Critique of the Gotha Programme by Karl Marx
Posted by ac on October 27th, 2011
“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… 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?”
-I thought readers would find it refreshing to read something other than utopian promises of redistribution from the ‘left’ wing of capitalist preservation. Capitalism requires poverty and inequality to condition its labour market. We cannot make poverty history through progressive taxation imposed by the bourgeois state. No matter how many new articles the social-democrats of Rabble write and how many times Leftnews.org reposts them, the arguments haven’t progressed an inch since Marx critiqued them.
October 28th, 2011 at 12:33 pm
I would be the first to say that Marx’s writings are as salient today as when they were first written — the Critique of the Gotha Programme is obviously an exceptional example of this.
I want to caution that the posting of articles on Leftnews.org does not represent an endorsement of the ideas or the positions expressed in them. I often post articles precisely because they contain positions I do not agree with. Leftnews.org is a project to make sure that left wing people do not have to look far to find articles that may be of interest to them, not just articles with perfect analysis (although, those are obviously welcome as well).
That said, I will put forward one argument on reforms. While soft left reforms are muddled, contradictory and often do little to address substantive issues, they are usually the product of the collective struggle against capitalism. This, in and of itself, does not necessarily mean that they should be defended, but it should result in a sophisticated analysis of and orientation towards them when critiquing capitalism and organising against the structures that support it.
It is a very unsophisticated analysis that states that reformist policies should not be defended when under attack from the right. Marx rejected this position in the Manifesto and in speech after speech during the First International. Lenin rejected that position in Leftwing Communism and many other articles and speeches. Luxembourg rejected that position in Reform or Revolution. Mao rejected that position in relation to industrial organisations when he reformed the All-China Federation of Trade Unions.
It is true that these all exist in different historical moments, but my point is on the sophistication of the analysis. It is one thing to not call for reformist and revisionist positions and policy, it is quite another thing not to defend those reforms when under political attack.
Policies of redistribution and progressive taxation within advanced industrialised nations must be defended while building consciousness around the contradictions within Capitalism in its current state. The process of consciousness raising may happen faster under conditions closer to barbarism, but it is hardly a situation to wish on people. Capitalism does a good job on its own of presenting crises. Organisers should not be spending time wishing for those crises to come. Instead, the role is to organise and build consciousness within the organisations that we have built and make sure that we can, while sustaining the reforms which have been victories of the struggle in the presence of attack, build the conditions for a sustainable socialist alternative.
October 29th, 2011 at 2:24 am
Defending past gains, supporting minimal demands is unquestionably necessary. But it is not sufficient and support is not given for gains in themselves, but to build a movement irreconcilably hostile to the capitalist system of class exploitation. This means that we do not spare capitalism criticism, nor do we seek to win reforms by creating illusions in its capabilities.
Luxemburg in Reform or Revolution argues that gains are Sisyphean, not progressive, and in times of crisis will be rolled back (as we are seeing). As Luxemburg puts it, “What will be the immediate result should our party change its general procedure to suit a viewpoint that wants to emphasise the practical results of our struggle, that is social reforms? As soon as “immediate results” become the principal aim of our activity, the clear-cut, irreconcilable point of view, which has meaning only in so far as it proposes to win power, will be found more and more inconvenient. The direct consequence of this will be the adoption by the party of a “policy of compensation,” a policy of political trading, and an attitude of diffident, diplomatic conciliation. But this attitude cannot be continued for a long time. Since the social reforms can only offer an empty promise, the logical consequence of such a program must necessarily be disillusionment.” In her argument she is defending revolutionary Marxism that maintains that socialism cannot be implemented gradually through reforms and winning elections in bourgeois parliament, but only through workers’ revolution. The Transitional Programme in which Trotsky codifies the method developed by the early years of the Comintern develops how communists, while supporting ‘minimal demands,’ (reforms) use ‘transitional demands’ that connect workers’ consciousness to the necessity of overthrowing capitalism.
Lenin’s Left-Wing Communism is a tactical manual based on the strategy of the United Front. The slogan of the United Front is, “strike together, march separately.” The communists enter into common action with the ‘centrist’ (wavering between revolution and reformism) parties and reformist social democrats, while maintaining freedom of criticism and political independence. They do this to win the struggle and expose the reformists for what they are (as Trotsky calls them, the political agents of the bourgeoisie within the working class) and winning away their working-class base of support. We do not create illusions that reforms will eliminate inequality or poverty. We don’t withhold criticism of capitalism or the pro-capitalist social-democrats and centrists with whom we enter into the United Front. I stand by what I wrote above. It is important that Marxists not pretend that poverty is incidental within capitalism–poverty is a condition necessary for the existence of a labour market.
And as for Mao, Maoism is a Stalinist political tradition that stands in irreconcilable hostility to workers’ democracy; it is responsible for the massacre of millions of Communists, notably the liquidation of the Indonesian communists by Suharto following the political and material disarmament of their pro-China party (PKI), carried out in the vain attempt to reassure the bourgeois nationalist Soekarno of their loyalty, and flowing from the Stalinist-Maoist class-collaborationist theory of the two-stage revolution and ‘bloc of four classes’. I find it amusing that you have cited Marx-Luxemburg-Lenin-(Stalin)-Mao.
As far as ‘wishing for crises to come,’ they come independently of our subjective will. The point is to intervene and put forward a Marxist analysis, not to mislead and channel that political energy into reformist dead ends. The reformists would like to pretend that revolutionary Marxists hope for conditions to worsen, when all we say is that, objectively, meaningful reform is not possible under capitalism in its epoch of imperialist decay. We defend minimal demands, but we explain why it is that capitalism becomes incapable of extending even the most minimal demand, why imperialism is not merely a policy choice, why poverty is necessary to capitalism, why bourgeois states (even headed by nominally ‘socialist’ governments) are not organs of workers’ democracy but for the suppression of the working class. The reformists, seated in the ranks of the petty-bourgeois conservative bureaucracy, pretend publicly that poverty can be eliminated through some alchemy at the policy level. For them socialism is ephemeral goal–a promise they pull out at cocktail parties and Mayday speeches. For Marxists, socialism is a definite set of social relations, transformed by the seizure of the means of production and smashing of the bourgeois state.
The Marxists are genuinely interested fighting against the system of class oppression by combining support for even the most minimal demand with open, irreconcilable hostility to the global system of class exploitation by winning support away from the treacherous misleaders of the working class.
October 29th, 2011 at 11:21 am
Alex,
Correct me if I am wrong, but I am not sure that I am disagreeing with you about whether or not the reforms are insufficient to combat capitalism. The particular reforms that exist in advanced industrialised countries are not going to bring about real change and the emancipation of the working class, obviously. Of course, I do not think that anyone would argue that they will, even Social Democrats for the most part have given up that ghost. At this point, it is a rather large straw-man. The same goes for organisations that are aligned with that framework, their work is not revolutionary and I don’t think that they would say it is.
For me, there are two separate spheres of work. There is the work to develop and maintain the reforms during the current phase of capitalism to protect working people from those that would undermine the social welfare state. The other is to develop and build perspectives and organisations that further revolutionary goals. These perspectives alone are contradictory in theoretical position, but not when put into an organisational programme and into practice on the ground.
This position should not be confused with those that seek reforms for reform’s sake as a somehow establish the utterly contradictory position that one can has sustainable Social Democratic re-distributive reforms. It should also not be confused with those that seek to work within the soft-left movements to take them over and have them become revolutionary. There are many of us that see the work to stop the further degradation of the reformist organisations and unions as important to the overall goals of the socialist struggle, not because they are revolutionary, but because they allow for space to actually organise.
These positions are outlined quite clearly in the works outlined above. All these the works and organisational positions (Mao included) were in response to two tendencies in the organisations, not just those that sought to undermine the revolutionary nature of the organisations, but also one that sought to distance themselves from the hard work of consciousness raising and praxis. Marx, Luxembourg, Lenin, and Mao were always arguing against “purist” positions that were used by some to think their way out of getting their hands dirty in the real world where contradictions always abound.
The arguments are the same today. While the correct analysis must be maintained, it is important to understand political organising in its entirety. It is this level of sophistication that is missing in an analysis that rejects the importance of engaging in the work that maintains the hard-fought and won gains of the union and soft-left movements (some are even from hard-left struggles). By this, I do not mean just the acknowledgement that these small victories forcing capital to reform are to be defended, but actually organising the defence of them. It is in this defence that work can be done (thought, not the only place) to raise consciousness and develop a clear and correct orientation to the capitalist system and expose the limitations of the reformist programme.
To be clear, I am not sure that you are saying this or not, I am simply clarifying my own position. To be honest, I am not really interested in a debate about it. My political orientation is born from organising and reading theory and trying my best to have a sufficiently sophisticated analysis to allow for consistency that orientation.
One point on Mao. I think that it is a mistake to so casually reject the writings and actions of Mao just because the institutionalists of that socialist tradition ended-up in a revisionist bureaucratic state in many countries. Samir Amin comes from that theoretical tendency of Marixism and it is hard to not respect much of his work and analysis as it applies to, what he calls, the periphery. We stand on the work of those that come before us, but especially on those that have had such a huge direct effect on the left-wing movement globally.
October 29th, 2011 at 3:17 pm
It is insufficient for you to write your own position, and then tack on the names of Marx, Luxemburg (note the spelling!) and Lenin. Luxemburg says it best: “Today he who wants to pass as a socialist, and at the same time declare war on Marxian doctrine, the most stupendous product of the human mind in the century, must begin with involuntary esteem for Marx. He must begin by acknowledging himself to be his disciple, by seeking in Marx’s own teachings the points of support for an attack on the latter, while he represents this attack as a further development of Marxian doctrine.” No social democrat needs to cite Marx today, but there is a handful of left-bureaucrats who continue to do this to maintain left-credentials.
You claim Marx, Lenin, Luxemburg were constantly writing against the “purist” position? Where, in what context, how? Give me a quote, put it in context. Marx, Luxemburg, Lenin were no sectarians–they did not stand aside from the struggle to maintain theoretical purity. But neither did they suspend criticism, or abandon principle for unity to win popularity (the point of the Critique of the Gotha Program, the German Spartacusbund, the Bolshevik party). In addressing the program of unification in the Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx says,
“it is my duty not to give recognition, even by diplomatic silence, to what in my opinion is a thoroughly objectionable programme that demoralises the Party.
Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programmes. If, therefore, it was not possible – and the conditions of the item did not permit it – to go beyond the Eisenach programme, one should simply have concluded an agreement for action against the common enemy. But by drawing up a programme of principles (instead of postponing this until it has been prepared for by a considerable period of common activity) one sets up before the whole world landmarks by which it measures the level of the Party movement… One knows that the mere fact of unification is satisfying to the workers, but it is a mistake to believe that this momentary success is not bought too dearly.”
They did not separate the spheres of activity, struggle for reforms versus struggle for power. The 5th Congress of the Comintern states that the number one task for communists’ work in the trade unions is “is to build fighting fractions beginning with the factory… and to strengthen the control of party organisations over the activities of individual members and particularly trade union fractions.” How could you build a militant caucus if you are currently sitting in a paid staff position in which you are required to defend the established (nationalist reformist) line? The task of communists is to win rank-and-file support for class-struggle leadership in its organizations. You can personally disagree with the theory and tactics of the Comintern, but (to draw on a formulation from Lenin) please, let go of Marx, Luxemburg and Lenin’s hands–don’t use their corpses to shield yourself as you wade through the swamp of opportunism. Their writings need to be read in context for their actual intent, not to selectively reinforce one’s own pre-existing beliefs and personal privileges.
I would like to note that I’m pleased to see that you haven’t dragged Trotsky’s tradition through the muck with you, appropriately preferring Mao, who led a bureaucratic caste to power based on a peasants’ insurrection, creating a deformed workers’ state qualitatively similar to the bureaucratic regime of Stalin.
October 30th, 2011 at 6:58 pm
Good. GOOOOD! Fight amongst yourselves! In the meantime I tighten my grip on power. Mwuh-ha-ha-ha!
October 31st, 2011 at 7:07 am
Alex,
I do apologise for the spelling and grammar errors. There is no excuse.
If you do not want to be challenged on your assertions then just let me know, but there is no reason to attack me personally. Indeed, I am unsure how you can reduce yourself to such attacks when you do not know what I do for a wage, never mind what I do outside of work. It is a fine position that you hold yourself to judge an individual without such knowledge.
It is unclear to me how it is that you can cite from the works you are reading, but somehow avoid the over-arching message. You quote from them as if they are dogma, but you must know (since you read it) that dogma cannot exist within the materialist science of dialectics. What we are discussing are not complex issues and do not need to be discussed in such a manner.
All of the writers we are discussing have spent their lives organising. First and foremost that is what the work of Marxists is. The debate about party line is an interesting one and it is necessary, but to quote from party pamphlets and propaganda is unhelpful. Luxemburg wrote much on need for the organising of workers into unions in the theoretical journal of the SDP. The overarching thread through her life was towards mass strikes of organised workers. The entire work Reform or Revolution is on solidifying the position against the opportunists and reformists in the party and for a principled position in organising and orientation of the Party toward the labour movement. She does not attack those that are working on building labour power, only those that are trying to establish some nonsensical theoretical basis for their opportunism against that work.
I have never put forward the false notion that we can build socialism through reform. In fact, to my knowledge, none of the organisations I have worked for have said such a thing. They are, themselves, not socialist or revolutionary organisations. And this is precisely why I am confused by your statements. It is correct to out opportunists and those that would move away from historical materialist analysis within our socialist organisations, but to turn that same language on the organisations that make no such claim is bizarre.
You say that the work of Marxists is to work within unions to build the struggle, but then denounce those who do just that? It is a strange argument and one that can only lead to isolation. There is no room for a priesthood in Marxist dialectics that judges those that work for the struggle and do not disagree with the correct line.
The position outlined by those that come before us is not just an attack on opportunism, it is also a clearly stated orientation for the socialist movement. You ask where it is written that we should not devolve into fights around ultra-leftist doma. My answer is that all of the works stating the position of Marxist organisers state this.
My question to you is where in all the works you cite does it say we should grind our organising, agitation and education work to a halt because the unions and social democratic organisations have, as mass democratic movements, the incorrect orientation to capital or political line? Where does it say that you can withdraw from the real struggles of workers and spend the precious little time we have attacking those on the left that are trying to do the work because they do not utter old dogmatic quotes all day long? Where does it say that individual education can be substituted for organising the mass of workers?
Do you really question my individual analysis and why does it matter? I hold no claim that I am a master theoretician in Marxist thought. I try my best to be an organiser and to put forward correct arguments, but I (along with many others) do my best to not let it get in the way of the struggle as I believe that the arguments will inevitably be tested through that struggle.
We are losing the fight, but you insist on undermining our defences and attacking the work to sustain the gains of the movement. I think that it is bullshit that you do not seem to know who your comrades are and that you attack fellow travelers because they do not share your exact position.