Kritik des Gothaer Programms

by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels

Die Kritik des Gothaer Programms (von Marx Randglossen zum Programm der deutschen Arbeiterpartei genannt) ist einer der wichtigsten Beiträge zur Entwicklung der grundlegenden programmatischen Fragen des revolutionären Sozialismus. Marx gibt in seinen Randglossen eine prinzipielle, kritischen Einschätzung des Programmentwurfs für die künftige vereinigte Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands
Marx’ Kritik am Programmentwurf wurde 1891 zum ersten Mal von Engels veröffentlicht, und zwar trotz des Widerstands anderer Mitglieder des Parteivorstandes.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, Economics, History, Germany

97 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1875

About the author

With the help of Friedrich Engels, German philosopher and revolutionary Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867-1894), works, which explain historical development in terms of the interaction of contradictory economic forces, form many regimes, and profoundly influenced the social sciences.

German social theorist Friedrich Engels collaborated with Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and on numerous other works.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin in London opposed Communism of Karl Marx with his antithetical anarchy.

Works of Jacques Martin Barzun include Darwin, Marx, Wagner (1941).

The Prussian kingdom introduced a prohibition on Jews, practicing law; in response, a man converted to Protestantism and shortly afterward fathered Karl Marx.

Marx began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Philosophy of Religion of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (see Democritus and Epicurus), doctoral thesis, also engaged Marx, who completed it in 1841. People described the controversial essay as "a daring and original piece... in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom." Marx decided to submit his thesis not to the particularly conservative professors at the University of Berlin but instead to the more liberal faculty of University of Jena, which for his contributed key theory awarded his Philosophiae Doctor in April 1841. Marx and Bauer, both atheists, in March 1841 began plans for a journal, entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), which never came to fruition.

Marx edited the newspaper Vorwärts! in 1844 in Paris. The urging of the Prussian government from France banished and expelled Marx in absentia; he then studied in Brussels. He joined the league in 1847 and published.

Marx participated the failure of 1848 and afterward eventually wound in London. Marx, a foreigner, corresponded for several publications of United States.
He came in three volumes. Marx organized the International and the social democratic party.

Marx in a letter to C. Schmidt once quipped, "All I know is that I am not a Marxist," as Warren Allen Smith related in Who's Who in Hell .

People describe Marx, who most figured among humans. They typically cite Marx with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, the principal modern architects.

Bertrand Russell later remarked of non-religious Marx, "His belief that there is a cosmic ... called dialectical materialism, which governs ... independently of human volitions, is mere mythology" ( Portraits from Memory , 1956).

More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bi...
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/...
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic...
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/...
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...

Reviews

[Gabrielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it at " http://marxists.org/archive/marx/work... " which is just the critique itself (and a brief introduction by Engels).

Some key points: I don't think this is an endorsement of "labor vouchers", but rather Marx pointing out that the new society is going to be stamped with the marks of the old, and that any sort of voucher is founded in capitalism and is a bourgeois right; but also it demolishes the idea that contributions are even measurable beyond labor time. I think Lenin's turning of this, even in "State and Revolution" into a two-stage model is more a function of the inherent tendency toward bureaucratization in the Bolshevik party model. In other words, the principle Marx is getting at is not "first we will have the system of labor vouchers and the social safety net administered by the dictatorship of the proletariat, and then, full communism!" but that task of the revolutionary proletariat is not just to smash the state, seize power, and expropriate the expropriators, but to, by changing the basic conditions of production, give birth to entirely new social relations.

Marx's pointing out that Nature is the source of wealth is important, and a good reminder - it's too easy to fall into the trap that since only labor produces surplus value, to then fall into "labor is the source of all wealth". That would be an inaccurate bit of inductive reasoning, there.

Marx does provide some guidance on organization, here, as Dunayevskaya points out. For instance:

"The international activity of the working classes does not in any way depend on the existence of the International Working Men's Association. This was only the first attempt to create a central organ for the activity; an attempt which was a lasting success on account of the impulse which it gave but which was no longer realizable in its historical form after the fall of the Paris Commune."

This is practically overflowing with advice. It's a pretty clear statement of Marx feeling that the working classes are autonomous of parties, unions, and other official organizations; that he feels that there is some usefulness to some forms of those organizations (that the IWMA was an attempt to create a central organ for the activity, and that the First International was a lasting success), but that they are historically specific, and are about coordinating, connecting, and aiding the organization of the class, not substituting for the class or sections of it. As an autonomist, I would of course extend this to say that each composition of the class has its own forms of organization. The whole discussion on organization serves as a strong rejection of the Second International, and even of, as Dunayevskaya would put it, the "half-way" solution of Lenin.

[Σταμάτης Καρασαββίδης · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most fun to read books i've ever read. The way Marx really gets furious at things that seem like minor details to someone not really into Marxism and at the same time how wholesome Engels appears in his letter to Bebel is so heartwarming and make the book a really accessible work that is both easy to read but also extremely important for some very foundamental ideas of Marxism regarding the dictatorship of the proletariats, the state, and how we understand wage and labour.

All in all, one of the greatest books i've ever read. 5/5

[A · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read, my edition (plain beige colored cover originally printed in the PRC) included letters from Engels after release which are worth checking out if you can find them online. I won't repeat most of Marx's critiques here, but he does a thorough breakdown of each of the points in the Gotha program.

Some memorable points for me:

1) Marx repeatedly stresses for a total change of how production is organized, as opposed to the Lassalleans who focus on "fair distribution" of the "proceeds of labor". Aside from the question of what is "fair distribution" and what should we define as the "proceeds of labor", Marx hammers home an important point: "Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. ... Vulgar socialism (and from it in turn a section of the democrats) 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". Arguing in the name of socialism based on distribution is a mistake I've made before and I see many still do so. We can recognize the contradiction between the bourgeoisie & proletariat all we want but if we mainly focus on showing how the redistribution of capitalist society would be better, we not only send the wrong msg but also end up along the path of social democracy (and there's obviously the issue of a 'social democrstic' country that relies on redistribution of wealth internally while being an imperialist power) This is Marxism 101 but it helps to see Marx clearly spell it out.

2) Marx is REALLY clear and deliberate in his critique. It's a mistake to simply emulate the style of communist writing in the past, but the quality of Marx's critiques is something to aspire to. He dissects each point of the Gotha program and shows how it's not only incorrect, but horribly defined and vague (making critiquing it that much more annoying). Funny how that remains an issue today too

3) Marx's criticism of the Bourgious concept of "equal rights" is fantastic and goes beyond where many do where they only discuss the issues of 'equal right' between the bourgiosie and proletariat. I can't summarize it with a few quotes so I leave the ending for those who lie and state that Marx believed those who can't work should starve: "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!"

[Agung]

In where Marx corrected some of the most common misunderstandings of his works. Some of them were:

- Marx asserted that people shouldn't moralize capitalists and capitalism. It's a system without moral agency. I think Marx is saying that capitalism is alienating the people who lived under it not just from the sense of belonging, but it also alienates people of their own moral agency. The dictum is "there is no moral consumption under capitalism"--which is also the point of the season 3 of the TV series The Good Place. As such, it is pointless to moralize. Socialists/communists shouldn't frame the anti-capitalist discourse under the lens of morality.

- Ferdinand Lassalle asserted that the main problem of capitalism is that the workers do not get fully recompensed the full value of their labor. Marx said that this is false. Marx said that in the past, the main mode of exchange occurs by the pattern of Commodity-Money-Commodity(C-M-C). In capitalism, however, the main pattern of exchange is M-C-M', where money is valued qua money. Lassale's assertion still falls into the M-C-M' paradigm, and still precipitates the drive to accumulate wealth for wealth's sake.

- Marx thought 'equal rights' to be a vague and nebulous concept. "Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal." The dictum was "From each, according to his ability; to each according to his needs". That dictum doesn't mention 'equality' at all.

- Finally, Marx asserted that socialism has to be based upon scientific principles, not utopian ones. Socialists should analyze the world around them, make hypotheses, execute some actions, and then revise the hypotheses, and then use them for further actions. Socialists should not base their actions in regard to a hazy utopian future. Utopianism is simply too idealistic for the materialistic Marx.

[sheymn · Rating 5 out of 5]

marx grandes tiraeras

[AHW · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most important political texts in existence. One would like to grind most leftists’ faces in it.

[Domhnall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Engels’ letter to August Bebel, written between March 18 and 28, 1875, is closely connected with Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme and is traditionally published together with the latter work. It conveyed the joint opinion of Marx and Engels concerning the fusion of two German workers’ parties, the Eisenachers and the Lassalleans, scheduled for early 1875. The immediate reason for the letter was the publication of the draft programme of the future united Social-Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany, which came to be known as the Gotha Programme.

As so often with these two, the seemingly urgent necessity to refute the output of their rivals provoked them to encapsulate pithily and readably key aspects of their own theories but one does have to pick them out from within the polemic. It is not difficult to read and digest this material in a few hours and for most topics, a few short lines are the sum total of their commentary. Nevertheless, this is sufficient to demonstrate that some notions attributed to “Marxism” were actually the views of their rivals with whom they strongly disagreed for sound theoretical and principled reasons. Engels also observes in his letter to Bebel that, if they fail to object stridently from the outset, their rivals and their enemies are not averse to attributing to Marx or making Marx responsible for all sorts of ideas and actions. Happily, among many other more technical (and obscure) uses of the term “dialectics”, material like this comes to resemble in its style a cheerfully bad tempered Platonic dialogue.

Some quotes

Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power. ... The bourgeois have very good grounds for falsely ascribing supernatural creative power to labor; since precisely from the fact that labor depends on nature it follows that 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.

Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.

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 Communist Manifesto it is said:
"Of all the classes that stand face-to-face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of modern industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product."
The bourgeoisie is here conceived as a revolutionary class – as the bearer of large-scale industry – relative to the feudal lords and the lower middle class, who desire to maintain all social positions that are the creation of obsolete modes of production. thus, they do not form together with the bourgeoisie "only one reactionary mass".
On the other hand, the proletariat is revolutionary relative to the bourgeoisie because, having itself grown up on the basis of large-scale industry, it strives to strip off from production the capitalist character that the bourgeoisie seeks to perpetuate. But the Manifesto adds that the "lower middle class" is becoming revolutionary "in view of [its] impending transfer to the proletariat".
From this point of view, therefore, it is again nonsense to say that it, together with the bourgeoisie, and with the feudal lords into the bargain, "form only one reactionary mass" relative to the working class.

the economists have been proving for 50 years and more that socialism cannot abolish poverty, which has its basis in nature, but can only make it general, distribute it simultaneously over the whole surface of society!

Instead of the indefinite concluding phrase of the paragraph, "the elimination of all social and political inequality", it ought to have been said that with the abolition of class distinctions all social and political inequality arising from them would disappear of itself.

In place of the existing class struggle appears a newspaper scribbler's phrase: "the social question", to the "solution" of which one "paves the way".

The chief offense does not lie in having inscribed this specific nostrum in the program, but in taking, in general, a retrograde step from the standpoint of a class movement to that of a sectarian movement.

Free state — what is this?
It is by no means the aim of the workers, who have got rid of the narrow mentality of humble subjects, to set the state free. In the German Empire, the "state" is almost as "free" as in Russia. Freedom consists in converting the state from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate to it; and today, too, the forms of state are more free or less free to the extent that they restrict the "freedom of the state".

Engels letter

the first prerequisite of all liberty — that all officials be responsible for all their official actions to every citizen before the ordinary courts and in accordance with common law.

Marx’s anti-Proudhon piece and after it the Communist Manifesto declare outright that, with the introduction of the socialist order of society, the state will dissolve of itself and disappear. Now, since the state is merely a transitional institution of which use is made in the struggle, in the revolution, to keep down one’s enemies by force, it is utter nonsense to speak of a free people’s state; so long as the proletariat still makes use of the state, it makes use of it, not for the purpose of freedom, but of keeping down its enemies and, as soon as there can be any question of freedom, the state as such ceases to exist. We would therefore suggest that Gemeinwesen ["commonalty"] be universally substituted for state; it is a good old German word that can very well do service for the French “Commune.”

The concept of a socialist society as a realm of equality is a one-sided French concept deriving from the old “liberty, equality, fraternity,” a concept which was justified in that, in its own time and place, it signified a phase of development, but which, like all the one-sided ideas of earlier socialist schools, ought now to be superseded, since they produce nothing but mental confusion, and more accurate ways of presenting the matter have been discovered.

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find myself, often, having to reread Marx's sentences a few times, before I have the least of an understanding of what he is saying; the fact that this is a translation, like all of his works, too, I imagine, makes this a bit more difficult to understand (alas, language(s) and its consequences). However, his Critique of the Gotha Programme remains absolutely essential to understanding, precisely, what is socialism, how it differs from social democracy/welfare states, and what is communism.

A letter to the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany, Marx reveals the faults of their proposed platform, named the Gotha Programme, for the soon-to-be-created Social Democratic Party of Germany. To keep it brief, for Marx addresses many other contentions with their manifesto, from "freeing the state" to the state in the transitional phase, his central issue, or, at least, his most popular concept from this document, was the inherent contradictions of equality, and the slogan he would coin from this contradiction: "for each according to [their] ability, for each according to [their] needs."

One worker, for example, may perform the same hours of labour and receive the same wages as that of another worker; however, the former may have worked more intensive labour, or they may have children as opposed to the latter having none, or they may have a disability that makes it more strenuous to work; this system of equality, then, will benefit the latter worker far more than the former, creating an unjust condition.

What Marx proposes, for socialism, referred to as "early-stage communism," is a labour voucher system in which each person may draw from the general stock proportionate to what they have contributed, through certificates; he cites that the prevailing vestiges of capitalism necessitates such a formula, until "late-stage communism" is reached. When it is reached, once one's labour is no longer needed for one's survival, and, instead, as with production, done for the good and need of society, once resources are plentiful enough, no longer done so for profit, and their exploitation, then, workers will work "according to [their} ability," and draw from the general stock "according to [their] need."

Therefore: equity over equality.

Link: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...

[Julia Landgraf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Na minha pequena experiência com a leitura direta de Marx, esse é um dos textos mais acessíveis. É importante ter alguma leitura dos pressupostos básicos do socialismo científico pra situar as propostas e efetivamente enxergar Marx em ação em suas críticas ferrenhas (e a sempre pressente ironia ácida) ao programa de Gotha. Das edições da Boitempo, foi uma das que considerei melhores, porque todos os textos de apoio são ótimos e agregam à leitura. O encerramento com a crítica de Marx à Bakunin pra mim foi uma cereja do bolo. Enfim, achei uma ótima leitura pra ver em ação alguns pontos de como Marx enxergou a transição ao socialismo e sua rigidez metodológica para isso.

[Mayo · Rating 5 out of 5]

lo gracioso que llega a ser el nivel ensañamiento en este texto

[C · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is extremely short. Only 23 pages are written by Marx, about 20 more are letters from Marx and Engel’s to readers who didn’t understand the first 23 pages (They aren’t difficult to understand…), and the rest is excerpts from Lenin’s State and Revolution. Also, it’s one of the only books where Marx, somewhat, outlines what Communism ought to look like. In the 50 volumes of his writing, only a handful of pages are devoted to what Communism ought to look like, and this book alone must take up at least half of that handful.

The Programme of the German Workers Party was established in 1875, under the framework of Lassallean political-philosophy. Ferdinand Lassalle was a former protégé and pupil of Marx and Engels, who later came to reject their socialism and economics; like most socialist he went off in the Utopian and Nationalist direction, away from the Scientific and International approach advocated by Marx and Engels. Thus, the Programme drafted a series of demands and prospective hopes for the future that Marx, while sick, was asked to comment on.

He does not comment on every aspect of the Programme, presumably because the parts he leaves out he either agrees with, or they are corollaries to positions he has already dispatched with.

The book is short so there’s no need to really go over all his critiques, simply summarizing them would in general consist of half the 23 pages. But, to inform prospective readers, you will learn about why Marx does not believe in Rights, rejects equal rights, how he thinks revolutionary socialism will lead to communism, and what the differences between the revolutionary socialist state and the communist non-state ought to be. Moreover, Marx deals with the concept of the state, and how one can never talk of freedom so long as a state exist (thus Marx was an anarchist, but he was not an Anarchist). Marx, to my surprise, finds demands for state sponsored education, and criminal justice, an absurd joke, seeing the state as educator as inherently tyrannical and absurd. Moreover, he claims if socialist are to make demands for the female sex they ought to be explicit about said demands, and not ambiguous. Perhaps there was a feminist bone in him after all?

Throughout the text invective jabs will be made at Lassalle and the Bourgeoisie (Engels claims he add to edit some out because of just how invective they were).

Overall, considering the small space, this is a very informative text, that anyone advocating for socialism ought to consult, to make sure they don’t fall into the same errors that have plagued Utopian Socialist for over a century.

P.S. I found it of interest that in the very opening Marx credits nature with the abundance of wealth given to man, and not labor wholesale. Most socialist and Marxist see labor as the ultimate creator of wealth, and use values, and Marx, long ago, rejected this claim.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pedantic critique of the theories of Lassalle, as put forth in the Gotha Program. When I say pedantic, I mean it. At one point, Marx points out that in the sentence:

Promotion of the instruments of labour to the common property

"Promotion" should actually be "conversion". Why that is important, I don't know. The meaning of the sentence proposed by Marx is almost completely congruent with the one included in the Gotha Program. It's not much fun to read corrections on little errors that an author made, and Marx is full of that. He's the person that would point out a minor typo and call you an imbecile for it.

Some of his critique is more substantial, but as his own position is just as wrong as that of Lassalle - more so, in fact, if we take his inconsistent theory of the stages of history into account - these passages weren't very interesting either. What do I care if objective value originally comes from nature or from labor when the concept of objective value has been rendered completely obsolete?

This was originally advertised to me as a critique against capitalism. Now, I'm not one who shies away from a challenge, so I read it, but found that there was preciously little in here that pertained to capitalism. It's a very short read, and the passages relevant to capitalism add up to maybe a quarter or a third of this space if we're really benign in counting them. Here as in all other works of Marx that I've read, the critique of capitalism is clouded in strong and impressive terms, but neither based on a strong a priori argumentation nor on a proper historical analysis (as David Osterfield showed in his essay in Requiem for Marx, Marx unwittingly criticized mercantilism rather than capitalism).

Marx gets two stars because this book is missing many of his worst blunders and because his discourse with Lassalle is not completely devoid of intellectual merit. I don't want to water down my one star judgements by including every book that I find bad.

[xenia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I mean, duh, of course I want Marx to be our appointed state economist, but I don't wanna sit in on his meticulous debates with fluffy liberals.

Essentially:

Politics should arise from praxis, not utopian mandates. We don't want equality, we want justice — the fair distribution of resources based on differential needs and desires (note: distribution, not redistribution, for redistribution already presupposes an unjust system of production that has to be regulated afterwards for the least modicum of fairness to arise). In other words, we want a democratically-determined inequality. People are not born equal (they have different passions and skills) and that's fine, the point is to generate a society of difference (rather than a society of equality) that arises through democracy rather than domination — the prerequisite being the communal ownership of the means of production (i.e. a classless society). True democracy requires democracy in the workplace, leaders held accountable to those they direct (okay, Marx doesn't say this last part, but he should have).

Tl;dr: Prefigurative politics from below contra utopian vision from above. Equality in decision making, but justice in material potentials. A baseline that permits an array of choices not gated by labour or wealth.

Recommended for insecure socialists who need an enemy to feel ontologically grounded and fluffy liberals with a perverse attachment to self-flagellation.

[Achealot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shortly before his death, Marx said "if they are Marxists, then I myself am not" in response to Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue who at the time excercised idealistic rhetoric while claiming to accurately represent the materialist theory of Marxism.

Similarly, today and in the past, there have been many who call themselves socialists but are steeped in strange contradictions and utopian thinking that run counter to their goals. In this uncharacteristically brief essay (considering the verbosity of his most famous work, Capital), Marx effectively picks apart some of the ideology that Germany's Social Democratic party stood for at the time, a platform already considerably more radical than any social democratic party today would support.

The SPD would go on to address these criticisms seriously, formulating the new and improved Erfurt Program in 1891 after Marx's death in 1883. Regrettably, from the early 20th century onward, the SPD among other social democratic groups would be remembered mostly for suppressing revolutionary effort rather than advancing it.

Critique of the Gotha Programme remains a valuable look into the way Marxist theory has informed the critique of socialist efforts in the past, in this case from the man himself. All who fancy themselves Marxists today should reserve an afternoon for reading it.

[Pavlogreen]

Este brevísimo opúsculo que se lee de una asentada y de corrido es, a pesar de su escasa longitud o precisamente gracias a ella, una obra fundamental para entender algunos puntos básicos de la filosofía marxiana y, muy destacadamente, el rumbo político que Marx quería imprimirles a los movimientos sociales y políticos que él había influido. Me ha sorprendido especialmente su fuerte confrontación con el credo socialdemócrata (recordemos que el programa de Gotha que se está criticando es el texto fundacional del Partido Obrero Alemán, germen del futuro Partido Socialdemócrata), sobre todo en relación al Estado, que para Marx nunca podrá ser una herramienta revolucionaria plena ni mucho menos el fin último de la revolución. Por ello, sería un ejercicio interesante para la izquiera actual, especialmente la anticapitalista, leer textos fundacionales como este para reflexionar de manera autocrítica sobre los programas progresistas actuales, especialmente en torno al endiosamiento en el que se tiene al Estado, para así buscar y pensar opciones que nos lleven por otros caminos, quizá más fructíferos. La Crítica al Programa de Gotha es sin duda una obra clave filosófica y políticamente hablando. No os la perdáis.

[Alifib · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s the tangible assets of class power, stupid

[Daniel Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting book, and it contains several parts (I rearranged them in my list here)

1) The Gotha Program, which is just a few pages of party platform by a 19th century German socialist party.

2) The Titular "Critique of the Gotha Program", which is Karl Marx criticizes the Gotha Program line-by-line for about 20 pages.

3) Several letters by Marx and Engels (mostly Engels) add a more prosaic criticism of the Gotha Program and the relevant political party, compared to the scathing, witty Critique.

1) About 45 pages by Lenin that are notes and commentary and such.

The sections by Marx and Engels (1-3 in my list above) are interesting and almost fun to read, because here Marx and Engels are applying their philosophy to an actual political party. I think it's fun to read about political squabbles and debates, and it does give some insight into how they think. You don't need to know anything about German politics to understand what they are saying, as the original Gotha Program is bland and generic (which was a major point of criticism). Also, because each of the 19th century documents are just a few pages each, this isn't drudgery - it's actually kind of entertaining.

I'd skip Lenin, who unfortunately is about 50% of the text. This is a fresh printing of an edition published in the Cold War, when understanding a few sections of Lenin were arguably relevant to understanding all the Marxist-Leninist states. Those all fell apart before I was born, and I don't feel like I got much out of the Lenin section anyway. Just stick to Marx and Engels.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

marx engels and the german worker’s party @ lassalle: boooo we hate ur pussy!

on a more serious note, some interesting + important points:
- equity as opposed to equality ("le droit devrait être non pas égal mais inégal", "« De chacun selon ses capacités, à chacun selon ses besoins! »")
- marx KNEW abt mass industrialisation, robotisation and IA (—> division of costs and revenue)
- classless society ie. abolition of class differences = end of social & political inequalities automatically —> both go hand in hand

anyways a win

[Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely some of his best, alongside “On the Jewish Question”—a glance into our decidedly il-liberal future, and our salvation

[Laura R. Aparicio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simplemente me lo paso genial leyendo a Marx cabreado. Me recuerda a mí corrigiendo trabajos. Un besito pa él, que tuvo que pasarlo fatal.

[Zapato · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bastante clave, en varios aspectos, como la crítica al Estado, y sobre todo en la contraposición que hace entre la posición y el análisis marxista riguroso y posiciones vagas y confusas. Estas segundas son bastante habituales aún hoy. Por ejemplo, la idea de que lo justo sería pagar a los trabajadores el fruto íntegro de su trabajo, obviando que el problema no es únicamente la distribución de los productos, sino que el propio proceso de producción capitalista implica explotación y reparto desigual.

Ahora bien, en cuanto al formato no dejan de ser las notas criticando un programa de un partido (no es un libro o un artículo con un formato más sistemático o pedagógico) y si además a uno no le suena un poco el contexto y los debates de la época, hay referencias que aunque no sean lo central suenan a chino, no es la lectura que elegiría para empezar con Marx pese a ser bastante cortita, para eso el Manifiesto u otra.

[David]

Difficult, exactly because it aims to formulate (or rather amend) a party-political programme in a concrete way. I'm not quite sure what to make of it yet and probably require more knowledge of the history of socialist struggle in party form before I can judge it.

Broadly speaking, Marx's ire is provoked by two categories of Lassallean proposals: the ones that are too vague (such as "fair distribution of the proceeds of labor" and "abolition of child labor", neglecting to define a precise age) and the ones that take a transitory social form as its end point (depending on the state to regulate the fruits of labour and protect cooperatives instead of the workers themselves being empowered, with the state being absolutely subservient to the class). The extent to which these pointers are applicable to the twenty-first century are debatable, but they provide a useful metric by which to measure the ambitions of contemporary 'Marxist' parties.

Contains the luminous quote: "But as far as the present cooperative societies are concerned, they are of value only insofar as they are the independent creations of the workers and not protégés either of the governments or of the bourgeois".

[Ty Bradley · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is essentially a drawn out laundry list of petty grievances toward Marx's socialist rivals. Many of his critiques have more to do with use of language than actual policy. The structure of this is not well done, and the argumentation is hard to follow. Most of Marx's ideas in this are the ones he has already put forward in the Communist Manifesto, and he simply repeats them in a more boring way. Many of the times he supposedly shows a flaw in Gotha reasoning he is simply stating what he has said in his own books, and assuming that because they didn't go along with his assumptions in the Gotha Program, the authors are obviously wrong. There are a few snappy quotes in this treatise, but overall it is petty, boring, and irrelevant to anything other than its direct context.

[Leo46 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very succinct obliteration of Lasalle and thus, Lasallian socialism.
As a byproduct, we get concise, important formulations of Marx's communism, socialism as a transitional state, and the concepts of the base and superstructure. Some of his most famous ideas/sayings are included here including the standard of labor as the right to inequality (critique of socialism as a societal end), "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!," beginnings of socialism in one country, and wage labor is slave labor (or capitalist freedom=freedom to starve). Some other cool bonus stuff like a critique of religion and thoughts on police and prison.

Extremely seminal work for anyone wanting to understand Marx.

[Álvaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

As definições de valor do capítulo I e IV de Das Kapital são um importante complemento para a leitura dessa crítica, como para o entendimento da "necessidade" de uma revolução para Karl Marx. O texto nada mais é do que uma demonstração na práxis de como reformas não são efetivas, e podem inclusive atrapalhar o progresso revolucionário segundo Marx e Engels. Entretanto, as traduções (ou possivelmente a escrita de Marx) são muito confusas, a estruturação frasal e a formulação das ideias são pouco entendíveis; assim dificultando o entendimento do texto.

Termos importantes --> [genossenschaftliche] [Aufhebung].

[Shreya · Rating 5 out of 5]

apart from being just gloriously salty ("it was anything but a “pleasure” to write such a lengthy screed"), a real lesson in writing to inform, not to obscure. also useful for reasons other reviews have gone into - the limited usefulness of human rights (it's so weird that people think communism is about enforcing an equality of outcomes, when communists have written in detail about how this is neither possible nor desirable), distribution of consumption as the red herring and distribution of production as the real deal, and an overall bracing pragmatist view on what a revolution can and can't do.

[Quiver · Rating 2 out of 5]

Key quotes on the difference between socialism, as the transitory state from capitalism to communism, and communism itself are drawn from this essay. Namely, in socialism “the right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard of labor” so “The equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor”. In communism, however, especially in the higher (idealistic, utopian) phase, we have “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”

[Hungry Rye · Rating 5 out of 5]

Second read through of this and my god Marx is so sassy it’s incredible. Also his ability to deconstruct arguments to not only prove his own stance but also make them looking ridiculous is superb. He covers so many topics so eloquently that they withstand the test of time. I certainly didn’t appreciate this as much as I could’ve have when I was first starting off my journey so I’m happy I did a reread now that I’ve read Capital and really understand his methodology.

[Zé · Rating 4 out of 5]

vo reler um dia

[Ahmed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gotha program BTFO