Written between June 18 and 29, 1891 

Neue Zeit, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1901-1902 and 
in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, First 
Russian Edition, Vol. XVI, Part II, Mos- 
cow. 1936 

219 

The present draft'™* differs very favourably from the former 
programme. The strong survivals of outmoded traditions—both 
the specific Lassallean and vulgar socialistic—have in the main 
been removed, and as regards its theoretical aspect the draft is, on 
the whole, based on present-day science and can be discussed on 
this basis. | 

It is divided into three sections: I. The Preamble, II. Political 
Demands, III. Demands for Measures of Protection for the 
Workers. 

I. PREAMBLE IN TEN PARAGRAPHS 

In general it suffers from the attempt to combine two things 
that are uncombinable: a programme and a commentary on the 
programme as well. The fear that a short, pointed exposition 
would not be intelligible enough, has caused explanations to be 
added, which make it verbose and drawn out. To my view the 
programme should be as short and precise as possible. No harm is 
done even if it contains the occasional foreign word, or a sentence 
whose full significance cannot be understood at first sight. Verbal 
exposition at meetings and written commentaries in the press take 
care of all that, and the short, precise phrase, once understood, 
takes root in the memory, and becomes a slogan, a thing that 
never happens with verbose explanations. Too much should not 
be sacrificed for the sake of popularity, and the mental ability and 
educational level of our workers should not be underestimated. 
They have understood much more difficult things than the 

shortest, most concise programme can offer them; and if the 
period of the Anti-Socialist Law has made more difficult, and 
here and there even prevented the spreading of comprehensive 
knowledge among the masses joining the movement, now that our 
propagandist literature can again be kept and read without risking 
trouble, lost time will soon be made up for under the old 
leadership. 

I shall try to make this entire section somewhat shorter and if I 
succeed shall enclose it or send it on later. Now, I shall deal with 
the individual paragraphs numbered from 1 to 106. 

Paragraph 1. “The separation,’ etc., “mines, pits, quarries” — 
three words for the same thing; two should be deleted. I would 
leave mines (Bergwerke), which is a word used even in the most 
level parts of the country, and I would designate them all by this 
widely used term. I would, however, add “railways and other means 
of communication”. 

Paragraph 2. Here I would insert: “In the hands of their 
appropriators (or their owners) the social means of labour are” and 
likewise below “dependence ... on the owners (or appropriators) of 
the means of labour’, etc. 

It has already been said in para. 1 that these gentlemen have 
appropriated these things as “exclusive possession” and will simply 
need to be repeated here if one absolutely insists on introducing 
the word “monopolists”. Neither this nor the other word adds 
anything to the sense. And anything redundant in a programme 
weakens it. 

“The means of labour necessary for the existence of society” 

— these are precisely those that are at hand. Before the steam 
engine it was possible to do without it, now we couldn’t. Since all 
the means of labour are nowadays directly or indirectly—either by 
their design or because of the social division of labour— social 
means of labour, these words express what is available at every given 
moment sufficiently clearly, correctly and without any misleading 
associations. 

If this conclusion is intended to correspond with the preamble 
of the Rules of the International, I should prefer it to correspond 
completely: “to social misery” (this is No. 1), “mental degradation 
and political dependence’’.* Physical degradation is part of social 
misery and political dependence is a fact, while the denial of political 

a K. Marx, “General Rules of the International Working Men’s Association’’, 
present edition, Vol. 23, p. 3.— Ed. 

First page of F. Engels’ manuscript 
A Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Programme of 1891 

A Critique of the Draft Programme of 1891 223 

rights is a declamatory phrase which is only relatively true and for 
this reason does not belong in the programme. 

Paragraph 3. In my opinion the first sentence should be 
changed. 

“Under the domination of the individual owners.” 

First of all that which follows is an economic fact, which should 
be explained in economic terms. The expression “domination of 
the individual owners” creates the false impression that this has 
been caused by the political domination of that gang of robbers. 
Secondly, these individual owners include not only “capitalists and 
big landowners” (what does the “bourgeoisie” following here 
signify? Are they a third class of individual owners? Are the big 
landowners also “bourgeois”? And, once we have turned to the 
subject of big landowners, should we ignore the colossal survivals 
of feudalism, which give the whole filthy business of German 
politics its specific reactionary character?). Peasants and petty 
bourgeois too are “individual owners”’, at least they still are today; 
but they do not appear anywhere in the programme and therefore 
the wording should make it clear that they are not included in the 
category of individual owners under discussion. 

“The accumulation of the means of labour and of the wealth that has been 
created by the exploited.” 

The “wealth” consists of 1. means of labour, 2. means of 
subsistence. It is therefore grammatically incorrect and illogical to 
mention one part of the wealth without the other and then refer 
to the total wealth, linking the two by and. 

‘Increases ... in the hands of the capitalists with growing speed”. 

What has happened to the “big landowners” and_ the 
“bourgeoisie” mentioned above? If it is enough to speak only of 
capitalists here, it should be so above as well. If one wishes to 
specify, however, it is generally not enough to mention them 
alone. 

“The number and the misery of the proletariat increase continuously.” 

This is incorrect when put in such a categorical way. The 
organisation of the workers and their constantly growing resis- 
tance will possibly check the increase of misery to a certain extent. 
However, what certainly does increase is the insecurity of existence. I 
should insert this. 

Paragraph 4. 

“The planlessness rooted in the nature of capitalist private production” 

needs considerable improvement. I am familiar with capitalist 
production as a social form, or an economic phase; capitalist 
private production being a phenomenon which in one form or 
another is encountered in that phase. What is capitalist private 
production? Production by separate entrepreneurs, which is 
increasingly becoming an exception. Capitalist production by 
joint-stock companies is no longer private production but production 
on behalf of many associated people. And when we pass on from 
joint-stock companies to trusts, which dominate and monopolise 
whole branches of industry, this puts an end not only to private 
production but also to planlessness. If the word “private” were 
deleted the sentence could pass. 

“The ruin of broad layers of the population.” 

Instead of this declamatory phrase, which looks as though we 
still regret the ruin of the bourgeois and petty bourgeois, I should 
state the simple fact: “which by the ruin of the urban and rural 
middle classes, the petty bourgeois and small peasants, widen (or 
deepen) the chasm between the haves and have-nots”. 

The last two phrases repeat the same thing. In the Appendix to 
Section I, I give a draft amendment.’ 

Paragraph 5. Instead of “the causes” this should read 
causes”, which is probably due to a slip of the pen. 

Paragraph 6. “Mines, pits, quarries,” see above, para. 1. “ Private 
production,” see above. I would say: “The transformation of 
present capitalist production on behalf of individuals or joint-stock 
companies into socialist production on behalf of society as a whole 
and according to a preconceived plan, a transformation, etc. ... 
which creates ... and by which alone can be achieved the 
emancipation of the working class and with it the emancipation of 
all members of society without exception.” 

Paragraph 7. 1 would say as in the Appendix to Section I.? 

Paragraph 8. Instead of ‘“‘class-conscious’’, which in our circles is 
an easily understood abbreviation, I would say the following to 
facilitate universal understanding and translation into foreign 
languages: “with workers conscious of their class position”, or 
something like it. 

Paragraph 9. Closing sentence: places ... and thereby 
concentrates in the same hands the power of economic exploita- 
tion and political oppression”. 

Paragraph 10. After “class rule” the words ‘and the classes 

ce 

ats 

ee 

a See this volume, p. 231.— Ed. 
6 Ibid., p. 232.— Ed. 

A Critique of the Draft Programme of 1891 225 

themselves” should be inserted. The abolition of classes is our 
basic demand, without which the abolition of class rule is 
economically inconceivable. Instead of “for equal rights for all’, I 
suggest: “for equal rights and equal duties of all’, etc. Equal duties 
are for us a particularly important addition to the bourgeois- 
democratic equal rights and do away with their specifically 
bourgeois meaning. 

The closing sentence: “In their struggle ... are capable,” would 
be better deleted. The imprecise wording “which are capable ... of 
improving the position of the people in general” (who is that?), can 
be taken to embrace everything, protective tariffs and free trade, 
guilds and freedom of enterprise, loans on landed security, 
exchange banks, compulsory vaccination and _ prohibition of 
vaccination, alcoholism and prohibition, etc., etc. What should be 
said here, has already been said earlier, and it is unnecessary to 
mention specifically that the demand for the whole includes every 
separate part, for this, to my mind, weakens the impact. If, 
however, this sentence is intended as a link to pass on to the 
individual demands, something resembling the following could be 
said: “Social Democracy fights for all demands which help it 
approach this goal” (‘measures and arrangements” to be deleted as 
repetitious). Or else, which would be even better: to say directly 
what it is all about, i.e., that it is necessary to catch up with what 
the bourgeoisie has missed; I have included a closing sentence to 
this effect in Appendix I.* I consider this important in connection 
with my notes to the next section and to motivate the proposals 
put forward by me therein. 

II. POLITICAL DEMANDS 

The political demands of the draft have one great fault. It lacks 
precisely what should have been said. If all the 10 demands were 
granted we should indeed have more diverse means of achieving 
our main political aim, but the aim itself would in no wise have 
been achieved. As regards the rights being granted to the people 
and their representatives, the imperial constitution is, strictly 
speaking, a copy of the Prussian constitution of 1850, a 
constitution whose articles are extremely reactionary and give the 
government all the real power, while the chambers are not even 
allowed to reject taxes; a constitution, which proved during the 
period of the conflict that the government could do anything it 

a See this volume, p. 232.— Ed. 

liked with it.'*’ The rights of the Reichstag are the same as those 
of the Prussian chamber and this is why Liebknecht called this 
Reichstag the fig-leaf of absolutism. It is an obvious absurdity to 
wish ‘to transform all the instruments of labour into common 
property” on the basis of this constitution and the system of small 
states sanctioned by it, on the basis of the “union” between Prussia 
and Reuss-Greiz-Schleiz-Lobenstein, in which one has as many 
square miles as the other has square inches. 

To touch on that is dangerous, however. Nevertheless, somehow 
or other, the thing has to be attacked. How necessary this is is 
shown precisely at the present time by opportunism, which is 
gaining ground in a large section of the Social-Democratic press. 
Fearing a renewal of the Anti-Socialist Law, or recalling all 
manner of over-hasty pronouncements made during the reign of 
that law, they now want the party to find the present legal order 
in Germany adequate for putting through all party demands by 
peaceful means. These are attempts to convince oneself and the 
party that “present-day society is developing towards socialism” 
without asking oneself whether it does not thereby just as 
necessarily outgrow the old social order and whether it will not 
have to burst this old shell by force, as a crab breaks its shell, and 
also whether in Germany, in addition, it will not have to smash the 
fetters of the still semi-absolutist, and moreover indescribably 
confused political order. One can conceive that the old society may 
develop peacefully into the new one in countries where the 
representatives of the people concentrate all power in their hands, 
where, if one has the support of the majority of the people, one 
can do as one sees fit in a constitutional way: in democratic 
republics such as France and the U.S.A., in monarchies such as 
Britain, where the imminent abdication of the dynasty in return 
for financial compensation is discussed in the press daily and 
where this dynasty is powerless against the people. But in 
Germany where the government is almost omnipotent and the 
Reichstag and all other representative bodies have no real power, 
to advocate such a thing in Germany, when, moreover, there is no 
need to do so, means removing the fig-leaf from absolutism and 
becoming oneself a screen for its nakedness. 

In the long run such a policy can only lead one’s own party 
astray. They push general, abstract political questions into the 
foreground, thereby concealing the immediate concrete questions, 
which at the moment of the first great events, the first political 
crisis automatically pose themselves. What can result from this 
except that at the decisive moment the party suddenly proves 

A Critique of the Draft Programme of 1891 224 

helpless and that uncertainty and discord on the most decisive 
issues reign in it because these issues have never been discussed? 
Must there be a repetition of what happened with protective 
tariffs, which were declared to be a matter of concern only to the 
bourgeoisie, not affecting the interests of the workers in the least, 
that is, a matter on which everyone could vote as he wished? Are 
not many people now going to the opposite extreme and are they 
not, in contrast to the bourgeoisie, who have become addicted to 
protective tariffs, rehashing the economic distortions of Cobden 
and Bright and preaching them as the purest socialism—the 
purest Manchesterism'*’? This forgetting of the great, the 
principal considerations for the momentary interests of the day, 
this struggling and striving for the success of the moment 
regardless of later consequences, this sacrifice of the future of the 
movement for its present, may be “honestly” meant, but it is and 
remains opportunism, and “honest” opportunism is perhaps the 
most dangerous of all! 

Which are these ticklish, but very significant points? 

First. lf one thing is certain it is that our party and the working 
class can only come to power under the form of a democratic 
republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the 
proletariat, as the Great French Revolution has already shown. It 
would be inconceivable for our best people to become ministers 
under an emperor, as Miquel. It would seem that from a legal 
point of view it is inadvisable to include the demand for a republic 
directly in the programme, although this was possible even under 
Louis Phillippe in France, and is now in Italy. But the fact that in 
Germany it is not permitted to advance even a republican party 
programme openly, proves how totally mistaken is the belief that a 
republic, and not only a republic, but also communist society, can 
be established in a cosy, peaceful way. 

However, the question of the republic could possibly be passed 
by. What, however, in my opinion should and could be included is 
the demand for the concentration of all political power in the hands of 
the people’s representatives. That would suffice for the time being if it 
is impossible to go any further. 

Second. The reconstitution of Germany. On the one hand, the 
system of small states must be abolished—just try to revolutionise 
society while there are the Bavarian-Wurttemberg reservation 
rights '"°—and the map of present-day Thuringia, for example, is 
such a sorry sight. On the other hand, Prussia must cease to 
exist and must be broken up into self-governing provinces for the 
specific Prussianism to stop weighing on Germany. The system of 

small states and Prussianism are the two sides of the antithesis now 
gripping Germany in a vice, in which one side must always serve 
as the excuse and justification for the existence of the other. 

What should take its place? In my view, the proletariat can only 
use the form of the one and indivisible republic. In the gigantic 
territory of the United States, the federal republic is still, on the 
whole, a necessity, although in the Eastern states it is already 
becoming a hindrance. It would be a step forward in Britain 
where the two islands are peopled by four nations and in spite of 
a single Parliament three different systems of legislation already 
exist side by side. In little Switzerland, it has long been a 
hindrance, tolerable only because Switzerland is content to be a 
purely passive member of the European state system. For 
Germany, federalisation on the Swiss model would be an 
enormous step backward. Two points distinguish a union state 
from a completely unified state: first, that each member state, each 
canton, has its own civil and criminal legislative and judicial 
system, and, second, that alongside a popular chamber there is 
also a federal chamber in which each canton, whether large or 
small, votes as such. The first we have luckily overcome and we 
shall not be so childish as to reintroduce it, the second we have in 
the Bundesrat and we could do very well without it, since our 
“federal state” generally constitutes a transition to a unified state. 
The revolution of 1866 and 1870 must not be reversed from 
above but supplemented and improved by a movement from 
below. 

So, then, a unified republic. But not in the sense of the present 
French Republic, which is nothing but the Empire established in 
1799* without the Emperor.'” From 1792 to 1799 each French 
department, each commune, enjoyed complete self-government on 
the American model, and this is what we too must have. How 
self-government is to be organised and how we can manage 
without a bureaucracy has been shown to us by America and the 
First French Republic, and is being shown even today by Australia, 
Canada ‘and the other English colonies. And a provincial and 
communal self-government of this type is far freer than, for 
instance, Swiss federalism, under which, it is true, the canton is 
very independent in relation to the federation, but is also 
independent in relation to the district and the commune. The 
cantonal governments appoint the district governors and prefects, 
which is unknown in English speaking countries and which we 

4 Here and in the next sentence Engels mistakenly has 1798.— Ed. 

A Critique of the Draft Programme of 1891 229 

want to abolish here as resolutely in the future as the Prussian 
Landrate and Regierungsrate. 

Probably few of these points should be included in the 
programme. I mention them also mainly to describe the system in 
Germany where such matters cannot be discussed openly, and to 
emphasise the self-deception of those who wish to transform such 
a system in a legal way into communist society. Further, to remind 
the party executive that there are other important political 
questions besides direct legislation by the people and _ the 
gratuitous administration of justice without which we can also 
ultimately get by. In the generally unstable conditions these 
questions may become urgent at any time and what will happen 
then if they have not been discussed by us beforehand and no 
agreement has been reached on them? 

However, what can be included in the programme and can, at 
least indirectly, serve as a hint of what may not be said directly is 
the following demand: 

“Complete self-government in the provinces, districts and 
communes through officials elected by universal suffrage. The 
abolition of all local and provincial authorities appointed by the 
state.” 

Whether or not it is possible to formulate other programme 
demands in connection with the points discussed above, I am less 
able to judge here than you can over there. But it would be 
desirable to debate these questions within the party before it is too 
late. 

1. I fail to see the difference between “election rights and 
voting rights”, between “elections and voting” respectively. If such 
a distinction should be made, it should in any case be expressed 
more clearly or explained in a commentary appended to the draft. 

2. “The right of the people to propose and reject” what? All 
laws or the decisions of the people’s representatives—this should 
be added. 

5. Complete separation of the Church from the State. All 
religious communities without exception are to be treated by the 
state as private associations. They are to be deprived of any 
support from public funds and of all influence on public 
education. (They cannot be prohibited from forming their own 
schools out of their own funds and from teaching their own 
nonsense in them.) 

6. In that case the point on the “secular character of the 
school” no longer arises, since it relates to the preceding 
paragraph. 

8 and 9. Here I want to draw attention to the following: These 
points demand that the following should be taken over by the 
state: (1) the bar, (2) medical services, (3) pharmaceutics, dentistry, 
midwifery, nursing, etc., etc., and later the demand is advanced that 
workers’ insurance become a state concern. Can all this be 
entrusted to Mr. von Caprivi? And is it compatible with the 
rejection of all state socialism, as stated above? 

10. Here I should say: “Progressive ... tax to cover all 
expenditure of the state, district and community, insofar as taxes 
are required for it. Abolition of all indirect state and local taxes, 
duties, etc.” The rest is a redundant commentary or motivation 
that tends to weaken the effect.