Critique of the Gotha Programme  

[Letter to Wilhelm Bracke]  

London, 5 May, ’75  

Dear Bracke,  

The following critical marginal notes on the coalition programme are, if you will be so good, after reading, to be forwarded for information to Geib and Auer, Bebel and Liebknecht. Nota bene. The manuscript must return into your hands, so that it is at my disposal in case of need. I am overburdened with work and must already far exceed the measure of work prescribed to me by my doctor. It was therefore by no means a  

“pleasure” to write such a lengthy scribble. But it was necessary, so that steps I may have to take later on will not be misinterpreted by the party friends for whom this communication is intended.  

For, after the coalition congress has been held, Engels and I shall publish a short declaration to the effect that we stand entirely aloof from the said programme of principles and have nothing to do with it.  

This is indispensable, as abroad the view—the thoroughly erroneous view—is nurtured most carefully by party foes that we secretly direct from here the movement of the so-called Eisenach party. In a recently published Russian work, Bakunin, for example, makes me responsible not only for all the programmes etc. of that party, but even for every step taken by Liebknecht from the day of his cooperation with the Volkspartei onward.  

Apart from this, it is my duty not to acknowledge, even by diplomatic silence, a programme that in my conviction is thoroughly objectionable and demoralising for the party.  

Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programmes. If, therefore, one could not—and the circumstances of the time did not permit it—go beyond the Eisenach programme, one should simply have concluded an agreement for action against the common enemy. But when one draws up programmes of principle (instead of postponing this until such a thing had been prepared by longer common activity), one erects before the whole world landmarks by which it measures the height of the party movement.  

The leaders of the Lassalleans came because circumstances forced them to. If one had told them from the outset that one would enter into no chaffering of principles, they would have had to content themselves with a programme of action or an organisational plan for common action. Instead, one lets them arrive armed with mandates and for one’s part acknowledges these mandates as binding, thus delivering oneself up to the mercy of those in need. To crown the matter, they again hold a congress before the compromise congress, whilst one’s own party holds its congress post festum. They evidently wanted to conjure away all criticism and not to let their own party come to reflection. One knows how the mere fact of unification satisfies the workers, but one is mistaken if one believes this momentary success was not bought too dearly.  

Apart from that, the programme is worth nothing, even leaving aside the canonisation of the Lassallean articles of faith.  

I shall shortly send you the final instalments of the French edition of Capital. Progress of the printing was held up for a long time by a ban of the French government. The thing will be ready this week or early next. Have you received the previous 6 instalments? Please also write me the address of Bernhard Becker, to whom I must likewise send the final instalments.  

The Volksstaat Bookshop has its own peculiar ways. For example, up to this very moment they have not sent me a single copy of the reprint of the Cologne Communist Trial.  

With best regards,  
Yours, Karl Marx  

Karl Marx: Critique of the Gotha Programme. Page 1.  

Marginal Notes on the:  
Programme of the German Workers’ Party.  

I.  

1) “Labour is the source of all wealth and all culture, and since useful labour is possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of labour belong, undiminished, with equal right, to all members of society.”  

First part of the paragraph: “Labour is the source of all wealth and all culture.”  

Labour is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use-values (and it is of such that material wealth certainly consists!) as labour, which itself is only the manifestation of a natural force, human labour-power.  

That phrase is found in all children’s primers and is correct in so far as it is implied that labour proceeds with the corresponding objects and means. But a socialist programme cannot allow such bourgeois phrases to silence the conditions that alone give them a meaning. Only in so far as man from the outset relates to nature, the first source of all means and objects of labour, as an owner, treats it as belonging to him, does his labour become the source of use-values, and thus also of wealth. The bourgeoisie have very good grounds for ascribing a supernatural creative power to labour; for from the fact that labour is conditioned by nature it follows that the man who possesses no other property than his labour-power must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the slave of other men who have made themselves the owners of the objective conditions of labour. He can only work with their consent, hence live only with their consent.

But let us leave the sentence as it stands, or rather limps. What would one have expected as a conclusion? Obviously this:

“Since labour is the source of all wealth, no one in society can appropriate wealth except as the product of labour. If, therefore, he does not work himself, he lives from the labour of others and also appropriates his culture at the expense of the labour of others.”

Instead, by a verbal twist, a second sentence is added in order to draw a conclusion from it, not from the first.

Second part of the paragraph.

“Useful labour is possible only in society and through society.”

According to the first sentence, labour was the source of all wealth and all culture; hence no society is possible without labour. Now we learn, conversely, that no “useful” labour is possible without society.

One could just as well have said that only in society can useless and even socially harmful labour become a branch of gain, that only in society can one live by idleness, etc., etc.—in short, one could have copied out the whole of Rousseau.

And what is “useful” labour? Surely only labour that produces the intended useful effect. A savage—and man is a savage after he has ceased being an ape—who kills an animal with a stone, gathers fruit, etc., performs “useful” labour.

Thirdly: The conclusion: “And since useful labour is possible only in society and through society—the proceeds of labour belong, undiminished, with equal right, to all members of society.”

Fine conclusion! If useful labour is possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of labour belong to society—and the individual worker receives only as much of it as is not required to maintain the “condition” of labour, society.

In fact, this proposition has at all times been upheld by the champions of whatever social order happened to exist. First come the claims of the government with everything that attaches to it, for it is the social organ for maintaining the social order; then come the claims of the various sorts of private property, for the various sorts of private property are the foundations of society, etc. One sees, one can twist and turn such hollow phrases as one likes.

The first and second parts of the paragraph have some kind of intelligible connection only in this wording:

“Labour becomes the source of wealth and culture only as social labour” or, what is the same thing, “in and through society”.

This proposition is indisputably correct, for while isolated labour (its objective conditions presupposed) can create use-values, it can create neither wealth nor culture.

But equally indisputable is the other proposition:

“In proportion as labour develops socially and thereby becomes a source of wealth and culture, poverty and destitution develop on the part of the worker, wealth and culture on the part of the non-worker.”

This is the law of all previous history. Therefore, instead of making general phrases about “labour” and “society”, what should have been demonstrated here was how, in present capitalist society, the material etc. conditions have at last been created which enable and compel the workers to break that historical curse.

In fact, however, the whole paragraph, flawed in style and content, is there only to inscribe the Lassallean catchword of the “undiminished proceeds of labour” as a slogan at the top of the party banner. I shall return later to the “proceeds of labour”, “equal right”, etc., since the same thing recurs in a somewhat different form.

2) “In present-day society the means of labour are the monopoly of the capitalist class; the resulting dependence of the working class is the cause of misery and bondage in all forms.”

This sentence, borrowed from the International Statutes, is false in this “improved” version.

In present-day society, the means of labour are the monopoly of the landowners (the monopoly of landed property is even the basis of the capital monopoly) and of the capitalists. The International Statutes, in the relevant passage, name neither the one nor the other class of monopolists. It speaks of the “monopoly of the means of labour, i.e., of the sources of life”. The addition: “sources of life” shows sufficiently that the soil is included among the means of labour.

The improvement was introduced because Lassalle, for reasons now generally known, attacked only the capitalist class and not the landowners. In England, the capitalist is mostly not even the owner of the land on which his factory stands.

3) “The emancipation of labour demands the elevation of the means of labour to the common property of society and the co-operative regulation of the total labour with a fair distribution of the proceeds of labour.”

“Elevation of the means of labour to common property!” This must surely mean their “transformation into common property”. But this only in passing.

What are “proceeds of labour”? The product of labour or its value? And in the latter case, the total value of the product or only that part of value which labour has newly added to the value of the consumed means of production?

The “proceeds of labour” is a loose notion that Lassalle has put in place of definite economic concepts.

What is a “fair” distribution?

Do the bourgeois not assert that the present-day distribution is “just”? And is it not, in fact, the only “just” distribution on the basis of the present-day mode of production? Are economic relations regulated by legal concepts, or do not conversely legal relations arise from the economic ones? Have not the socialist sectarians also the most diverse notions about “just” distribution?

In order to know what one is to understand by the phrase “just distribution” on this occasion, we must compare the first paragraph with this one. The latter presupposes a society in which “the means of labour are common property and the total labour is co-operatively regulated”, and from the first paragraph we perceive that “the proceeds of labour belong undiminished, with equal right, to all members of society”.

“To all members of society?” To the non-working as well? Where then remains “the undiminished proceeds of labour”? Only to the working members of society? Where then remains “the equal right” of all members of society?

But “all members of society” and “the equal right” are obviously mere phrases. The core is that in this communist society every worker must receive his “undiminished” Lassallean “proceeds of labour”.

[6] If we take the word “proceeds of labour” in the sense of the product of labour, then the co-operative proceeds of labour is the total social product.

From this must now be deducted:

*First:* cover for replacement of the means of production used up;

*Second:* additional portion for expansion of production;

*Third:* reserve or insurance fund against accidents, disturbances by natural events, etc.

These deductions from the “undiminished proceeds of labour” are an economic necessity, and their magnitude is to be determined according to available means and forces, partly by probability calculation, but they are in no way calculable on the basis of justice.

There remains the other part of the total product, intended to serve as means of consumption.

Before this comes to individual division, there is again deducted from it:

*First:* the general, not directly pertaining to production, costs of *administration*.

From the outset this part is limited to the most significant extent compared with present-day society, and it diminishes in the same measure as the new society develops.

*Second:* what is destined for the communal satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health services, etc.

From the outset this part grows considerably compared with present-day society, and it increases in the same measure as the new society develops.

*Third:* fund for those unable to work, etc., in short, for what today belongs to the so-called official poor relief.

Only now do we come to the “distribution” which the programme, under Lassallean influence, in narrow fashion alone has in view, namely to that part of the means of consumption which is divided among the individual producers of the co-operative society.

The “undiminished proceeds of labour” have already imperceptibly transformed themselves into “diminished” proceeds, although what the producer loses in his capacity as a private individual benefits him directly or indirectly in his capacity as a member of society.

Just as the phrase of the “undiminished proceeds of labour” has disappeared, so now the phrase of the “proceeds of labour” disappears altogether.

Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labour expended on products appear here as the *value* of these products, as a material property possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labour no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of the total labour. The word “proceeds of labour”, objectionable even today because of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning.

What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has *developed* on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it *emerges* from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. [7] Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society—after the deductions—exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labour. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of labour; the individual labour time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labour (after deducting his labour for the common funds), and with this certificate he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labour costs. The same amount of labour which he has given to society in one form he receives back in another.

Here obviously the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labour, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity-equivalents: a given amount of labour in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labour in another form.

Hence, equal right here is still in principle—*bourgeois* right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the average and not in the individual case.

In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatised by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is *proportional* to the labour they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an *equal standard*, labour. But one man is superior to another physically or mentally, and thus supplies more labour in the same time, or can labour for a longer time; and labour, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This *equal* right is an unequal right for unequal labour. It recognises no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognises unequal individual endowment and thus productive capacity of the worker as natural privileges. *It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right.* Right by its very nature can only consist in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are only commensurable by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only, for instance, in the present case, are regarded *only as workers* and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being abstracted away.

Further: one worker is married, another not; one has more children than the other, [8] etc., etc. Thus, with an equal performance of labour, and hence an equal share in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, etc. To avoid all these defects, right would have to be unequal rather than equal.

But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when emerging from capitalist society after a long and painful delivery. Right can never be higher than the economic form of society and the cultural development conditioned by it.

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of individuals to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!

I have dealt more at length with the “undiminished proceeds of labour” on the one hand, and “equal right” and “just distribution” on the other, in order to show what a crime it is to attempt, on the one hand, to force on our Party again as dogmas ideas which at a certain time had a meaning but have now become obsolete verbal rubbish, while, on the other hand, the realistic outlook, which has been instilled into the Party with so much difficulty but has taken root in it, is being perverted by ideological legal and other humbug so familiar to the democrats and French socialists.

Apart from what has been developed so far, it was altogether erroneous to make a fuss about so-called distribution and put the principal emphasis on it.

The distribution of the means of consumption at any time is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves; the latter distribution, however, is a characteristic of the mode of production itself. The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of non-workers in the form of property in capital and landed property, while the mass are only owners of the personal condition of production, of labour-power. If the elements of production are distributed in this way, the present-day distribution of the means of consumption follows of itself. If the material conditions of production are the co-operative property of the workers themselves, there likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one.

Vulgar socialism (and from it again a section of the democracy) has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production, and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution. After the real relation has long since been made clear, why go back again?

[9] 4) “The emancipation of labour must be the work of the working class, in relation to which all other classes are only a reactionary mass.”

The first stanza is from the introductory words of the International Statutes, but “improved”. There it says: “The emancipation of the working class must be the act of the workers themselves”; here, on the contrary, “the working class” has to emancipate—what? “labour”. Understand it who can.

By way of compensation, on the other hand, the anti-strophe is a Lassallean quotation of the purest water.

“in relation to which (the working class) all other classes are only a reactionary mass.”

In the Communist Manifesto it says:

"Of all the classes which today confront the bourgeoisie, only the proletariat is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and perish alongside large-scale industry, the proletariat is its own special product."

The bourgeoisie is here conceived as a revolutionary class—as the bearer of large-scale industry—in relation to the feudal lords and the middle estates, which want to maintain all social positions that are the creations of antiquated modes of production. Thus they do not, together with the bourgeoisie, form merely one reactionary mass.

On the other hand, the proletariat is revolutionary vis-à-vis the bourgeoisie because, having itself grown up on the basis of large-scale industry, it strives to strip production of the capitalist character that the bourgeoisie seeks to perpetuate. But the Manifesto adds that the "middle estates ... become revolutionary ... in view of their impending transition into the proletariat".

From this standpoint, therefore, it is once again nonsense that they "together with the bourgeoisie" and on top of that vis-à-vis the working class "form merely one reactionary mass".

Has one called out to the artisans, small manufacturers, etc., and peasants, at the last elections: in relation to us, you together with bourgeois and feudal lords form only a reactionary mass?

Lassalle knew the Communist Manifesto by heart, as his faithful knew the holy scriptures he had composed. If he thus grossly falsified it, this was done only to whitewash his alliance with the absolutist and feudal opponents against the bourgeoisie.

In the above paragraph, moreover, his wise dictum is dragged in by the hair, with no connection whatever to the mangled quotation from the Statutes of the International. It is therefore here simply an impertinence, and by no means one displeasing to Herr Bismarck, one of those cheap pieces of loutishness in which the Berlin Marat indulges.

5) "The working class works for its emancipation first of all within the framework of the present-day national state, conscious that the necessary result of its striving, which is common to the workers of all civilised countries, will be the international fraternisation of peoples."

In contrast to the Communist Manifesto and to all earlier socialism, Lassalle had conceived the workers’ movement from the narrowest national standpoint. He is followed in this—and this after the work of the International!

It goes without saying that in order to be able to fight at all, the working class must organise itself at home as a class and that the immediate theatre of its struggle is its own country. In this sense its class struggle is national, not in content but, as the Communist Manifesto says, "in form".

But the "framework of the present-day national state", for instance of the German Reich, itself stands, economically, "within the framework of the world market", politically "within the framework of the system of states". The first shopkeeper knows that German trade is at the same time foreign trade, and the greatness of Herr Bismarck resides precisely in his kind of international politics.

And to what does the German Workers’ Party reduce its internationalism? To the consciousness that the result of its striving "will be the international fraternisation of peoples"—a phrase borrowed from the bourgeois League of Freedom and Peace, which is to pass as the equivalent of the international brotherhood of the working classes in their joint struggle against the ruling classes and their governments. Thus not a word about the international functions of the German working class! And in this way it is to offer a bold front to its own bourgeoisie—which is already fraternised with the bourgeois of all other countries against it—and to Herr Bismarck’s international policy of conspiracy!

Indeed, the international confession of the programme stands infinitely far beneath that of the Free Trade party. It too asserts that the result of its striving is "the international fraternisation of peoples". But it also does something to make trade international, and by no means contents itself with the consciousness—that all peoples carry on trade at home.

The international activity of the working classes does not depend in any way on the existence of the "International Working Men’s Association". That was only the first attempt to create a central organ for that activity; an attempt which, because of the impetus it gave, was of lasting success, but which, in its first historical form, after the fall of the Paris Commune, could no longer be carried on.

Bismarck’s *Norddeutsche* was perfectly right when it announced, to the satisfaction of its master, that the German Workers’ Party had abjured internationalism in the new programme.

II.

"Proceeding from these principles, the German Workers’ Party strives with all legal means for the free state—and—socialist society: the abolition of the wage system with the iron law of wages—and—of exploitation in every form; the elimination of all social and political inequality."

I shall return to the "free" state later.

Thus in future the German Workers’ Party has to believe in Lassalle’s "iron law of wages"! Lest it be lost, the nonsense is committed of speaking of the "abolition of the wage system (it should read: system of wage labour) with the iron law of wages". If I abolish wage labour, then naturally I also abolish its laws, whether they be "iron" or spongy. But Lassalle’s attack on wage labour revolves almost solely around this so-called law. In order to prove, therefore, that the Lassallean sect has triumphed, the "wage system" must be abolished "with the iron law of wages", and not without it.

Of the "iron law of wages", as is well known, nothing belongs to Lassalle except the word "iron", borrowed from Goethe’s "eternal, iron, great laws". The word *iron* is his signature, by which the orthodox know one another. But if I take the law with Lassalle’s stamp, and therefore in his sense, then I must also take it with its foundation. And what is that? As Lange already showed shortly after Lassalle’s death: the Malthusian theory of population (preached by Lange himself). But if this theory is correct, then I cannot abolish the law even if I abolish wage labour a hundred times, because the law then governs not only the system of wage labour, but every social system. Basing themselves precisely on this, the economists have proved for fifty years and more that socialism cannot abolish poverty based on nature, but can only generalise it, distribute it equally over the whole surface of society!

But all this is not the main thing. Quite apart from the false Lassallean formulation of the law, the truly outrageous regression consists in the following:

Since Lassalle’s death, the scientific insight has made its way in our Party that wages are not what they appear to be, namely the value, or price, of labour, but only a disguised form for the value, or price, of labour-power. With this, the whole previous bourgeois conception of wages, as well as all previous criticism directed against the same, was thrown overboard once and for all and it was made clear that the wage-worker has only permission to work for his own life, i.e., to live, in so far as he works for a certain time gratis for the capitalist (and hence also for those who share with him the surplus-value); that the whole capitalist system of production turns upon the prolongation of this unpaid labour by extending the working day or by developing the productivity, greater tension of labour-power, etc.; that therefore the system of wage labour is a system of slavery, and indeed a slavery which grows more severe in the same measure as the social productive forces of labour develop, whether the worker receives better or worse payment. And after this insight has made more and more headway in our Party, one returns to Lassalle’s dogma, although one must now have known that Lassalle did not know what wages were, but, following the bourgeois economists, took the appearance for the essence of the matter.

It is as if, among slaves who have at last got behind the secret of slavery and broken out in rebellion, a slave still in thrall to antiquated notions were to write on the programme of the rebellion: slavery must be abolished because the feeding of slaves under the system of slavery cannot exceed a certain low maximum!

The mere fact that the representatives of our Party were capable of perpetrating such a monstrous assault upon the insight spread among the mass of the Party—does it not alone prove with what criminal levity, with what unscrupulousness they set about drawing up this compromise programme!

Instead of the vague closing phrase of the paragraph, "the elimination of all social and political inequality", one should have said that with the abolition of class distinctions all social and political inequality springing from them will vanish of itself.

II.

"The German Workers’ Party demands, in order to pave the way for the solution of the social question, the establishment of producers’ co-operatives with state aid under the democratic control of the working people. The producers’ co-operatives are to be called into being for industry and agriculture on such a scale that out of them arises the socialist organisation of the total labour."

After the Lassallean "iron law of wages", the prophet’s remedy! It is "paved" in a worthy manner! In place of the existing class struggle, there steps a hack journalist’s phrase—"the social question", whose "solution" one "paves the way for". Instead of arising out of the revolutionary process of the transformation of society, the "socialist organisation of the total labour" "arises" from the "state aid" that the state gives to producers’ co-operatives, which it, not the workers, "calls into being". This is worthy of Lassalle’s fantasy that with state loans one can build a new society just as well as a new railway!

Out of a remnant of shame, one places "state aid"—"under the democratic control of the working people".

Firstly, in Germany the "working people" consists, in the majority, of peasants, and not of proletarians.

Secondly, "democratic" translated into German means "ruled by the people". But what is "the people-ruled control of the working people"? And that moreover from a working people which, through these demands that it addresses to the state, expresses its full consciousness that it neither is in power nor is ripe for power!

To criticise the recipe prescribed by Buchez under Louis Philippe in opposition to the French socialists and adopted by the reactionary workers of the *Atelier* is superfluous here. Nor does the main objection lie in the fact that this specific miracle cure has been written into the programme, but in the fact that one has altogether regressed from the standpoint of the class movement to that of the sect movement.

That the workers want to establish the conditions of co-operative production on a social scale, and, first of all, among themselves, i.e., on a national scale, only means that they are working for the transformation of the present conditions of production, and it has nothing in common with the founding of co-operative societies with state aid! As for the present co-operative societies, however, they have value only insofar as they are independent creations of the workers, protected neither by the governments nor by the bourgeoisie.

Critique of the Gotha Programme

[IV.]

I come now to the democratic section.

A.) “Free foundation of the state.”

First, according to II, the German workers’ party strives for “the *free state*”.

Free state — what is that?

It is by no means the aim of the workers, who have got rid of the limited mentality of subjects, to make the state “free”. In the German Reich the “state” is almost as “free” as in Russia. Freedom consists in converting the state from an organ superior to society into an organ completely subordinate to it, and even today the forms of state are freer or less free to the degree that they restrict the “freedom of the state”.

The German workers’ party — at least if it makes this programme its own — shows how little it is imbued with socialist ideas even skin-deep, in that, instead of treating existing society (and this holds for every future one) as the “foundation” of the existing state (or future one; for future society), it rather treats the state as an independent entity that possesses its own “spiritual, moral, free foundations”.

And then the horrible misuse that the programme makes of the words “present-day state”, “present-day society”, and the still more horrible misunderstanding it creates about the state to which it addresses its demands!

“Present-day society” is capitalist society, which exists in all civilised countries, more or less free from medieval admixture, more or less modified by the particular historical development of each country, more or less developed. On the other hand, the “present-day state” changes with the country’s frontier. It is one thing in the Prusso-German Reich and another in Switzerland, another in England and another in the United States. “The present-day state” is therefore a fiction.

However, the different states of the different civilised countries, in spite of their motley diversity of form, all have this in common: that they stand on the ground of modern bourgeois society, only one more or less capitalistically developed. They therefore also have certain essential characteristics in common. In this sense one can speak of the “present-day state system”, in contrast to the future, where its present root, bourgeois society, has died away.

It then becomes a question: what transformation will the state system undergo in a communist society? In other words, what social functions remain there that are analogous to present-day state functions? This question can only be answered scientifically, and one does not come a flea’s hop nearer to the problem by a thousandfold combination of the word people with the word state.

Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period, whose state can be nothing but the *revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat*.

Now the programme has nothing to do with either the latter or with the future state system of communist society.

Its political demands contain nothing but the democratic litany known to all the world: universal suffrage, direct legislation, people’s right, people’s militia, etc. They are a mere echo of the bourgeois People’s Party, of the Peace and Freedom League.

They are all demands which, insofar as they are not exaggerated in fantastic imagination, are already realised. Only the state to which they belong is not within the borders of the German Reich, but in Switzerland, the United States, etc. This kind of “future state” is present-day state, although existing outside the “framework” of the German Reich.

But one thing has been forgotten. Since the German workers’ party expressly declares that it moves within “the present-day national state”, i.e., its state, the Prusso-German Reich — otherwise its demands would also be largely meaningless, since one only demands what one does not yet have — it should not have forgotten the main point, namely that all those pretty little things rest on the recognition of so-called popular sovereignty, that they are therefore only in place in a democratic republic.

Since they lack the courage — and wisely, for the conditions prescribe caution — to demand the democratic republic, as the French workers’ programmes did under Louis Philippe and under Louis Napoleon, they should [not] have taken refuge in the subterfuge, which is neither “honest” nor dignified, of demanding things that make sense only in a democratic republic from a state that is nothing but a military despotism, trimmed with parliamentary forms, mixed with feudal admixture, and already influenced by the bourgeoisie, bureaucratically carpentered, police-guarded, and to assure this state into the bargain that they imagine they can impose such things upon it “by legal means”!

Even vulgar democracy, which sees the democratic republic as the millennium and has no notion that it is precisely in this last form of state of bourgeois society that the class struggle has to be fought out definitively — even it stands mountains high above this kind of democratism within the bounds of what is permitted by the police and logically not permitted.

That by “state” is in fact understood the governmental machine, or the state insofar as it forms an organism of its own separated from society by division of labour, is already shown by the words:

“The German workers’ party demands as the economic foundation of the state: a single progressive income tax, etc.”

Taxes are the economic foundation of the governmental machinery and of nothing else. In the future state existing in Switzerland, this demand is fairly well fulfilled. Income tax presupposes the various sources of income of the various social classes, hence capitalist society. It is therefore nothing surprising that the Financial Reformers of Liverpool — bourgeois with Gladstone’s brother at their head — put forward the same demand as the programme.

B.) “The German workers’ party demands as the spiritual and moral foundation of the state:

1) General and equal elementary education by the state. Universal compulsory school attendance. Free instruction.”

Equal elementary education? What does one imagine under these words? Is it believed that in present-day society (and one only has to do with it) education can be equal for all classes? Or is it demanded that the upper classes also be compulsorily reduced to the modicum of education — of the elementary school — which alone is compatible with the economic conditions not only of the wage-labourers but also of the peasants?

“Universal compulsory school attendance. Free instruction.” The first exists even in Germany, the second in Switzerland, the United States for elementary schools. If in some states of the latter “higher” educational institutions are also “free”, that only means in fact defraying the education costs of the upper classes from the general tax purse. Incidentally, the same applies to the “free legal assistance” demanded under A. 5). Criminal justice is available free everywhere; civil justice deals almost exclusively with property conflicts, therefore touches almost only the propertied classes. Are they to conduct their lawsuits at the expense of the people’s purse?

The paragraph on schools should have at least demanded technical schools (theoretical and practical) in combination with the elementary school.

“Elementary education by the state” is completely objectionable. To determine by a general law the means of the elementary schools, the qualification of the teaching personnel, the branches of instruction, etc., and, as is done in the United States, to supervise the fulfilment of these legal provisions by state inspectors, is something quite different from appointing the state as the people’s educator! Rather, government and church are to be excluded equally from any influence on the school. In the Prusso-German Reich (and one should not try to help oneself with the lazy excuse that one is speaking of a “future state”; we have seen what that amounts to) the state, on the contrary, needs a very rough education by the people.

Yet the whole programme, despite all its democratic tinkling, is thoroughly infected with the subject-faith of the Lassallean sect in the state, or, what is no better, with the democratic miracle-belief, or rather it is a compromise between these two sorts of miracle-belief, equally remote from socialism.

2.) “Freedom of science” reads a paragraph of the Prussian constitution. Why here, then?

“Freedom of conscience!” If one wanted at this time of the *Kulturkampf* to remind liberalism of its old catchwords, it could only happen in this form: Everyone must be able to satisfy his religious as well as his bodily needs without the police sticking their nose into it. But the workers’ party should have taken this opportunity to express its consciousness that bourgeois “freedom of conscience” is nothing but the toleration of all possible sorts of religious unfreedom of conscience, and that it rather strives to liberate the conscience from the religious spectre. But one chooses not to go beyond the “bourgeois” level.

I have now arrived at the end, for the appendix that now follows in the programme forms no characteristic part of it. I have therefore to be very brief here.

2) “Normal working day.” The workers’ party of no other country has restricted itself to such an indefinite demand, but has always fixed the length of the working day that it considered normal under the given circumstances.

3) “Restriction of women’s labour and prohibition of child labour.”

The regulation of the working day must already include the restriction of women’s labour, so far as it relates to duration, breaks, etc., of the working day; otherwise it can only mean the exclusion of women’s labour from branches of industry that are specifically injurious to the health of the female body or are morally objectionable for the female sex. If that was meant, it should have been said.

“Prohibition of child labour!” Here it was absolutely necessary to indicate the age limit.

A general prohibition of child labour is incompatible with the existence of large-scale industry and hence an empty pious wish.

Its realisation — if possible — would be reactionary, since, with strict regulation of the working time according to the various age levels, and other protective measures for the protection of children, early connection of productive labour with instruction is one of the most powerful means of transforming present-day society.

4) “State supervision of factory, workshop and domestic industry.”

In relation to the Prussian-German state it should definitely have been demanded that the inspectors be removable only by the courts; that any worker can denounce them before the courts for breach of duty; that they must belong to the medical profession.

5) “Regulation of prison labour.”

A petty demand in a general workers’ programme. In any case, it should have been stated clearly that, out of competitive jealousy, one does not wish common criminals to be treated like cattle and especially does not wish to cut them off from their sole means of improvement, productive labour. That was the least that could be expected of socialists.

6) “An effective law on liability.”

It should have been stated what is meant by an “effective” law on liability.

Incidentally, concerning the normal working day, the part of factory legislation dealing with health measures and safeguards against danger, etc., has been overlooked. The law on liability only comes into effect once these regulations have been violated.

In short, this appendix too is distinguished by slovenly editing.

Dixi et salvavi animam meam.

Friedrich Engels
To the General Council
of the International Working Men’s Association in New York

London, 122 Regents Park Road
N.W. 13 Aug. 1875

To the General Council
of the International Working Men’s Association

Citizens,

The circulars sent to me with the letter of Secretary Speyer (4 June, received 21st) have been put into circulation according to instructions, and I have been able to do the following in the interest of the matter:

1) Since the local workers’ society (German section), through fusion with the Lassalleans and excessive liberality in the admission of members — about 120 — would only be suitable for confidential communications if one wished them to be published immediately, I gave the circulars to Leßner and Frankel, who agreed with me that the content was not suitable for official communication in the society and that one must restrict oneself to communicating with suitable persons and otherwise work in silence in the interest of the matter raised. As certainly no German workers will be sent from here to Philadelphia, this will not alter the practical consequences.

2) Our friend Mesa from Madrid, who now lives in Paris, was just here when the circular arrived. He took the matter up very enthusiastically; I translated the circular for him, and as he knows members of the committee in Paris that administers the subscriptions for the purpose of sending workers to Philadelphia, he will, with his well-known activity, probably be able to do something. He is also sending it to Spain.

3) I could not send it to Belgium, because the whole Belgian International is on the side of the Alliance people, and it is not in our interest to communicate the plan to them. I have no addresses in Portugal and Italy. The Plebe of Lodi has largely gone over to the Alliance people and would be capable of publishing the whole thing immediately.

4) Since the instruction does not mention Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and the General Council has abundant direct connections there, I have taken no steps there, so as not to cross those taken directly from there.

5) The circular has met with great approval among all who have seen it, and the proposal for a conference is generally regarded as the only practical one. But to bring about a vote on it seems to us impossible here. The local society has already been mentioned. Other sections in England have all fallen asleep, the best people mostly gone. In Denmark, France, Spain, where the International is directly prohibited, there can be no question of a vote. In Germany, they have never voted on such a thing, and after the unification with the Lassalleans, the already loose connection with the International has been completely renounced. Under these circumstances the American votes ought to suffice to cover the General Council if it raises the proposal to a resolution, all the more as we know from a good source that the Alliance people are likewise holding no congress this year (nor likely ever again).

6) Would it not be good if, around the time of the opening of the exhibition, a brief notice were inserted in the European party organs, something to the effect: “Socialist workers visiting the exhibition in Philadelphia are requested to proceed to … (address) where they will be put in touch with Phil. party comrades” or if a “Committee for the Accommodation of Socialist Workers or their Protection from Swindlers” were set up and its address published? The latter in particular would look very harmless, but a few private letters would suffice to spread the information sufficiently.

Fraternal greetings,
F. Engels

Friedrich Engels
Address delivered at the meeting
held on the occasion of the anniversary of
the Polish insurrection of 1863

Citizens — The role of Poland in the history of European revolutions is a role quite apart. Any revolution of the West that does not succeed in carrying Poland with it and ensuring her independence and liberty is doomed to defeat. Take the example of the revolution of 1848. It occupied a far broader terrain than any previous revolution; it swept into its current Austria, Hungary, Prussia. But it came to a halt at the frontiers of Poland occupied by the armies of Russia. When Czar Nicholas received the news of the February revolution, he said to his entourage: Gentlemen, saddle your horses. Immediately he mobilised his troops and concentrated them in Poland, ready to have them pour out, at the opportune moment, over rebellious Europe. For their part, the revolutionaries knew perfectly well that the terrain on which the decisive battle would have to be fought was Poland. On 15 May, the people of Paris, to the cries of “Long live Poland!”, invaded the National Assembly to force it to wage war for Polish independence. At the same time, in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Marx and I demanded that Prussia immediately declare war on Russia to liberate Poland, and we were supported by the whole of advanced German democracy. Thus, in France and in Germany, it was perfectly understood where the decisive point lay: with Poland, the revolution was assured; without Poland, it was bound to fail. But in France Mr. Lamartine, in Prussia Frederick William IV, the Czar’s brother-in-law, and his bourgeois minister Mr. Camphausen, had no mind at all to shatter, by their own hand, the force of Russia, in which they rightly saw their last safeguard against the revolutionary overflow. Nicholas could dispense with mounting his horse; his troops, for the moment, could limit themselves to containing Poland and threatening Prussia, Austria, and Hungary, until the moment when the advances of the insurgent Hungarians threatened the Austrian reaction, victorious in Vienna. It was then that those Russian armies flooded Hungary, and, by crushing the Hungarian revolution, secured the victory of reaction throughout the whole of the West. Europe lay at the feet of the Czar, because Europe had abandoned Poland. In truth, Poland is not like any other country. In the matter of revolutions, she is the keystone of the European edifice; whichever of the two, revolution or reaction, knows how to maintain itself in Poland, that one will ultimately dominate the whole of Europe. And it is this quite special character that gives Poland the importance she has for all revolutionaries, and which, even today, wrings from us the cry: Long live Poland!