The document is a critique of the Gotha Programme, which was the draft programme of the United Workers' Party of Germany. Marx addresses various topics including the dictatorship of the proletariat, the transition from capitalism to communism, phases of communist society, production and distribution of social goods, proletarian internationalism, and the party of the working class. The document is considered significant for its application of materialist dialectics and the theory of development in understanding the economic maturity of communism.
Written: April or early May, 1875;
Source: Marx/Engels Selected Works, Volume Three, p. 13-30;
Publisher: Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1970;
First Published: Abridged in the journal Die Neue Zeit, Bd. 1, No. 18, 1890-91;
Online Version: mea; marxists.org 1999;
Transcribed: Zodiac and Brian Baggins;
HTML Markup: Brian Baggins.
Table of Contents:
Critique of the Gotha Programme - ForewordLetters: Marx to BrackeLetters: Engels to BebelCritique of the Gotha Programme-- ICritique of the Gotha Programme-- IICritique of the Gotha Programme-- IIICritique of the Gotha Programme-- IVCritique of the Gotha Programme-- AppendixBackground
Critique of the Gotha Programme is a critique of the draft programme of the United Workers' Party of Germany. In this document Marx address the dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition from capitalism to communism, the two phases of communist society, the production and distribution of the social goods, proletarian internationalism, and the party of the working class.
Lenin later wrote:
The great significance of Marx's explanation is, that here too, he consistently applies materialist dialectics, the theory of development, and regards communism as something which develops out of capitalism. Instead of scholastically invented, 'concocted' definitions and fruitless disputes over words (What is socialism? What is communism?), Marx gives analysis of what might be called the stages of the economic maturity of communism.
(Lenin Collected Works, Volume 25, p. 471)
Engels wrote a foreword when the document was first published in 1891. Together with the Critique of the Gotha Programme Engels published Marx's letter to Bracke, directly bound up with the work.