We mustn't pretend Marx isn’t potentially the second most influential political economist of all time — second only to Adam Smith himself. Marxism today remains by far the dominating fiscal analysis popular on the far left. We as anarchists voice complaints on how, contrary to much of anarchism, Marxism has remained mostly stagnant since it’s origins— which I do believe to be essentially true, especially seeing as how Marxists throughout the latter twentieth century and today get increasingly more interesting the less they subscribe to Marxism as it is typically understood. We haven’t been entirely fair, though! After all, it’s a habit in particular anarchist circles to boast dusty pages of Proudhon unread for decades as ontological holy word.
“Critique of the Gotha Programme” is a text frequently debated and discussed within Marxist circles and a relatively short and insightful piece as to Marx’s political philosophy in general.
Gotha, a city in Germany, was preparing for it’s impending Social Democratic Workers Party congress intended to unite various socialists throughout the country through a common program around 1875. Marx’s negative commentary on such, among his last published writings, outline his position on a phase-oriented approach to communism, revolutionary strategy, production practices after capitalism and proletarian internationalism. His positions were largely ignored by the SDWP and only came to be widely published posthumously.
The document positions itself as a thorough critique of the socialist party programme, which unlike the response I’ve written to his critique of Proudhon, is not a subject I plan on defending throughout this piece. The German Social Democrats errored in numerous ways throughout their platform — arguably in their belief they could use a party platform for change whatsoever. Marx’s critique was specifically attempting to weed out what he saw as Ferdinand Lassalle’s lasting influence within the party’s doctrine, a thinker Marx frequently associated with Proudhon but whom Proudhon critiqued himself. This is also not a defense of Lassalle. Instead, this is a piece-by-piece analysis of propositions Marx makes about socialism broadly and a critique as to the relevance of this text to our understanding today, especially in regards to production practice and state co-operation.
And, of course, a link to the text in case you’d like to read it before my response to make sure I’m not purposefully misrepresenting Karl’s ideas.
Marx’s initial response to the erroneous proposition,
“Labor is the source of wealth and all culture, and since useful labor is possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of labor belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society.” (The Gotha Programme)
is not bad at all. In fact, Marx seemingly stumbles upon some ideas that he counteracts throughout his thought. His response to the last piece of this initial proposition,
“Useful labor is possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of labor belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society.” (The Gotha Programme)
is funnily aligned with the Proudhonian propositions he loves to hate.
“A fine conclusion!
If useful labor is possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of labor belong to society — and only so much therefrom accrues to the individual worker as is not required to maintain the “condition” of labor, society.
In fact, this proposition has at all times been made use of by the champions of the state of society prevailing at any given time. First comes the claims of the government and everything that sticks to it, since it is the social organ for the maintenance of the social order; then comes the claims of the various kinds of private property, for the various kinds of private property are the foundations of society, etc. One sees that such hollow phrases are the foundations of society, etc. One sees that such hollow phrases can be twisted and turned as desired.” (Marx)
To be clear, his words here are an attack on the rhetoric of the words, their relevance to schemes of private property — but he acknowledges how the advocates of government as the decision-makers of social order tend to serve the status quo. This is the government, the social organ for the maintenance of the social order, which Marx, under different words, seeks to use the foundations of to construct a new society (I’m well aware more radical interpretations of his words exist, but regardless, governance remains something that is necessary, at least in the transition towards lower stage communism, implicitly throughout his thought.)
Private property here seemingly comes chronologically after the establishment of government in the mythology of creation of capitalist order, which is coherent and understandable in regards to his analysis of primitive accumulation (which, I must say, Kevin Carson expands today significantly on.) It is not, however, coherent or valid in regards to the arguments Marx, his compatriots, and Marxists today hurl at Market socialists, namely that ownership in general is fundamentally the first building block of bourgeois order, the government being established thereafter merely and exclusively as it’s protector. Beyond the Gotha Critique, this confusion permeates Marx’s historicisms and makes for a confusing stance as to the validity of his methods. The temporal debate here has vast implications as to the nature of governance and property, as well as to how power structures are formed and how we can inverse or dismantle them.
Moving on to the second proposition of the Gotha Programme,
“In present-day society, the instruments of labor are the monopoly of the capitalist class; the resulting dependence of the working class is the cause of misery and servitude in all forms.” (The Gotha Programme)
Marx’s critique here is simply that this excludes the existence of a seperate but related monopolizing class than that of the capitalist, namely that of the landowner. This idea is correct, and is in fact more central to the work of Proudhon and his compatriots in their analysis of how the structures of landownership as opposed to use enable accumulation, exploitation and monopolization. This idea is not originally Marx’s either, considering it was (in my opinion better) put forth by Thomas Hodgskin, English market socialist and proto-anarchist Marx and Carson alike both cite as inspiration.
The emancipation of labor demands the promotion of the instruments of labor to the common property of society and the co-operative regulation of the total labor, with a fair distribution of the proceeds of labor. (The Gotha Programme)
Marx’s issues with this proposition are numerous. His initial immediate concern is that “promotion of the instruments of labor to the common property” should read “conversion to common property,” which is annoyingly useless and also questionable. A crux of disagreement between Marxists and Proudhonians in general is over this idea — are the objects of production allocated collectively post-capitalism, in an almost neo-Rousseaudian sense in which the universal social labor of society allows society to somehow organically, democratically or otherwise distribute goods socially, or do they live, in a non-possessed state of non-ownership or a possessive form of exclusive ownership, essentially allowing people to have control over the “proceeds of their labor” as Lasalle would say. Marx has complaints about the latter formulation.
“What are the “proceeds of labor”? The product of labor, or its value? And in the latter case, is it the total value of the product, or only that part of the value which labor has newly added to the value of the means of production consumed?
“Proceeds of labor” is a loose notion which Lassalle has put in the place of definite economic conceptions.” (Marx)
These questions are misleading and rely on an extent to bourgeois forms of production definitively unnecessary in any sort of socialist economy. I’m unsure as to the answers to them in regards to the authors of the Gotha Programme, because their solution was that which folks like Proudhon and Bakunin are often misconstrued of having (that of a central force that would distribute goods based on perceived input value within the nebulous concept of ‘social labor.’)
From a Proudhonian perspective, the answer lies in the possessive autonomy we espouse. If one labors to create something, they rightly possess and have autonomy over said thing. If they got help in an early part of making it, an agreement will have already been formulated between the two parties whether it be a trust based insurance of shared earnings or a direct transaction prior to the final product. If one should wish to keep said product for themselves, they are more than welcome, and if one should wish to receive it’s exchange value one need only exchange it. Marx’s question pertains to a sort of socially assigned labor input value which, regardless of centripetal obstacles, remains by ontological necessity an “exchange value” of sorts due to the contract being implicitly relied on in said negotiation (that of the social contract.)
His next question, that of what makes a distribution “fair” in the eyes of the socialist legislators he’s responding to, is valid. His theoretical solution as it specifically relates to communism but also the way economies work in general is that, via a central organ of some sort, one immediately uses wealth on insurance, expansion, and production costs, then focuses the wealth on administrative costs and social services. Here, to Marx, the “fair distribution” of wealth, in it’s nebulous formulation, is that in which the individuals contribution to society is understood as a piece of a wider sociological puzzle, to be collectively distributed and dealt with, as he makes clear in his insistence that this formula will continue in a communist society. In this sense, the individual has no autonomy over their labor’s proceedings or dealings. The question then becomes which issues of property we are disposing of?
To Hodgskin and Proudhon, the issues of property have to deal with unjust domain, the ability to coerce and exploit social relationships, accumulate unjust amounts of wealth, and the fundamental uneven and sloppy application classical liberals made of bodily-autonomy based arguments for property that one neither possesses nor uses. It remains crucial to remember, however, that bodily and social autonomy made up the foundations of Anarchist critiques of property since their inception.
Marx repeats many of these criticisms, specifically in the way that property impacts the relationships of laborers and value production, but his solution seems to be lacking in regards to solvency. Property is exclusively owned in a collective sense, owned by a “society” which is nebulous and cannot be said to have any sort of conscious justification for “autonomy.” One’s coercive relationship with production is not dampened by the totalizing, anxiety-inducing relationship between one and their society, nor does this solve the complaint Marxists have of the impersonality of production under capitalism (unless you mean collective ownership as in individuals still coordinate autonomously and locally without exchange, which is both a contradiction in terms assuming autonomy in possession and also more adequately handled by systems of exchange in general.) One still produces and hopes to receive input value back, but seemingly “authority” needs to be designated some consumption value for existing to Marx, which begs the question as to what a communist managerial class is adding to production.
At the end of the day, Marx cannot properly “eliminate” property by it’s loosest definitions. There is still wealth being produced, and someone has to distribute it! The potential collective solutions here are either that of a council of representatives, which is essentially a collectivization of the issue of landowners, or democratic distribution, which inevitably means ignoring the conscious, individual wishes of people who provide use value to society at large. These people labor and thus have, in effect, zero input as to the proceeds of their labor or their consumption patterns so long as they are in the voting minority.
“Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor. The phrase “proceeds of labor”, objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning.” (Marx)
In his discussion of final-phase communism, Marx makes it clear that exchange is not happening — but then what is? If not between individuals, are people not exchanging labor input for society’s services? Their products are not autonomously exchanged, that is clear, but that leaves only central distribution as the means of distribution, for which enforcement is to be drawn up, rulers (or decision makers) are to be chosen up, and in which producers will inevitably have their input and needs ignored.
“Exchange value” no longer exists because exchange no longer exists, but still one can look at one’s labor input into society, question whether the social services they receive are equivalent or beneficial compared to what they put in, and, if not, presumably join another economy (assuming there is choice, which for Marx’s sake we ought to.) This is absolutely, undoubtedly, exchange value in it’s primitive state. If between individuals prior to money, similarly, exchange value would be actualized as subjective weighing of utility and disutility, operating in an exchange network as an assurance of reciprocal utility in trade. Marx’s formulation of exchange value as a pure byproduct of commodity production is false. As Carson puts it,
“And fairness and unfairness will continue to exist, although concealed (along with the law of value) behind a “collective” planning process. Either the labor entailed in producing the goods consumed by a worker will equal the labor he expends in production, or they will not. If not, somebody is being exploited. The law of value is not simply a description of commodity exchange in a market society; it is a fundamental ethical principle.” (Carson)
Labor employed on products will remain a point of valuation, by both the producer and the consumer, as long as there exists a society through which to distribute goods, and beyond use-value, exchange-value (or perhaps social value) exists as long as goods are being dealt with by numerous people who must deal in relationships and obligations. It is a foundational aspect of economic relations.
Marx’s reasoning towards the opposite is that “labor becomes a mere piece of total society” which is both a pretty accurate statement regarding the operation of capitalist society and a grim sentiment regarding the value an individual has within a communist society — every labor a tax, every act of consumption guaranteed only by social analysis of necessity.
Next, however, Marx espouses that to get to such an ideal communism, it’s a necessity to pass through the “lower-phase” communism as we have called it.
“Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society — after the deductions have been made — exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.” (Marx)
To be clear, Marx is open about the bourgeois remnants and exchange value implicit in this formulation, but he sees it as a chronological necessity on the way to true communism. Now we have entered the fantasy of “labor time” as the metric of economic input, somehow a social being derived from averaged timetables of production, but which exists materially only as
- entirely contingent on an established commodity market
- vaguely applied only in the guesses of capitalists in paying their laborers
- lacking as to a proper source or origin of “value” as a concept
For a more in depth critique of this, look to Kevin Carson, but in general this concept is insufficient and should be tossed out. Using a certificate with an imagined productive capacity to withdraw from the “social stack” is in essence a recreation of capitalist order with a red sheen painted on top — the only way to abandon the fundamentally coercive operation of such in a system of exchange (which, again, Marx admits it would be,) would be to let “social values” or “exchange values” be set by the producers themselves, from their own subjective standpoint.
“In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly — only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” (Marx)
Mutualists have a fundamental agreement with many of the goals of communist society — making labor not only less miserable but a joyful affair, producing an abundance of cooperative wealth, removing obstacles to labor and removing the hierarchical enforcement of the division of labor (although it’s spontaneous emergence in the market is born out of the desire of people and likely better at suiting their needs.) The issue here lies in Marx’s confused application of these goals. His centripetal dream solutions are, would be, and historically were (in their admittedly dubious applications) not solutions at all.
As Marx himself puts it in the last paragraph on this proposition,
“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.” (Marx)
With numerous productive flaws and questionable applications of core socialist ethical principles, his plans fail by our applications of his own standards.
Next,
“The emancipation of labor must be the work of the working class, relative to which all other classes are only one reactionary mass.” (The Gotha Programme)
Perhaps surprisingly, Marx’s primary disagreement with this statement lies in it’s generalizing effect. To Marx, the bourgeois, the petit-bourgeois (artisans) and the middle (especially lower middle) class are all distinct classes with distinct relations to revolutionary potential. I doubt mutualists would disagree — in fact, a facet of market socialism that is often criticized by Marxists is the “petit-bourgeois” models of production we propose. The reality is simply that, without
- A capitalist, rent-seeking, land-owning coercive class
- A state-sanctioned set of workingmen destined to labor only for others who own
- A vague central societal bank of resources that takes all labor produce without question
labor becomes the sort of self-actualized, livelihood integrated production pattern often associated with the petit-bourgeois. In the status-quo, however, the petit-bourgeois often remain entrenched in systems of capitalist hierarchy, above all as a byproduct of the state. With the state, which we see as, in it’s broadest applications, the primary causal force of class difference, done away with, the petit-bourgeois as it exists is dissolved as well, as is class in general.
The fifth proposition, which reads
“The working class strives for its emancipation first of all within the framework of the present-day national states, conscious that the necessary result of its efforts, which are common to the workers of all civilized countries, will be the international brotherhood of peoples.” (The Gotha Programme)
Marx criticizes this only because it is essentially too nationalist. Anarchists rejoice and affirm this criticism, with a keen insistence that Marx question the nationalism he and his followers espouse, as well as an ideological abandonment of the necessity of reusing state machinery. So much for party politics! We need entirely new institutions!
Marx’s critique of the sixth proposition, that of
“Starting from these basic principles, the German workers’ party strives by all legal means for the free state — and — socialist society: that abolition of the wage system together with the iron law of wages — and — exploitation in every form; the elimination of all social and political inequality.” (The Gotha Programme)
deals primarily with the “iron law of wages.” This is a Lassallean formulation which essentially posits that wages as set by capitalists are, in general, always approaching the absolute minimum laborers need to survive. This seems on it’s face true, due to the capitalist’s overwhelming power in setting wage and their own interest in having a living workforce but also maintaining wealth. We can essentially draw a Laffer curve, (a graph that attempts to find a balance between too low of taxes as missed potential and too high of taxes as destroying business, the equilibrium serving to maximize government profit,) on one side of which too low of wages produce a non existent workforce due to strikes, unemployment or death, and on the other side of which too high of wages mean a simple loss in net profit for the capitalist.
Marx’s critique here is essentially that this “iron” law relies on some principles, including that of Malthusian origin, that would seemingly imply this rule is that not only that of wage labor but of all political economy at large, seemingly dooming socialism to be it’s often misconstrued “socialization of misery.” Malthus’ theory of population, however, is a proto-eugenicist myth repeatedly disproven both by lived experience and theoretical inaccuracy. The iron law of wages, if we are to believe it (which is unnecessary for our theory of mutualism) deals as a theory of interests as they are materially constructed by different classes, which is not contingent on ecofascist lies, instead an observation of the relation between capitalists and workers. Marx’s innate tie between the iron law of wages and Malthus he inherits from Friedrich Lange, who was not an economist and who’s other theories Marx entirely contradicts.
His seperate insistence that the issues of capitalism lie in production, not distribution, are true, but it is also important to remember that the two, (production and distribution,) are in essence tied in an eternal loop, and that a pattern of problems permeates both in the status quo.
Moving on,
“The German Workers’ party, in order to pave the way to the solution of the social question, demands the establishment of producers’ co-operative societies with state aid under the democratic control of the toiling people. The producers’ co-operative societies are to be called into being for industry and agriculture on such a scale that the socialist organization of the total labor will arise from them” (Gotha Programme)
Marx’s substantive critique beyond semantic disagreements on democracy is mostly of the relevance of state aid or co-operative societies to building an adequate working class movement. Although it is true that co-operative societies that rely on state aid fail to be revolutionary, he himself, as well as his later followers (namely Lenin) view statist patterns of distribution as essential necessities in the formulation of socialism. This conceptualization of working-praxis is ineffective and leaves Marx’s chase towards communism as one riddled with bourgeois machinery he sees as a dialectical necessity (but which is also totally unrelated to the functions of a final communist society.) Cooperative institutions, to mutualists, are one of the primary vehicles we have into the future away from capitalism. Marx agrees non-state organizations of workers are important, but his final programme for change seemingly ignores them as autonomous agencies. Anarchists insist on progress in line with our established socialist ethic and disavow state action almost entirely.
Marx’s final two questions are in regards to the terms ‘The Free basis of a State’ for which the German party strives, and their subsequent absolute ethical demand on universally provided compulsory schooling.
For the first, his critique is again partly semantic, and he questions the nationalism implicit in the foundation of the party programme itself. He goes on to critique what the Gotha programme deems as a proper function of transitory government
“Its political demands contain nothing beyond the old democratic litany familiar to all: universal suffrage, direct legislation, popular rights, a people’s militia, etc. They are a mere echo of the bourgeois People’s party, of the League of Peace and Freedom. They are all demands which, insofar as they are not exaggerated in fantastic presentation, have already been realized.” (Marx)
He contrasts these empty words of the Gotha Programme with his insistence that, in reality, the German state is
“a state which is nothing but a police-guarded military despotism, embellished with parliamentary forms, alloyed with a feudal admixture, already influenced by the bourgeoisie, and bureaucratically carpentered.” (Marx)
which makes it clear the use of existing bourgeois state ideas are false. The application of his words to his own ideas is obvious, however. Take his words in the communist manifesto:
“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.” (Marx, The Communist Manifesto)
Several of his policy proposals include
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.
(all from the communist manifesto.)
A police-guarded military despotism is both in theory what he disguises with floral diction as a socialist project and historically what was established by fans of his. The state machinery he insists on using dialectically is always, and will always be, “already influenced by the bourgeoisie and bureaucratically carpentered.” He admits this, but somehow plans to use it in it’s own abolition, an impossible task riddled with logical errors. This is because statist domination itself is, tying back to our earlier chronological debate, the foundation of bourgeois rule itself, and eternally entwined with the protection of propertarian interests.
In later commentary after the Paris Commune, he contends that much of his original policy proposal ought to be altered, easing up on some of his key disagreements with anarchists, but his vague standards of “material necessity” and overall insistence on top-down transition remained an issue within his thought unable to escape bourgeois influence until his death in 1883.
As for the second disagreement he has, anarchists tend not to be fond of state schooling in general, and many of us have issues with the ways schools as we understand them operate. To quote a communist anarchist,
“It is for the child what the prison is for the convict and the barracks for the soldier — a place where everything is being used to break the will of the child, and then to pound, knead, and shape it into a being utterly foreign to itself.
I do not mean to say that this process is carried on consciously; it is but a part of a system which can maintain itself only through absolute discipline and uniformity; therein, I think, lies the greatest crime of present-day society.” -Goldman
Marx’s criticisms, most of them semantic, do not and cannot root out the social issues present in our systems of schooling.
That is the whole of Gothakritik. The criticism we pose is not that communism is always authoritarian — many friends of market anarchism historically have been communists, including Goldman. Instead, we pose questions as to the theoretical validity of the Marxian project. His critiques of property and the notions of labor products are uneven and ineffective, and our theories prove to hold up in relation with century-old criticisms.
Works Cited:
Carson’s ‘Studies in Mutualist Political Economy’
Goldman’s ‘The Social Importance of the Modern School’
Marx’s ‘Critique of the Gotha Programme’
