Critique of the Gotha Programme

Also known as Marginal Notes to the Programme of the German Worker’s Party. A work in which Marx profoundly exposed and criticized Lassalle’s opportunism and expounded the principles of scientific socialism. Written between April and early May 1875, unpublished in Marx’s lifetime. In 1891, in order to assist the Social Democratic Party of Germany to formulate a scientific programme of action, Engels, in spite of the opposition of the opportunist leaders of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, published this work publicly in the German Party’s theoretical journal Die Neue Zeit, Vol. 1, No. 18, and wrote a preface. At the same time, Marx’s letter to Wilhelm Bracke on May 5, 1875, which was directly related to this work, was also published. The Critique of the Gotha Programme was first translated into Chinese by Xiong Deshan and was published in the Beijing magazine Today, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Marx Special Issue) in 1922; and another translation by Li Chunfan (Ke Bonian) was published by the Shanghai Liberation Series in 1925; and another translation by He Sijing and Xu Bing was published by the Yan’an Liberation Publishing House in 1939. After the founding of New China, Renmin Publishing House also published a single edition in 1965, 1992, 1997 and 2015, respectively.

During the 1860s to 1870s, there were two opposing factions in the German workers’ movement: one was the General German Workers’ Association (Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiter-Verein), founded in Leipzig on May 23, 1963, i.e., the Lassalleans, the political organization that guided the German workers’ movement and was chaired by Lassalle; the other was the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei), founded in August 1869, i.e., the Eisenachers, whose leaders were chiefly Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel. The Eisenachers and the Lassalleans differed in principle on a number of theoretical and political questions. The Eisenachers upheld the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and opposed the Prussian rule, while the Lassalleans, on the contrary, advocated universal suffrage and the establishment of production co-operatives with state aid, embarked on the path of “state socialism” of peaceful transition, spurned the status and role of the peasants, opposed the worker-peasant alliance, preached the “iron law of wages”, and defended bourgeois exploitation. In 1871, Germany achieved national unification in the Franco-Prussian War, and the objective situation after the unification demanded that the German workers’ movement should have a unified leadership, and therefore the necessity for the two factions to overcome their split and achieve unity became more and more prominent. In 1875, the Eisenachers and the Lassalleans negotiated and eventually drew up a draft programme for unification—Programme of the German Workers’ Party. In formulating the new unity programme, the leaders of the Eisenachers did not avail themselves of their favorable position vis-à-vis the Lassalleans, and in particular, the leader of the faction, Liebknecht, did not listen to the advice of Marx and Engels, and thus gave up his principles on the basis of the unification, the conditions of the unification, and other questions. In order to effectively defend the fundamental principles of scientific socialism, liquidate the erroneous thought of Lassalleanism, and make the Eisenachers realize the revolutionary situation, Marx wrote this work from April to May 1875, and on May 5 of the same year, and he sent it, with an accompanying letter, to Wilhelm Bracke, one of the leaders of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany, and asked him to pass it on to the other leaders of the Eisenachers. The Critique of the Gotha Programme contains very important contents. It chiefly includes:

First, it systematically criticized Lassalle’s erroneous views on “labor” and “fair distribution”. (1) It analyzed the erroneous nature of his viewpoint from the economic aspect (it avoided the question of the property in the means of production and that the economic base determines the superstructure. The so-called “fairness” and “equality” belonged to the category of superstructure.) Marx firmly rejected the viewpoint that “Labor is the source of wealth and all culture”. He put forth: “The man who possesses no other property than his labor-power must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the slave of other men who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labor. He can only work with their permission, hence live only with their permission.” The capitalist mode of production rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of nonworkers in the form of property in capital and land, that is, in present-day society, the instruments of labor are the monopoly of the landowners (the monopoly of property in land is even the basis of the monopoly of capital) and the capitalists. The masses are only owners of the personal condition of production, of labor-power. If the elements of production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution of the means of consumption results automatically. This verified that the property in the means of production and the economic base determine the mode of production and distribution of society. Therefore, in the capitalist society of private property, labor and its products are owned by the capitalists, and the so-called “fair distribution” and “equal rights” were mere phrases. If the material conditions of production are the co-operative property of the workers themselves, then there likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one. Vulgar socialism has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution. (2) It explained that in the future society, the distribution of the total social product will also be “diminished” proceeds. According to his theoretical analysis of the process of expanded reproduction, Marx pointed out that the value created by social production, before being distributed to individual workers, should be deducted in three parts: the first part is the part that covers for replacement of the means of production used up; the second part is the additional portion to continue the expansion of production, the third part is the reserve fund to meet unforeseen contingencies. The remaining portion is also subject to deductions: the costs of administration incurred in organizing production; common needs, such as schools, health services, etc.; public funds for those unable to work, etc. In this way, the so-called “undiminished” proceeds of labor have already unnoticeably become converted into the “diminished” proceeds. (3) Distribution in the first phase of communist society, i.e., socialist society. On the question of distribution, Marx pointed out that communism was a social formation in constant development and that its formation and development were not blind but based on certain objective laws. On the question of the phases of development of the future communist society, he anticipated that it would go through two stages in its development: the first phase of communist society (often referred to as “socialist society”) and the higher phase of communist society. Since the first phase of communist society has just emerged from capitalist society, it is in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerged. At this stage of development of society, the original private ownership of the means of production and exploitation in capitalist society has already been abolished, and in the sphere of distribution, each worker receives appropriate remuneration from society in accordance with the size of his or her contribution of labor. People follow the rule of distribution “more pay for more work and less pay for less work”. From this point of view, everyone should enjoy equal rights. However, they cannot be exactly the same because of objective differences in the endowments and productive capacity, etc., possessed by each individual; since the family burdens, etc., are not the same for each individual, the differences in distribution among workers exist objectively under the condition that the fruits of their labor are the same, and consequently, their shares in the distribution of social consumer goods are the same. Rights enjoyed by people can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby. The socialist stage introduces the rule of distribution according to contribution, which will lead to differences in the degree of prosperity of workers. Conditioned by the conditions of social development, such differences will exist objectively in the first phase of communist society. (4) The distribution at the higher phase of communist society. Marx pointed out: “In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”. In the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx made a foresightful judgment about the features of distribution in the higher phase of the future communist society, thus drew a boundary for the distinction between the higher phase and the first phase.

Second, Marx made a radical criticism of Lassalle’s “iron law of wages”. He held that Lassalle’s “iron law of wages” was fabricated out of thin air and its theoretical basis was the reactionary Malthusian theory of population, which did not touch on the real root of the proletarian poverty, the “system of wage-labor”.

Third, Marx criticized Lassalle’s fallacies such as “the establishment of production co-operatives with state aid under the democratic control of the toiling people.” In a society dominated by the bourgeoisie, it is only a fantasy to expect to achieve “democratic control of the toiling people” by obtaining “state aid” and then realize socialism in a peaceful way without revolution.

Fourth, Marx made a radical criticism of the anti-scientific viewpoint of “free state” in the Gotha Programme (Draft), and profoundly exposed the hypocritical and deceptive nature of the bourgeois state. Marx pointed out that “freedom consists in converting the state from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate to it”; and the existing “forms of state” did not restrict the “freedom of the state”. “The different states of the different civilized countries, in spite of their motley diversity of form, all have this in common: that they are based on modern bourgeois society”, they have all, without exception, become tools of bourgeois rule. As for the future state system, Marx held: “Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”

The Critique of the Gotha Programme occupies an outstanding place in the history of the development of Marxism, as it comprehensively and systematically criticized the erroneous theories of Lassalleanism, clarified the essential difference between scientific socialism and non-scientific socialist thoughts and theories, and then made a principled conception of the future society in terms of its system, phases of development as well as distribution, etc. From the point of view of the development of the history of the international communist movement, this work has exerted a wider theoretical and practical influence in the revolutionary practice of the European proletariat, and is an important document of scientific socialism, and the quintessence it contains has always been an important ground for the proletarian parties of all countries to improve their theoretical literacy and enhance their capacity for theoretical analysis.