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Critique of the Gotha Program

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Critique of the Gotha Programme is a critique of the draft programme of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany created at its first congress in Gotha. In this document Marx addresses 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.[1]

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.

References[edit | edit source]

  1. Vladimir Lenin (1918). The State and Revolution: 'The economic basis of the withering away of the state; The higher phase of communist society'.