans", from Ferdinand Lassalle) to form a unified party.

The Eisenachers sent the draft programme for a united party to Marx for comment. He found the programme negatively influenced by Lassalle, whom Marx regarded as an opportunist willing to limit the demands of the workers' movement in exchange for concessions from the government. However, at the congress held in Gotha in late May 1875 the draft programme was accepted with only minor alterations by what was to become the powerful Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Marx's programmatic letter was published by Engels only much later, in 1891 when the SPD had declared its intention of adopting a new programme, the result being the Erfurt Programme of 1891.

In Critique of the Gotha Programme Marx describes the transition from a capitalist society to a socialist society, the first stage of communism.^[2]

In Marx's work, the concept of bourgeois right (bürgerliche Recht) is primarily addressed in Critique of the Gotha Programme (it is also mentioned briefly in Capital).^[3]: 127 Marx writes that in the transitional state of socialism, workers would not receive, in the form of rights to consumption, their own contribution to the total social product because their contribution would necessarily be reduced by what is necessary for accumulation and to support those unable to labor.^[3]: 127 Marx contends that although the post-capitalist society could not be understood in terms of value and commodity production, it would still not yet reach the communist model of from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.^[3]: 127 Marx writes a society having emerged from the cultural and ideological conditions of capitalism would still be "stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose whom it emerges."^[3]: 127 According to Marx, the mode of distribution in such a society is the "equal right" or "bourgeois right".^[3]: 127

Editions

• Critique of the Gotha Program, translated by Kevin B. Anderson and Karel Ludenhoff, Introduction by Peter Hudis, Foreword by Peter Linebaugh, PM Press/Spectre 2023, ISBN 9781629639161.

See also

• Iron law of wages
• Marxism
• Marxist philosophy
• Marxist theory
• Historical materialism