Karl Marx - Critique of the Gotha Program

In their penetrating account of Marxs famous hatchet job on the nineteenth-century left, Hudis and Anderson go to the heart of issues haunting the left in the twenty-first century: what would a society look like without work, wages, GDP growth and human self-oppression.

Paul Mason, writer for New Statesman and author of Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future

This is a compelling moment for a return to Marxs most visionary writings. Among those is his often-neglected Critique of the Gotha Program. In this exciting new translation, we can hear Marx urging socialists of his day to remain committed to a truly radical break with capitalism. And in Peter Hudiss illuminating introductory essay we are reminded that Marxs vision of a society beyond capitalism was democratic and emancipatory to its very core. This book is a major addition to the anticapitalist library.

David McNally, Cullen Distinguished Professor of History, University of Houston, and author of Monsters of the Market

Critique of the Gotha Program is a key text for understanding Marxs vision of an emancipated society beyond capitalism. With an excellent introduction by Peter Hudis, this new translation is both timely and important. Returning to Marxs pathbreaking essay can give new direction to the political struggles of our time.

Martin Hgglund, Birgit Baldwin Professor of Comparative Literature and Humanities, Yale University, author of This Life

This new edition of Marxs Critique of the Gotha Program, with an illuminating introduction by Peter Hudis, confirms that to re-translate is not only to re-animate old questions in the body of new words, but is also to propel writing towards contemporary exigencies. Arcing across times, the then of a first articulation connects to the now of hindsight and to the unwritten terms of an open future. While the delusions of real existing state socialism have dispelled, confusions around the role of the state in an emancipating society persist. In this short metatext, Marxs snappish commentaries and his forensic dissections of weasel words and hollow phrases reveal how language matters, because it conveys and betrays ideology, policy, and underlying standpoints. Translation works with this malleability of language. Meaning turns on a dime: political orientation can be realigned, if the slogan evinces exactitude, acknowledging history and horizons of possibility. We should learn, through this book, to read closer, better, and in dialogue.

Esther Leslie, professor of political aesthetics, Birkbeck College, University of London, and author of Walter Benjamin

This new translation of Marxs Critique of the Gotha Program includes an introductory essay by Peter Hudis, which points to Marxs distinction between value, that is, the socially necessary time required to produce a commodity, and labor itself, that is, the actual number of hours a worker engages in. He provides a provocative and useful critique of Lenins conception of the transition to socialism, and of subsequent Marxist-Leninist and social democratic conceptions of a socialist society. This raises questions about the nature of both labor and value in a society in which both have been transformed by technology. Nevertheless Hudiss analysis provides a clarifying and useful critique of both social democratic and Marxist-Leninist conceptions of socialism/communism.

Barbara Epstein, professor in the History of Consciousness Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, and author of Political Power and Cultural Revolution

Critique of the Gotha Program is one of Marxs great strategic texts, often cited but little read. At a time when the questions of transition and of the forms of organization to exit capitalism are so urgent, this new edition should be saluted. Elaborated by the Marxist-Humanist tendency, it makes a valuable contribution, thanks to the way it situates Marxs Critique in historical perspective.

Isabelle Garo, editing committee, Grande dition des Oeuvres de Marx et Engels, Paris

Editor: Sasha Lilley

Spectre is a series of penetrating and indispensable works of, and about, radical political economy. Spectre lays bare the dark underbelly of politics and economics, publishing outstanding and contrarian perspectives on the maelstrom of capitaland emancipatory alternativesin crisis. The companion Spectre Classics imprint unearths essential works of radical history, political economy, theory and practice, to illuminate the present with brilliant, yet unjustly neglected, ideas from the past.

Spectre

Greg Albo, Sam Gindin, and Leo Panitch, In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives

David McNally, Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance

Sasha Lilley, Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult

Sasha Lilley, David McNally, Eddie Yuen, and James Davis, Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth

Peter Linebaugh, Stop, Thief! The Commons, Enclosures, and Resistance

Peter Linebaugh, The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day

Richard A. Walker, Pictures of a Gone City: Tech and the Dark Side of Prosperity in the San Francisco Bay Area

Silvia Federici, Patriarchy of the Wage: Notes on Marx, Gender, and Feminism

Raymond B. Craib, Adventure Capitalism: A History of Libertarian Exit, from the Era of Decolonization to the Digital Age

Spectre Classics

E.P. Thompson, William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary

Victor Serge, Men in Prison

Victor Serge, Birth of Our Power

Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program

Karl Marx

With a new introduction by Peter Hudis

Translated and annotated by Kevin B. Anderson and Karel Ludenhoff

Critique of the Gotha Program

Karl Marx

With a new introduction by Peter Hudis

Translated and annotated by Kevin B. Anderson and Karel Ludenhoff

This edition PM Press 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN: 9781629639260

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021936594

Cover by John Yates / www.stealworks.com

Interior design by briandesign

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

PM Press

PO Box 23912

Oakland, CA 94623

www.pmpress.org

Printed in the USA

In memory of James Obst aka Jim Mills, J. Turk (19532020), friend, comrade, revolutionary

The final versions of Peter Hudiss introduction, the new translation of Marxs Critique of the Gotha Program, and that of the Gotha Program itself are the result of several years of discussion, in which numerous members and friends of the International Marxist-Humanist Organization participated. We are grateful for all their comments and suggestions.

By Peter Hudis