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^[1] Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme is one of the most important contributions to the development of the theory of scientific communism and an example of uncompromising struggle against opportunism. It was written in April and early May of 1875 and sent to the leadership of the Eisenachers (Wilhelm Bracke) on May 5, 1875. The work contains a critical examination of the draft programme of the united German Social-Democratic Party and was prepared for the Gotha Unity Congress.
The Critique of the Gotha Programme was first published by Engels in 1891 despite the opposition of the opportunist leadership of the German Social-Democratic Party. It appeared, together with Engels' "Foreword," in Die Neue Zeit, the theoretical organ of the German Social-Democratic Party, Vol. 1, No. 18, 1891.
Engels also published Marx's relevant letter to Wilhelm Bracke of May 5, 1875, together with the Critique of the Gotha Programme.
It is clear from Engels' letter to Karl Kautsky of February 23, 1891, that Engels had to agree to tone down some of the more incisive passages. The present edition is a verbatim translation from Marx's manuscript.    [p.1]

^[2] At the Gotha Congress, which took place from May 22 to 27, 1875, the two existing German workers' organizations -- the Social-Democratic Workers' Party (the Eisenachers) founded by Liebknecht and Bebel in Eisenach in 1869 and led by them, and the Lassallean General Association of German Workers headed by Hasenclever, Hasselmann and T&oumllcke -- united to form the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany.    [p.3]

^[3] The Congress of the German Social-Democratic Party at Halle -- the first after the repeal of the Anti-Socialist Law -- decided on October 6, 1890, on the motion of Wilhelm Liebknecht, the main author of the

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Gotha Programme, to prepare a new draft programme for the next Party congress. This new programme was adopted in October of the following year at the Erfurt Congress (the Erfurt Programme).    [p.3]

^[4] The Hague Congress of the First International, held in Septcmber 1872, was marked by the struggle against Bakunin. The majority at the congress supported the stand of the General Council led by Marx. Bakunin was expelled from the International.    [p.4]

^[5] Bakunin's Statehood and Anarchy, Zurich, 1873.    [p.6]

^[6] The People's Party of Germany, established in 1865, consisted mainly of petty-bourgeois democrats from the South German states and a section of the bourgeois democrats. It opposed the hegemony of Prussia over Germany and advanced general democratic slogans which also reflected the secessionist tendency of some German states. It advocated building a German federation and opposed unifying Germany under a centralized democratic republic.
In 1866, the People's Party of Saxony, which had workers as its nucleus, merged with the German People's Party, forming its left wing. The combined Party agreed to settling the question of national unification by democratic means and later developed in a socialist direction. After breaking with the petty-bourgeois democrats, it participated in founding the Social-Democratic Workers' Party in August 1869.    [p.6]

^[7] The Unity Congress of German Social-Democracy was held on May 22-27, 1875, in Gotha; the congress of the Lassalleans had taken place earlier in May, while the congress of the Eisenachers was convened afterwards, on June 8, in Hamburg.    [p.6]

^[8] The first French translation of Volume I of Capital, which Marx himself edited, was published in instalments in 1872-75 in Paris.    [p.7]

^[9] The publishing house of the Social-Democratic Workers' Party attached to the editorial board of Volksstaat (People's State), the central organ of the party.    [p.7]

^[10] The second edition of Marx's pamphlet, Revelations About the Cologne Communist Trial (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Works, German ed., Vol. 8, pp. 405-70). It was issued in 1875 by the Volksstaat bookshop at Leipzig.    [p.7]

^[11] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1970, p. 44.    [p.19]

^[12] The Reichstag elections of January 10, 1874.    [p.19]

^[13] "The Marat of Berlin" is an ironic reference to Hasselmann, the chief editor of Neuer Sozialdemokrat.

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The magazine Neuer Sozialdemokrat was the organ of the Lassallean General Association of German Workers, appearing three times a week in Berlin from 1871 to 1876. It pursued a line which faithfully reflected the Lassallean policy of accommodation to the Bismarck regime and propitiation of the German ruling classes, as well as the Lassallean leadership's opportunism and nationalism. Adopting a sectarian stand, it consistently opposed the Marxist leadership of the International and the German Social-Democratic Workers' Party, and supported the hostile activities of the Bakuninists and other anti-proletarian elements against the General Council of the International.    [p.20]

^[14] The International League of Peace and Freedom was a bourgeois pacifist organization set up in Switzerland in 1867 by a group of petty-bourgeois Republicans and liberals (Victor Hugo, Giuseppe Garibaldi, and others taking an active part in it). In 1867-68 Mikhail Bakunin joined in the work of the League. During its early period, the League attempted to use the working class movement to attain its own ends. It asserted that war could be eliminated through the establishment of a "United States of Europe," thus spreading illusions among the masses in order to divert the proletariat from class struggle.    [p.21]

^[15] After the fall of the Paris Commune, Bismarck attempted in 1871-72 to conclude a formal treaty with Austria and Russia for united action against the revolutionary movement in general, and against the First International in particular. In accordance with Bismarck's proposal, the Three Emperors' League of Germany. Russia and Austria-Hungary was formed in October 1873 to take common action once a "European disturbance" occurred.    [p.21]

^[16] The Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung editorial of March 20, 1875, on the draft programme. It stated that "Social-Democratic agitation has in some respects become more prudent: it is renouncing the International."
Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (North-German General Newspaper), a reactionary daily published in Berlin from 1861 to 1918, was the organ of the Bismarck government from the sixties to the eighties.    [p.22]

^[17] Lassalle formulated this law as, "The iron economic law which, under present-day conditions, under the rule of the supply and demand of labour, determines wages is this: that the average wage always remains reduced to the necessary subsistence level which in any given nation is habitually needed for eking out a living and for propagation.
"It is the pivot around which the actual daily wage constantly swings pendulum-like, without ever rising above it or falling below it for long. The actual daily wage cannot remain above this average for any length

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of time, otherwise the lightened, improved condition of the workers would give rise to an increase of the working population and, consequently, of the supply of factory hands, which in turn would bring wages down to the original level or below.
"Wages cannot remain far below this necessary subsistence level for long, because this would cause migration, celibacy, abstention from producing children and thus finally reduction in the number of workers due to poverty, whereby the supply of factory hands would be lowered and wages would return to their original higher level. The actual average wage is, therefore, destined to be always fluid, to fluctuate around this pivot to which it must constantly return, to be sometimes above and sometimes below it" (Arbeiterlesebuch [Workers' Reader], two speeches by Lassalle in Frankfort-on-Main on May 17 and 19, 1863, Hottingen-Zurich, 1887).
Lassalle first explained this "law" in his pamphlet "An Open Answer to the Central Committee for Convening a General Congress of German Workers at Leipzig" (Zurich, 1863, pp. 15-16).    [p.22]

^[18] A quotation from Goethe's "Das Gottliche."    [p.22]

^[19] The theory advanced by Friedrich Albert Lange (1828-75) in his work Die Arbeiterfrage in ihrer Bedeutung f&uumlr Gegenwart und Zukunft (The Labour Question: Its Significance for the Present and the Future), Duisburg, 1865, pp. 144-61 and 180.    [p.22]

^[20] Philippe Joseph Buchez (1796-1865), French historian and publicist. In the 1840s he advocated French Catholic socialism, which demanded the formation of producers' co-operative societies with state aid.    [p.25]

^[21] Louis Philippe (1773-1850), King of France in the period of the "July Monarchy." He ascended the throne after the July Revolution of 1830, and the February Revolution of 1848 brought his reign to an end.    [p.25]

^[22] L'Atelier (Workshop), a monthly published in Paris from 1840 to 1850 by artisans and workers influenced by Catholic socialism. Its edito rial board included workers' representatives who were re-elected every three months.    [p.25]

^[23] Napoleon III (Louis Bonaparte), Emperor of France (1852-70).    [p.28]

^[24] "Honest" was the epithet applied to the Eisenachers.    [p.28]

^[25] Robert Gladstone, a Liverpool merchant and liberal who advocated a progressive income tax which should fall primarily on the big land owners. He was the brother of William Gladstone (1809-98), British Liberal Prime Minister in the last half of the 19th century.    [p.29]

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^[26] "Kulturkampf" (struggle for culture), a term applied by bourgeois liberals to the legal measures adopted by the Bismarck government in the 1870s. Under the pretext of fighting for secular culture, they were aimed against Catholicism and the party of the "Centre" which supported the secessionism and anti-Prussian tendency of the officials, landowners and bourgeoisie of the medium-sized and smaller southwest German states. However, in the 1880s, Bismarck repealed most of these measures in order to muster all the reactionary forces of the states.    [p.31]

^[27] This letter is closely related in content to Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme and expresses Marx's and Engels' common view on the union of the two German workers' parties which was planned for early 1875. The immediate reason for this letter was the publication in Volksstaat and in Neuer Sozialdemokrat, March 7, 1875, of the draft programme of the would-be united German Social-Democratic Workers' Party. The draft was revised only slightly and adopted at the Unity Gotha Congress of May 1875. It has since been known as the Gotha Programme.
Marx and Engels favoured merging the two workers' parties. However, they held that the unification was possible only on the basis of sound principles. In his letter to Bebel, Engels criticized the draft and warned the Eisenachers not to give in to the Lassalleans. Not until 36 years later was the letter first published in Bebel's book Aus meinem Lehen (From My Life), Part 2, Stuttgart, 1911.    [p.37]

^[28] The programme adopted at the General German Social-Democratic Workers' Congress at Eisenach on August 7-9, 1869, which was attended by German, Austrian and Swiss Social-Democrats. The German Social Democratic Workers' Party, later known as the Eisenach party, was founded at this congress. The Eisenach Programme adhered in general to the line of the International.    [p.38]

^[29] Der Volksstaat, central organ of the German Social-Democratic Workers' Party (Eisenachers), published in Leipzig from October 2, 1869, to September 29, 1876, twice weekly at first, then three times a week from July 1873. The journal represented the viewpoint of the revolutionaries in the German working-class movement and was therefore subjected to frequent persecution by the government and police. As the editors were arrested from time to time, the editorial board membership was always changing, but the leadership of the paper remained in the hands of Wilhelm Liebknecht. August Bebel also played a prominent role. Marx and Engels had been contributors since the journal's founding and often helped the editorial board.    [p.39]

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^[30] The Frankfurter Zeitung was the shortened name of the Frankfurter Zeitung und Handelsblatt, originally a daily with a petty-bourgeois democratic orientation, published from 1856 to 1943 at Frankfort-on-Main.    [p.39]

^[31] These political demands of the draft Gotha Programme read as follows:
The German Workers' Party demands as the free basis of the state:
1. Universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage for all males twenty-one years of age and above, in all elections -- national and local. 2. Direct legislation by the people with the right of initiating and vetoing proposals. 3. Universal military training; people's militia to replace the standing army. Questions of war and peace to be decided by the representative assembly of the people. 4. Abolition of all exceptional laws, especially the laws on the press, association and assembly. 5. People's courts. Free administration of justice.
The German Workers' Party demands as the intellectual and moral basis of the state: 1. Universal and equal elementary education by the state. Universal compulsory school attendance. Free instruction. 2. Freedom of science. Freedom of conscience.    [p.39]

^[32] I.e., the International League of Peace and Freedom. See Note 14    [p.39]

^[33] See Note 17    [p.40]

^[34] See Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Part VII.    [p.41]

^[35] Wilhelm Bracke's Der Lassalle'sche Vorschleg (The Lassallean Proposal ), Brunswick, 1873.    [p.41]

^[36] Amand Gogg (1820-97), one of the leaders of the bourgeois League of Peace and Freedom.    [p.41]

^[37] Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Works, German ed., Vol. 4, pp. 63-182).    [p.42]

^[38] Demokratisches Wochenblatt (Democratic Weekly ), a German workers' journal published from January 1868 to September 1869 in Leipzig under the editorship of Wilhelm Liebknecht. In December 1868 it became the organ of the Union of German Workers' Associations led by August Bebel. In the beginning the journal was to some extent influenced by the petty-bourgeois ideology of the People's Party. But thanks to Marx's and Engels' efforts, it began to conduct the struggle against the Lassalleans and to spread the ideas of the International and publish its important documents, so that it played a significant role in the founding of the

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German Social-Democratic Workers' Party. At the Eisenach Party Congress in 1869 it was renamed the party's central organ and its title was changed to Der Volksstaat (see Note 29).    [p.44]

^[39] On account of the revolutionary-internationalist position they adopted during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, Liebknecht and Bebel were charged with treason at the famous Leipzig trial in Match 1872 and sentenced to two years' imprisonment in a fortress. Bebel's term expired on May 14, 1874, but six weeks later he was again jailed in Zwickau, Saxony, for another nine months, for "l&egravese majesté." He was finally released on April 1, 1875, coincidentally Bismarck's birthday.    [p.44]

^[40] Hermann Ramm, one of the editors of Der Volksstaat, the central organ of the Eisenach party.    [p.45]

^[41] At the Gotha Congress, the Party's leading organ was composed of representatives of the two organizations. The committee consisted of Wilhelm Hasenclever, Georg Wilhelm Hartmann and Karl de Rossi of the Lassalleans, and August Geib and Ignaz Auer of the Eisenachers.    [p.47]

^[42] In 321 B. C., during the Second Samnite War, the Samnites defeated the Roman army at the Caudine Forks, a defile near the ancient Italian town Caudium and forced the vanquished army to pass under a yoke, a monstrous insult to a defeated army. Hence the term denotes suffering deep humiliation.    [p.48]

^[43] The committee's proposal to remove from the list of Party literature the following works concerning Lassalle: Bernhard Becker, Revelations About the Tragic Death of Ferdinand Lassalle, Schleiz, 1868; The History of Lassalle's Working Class Agitation, Brunswick, 1874, and Wilhelm Bracke, The Lassallean Proposal, Brunswick, 1873.    [p.49]

^[44] The next Reichstag elections were to take place on January 10, 1877.    [p.50]

^[45] Wilhelm Stieber, the head of the Prussian political police. Tessendorf, the public prosecutor in Prussia.    [p.50]

^[46] By the Leipzigers, Engels meant Liebknecht, Bebel and other members of the editorial board of the Party's central organ, Volksstaat.    [p.50]

^[47] Kautsky was then editor of the weekly journal Die Neue Zeit.    [p.54]

^[48] Victor Adler (1852-1918), the founder and leader of the Austrian Social-Democratic Party.    [p.54]

^[49] Engels' work published not long afterwards under the title, Brentano Against Marx Because of So-Called Falsified Quotation, Hamburg, 1891.    [p.55]

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^[50] Wilhelm Dietz (1843-1922), a German Social-Democratic member of the Reichstag, was manager of the Party publishing house in Stuttgart, which also put out Die Neue Zeit.    [p.56]

^[51] Wilhelm Liebknecht's report on the Party programme on October 15, 1890, at the Halle Congress (see Note 3).    [p.56]

^[52] Eduard Bernstein.    [p.58]

^[53] "Marginal Notes to the Programme of the German Workers' Party" was published in Die Neue Zeit, No. 18, January 31, 1891, and in Vorw&oumldrts, February 1 and 3, 1891.
Vorw&oumldrts, the central organ of the German Social-Democratic Party, published in Leipzig, 1876-78, and in Berlin, 1891-1933. Liebknecht and Hasenclever were in charge from 1876 to 1878, and Liebknecht alone from 1891-1900.    [p.58]

^[54] The German Social-Democratic Party leaders attempted to obstruct the distribution of Die Neue Zeit, No. 18.
The Anti-Socialist Law which outlawed the German Social-Democratic Party was passed by the Bismarck government with majority support in the Reichstag on October 21, 1878, to suppress the socialist and workers' movement. The law was prolonged every 2 to 3 years. As a result of the pressure of the mass workers' movement, the Exceptional Law Against the Socialists was abrogated on October 1, 1890.    [p.58]

^[55] August Bebel.    [p.58]

^[56] I.e., the Eisenachers.    [p.59]

^[57] Hamburger Echo, the Social-Democratic daily founded in 1887.    [p.61]

^[58] The editorial "On the Critique of the Social-Democratic Pro gramme, appearing in the Hamburger Echo, No. 33, February 8, 1891, indicated the great significance which Engels' publication of Marx's letter on the Gotha Programme had in formulating a new Social-Democratic programme.
Engels here refers to the "system of acquired rights" as expounded by Lassalle in his book of the same title, Leipzig, 1861. Starting from philosophy and jurisprudence, Lassalle interpreted the legal relationships between men from his idealist standpoint.    [p.61]

^[59] Berlin dispatch in the Vienna Arbeiter-Zeitung, No. 6, February 6, 1891, reported that Engels had published in Germany a document of great theoretical and practical significance -- Marx's Critique. The author of the dispatch, in commenting on Engels' achievements, wrote further that it was now "time to formulate the theoretical principles of our party

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with full sharpness and without any compromise as to the programme, and at the present moment this publication is indeed timely."    [p.61]

^[60] Paul Lafargue's article for Die Neue Zeit, instead of appearing there as prearranged, was published in Revue Socialiste, No. 93, Vol. 16, 1892, under the title "La th&eacuteorie de la Valeur et de la plus-value de Marx et les &eacuteconomistes bourgeois" ("Marx's Theory of Value and Surplus-Value and the Bourgeois Economists").    [p.62]

^[61] Wilhelm Liebknecht.    [p.62]

^[62] Jules Guesde in his "Briefe aus Frankreich" ("Letters from France") which appeared in Vorw&aumlrts, Nos. 23 and 25, January 28 and 30, 1891, exposed the policy of suppressing the workers' movement at home, which, injurious to the good name of the Republic, was implemented by the moderate bourgeois Republicans -- the so-called opportunists -- headed by Jean Antoine Ernest Constans, Pierre Maurice Rouvier and others.    [p.62]

^[63] On February 13, 1891, in Vorw&aumlrts was printed an editorial, "Der Marx'sche Programm-Brief" ("Marx's Letter on the Programme"), which expressed the official position of the Party executive on the Critique of tbe Gotha Programme. The article strongly opposed Marx's estimate of Lassalle and his authoritative advice with a "categorical no," and supported the Party's adoption of the draft programme in disregard of Marx's criticism.    [p.62]

^[64] August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht and Paul Singer were guests in Engels' home from November 27 to early December 1890 after they went to London on behalf of the German Social-Democratic Party to congratulate Engels on his 70th birthday (November 28, 1890). At Engels' proposal, these representatives of the German Social-Democratic Party met Eleanor Marx-Aveling, John Burns, William Thorne and Cunninghame Graham, activists in the English working-class movement, to exchange views on problems of the international working-class movement, and in particular, on methods of strengthening the international ties among socialist and workers' parties and organizations.    [p.63]

^[65] Arbeiter-Zeitung, the central organ of the Austrian Social-Democratic Party, founded by Victor Adler in 1889 in Vienna.    [p.65]

^[66] This letter was first published in Internationale Presse Korrespondenz, Berlin, Vol. XII, No.11, February 9, 1932.    [p.67]

^[67] The reference is to Critique of the Gotha Programme.    [p.67]

^[68] S&aumlchsische Arbeiter-Zeitung, the Social-Democratic Party paper published in Dresden from 1890.

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Z&uumlricher Post, a Swiss Social-Democratic paper, published from December 1890 to April 1891.    [p.68]

^[69] Die Neue Zeit carried the Vorw&aumlrts editorial, No. 37, February 13, 1891 (see Note 63), in Vol. I, No. 21, 1890-91. Besides its introduction to the Vorw&aumlrts editorial, the Neue Zeit editorial board stated: "The fact is, we don't feel duty bound to submit this letter by Marx to the leadership and/or fraction of the Social-Democratic Party for their consideration. We alone bear the responsibility for publishing it."    [p.68]

^[70] As a lawyer, Lassalle handled the divorce case of Countess Sophie Hatzfeldt from 1845 to 1854.    [p.69]

^[71] Johann Baptist von Schweitzer (1833-75), the leader of the Lassalleans after Lassalle's death.    [p.70]

^[72] Engels was preparing the fourth edition of The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, 1891.    [p.71]

^[73] Richard Fischer (1855-1926), a member of the German Social-Democratic Party executive and the manager of the Berlin Party publishing house.
In his letter of February 20, 1891, Richard Fischer notified Engels of the Party executive's decision to re-publish Marx's The Civil War in France and Wage-Labour and Capital and Engels' Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, and asked him to write prefaces for the new editions.    [p.71]

^[74] New-Yorker Volkszeitung, founded by and under the direction of Frederick Sorge in 1878.    [p.72]

^[75] In a letter of March 30, 1891, August Bebel gave his reasons for remaining silent for so long. He was unwilling to give a direct answer after the publication of Marx's letter on the programme because he disagreed with the way it was done; besides, he was involved in Reichstag activities. Bebel considered it improper to publish Marx's covering letter to Bracke, May 5, 1875, for, he claimed, it concerned not the Party programme but the Party leadership. He gave as his main reason for opposing its publication that it placed weapons in the hands of the enemy to fight the socialists, while the sharp criticism of Lassalle would irritate the ex-Lassalleans in the Party.
In his letter of April 25, 1891, Bebel gave Engels an account of the German workers' movement and mentioned in particular the strike of the Rhine-Westphalian coal miners. He considered the strike untimely, as it would be favourable to the mine-owners who had been seeking excuses to smother the miners' discontent. In the face of the probability

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of police provocation particularly on the eve of May Day, the Party executive warned the miners not to take premature acrion.    [p.74]

^[76] Audorf's prologue was written for the commemomtion on September 4, 1876, of the anniversary of Ferdinand Lassalle's death.    [p.78]

^[77] Der Vorbote (Herald ), a German anarchist paper published in Chicago from 1881.    [p.78]