you'll be forgiven for not knowing who ferdinand lassalle is, but i have to briefly explain who he is in order for you to understand what this is all about. lassalle was a shady character in the german labour movement that marx appears to have believed was a secret agent in the employ of the prussian government, and there is indeed evidence of covert communication between lassalle and no lower a junker than bismarck himself. marx seems to think his purpose was to align the labour movement with a docile form of liberalism that ultimately posed the prussian state no serious threat rather than with marx' socialist international, which most certainly did. as it interestingly turns out, lassalle became one of the primary philosophical guiding forces of the social democratic party of germany (sdp), which to this day remains the largest centre-left political force in germany. the text in question is a short, and very scathing, critique of the sdp's initial party constitution.
there are a couple of things underlying the rebuke. first, it's rather obvious that marx was trying to assert some influence over the new party. second, he appears to be trying to explain to the poor, brainwashed fools that what they're advocating, social democracy, is a liberal form of capitalism and not something that can be identified with socialism. his approach is to go through the five-point constitution, point by point, and offer clarifications, corrections, modifications and additions. it's almost like he's acting as an unwanted editor; as scathing as the criticism is, it's constructive.
unfortunately, it doesn't come off today as substantive. large portions of the short text deal with semantics and "corrections" of points that were almost certainly consciously worded as they are. given that marx' clear motive was not clarification but to take control of the process of writing the constitution, these semanticisms come off as as silly as they are, not to mention entirely void of integrity.
there are, however, a few points to take note of. the first is marx' approach to the concepts of equal rights and equal wages. marx claims that, when applied to a system built on inequality, equal rights will further that existing inequality. he also claims that equal wages will lead to inequality because everybody has different expense levels; some have several children, some have none, and to pay them equally would be to enforce a division. the conclusion is that in order to ensure true equality workers should be compensated at different levels relative to what they require and not at the same pay rate; "to each according to his needs.". the second is marx' clear opposition to state-run education, which many may find surprising but shouldn't given marx' views on the purpose of the state: "Government and church should rather be equally excluded from any influence on the school.".
in the essay, marx asks what a "free state" is and, while i recognize that he's being purposefully difficult, the reader may want to look up the history of a city such as lubeck to understand the context of the term as it was initially used before falling into marx' trap.
in the end, it may be worth noting that, as loudly as marx may pontificate, he is truly the one that should be taking notes; for every society that languishes under the tyranny of the dictatorship of the proletariat, there exists a democratic socialist near utopia.
additional notes:
- "one sees that such hollow phrases can be twisted and turned as desired". indeed, that's what marx is doing here. as mentioned, marx is primarily upset that he is not the author of the text - that the text takes in the ideas of a multitude of leftist thinkers, rather than merely his own. it's worth restating that this reaction is primarily about marx' ego, rather than the contents of the gotha program. he often attacks points merely for the purpose of attacking the points, simply because they aren't *his* points; the result is often trivial, when it isn't banal or even taking things completely out of context in order to "twist and turn". when the program *does* legitimately disagree with marx, he takes on a deeply condescending professorial sort of tone. rather than accept disagreement at face value, he treats dissent as a type of ignorance. a critical analysis of marx' critique should consequently begin with the primary intent of deconstructing his ego, leaving political analysis as a secondary concern.
- "this is the law of all history hitherto.". marx is trying to enforce his silly pseudo-scientific theory of "historical materialism" as though it is a natural law. it's kind of funny, really. see, improving society through reformist approaches like democratic socialism is impossible because of the natural law of historical materialism, which states that workers-->poverty as t-->infinity. never mind empirical study. scandinavia? yeah, i bet you think unicorns exist, too. pshaw. marx has spoken, and it is good.
- marx reacts badly to terms like "useful labour" and "proceeds of labour", fearful that lassalle's junker-penned hidden agenda may be to set up a sort of producerist state that divides the proletariat into a conflict between "workers" and "non-workers". i hope my precise choice of language does not upset karl's ego. now, in hindsight, considering nazism and stalinism, it may seem like he had a point that's worth listening to. however, it seems to me as though the distinction is made to clarify that certain types of labour, such as art, are not social in nature and ought not to be socialized. i think this discussion is better had in german than in english as any subtleties in the language would be clarified; i can't meaningfully have this discussion with myself through a haze of translation, and this is partly why i avoided discussing the critique in more depth in the first place. the critique is based on subtleties of language that likely did not make it through translation....although i suspect it would come off as more rather than less banal in it's original german. anyways, this is a real distinction that needs to be met with head on. i believe that karl stated on numerous occasions that artists are not members of the proletariat - by definition, it is clear that they are not, because they do not sell their labour. yet, is art not a creation of labour? in a worker's state, might there be a fear that art may be cast aside as useless labour, that artists may be forced to work in factories? would it not be valuable to state otherwise in the party constitution so that the matter is settled and artists are not attacked as bourgeois idlers? to be clear: marx makes a compelling argument against the dangers of producerism. reaching the text's highest points of banality, he carefully fills in the accounting holes that the program obviously assumes will be dealt with later on. however mundane it may be, it's at least a valid addition to the program. however, the rhetoric justifying this addition reads off like the ravings of an outlandish conspiracy theorist when compared to the translation i have in front of me, which seems designed to uphold artistic freedom rather than to stigmatize "useless eaters" as a waste of resources.
- marx also goes on a tirade about how the program does not incorporate the concept of a dictatorship of the proletariat. rather than consider that the authors of the program may not want to live in a worker's dictatorship, he accuses them of not understanding the natural science of historical materialism. once again, the modern reader has no option but to snicker; it's enough to write marx off as a fringe lunatic.
- marx interestingly suggests that switzerland - then and now a bastion of anarcho-capitalism - is the model for the state of the future. lassalle's vision is responsible for the modern-day social democracies in scandinavia. it opens an interesting question: if marx were alive today, would he still prefer the swiss model over the scandinavian one? is this an example of marx' liberal individualism dominating his thought, or is it just horrifically bad foresight?
- i must admit that marx does make a good point when he argues against the 'bourgeois' freedom of conscience. why it's 'bourgeois' isn't stated. it would be more consistent for him to write it off as 'aristocratic' - but now i'm guilty of the same thing marx is in this polemic. he suggests that socialists should focus on the goal of 'liberating the conscience from the witchery of religion' and leave 'freedom of conscience' to the liberals. he's unquestionably right; so long as religion exists, it will continue to prevent us from reaching communism. this is something that the left ought to remember as it reconstructs itself.
- one of the better examples of how marx' ego is blinding his brain, here, is his argument that a prohibition on child labour is not just impossible due to it being against the interests of capital (and, yet, most countries today ban child labour...) but would be reactionary if it were possible.
- there's a scary part at the end of the text, where marx suggests that labour should not be "deprived" of criminals, but rather used as a means of their "betterment". one wonders if marx had prison camps in mind.
full text:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/index.htm
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/books/congress/HX/276.M283/index.html