Critique of the Gotha ProgramKarl Marx

Marx wrote this critique in 1875 as marginal notes on the draft program of the German Workers' Party. It was not published until after his death, but it contains some of his most precise statements on the transition from capitalism to communism.

Marx attacks the Lassallean notion of a "fair distribution" of the proceeds of labor. Distribution, he argues, is always a function of the mode of production; you cannot change the one without changing the other. He distinguishes two phases of communist society. In the first, the individual receives back from society what he has contributed, minus deductions for common needs. In the second, higher phase, the principle shifts: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." This formulation, Marx's most famous, presupposes an abundance that only the full development of productive forces can achieve.

The critique also rejects the Lassallean appeal to the "free state." The state, Marx insists, is not an independent moral agent but an instrument of class rule. The question is not what the state should do for the workers but how the workers will transform and eventually abolish the state.