# “On the Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Program of 1891”
Source: PSS, Volume 33

In 1891, Engels stated (in “Zur Kritik des sozialdemokratischen Programmentwurfes 1891,” Neue Zeit, XX, No. 1, 1901–1902, pp. 5ff.; Engels’s letter to Kautsky regarding the dispatch of this critique is dated June 29, 1891).
NB
“The political demands contained in the draft are fraught with a grave error. What ought to have been said is not actually stated therein” (Engels’s italics) (p. 9). Engels further clarifies that the German constitution is but a “copycat” of the 1850 Constitution, and that the Reichstag—“as Liebknecht put it”—is “the fig leaf of absolutism” (p. 10).
“… To attempt, on the basis of this constitution and the petty-state fragmentation it sanctions; on the basis of a federation among Prussia, Reuß, Greiz, Schleiz, Lobenstein—where one state possesses as many square miles as another has square inches—to carry out the ‘transformation of all means of production into common property’ is plainly absurd.
To meddle with such a proposition, however, is perilous. And yet, the matter must be tackled one way or another. How urgently this is needed is starkly demonstrated by the opportunism currently rampant throughout much of the social-democratic press—opportunism born of fear of a
* The text enclosed in brackets was written by V. I. Lenin in the margins of the manuscript. Ed.