Critique of the Gotha Programme is a critique of the draft programme of the United Workers' Party of Germany. "Labor is the source of wealth and all culture, and since useful labor is possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of labor belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society. 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. To crown the whole thing, they are holding a congress before the Congress of Compromise, while our own party is holding its congress post festum. endobj Instead of this, they are permitted to come armed with mandates, given recognition of them as binding, nd thus one surrenders unconditionally to those who are in need of help. "Freedom of conscience"! Logged in users: ▶ Can comment on articles and discussions And what is "useful" labor? Quite apart from the false Lassallean formulation of the law, the truly outrageous retrogression consists in the following: Since Lassalle's death, there has asserted itself in our party the scientific understanding that wages are not what they appear to be -- namely, the value, or price, of labor -- but only a masked form for the value, or price, of labor power. If the elements of production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution of the means of consumption results automatically. 9 0 obj 0000010761 00000 n "Critique of the Gotha Programme" MARGINAL NOTES TO THE PROGRAM OF THE GERMAN WORKERS' PARTY. 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". Its political demands contain nothing beyond the old democratic litany familiar to all: universal suffrage, direct legislation, popular rights, a people's militia, etc. Let us now leave the sentence as it stands, or rather limps. But one thing has been forgotten. %PDF-1.4 %âãÏÓ ▶ Get 'recent posts' refreshed more regularly 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. 0000003071 00000 n 0000004936 00000 n If therefore it was not possible -- and the conditions of the time did not permit it -- to go beyond the Eisenach program, one should simply have concluded an agreement for action against the common enemy. In other words, what social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present state functions? Only the state to which they belong does not lie within the borders of the German Empire, but in Switzerland, the United States, etc. ([IV]) "Prohibition of child labor." The standardization of the working day must include the restriction of female labor, insofar as it relates to the duration, intermissions, etc., of the working day; otherwise, it could only mean the exclusion of female labor from branches of industry that are especially unhealthy for the female body, or are objectionable morally for the female sex. And is it not, in fact, the only "fair" distribution on the basis of the present-day mode of production? From the outset, this part grows considerably in comparison with present-day society, and it grows in proportion as the new society develops. endobj Second, additional portion for expansion of production. Nevertheless, the different states of the different civilized countries, in spite or their motley diversity of form, all have this in common: that they are based on modern bourgeois society, only one more or less capitalistically developed. institution, Login via your And to what does the German Workers' party reduce its internationalism? Annotations to Karl Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme Hans G. Ehrbar August 26, 2010. After having narrated the events leading to the coup, we return to Bolivia with the aim of analyzing what has been... A history of the once highly-influential Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union and its publication Direct Action in Australia. 32 0 obj << "Equal elementary education"? -- in short, once could just as well have copied the whole of Rousseau. THIRDLY, THE CONCLUSION: "Useful labor is possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of labor belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society.". 0000009740 00000 n 0000002486 00000 n This sort of "state of the future" is a present-day state, although existing outside the "framework" of the German Empire. And it is thus that it is to challenge its own bourgeoisie -- which is already linked up in brotherhood against it with the bourgeois of all other countries -- and Herr Bismarck's international policy of conspiracy. Marx is a name to conjure with. A growing selection of library products includes archives, data, case studies and video. Have not also the socialist sectarians the most varied notions about "fair" distribution? I have now come to the end, for the appendix that now follows in the program does not constitute a characteristic component part of it. PDF WITH TEXT download. 21 0 obj So often and so loudly has the “authority” for the dictatorship been based upon Marx’s “Gotha Program,” that the uninitiated easily conceive the notion that his criticism constitutes a defense of the dictatorship as against its opponents. "Labor." But the whole program, for all its democratic clang, is tainted through and through by the Lassallean sect's servile belief in the state, or, what is no better, by a democratic belief in miracles; or rather it is a compromise between these two kinds of belief in miracles, both equally remote from socialism. They speak of the "monopolizer of the means of labor, that is, the sources of life." 0000015587 00000 n This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. But a socialist program cannot allow such bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the conditions that lone give them meaning. If useful labor is possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of labor belong to society -- and only so much therefrom accrues to the individual worker as is not required to maintain the "condition" of labor, society. Surely only labor which produces the intended useful result. That the workers desire to establish the conditions for co-operative production on a social scale, and first of all on a national scale, in their own country, only means that they are working to revolutionize the present conditions of production, and it has nothing in common with the foundation of co-operative societies with state aid. The first and second parts of the paragraph have some intelligible connection only in the following wording: "Labor becomes the source of wealth and culture only as social labor", or, what is the same thing, "in and through society". 0000006433 00000 n 0 "The German Workers' party, in order to pave the way to the solution of the social question, demands the establishment of producers' co-operative societies with state aid under the democratic control of the toiling people. 8 0 obj But equally incontestable is this other proposition: "In proportion as labor develops socially, and becomes thereby a source of wealth and culture, poverty and destitution develop among the workers, and wealth and culture among the nonworkers.". 0000006544 00000 n 17 0 obj Read your article online and download the PDF from your email or your account. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. And after this understanding has gained more and more ground in our party, some return to Lassalle's dogma although they must have known that Lassalle did not know what wages were, but, following in the wake of the bourgeois economists, took the appearance for the essence of the matter.