Critique of the Gotha Programme

National Democratic Revolution, Part 1a

Critique of the Gotha Programme

Why does the Critique of the Gotha Programme come in here? What does it have to do with the NDR?

Because: The Gotha Programme was a Unity Programme. It was supposed to be the basis upon which the separate factions of the German Social Democrats were going to unite and go forward together.

The National Democratic Revolutionary Alliance must also be a “united front” or unity-in-action. The one that Marx criticised here was founded on a false basis. It needed to be an honest programme.

If you skip over Engels’ foreword, you will find that the actual “Critique” is only eight pages long. It is a short read but it contains a lot; some of it is controversial, even today – for example Marx’s remarks about co-operatives (p. 9).

The person called Lassalle who Marx refers to had been the energetic leader of the politically weaker faction, by this point in time deceased, leaving his followers to be still called the “Lasalleans”.

Our National Democratic Revolutionary Alliance does not require the creation of a monolithic Party. Perhaps this is one reason why we are approaching the centenary of the ANC, without the collapse of the essential class alliance.

Please download and read the text via the following link:

 Critique of the Gotha Programme, Karl Marx (8317 words)

Further reading:

Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League, Karl Marx, 1850 (4120 words)

The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Chapters 1 & 7, Marx  (10719 words)

Class Struggles in France, Part 1, The Defeat of June 1848, Marx (9373 words)

Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, Part 1, Engels (5105 words)