The manuscript published here—the covering letter to Bracke* 
as well as the critique of the draft programme—was sent in 1875, 
shortly before the Gotha Unity Congress,’** to Bracke for 
communication to Geib, Auer, Bebel, and Liebknecht and 
subsequent return to Marx. Since the Halle Party Congress ‘** has 
put the discussion of the Gotha Programme on the agenda of the 
party, I think I would be guilty of suppression if I any longer 
withheld from publicity this important—perhaps the most impor- 
tant—document relevant to this discussion. 

But the manuscript has yet another and more far-reaching 
significance. Here for the first time Marx’s attitude to the line 
adopted by Lassalle in his agitation from the very beginning is 
clearly and firmly set forth, both as regards Lassalle’s economic 
principles and his tactics. 

The ruthless severity with which the draft programme is 
dissected here, the mercilessness with which the results obtained 
are enunciated and the shortcomings of the draft laid bare—all 
this today, after fifteen years, can no longer give offense. Specific 
Lassalleans now exist only abroad as isolated ruins, and in Halle 


2 See K. Marx’s letter to W. Bracke of May 5, 1875 (present edition, 
Vol. 45).— Ed. 


Preface to K. Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme 93 


the Gotha Programme was given up even by its creators as 
altogether inadequate. 

Nevertheless, I have omitted a few sharp personal expressions 
and judgements where these were immaterial, and replaced them 
by dots. Marx himself would have done so if he had published the 
manuscript today. The violence of the language in some passages 
was provoked by two circumstances. In the first place, Marx and I 
had been more intimately connected with the German movement 
than with any other; we were, therefore, bound to be particularly 
perturbed by the decidedly retrograde step manifested by this 
draft programme. And secondly, we were at that time, hardly two 
years after the Hague Congress of the International,’° engaged in 
the most violent struggle against Bakunin and his anarchists, who 
made us responsible for everything that happened in the labour 
movement in Germany; hence we had to expect that we would 
also be saddled with the secret paternity of this programme. These 
considerations have now ceased to exist and with them the 
necessity for the passages in question. 

For reasons of censorship, a few sentences have been indicated 
only by dots. Where I have had to choose a milder expression this 
has been enclosed in square brackets. Otherwise the text has been 
reproduced word for word. 


London, January 6, 1891 
Fr. Engels