On Saturday, August 31st, at 8 PM ET, I’m going to host a discussion about Karl Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme in relation to the current moment in American politics. At the time of the critique’s writing in 1875, the German socialists were very far from power and were just about to form an alliance between their marginalized parties. Marx criticized the proposed program for the new party, the Gotha Programme, and saw it as inadequate for what German socialism should be. Without divinizing Marx, we should take these criticisms seriously and see if they can inform how we view socialist politics now.
All are welcome to attend and contribute! I’m hosting the discussion via text chat on the No Fun Zone Discord so we can accommodate the most people! Details about a transcript are still being decided.
Questions to explore:
- Did the Gotha Programme require criticism? Was it a deficient document or did it usefully serve any purpose? If it was useful, were Marx’s concerns about the program still valid?
- Why did Marx think that the compromises implied in the Gotha Programme were harmful to the socialist movement?
- What is the value of correctly formulating ideas? Much of Marx’s critique centers around the inexact and/or misleading ways that the Gotha Programme set out its ideas. Does the exact formulation of ideas matter?
- Does this critique have anything to tell us about how divisions within a party can be dealt with? Does it say anything about the issues in joining seemingly-similar parties?
- What is the relationship between theory and policy? What do programs, manifestos, etc. add to movements? What do they take away, or how do they limit movements?
Further questions:
- What is a stateless society?
- What is the proper relationship between reform and revolution?
Read the Critique of the Gotha Programme here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/
Join the No Fun Zone Discord channel: https://discord.gg/EuDNSXdZ?event=1272325387401166858
Leave a Reply