Critique of the Gotha Programme - Foreword 

 Karl Marx 

Critique of the Gotha Programme

 Foreword 

The manuscript published here -- the covering letter to Bracke 
as well as the critique of the draft programme -- was sent in 
1875, shortly before the Gotha Unity Congress , to Bracke for communication to Geib, Auer, Bebel [1] , and Liebknecht and subsequent return to Marx. Since the Halle Party Congress has put the discussion of the Gotha Programme on the agenda of the Party, I think I would be guilty of suppression if I any longer withheld from publicity this important -- perhaps the most important -- document relevant to this discussion.

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

The ruthless severity with which the draft programme is 
dissected here, the mercilessness with which the results 
obtained are enunciated and the shortcomings of the draft laid 
bare -- all this today, after fifteen years, can no longer give 
offence. Specific Lassalleans now exist only abroad as isolated 
ruins, and in Halle the Gotha Programme was given up even by its 
creators as altogether inadequate.

Nevertheless, I have omitted a few sharp personal expressions 
and judgments where these were immaterial, and replaced them by 
dots. Marx himself would have done so if he had published the 
manuscript today. The violence of the language in some passages 
was provoked by two circumstances. In the first place, Marx and 
I had been more intimately connected with the German movement 
than with any other; we were, therefore, bound to be 
particularly perturbed by the decidedly retrograde step 
manifested by this draft programme. And secondly, we were at 
that time, hardly two years after the Hague Congress of the International , engaged in the most violent struggle against Bakunin and his anarchists, who made us responsible for everything that happened in the labour movement in Germany; hence we had to expect that we would also be addled with the secret paternity of this programme. These considerations do not now exist and so there is no necessity for the passages in question. 

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

London, January 6, 1891

 Footnotes

 [1] 
Before the Critique of the Gotha Programme was written, Engels wrote a letter to August Bebel expressing Marx and Engels' surprise at the programme, and going on to criticise it.

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