Critique of the Gotha Programme

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The Critique of the Gotha Programme (German: Kritik des Gothaer Programms) is a document written by Karl Marx in 1875 as a private communication to the leadership of the German Social Democratic Workers' Party (the "Eisenachers"). The critique was directed at the draft programme of the unified party that was to be created through a merger with the General German Workers' Association (the "Lassalleans") at a congress in the city of Gotha. Marx argued that the programme made significant and damaging concessions to the state-oriented socialism of Ferdinand Lassalle, whose ideas he considered opportunistic and insufficiently revolutionary. The work is celebrated among Marxists for being one of Marx's most detailed pronouncements on programmatic matters. It offers his most extensive statements on the nature of a hypothetical future communist society, the strategy for achieving it, and the principles that would govern it. The Critique outlines the "two phases of communist society" as predicted...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Karl Marx / Karl Kautsky, Public domain