‘Critique of the Gotha Program’ by Karl Marx reviewed by David Black


Critique of the Gotha Program

Trans. and annot. Karel Ludenhoff and Kevin B. Anderson, PM Press/Spectre, Oakland, 2022. 128 pp., £15.99 pb
ISBN 9781629639161

Reviewed by David Black

About the reviewer

David Black is an independent scholar and author whose works include 1839: The Chartist …

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This new edition of Marx’s 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program comes with a few surprises in translation for Marxists who have previously interpreted it as justification for the continuation of wage-labour and commodity production, under the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ in the ‘first phase’ of socialism/communism.

By the 1870s, there were two main socialist parties in Germany: the Social Democratic Workers’ Party, founded under the leadership of Marx’s collaborator, Wilhelm Liebknecht, at a congress in Eisenach in 1869, and the General German Workers Association, founded by the late Ferdinand Lassalle in 1863. In 1875 the two parties were fused into Socialist Workers Party of Germany at a congress in Gotha. The new party, following the repeal of the Anti-Socialist Laws, was to change its name in 1890 to the Social Democratic Party of Germany, which today leads the German coalition government in alliance with the Greens and the Liberals.

Shortly before the Gotha congress, Marx sent a critique of the draft program from London to his colleague, Wilhelm Bracke in Brunswick, for distribution to Liebknecht and other leaders of the ‘Eisenachers’.  Marx’s accompanying letter to Bracke states bluntly that he and Engels ‘disassociate ourselves from said program’s principles and have nothing to do with it.’ (47) The very first sentence of the Gotha Program set off the alarm bells: ‘Labor is the source of all 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.’ (51)

On the contrary, writes Marx, ‘[l]abor is not the source of all wealth.’ Nature was just as much the source of material wealth; and labor, as human labor-power, was itself ‘only the manifestation of a force of nature.’ Those with the means to buy the workers’ labor-power falsely ascribed to it a ‘supernatural creative power.’ It was false because ‘the human being who possesses no other property than his labor power’ must be, as always, ‘the slave of other human beings who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labor.’ (51-52)

Marx’s comrades in Germany had allowed Lassalle’s theory of the ‘iron law of wages’ to be incorporated into the new program. Inspired by Malthusian political economy, the theory held that although real wages might rise temporarily, they would always fall back to the minimum subsistence level because the market price of labor would inexorably be reduced as the working population increased.

If Lassalle had been right, class struggle between bosses and workers at the point of production would surely have been pointless. Because the Lassalleans could only appeal to the state for the abolition of capitalism, capitalists didn’t see the Lassalleans as much of a threat, now that the Bismarckian state already had a strong bourgeois component. Nor did the land-owning nobility fear the Lassallaen party. After all, as Marx was aware, Lassalle had, in 1862, assured Bismarck that his prospective party stood opposed only to the capitalist class, and had no intention of taking on the landowners and the Junker-dominated state.

Marx points out that bourgeois economists had long seen Lassalle’s theory as conceding that ‘socialism cannot abolish poverty, which has its basis in nature, but can only make it general, distributing it simultaneously over the whole surface of society!’ To adopt Lassalle’s ‘law’ was a ‘truly outrageous retrogression’ which ignored the development within ‘our party’ of ‘the scientific understanding that wages are not what they appear to be, namely the value of labor with respect to its price, but only a masked form for the value of labor power with respect to its price. (64) Marx argues in Capital that in proportion to the accumulation of capital, the lot of the labourer could only grow worse, ‘be his payment high or low’. Accumulation, in equilibrating the industrial reserve army, ‘rivets the worker to capital more firmly than the wedges of Hephaestus that held Prometheus to the rock. It makes an accumulation of misery a necessary condition, corresponding to the accumulation of wealth.’ (Marx 1976: 799)

Not only did the authors of the Gotha Program adopt Lassalle’s ‘iron law’, they also bought into his ‘solution’. In Marx’s words, ‘[a]fter the Lassallean “iron law of wages” […] the establishment of producers’ cooperative societies with state aid under the democratic control of the working people’ was to be enacted ‘on such a scale that the socialist organization of the total labor will arise from them.’ This substituted the role of the state for the revolutionary process of transforming society: ‘It is worthy of Lassalle’s imagination that with state loans one can build a new society as easily as a new railway!’ (66)

Marx, with an eye on actual class struggles, insists: ‘Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programs.’ His comrades had put the cart before the horse by drawing up a program of principles in advance of activity. It would have been better to ‘simply have concluded an agreement for action against the common enemy.’ (81)

The Gotha Program claimed that the necessary result of its efforts would be ‘the international brotherhood of peoples’. Yet, as Marx pointed out, the program’s commitment to internationalism stood ‘infinitely below even that of the free trade party’. For the free trade liberals, international brotherhood actually involved doing something practical to make trade international. (63)

The Program called for establishment of a ‘free state’. But Marx did not think it was the job of the workers to set the state ‘free’. He poses the question: ‘What transformation will the body politic [Staatswesen] undergo in communist society? In other words, what social functions analogous to present state functions [Staatsfunktionen] will remain at that juncture?’ (68)

All previous English translations have rendered Staatswesen as ‘state’. However, as Peter Hudis writes in the introduction, to speak of ‘the form of the state’ in this context is a mistranslation: ‘The original does not speak of the “form of the state” in communism; it speaks of former state functions (Staatswesen — not Staat) that can readily be employed without a state. This is made clear by the next sentence: “In other words, what social functions analogous to present state functions will remain at that juncture?”’ (33)

One reason that Marxists downplay the importance of the Critique of the Gotha Program has been their belief that Marx’s organizational prescriptions were superseded by Lenin’s theory and practice of ‘democratic centralism’ and the vanguard party-to-lead. Another reason has been the equation of the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat with a first stage of communism, which would nevertheless be characterized by commodity production and wage labor. But Marx is quite clear that the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is simply the means by which commodity production and wage labor (and the state) are abolished. Within a cooperatively organized society, the labor expended does not appear as the value of the product, ‘since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor.’ (57)

How this principle might operate in a modern society, in which the work process is infinitely more diversified, with occupations and professions unheard of or in their infancy during Marx’s time? It is quite conceivable that some groups of workers might argue that having spent years in training, they are entitled to receive more than those who haven’t. In such cases, in order to prevent the growth of a black market for certain goods and services, it might be seen as expedient to compromise by increasing their pay. The difference with capitalism would be that the arrangement would be transparent – and debatable.

Marx signs off his critique in Latin: ‘Dixi et salvavi animam meam [I have spoken and saved my soul]’. Peter Linebaugh, in the Afterword to this new edition, asks, from the point of view of a historical materialist: ‘What is Marx’s soul? How did he save it? And what about ours?’ (79) Linebaugh believes that today ‘[w]e are present at the edge of the abyss staring into the “ecological rift”’ He hopes that the ‘risings among black and brown people, women, indigenous peoples, and the rebels against extinctions’ will become components of ‘the real movement’ that conquers as well as resists: ‘We can pluck the living flower to re-create the commons.’ (81-82)

Marx knew of no historical experience that could provide a ‘guide’ to a successful revolution. As Hudis puts it: ‘Marx does not give us the “answer” as to how to build a new society, but his work points us in an important direction […] in developing revolutionary perspectives for the actual transcendence of capitalism.’ (35)

Marx’s critique of his own followers still resonates after 150 years. To conclude, if there is one thing that the left should have learned by now is that the socialist cause cannot be advanced by offering a half-way house in which goals are supposedly balanced against ‘realities’, such as the ability of capitalists to retaliate by capital flight and other means. If socialists know full well that capitalists have the power to derail their project, then keeping quiet about it in order to get elected or lead the next big demo can only lead to retreat, capitulation and disillusionment. If the left would desist from touting a vaguely-defined ‘socialism’ they can’t deliver, but nonetheless promote fruitful resistance, they might be taken seriously enough to help develop ‘revolutionary perspectives for the actual transcendence of capitalism.’ (35)

10 February 2023

References

  • Karl Marx 1976 Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 trans. Ben Fowkes, London: Penguin.

10 comments

  1. Just read the new volume. Marx’s critique here emphasizes that a valid socialist political program needs to speak to masses of people, i.e. organize actions that will clearly enhance the well-being of working families. Why can’t the discussion of post-revolutionary wages (given the need to abolish the system of wage labor and capital) be resolved not in stages (based on arcane distinctions about the nature of time on any task) but in one fell-swoop through a universal guaranteed income? This would stress to working families that socialism is a new higher level of civilization overcoming both precarity and inequalities due to structural race and gender discrimination. Income for all working families needs to be decoupled from labor, Thus liberating labor from the duress of exploitation, labor is freed to become “life’s prime want.”

  2. “…a valid socialist political program needs to speak to masses of people, i.e. organize actions that will clearly enhance the well-being of working families.”

    But Marx argued that ‘working families’ had to be the ones to ‘organise actions’.

    Otherwise, WHO is the producer of the theory and practice which is to ‘organise actions’?

    That is, any ‘valid socialist political program’ has to originate from ‘working families’ – that origin is what gives it its ‘validity’.

  3. I think the solution to this conundrum is clear: LBird needs to take charge of organizing actions that originate a valid socialist political programme from 18 million households of working families in the UK, in a way that enhances their wellbeing – go for it LBird, do your stuff!

  4. “I think the solution to this conundrum is clear:…”

    Who (or what) did Marx claim that the originator should be, Jurriaan, if not (to use your term) the ’18 million households of working families in the UK’?

    Surely Marx looked to the WORLD proletariat (not just ‘the UK’), with a mass collective and democratic method?

    If you believe someone else will provide ‘the solution to this conundrum’, fair enough, just tell us who they are, in your political, philosophical and epistemological opinion.

  5. @LBird: The conundrum is that, in your terms, the valid socialist program has to originate from millions of working families, but nobody except all of them together can originate it. Nobody and nothing else can “represent” them, because that would not be valid.

    The unanswered questions then are, how exactly can a shared program originate at all, who is going to formulate it, how can it be shared and communicated to 18 million households with working families?https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/workingandworklesshouseholds/julytoseptember2022

    What would ensure, that all these people are actually going to follow the program? What do you do, if some of them say “no, I am not going to follow the valid socialist program today, I am going to take a left, or I am going to take a right”?

    In the past, these problems were thought about by numerous socialist theorists, and various solutions were proposed or adopted (but you are perhaps not aware of that, given that political culture and education is so dumbed-down now).

    In the misty realm of religion, the biblical Book of Exodus tells us that Moses climbed to the summit of Mount Sinai, where the Ten Commandments were revealed to him. They were inscribed by God’s holy finger on two tablets of stone and kept in the Ark of the Covenant. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ten-Commandments

    Of course, we do not use tablets of stone very much anymore, except for ornamentation, because now we have iPads etc. We no longer have prophets, only academics. Perhaps, with the aid of the internet, creating and distributing the valid socialist program becomes a lot easier (?). Even so, somebody has to start it off, and tap something on a keyboard (the Instigator).

    In Britain, Jeremy Corbyn proposed a grandiose socialist program in 2019 when he was Labour party leader https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Real-Change-Labour-Manifesto-2019.pdf But not only was he outvoted and ousted, Keir Starmer has now also declared that Corbyn will be barred totally from standing as a Labour candidate in next general election. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/15/jeremy-corbyn-to-stand-as-an-independent-if-blocked-by-labour

    Probably, Corbyn will not stand ever again as a Labour candidate. In religious language, Corbyn has become a sort of “fallen angel” figure who was exorcized for his alleged “antisemitic racism” (a false accusation; now there is a government in Israel, which is so far right, that even thousands of IDF soldiers have shown their opposition to it).

    In the USA in 2020, Bernie Sanders developed the most comprehensive and sophisticated American election campaign ever for a valid socialist program, with a unionized team, and received donations from more than a million individuals, mostly ordinary working people. But just when success seemed within reach, Sanders was whisked out of the presidential race, and Joe Biden became the Democratic Party candidate.

    This is just to illustrate the sort of problems you can get, even if you did your best to originate the valid socialist program while travelling up and down the country, talking to working families, and being completely at one with the people.

  6. “This is just to illustrate the sort of problems you can get, even if you did your best to originate the valid socialist program while travelling up and down the country, talking to working families, and being completely at one with the people.”

    That’s a very reasonable comment, Jurriaan, but it’s a conundrum left to us by Marx.

    I have no problem with anyone claiming that this problem compels us to allow an elite, expert, minority, usually organised in a ‘cadre party’, to do the hard theoretical, organisational and practical work required to produce ‘socialism’, but I do think that this ‘solution’ to the conundrum of ‘mass democratic origin’ (which was the solution of Kautsky/Plekhanov/Lenin (and perhaps Engels?)) is in complete opposition to Marx’s democratic views about proletarian self-emancipation.

    In my opinion, to reject the active mass democratic political method (and to look to just ‘representation’, even if elected by a passive mass) is to reject all of Marx’s views. Mass activity is Marx’s epistemological starting point. Validity comes from the majority, not a minority.

    Needless to say, I don’t regard Lenin as a ‘Marxist’.

  7. Three sorts of solution to the conundrum are:

    (1) Informal or semi-formal social networks, which can rapidly convey information and action things.
    (2) Workers’ councils and committees basing themselves on democratic decisions.
    (3) Democratic political parties, which are continuously in a living dialogue with the masses.

    These have all been tried with varying degrees of success, but there may be far more optionsm if e.g. new technologies create new possibilities for making collective decisions. Nevertheless most serious researchers studying this problem agree that a degree of centralization is essential for the coordination of activities in any economic system of a society with a complex division of labour.

    David Black’s review is useful, but it doesn’t really say much about the quality of the new translation. I don’t think that “state functions” is necessarily a good translation of “Staatswesen”. Alternative translations are “state operations”, “the political system” or “the affairs (or the business) of the state”, depending on the context.

    The original stone tablets of Moses, or the Ark of the Covenant, have as far as I know never (or not yet) been found. In November 2016, the oldest known stone tablet with the ten Commandments written on it (with 20 lines of Samaritan Hebrew script) was sold at a Beverly Hills auction in California for $850,000. The buyer wished to remain anonymous. Two phone bidders pushed the sale price up from an opening live bid of $300,000.

    This tablet consists of a 63 x 57 cm square slab of white marble, weighing about 50 kilo’s. Experts think that the stone must have been carved in the late Roman or Byzantine era, between 300 and 500 AD. It was recovered in 1913, during excavations for a railroad station near Yavne, 30 kms south of Tel Aviv.

    A Mr. Y. Kaplan apparently obtained it, and set it in the floor of a courtyard. It stayed there until 1943, when an archaeologist acquired it. The antiquities dealer Robert Deutsch subsequently purchased the artifact in the 1990s, and in 2005, rabbi Saul Deutsch obtained it for his Living Torah Museum in Brooklyn, New York. In the end, the rabbi wanted to sell the tablet again, together with other artifacts, to raise money for his museum renovations.

    Possibly, the tablet was originally placed at the entrance of a Yavne synagogue which was later destroyed by Roman troops or by the Crusaders. Nine of the 10 biblical commandments from the Book of Exodus are chiseled on the tablet. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38011205 Missing is the directive “not to take the Lord’s name in vain”. Instead, there is a Samaritan commandment calling on believers to “raise up a temple” on Mount Gerizim, a place near Nablus revered by Samaritans.

    Heritage Auctions director David Michaels stated that “The tablet’s significance is testament to the deep roots and enduring power of the commandments that still form the basis of three of the world’s great religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Its surface is worn, battered and encrusted in places, but running a gloved finger over it does produce, in some people, a particular thrill of touching a piece of Bible history.”

    Israeli antiquities authorities approved export of the stone tablet to the United States in 2005, on condition that it should be on display in a public museum. David Michaels likewise confirmed that “The new owner is under obligation to display the tablet for the benefit of the public. The sale of this tablet does not mean it will be hidden away.”

    Who knows, maybe 1,500 years from now, extraterrestrials visiting earth in a spaceship will recover a glass bottle containing a USB stick which has the valid socialist program on it (?).

  8. Ha I found the official Heritage Auctions text for the stone slab sold in 2016, after all (I couldn’t find it at first, and had to make do with the news reports). The link is: https://historical.ha.com/itm/judaica/judaea-late-roman-byzantine-era-circa-300-830-ce-marble-decalogue-inscription/a/6170-52095.s?ic4=OtherResults-SampleItem-071515&tab=ArchiveSearchResults-012417 (you have to scroll down a bit to find the text).

    The 2016 news reports about the auction on which I based my previous comments were not fully accurate. It’s also not clear, whether the “Yavneh” settlement where the stone tablet was reportedly found refers to the coastal city of Yavne (as I initially thought) or to Yavne’el in the Northern District of Israel (where many ancient artifacts were found).

    The new interpretive translation of Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme” created by Anderson and Ludendorff is said to be based on the German original text in the Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA2), vol. I/25 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1985). Anderson and Ludendorff also consulted the Collected Works anonymous translation, in MECW vol. 24 (London: 1989), and Terrell Carver’s translation in his edition of Marx’s Later Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

    A new edition of this old text has certain obvious advantages and strengths, because it can improve on previous translations. It also has scientific limitations. Anderson and Ludendorff did not consult the MEW edition or other existing translations and editions. It remains unclear where the original manuscript of Marx’s text is located. Anderson and Ludendorff do not provide a publication history for Marx’s manuscript, nor do they systematically reference how their own new translation differs from preceding ones. Engels’s preface for the first publication of the text (in Die Neue Zeit, Vol. 1, No. 18, 1891) is deleted. Most other relevant correspondence (e.g. Engels, Sorge, Kautsky, Bebel etc.) and references to later important commentaries and interpretations (e.g. by Lenin and various Marxologists) are absent from this new edition.

    So this new edition seems to be pretty much the “correct reading” of Marx according to the scriptures of the Marxist Humanist organization (https://imhojournal.org/).

  9. My apologies, you are quite right, it’s Ludenhoff.
    I’ve met Karel before in the bookmarket and elsewhere, he lives in Amsterdam too.
    I am always interested in new translations, hoping that they will improve on the previous ones.

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