Critique of the Gotha Programme-- I 

Karl Marx 

Critique of the Gotha Programme 

I 

1. "Labor is the source of wealth and all culture, and since useful 
labor is possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of 
labor belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society."

 First part of the paragraph : "Labor is the source of all wealth and all 
culture."

 Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is 
just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material 
wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a 
force of nature, human labor power. The above phrase is to be found in 
all children's primers and is correct insofar as it is implied that labor 
is performed with the appurtenant subjects and instruments. But a socialist 
program cannot allow such bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the 
 conditions that lone give them meaning. And insofar as man from 
the beginning behaves toward nature, the primary source of all instruments 
and subjects of labor, as an owner, treats her as belonging to him, his 
labor becomes the source of use values, therefore also of wealth. The bourgeois 
have very good grounds for falsely ascribing supernatural creative power 
to labor; since precisely from the fact that labor depends on nature it 
follows that the man who possesses no other property than his labor power 
must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the slave of other men 
who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labor. 
He can only work with their permission, hence live only with their permission.

 Let us now leave the sentence as it stands, or rather limps. What 
could one have expected in conclusion? Obviously this:

 "Since labor is the source of all wealth, no one in society can 
appropriate wealth except as the product of labor. Therefore, if he himself 
does not work, he lives by the labor of others and also acquires his culture 
at the expense of the labor of others."

Instead of this, by means of the verbal river "and since", a proposition 
is added in order to draw a conclusion from this and not from the first 
one. 

 Second part of the paragraph : "Useful labor is possible only in 
society and through society."

 According to the first proposition, labor was the source of all 
wealth and all culture; therefore no society is possible without labor. 
Now we learn, conversely, that no "useful" labor is possible without society.

 One could just as well have said that only in society can useless 
and even socially harmful labor become a branch of gainful occupation, 
that only in society can one live by being idle, etc., etc. – in short, 
once could just as well have copied the whole of Rousseau.

 And what is "useful" labor? Surely only labor which produces the 
intended useful result. A savage – and man was a savage after he had ceased 
to be an ape – who kills an animal with a stone, who collects fruit, etc., 
performs "useful" labor. 

 Thirdly, the conclusion : "Useful labor is possible only in society 
and through society, the proceeds of labor belong undiminished with equal 
right to all members of society."

 A fine conclusion! If useful labor is possible only in society 
and through society, the proceeds of labor belong to society – and only 
so much therefrom accrues to the individual worker as is not required to 
maintain the "condition" of labor, society.

 In fact, this proposition has at all times been made use of by 
the champions of the state of society prevailing at any given time . 
First comes the claims of the government and everything that sticks to 
it, since it is the social organ for the maintenance of the social order; 
then comes the claims of the various kinds of private property, for the 
various kinds of private property are the foundations of society, etc. 
One sees that such hollow phrases are the foundations of society, etc. 
One sees that such hollow phrases can be twisted and turned as desired.

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

 "Labor becomes the source of wealth and culture only as social labor", 
or, what is the same thing, "in and through society".

This proposition is incontestably correct, for although isolated labor 
(its material conditions presupposed) can create use value, it can create 
neither wealth nor culture.

 But equally incontestable is this other proposition:

 "In proportion as labor develops socially, and becomes thereby a 
source of wealth and culture, poverty and destitution develop among the 
workers, and wealth and culture among the nonworkers."

This is the law of all history hitherto. What, therefore, had to be done 
here, instead of setting down general phrases about "labor" and "society", 
was to prove concretely how in present capitalist society the material, 
etc., conditions have at last been created which enable and compel the 
workers to lift this social curse.

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

 2. "In present-day society, the instruments of labor are the monopoly 
of the capitalist class; the resulting dependence of the working class 
is the cause of misery and servitude in all forms."

This sentence, borrowed from the Rules of the International, is incorrect 
in this "improved" edition.

 In present-day society, the instruments of labor are the monopoly 
of the landowners (the monopoly of property in land is even the basis of 
the monopoly of capital) and the capitalists. In the passage in 
question, the Rules of the International do not mention either one or the 
other class of monopolists. They speak of the "monopolizer of the means 
of labor, that is, the sources of life ." The addition, "sources 
of life", makes it sufficiently clear that land is included in the instruments 
of labor.

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

 3. "The emancipation of labor demands the promotion of the instruments 
of labor to the common property of society and the co-operative regulation 
of the total labor, with a fair distribution of the proceeds of labor.

"Promotion of the instruments of labor to the common property" ought obviously 
to read their "conversion into the common property"; but this is only passing.

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

 "Proceeds of labor" is a loose notion which Lassalle has put in 
the place of definite economic conceptions.

 What is "a fair distribution"?

 Do not the bourgeois assert that the present-day distribution 
is "fair"? And is it not, in fact, the only "fair" distribution on the 
basis of the present-day mode of production? Are economic relations regulated 
by legal conceptions, or do not, on the contrary, legal relations arise 
out of economic ones? Have not also the socialist sectarians the most varied 
notions about "fair" distribution?

 To understand what is implied in this connection by the phrase 
"fair distribution", we must take the first paragraph and this one together. 
The latter presupposes a society wherein the instruments of labor are common 
property and the total labor is co-operatively regulated, and from the 
first paragraph we learn that "the proceeds of labor belong undiminished 
with equal right to all members of society."

 "To all members of society"? To those who do not work as well? 
What remains then of the "undiminished" proceeds of labor? Only to those 
members of society who work? What remains then of the "equal right" of 
all members of society?

 But "all members of society" and "equal right" are obviously mere 
phrases. The kernel consists in this, that in this communist society every 
worker must receive the "undiminished" Lassallean "proceeds of labor".

 Let us take, first of all, the words "proceeds of labor" in the 
sense of the product of labor; then the co-operative proceeds of labor 
are 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 funds to provide 
against accidents, dislocations caused by natural calamities, etc.

 These deductions from the "undiminished" proceeds of labor are 
an economic necessity, and their magnitude is to be determined according 
to available means and forces, and partly by computation of probabilities, 
but they are in no way calculable by equity.

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

 Before this is divided among the individuals, there has to be 
deducted again, from it: First , the general costs of administration 
not belonging to production. This part will, from the outset, be very considerably 
restricted in comparison with present-day society, and it diminishes in 
proportion as the new society develops. Second , that which is intended 
for the common satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health services, 
etc. From the outset, this part grows considerably in comparison with present-day 
society, and it grows in proportion as the new society develops. Third , 
funds for those unable to work, etc., in short, for what is included under 
so-called official poor relief today.

 Only now do we come to the "distribution" which the program, under 
Lassallean influence, alone has in view in its narrow fashion – 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 labor have already unnoticeably 
become converted into the "diminished" proceeds, although what the producer 
is deprived of 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 labor has 
disappeared, so now does the phrase of the "proceeds of labor" disappear 
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 labor employed on the products appear here as the value 
of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, 
in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in 
an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor. The 
phrase "proceeds of labor", objectionable also today on account 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, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks 
of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual 
producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made 
– exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual 
quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum 
of the individual hours of work; the individual labor 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 labor (after deducting his labor 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 labor cost. The same amount 
of labor 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 labor, 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 labor in one form 
is exchanged for an equal amount of labor 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 
stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional 
to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement 
is made with an equal standard , labor.

 But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and 
supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and 
labor, 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 labor. It recognizes no class differences, 
because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes 
unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural 
privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like 
every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application 
of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different 
individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only 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 ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has 
more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal 
performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, 
one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, 
and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would 
have to be unequal.

 But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist 
society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from 
capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure 
of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.

 In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination 
of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis 
between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become 
not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces 
have also increased with the all-around 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 ability, 
to each according to his needs!

 I have dealt more at length with the "undiminished" proceeds of 
labor, on the one hand, and with "equal right" and "fair 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 in a certain 
period had some meaning but have now become obsolete verbal rubbish, while 
again perverting, on the other, the realistic outlook, which it cost so 
much effort to instill into the Party but which has now taken root in it, 
by means of ideological nonsense about right and other trash so common 
among the democrats and French socialists.

 Quite apart from the analysis so far given, it was in general 
a mistake to make a fuss about so-called distribution and put the principal 
stress on it.

 Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only 
a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. 
The latter distribution, however, is a feature 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 nonworkers 
in the form of property in capital and land, while the masses are only 
owners of the personal condition of production, of labor power. If the 
elements of production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution 
of the means of consumption results automatically. If the material conditions 
of production are the co-operative property of the workers themselves, 
then there likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption 
different from the present one. Vulgar socialism (and from it in turn a 
section of the democrats) 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 been made clear, why 
retrogress again? 

 4. "The emancipation of labor must be the work of the working class, 
relative to which all other classes are only one reactionary mass."

The first strophe is taken from the introductory words of the Rules of 
the International, but "improved". There it is said: "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? "Labor." 
Let him understand who can.

 In compensation, the antistrophe, on the other hand, is a Lassallean 
quotation of the first water: "relative to which" (the working class) "all 
other classes are only one reactionary mass."

 In the Communist Manifesto it is said:

 "Of all the classes that stand face-to-face with the bourgeoisie 
today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other 
classes decay and finally disappear in the face of modern industry; the 
proletariat is its special and essential product."

The bourgeoisie is here conceived as a revolutionary class – as the bearer 
of large-scale industry – relative to the feudal lords and the lower middle 
class, who desire to maintain all social positions that are the creation 
of obsolete modes of production. thus, they do not form together with the 
bourgeoisie "only one reactionary mass".

 On the other hand, the proletariat is revolutionary relative to 
the bourgeoisie because, having itself grown up on the basis of large-scale 
industry, it strives to strip off from production the capitalist character 
that the bourgeoisie seeks to perpetuate. But the Manifesto adds 
that the "lower middle class" is becoming revolutionary "in view of [its] 
impending transfer to the proletariat".

 From this point of view, therefore, it is again nonsense to say 
that it, together with the bourgeoisie, and with the feudal lords into 
the bargain, "form only one reactionary mass" relative to the working class.

 Has one proclaimed to the artisan, small manufacturers, etc., 
and peasants during the last elections: Relative to us, you, together with 
the bourgeoisie and feudal lords, form one reactionary mass?

 Lassalle knew the Communist Manifesto by heart, as his 
faithful followers know the gospels written by him. If, therefore, he has 
falsified it so grossly, this has occurred only to put a good color on 
his alliance with absolutist and feudal opponents against the bourgeoisie.

 In the above paragraph, moreover, his oracular saying is dragged 
in by main force without any connection with the botched quotation from 
the Rules of the International. Thus, it is simply an impertinence, and 
indeed not at all displeasing to Herr Bismarck, one of those cheap pieces 
of insolence in which the Marat of Berlin deals. [ Marat of Berlin a reference to Hasselmann, cheif editor of the Neuer Social-Demokrat ] 

 5. "The working class strives for its emancipation first of all 
within the framework of the present-day national states, conscious that 
the necessary result of its efforts, which are common to the workers of 
all civilized countries, will be the international brotherhood of peoples."

Lassalle, in opposition to the Communist Manifesto and to all earlier 
socialism, conceived the workers' movement from the narrowest national 
standpoint. He is being followed in this – and that after the work of 
the International!

 It is altogether self-evident that, to be able to fight at all, 
the working class must organize itself at home as a class and that 
its own country is the immediate arena of its struggle – insofar as its 
class struggle is national, not in substance, but, as the Communist 
Manifesto says, "in form". But the "framework of the present-day national 
state", for instance, the German Empire, is itself, in its turn, economically 
"within the framework" of the world market, politically "within the framework" 
of the system of states. Every businessman knows that German trade is at 
the same time foreign trade, and the greatness of Herr Bismarck consists, 
to be sure, precisely in his pursuing a kind of international policy.

 And to what does the German Workers' party reduce its internationalism? 
To the consciousness that the result of its efforts will be "the international 
brotherhood of peoples" – a phrase borrowed from the bourgeois League 
of Peace and Freedom , which is intended to pass as equivalent to the international 
brotherhood of working classes in the joint struggle against the ruling 
classes and their governments. Not a word, therefore, about the international 
functions of the German working class! And it is thus that it is to challenge 
its own bourgeoisie – which is already linked up in brotherhood against 
it with the bourgeois of all other countries – and Herr Bismarck's international 
policy of conspiracy.

 In fact, the internationalism of the program stands even infinitely 
below that of the Free Trade party. The latter also asserts that 
the result of its efforts will be "the international brotherhood of peoples". 
But it also does something to make trade international and by no 
means contents itself with the consciousness that all people are carrying 
on trade at home.

 The international activity of the working classes does not in 
any way depend on the existence of the International Working Men's Association. 
This was only the first attempt to create a central organ for the activity; 
an attempt which was a lasting success on account of the impulse which 
it gave but which was no longer realizable in its historical form after 
the fall of the Paris Commune.

 Bismarck's Norddeutsche was absolutely right when it announced, 
to the satisfaction of its master, that the German Workers' party had sworn 
off internationalism in the new program. 

 Next: Section II 

 Critique of the Gotha Programme