The present draft differs very favourably from the former programme [at Gotha].The strong survivals of outmoded traditions both the specific Lassallean and vulgar socialistic have in the main been removed, and as regards its theoretical aspect the draft is, on the whole, based on present-day science and can be discussed on this basis. It is divided into three sections: I. The Preamble, II. Political Demands, III. Demands for Measures of Protection for the Workers. I. Preamble in Ten Paragraphs In general it suffers from the attempt to combine two things that are uncombinable: a programme and a commentary on the programme as well. The fear that a short, pointed exposition would not be intelligible enough, has caused explanations to be added, which make it verbose and drawn out. To my view the programme should be as short and precise as possible. No harm is done even if it contains the occasional foreign word, or a sentence whose full significance cannot be understood at first sight. Verbal exposition at meetings and written commentaries in the press take care of all that, and the short, precise phrase, once understood, takes root in the memory, and becomes a slogan, a thing that never happens with verbose explanations. Too much should not be sacrificed for the sake of popularity, and the mental ability and educational level of our workers should not be underestimated. They have understood much more difficult things than the shortest, most concise programme can offer them; and if the period of the Anti-Socialist Law has made more difficult, and here and there even prevented the spreading of comprehensive knowledge among the masses joining the movement, now that our propagandist literature can again be kept and read without risking trouble, lost time will soon be made up for under the old leadership. I shall try to make this entire section somewhat shorter and if I succeed shall enclose it or send it on later. Now, I shall deal with the individual paragraphs numbered from 1 to 10. Paragraph 1. The separation, etc., mines, pits, quarries three words for the same thing; two should be deleted. I would leave mines (Bergwerke), which is a word used even in the most level parts of the country, and I would designate them all by this widely used term. I would, however, add railways and other means of communication . Paragraph 2. Here I would insert: In the hands of their appropriators (or their owners) the social means of labour are and likewise below dependence ... on the owners (or appropriators) of the means of labour , etc. It has already been said in para. I that these gentlemen have appropriated these things as exclusive possession and will simply need to be repeated here if one absolutely insists on introducing the word monopolises . Neither this nor the other word adds anything to the sense. And anything redundant in a programme weakens it. these are precisely those that are at hand. Before the steam engine it was possible to do without it, now we couldn t. Since all the means of labour are nowadays directly or indirectly either by their design or because of the social division of labour social means of labour, these words express what is available at every given moment sufficiently clearly, correctly and without any misleading associations. If this conclusion is intended to correspond with the preamble of the Rules of the International, I should prefer it to correspond completely: to social misery (this is No. 1), mental degradation and political dependence [General Rules of the International Working Men s Association]. Physical degradation is part of social misery and political dependence is a fact, while the denial of political rights is a declamatory phrase which is only relatively true and for this reason does not belong in the programme. Paragraph 3. In my opinion the first sentence should be changed. First of all that which follows is an economic fact, which should be explained in economic terms. The expression domination of the individual owners creates the false impression that this has been caused by the political domination of that gang of robbers. Secondly, these individual owners include not only capitalists and big landowners (what does the bourgeoisie following here signify? Are they a third class of individual owners? Are the big landowners also bourgeois"? And, once we have turned to the subject of big landowners, should we ignore the colossal survivals of feudalism, which give the whole filthy business of German politics its specific reactionary character?). Peasants and petty bourgeois too are individual owners , at least they still are today; but they do not appear anywhere in the programme and therefore the wording should make it clear that they are not included in the category of individual owners under discussion. The wealth consists of 1. means of labour, 2. means of subsistence. It is therefore grammatically incorrect and illogical to mention one part of the wealth without the other and then refer to the total wealth, linking the two by and. What has happened to the big landowners and the bourgeoisie mentioned above? If it is enough to speak only of capitalists here, it should be so above as well. If one wishes to specify, however, it is generally not enough to mention them alone. This is incorrect when put in such a categorical way. The organisation of the workers and their constantly growing resistance will possibly check the increase of misery to a certain extent. However, what certainly does increase is the insecurity of existence. I should insert this. Paragraph 4. needs considerable improvement. I am familiar with capitalist production as a social form, or an economic phase; capitalist private production being a phenomenon which in one form or another is encountered in that phase. What is capitalist private production? Production by separate entrepreneurs, which is increasingly becoming an exception. Capitalist production by joint-stock companies is no longer private production but production on behalf of many associated people. And when we pass on from joint-stock companies to trusts, which dominate and monopolise whole branches of industry, this puts an end not only to private production but also to planlessness. If the word private were deleted the sentence could pass. Instead of this declamatory phrase, which looks as though we still regret the ruin of the bourgeois and petty bourgeois, I should state the simple fact: which by the ruin of the urban and rural middle classes, the petty bourgeois and small peasants, widen (or deepen) the chasm between the haves and have-nots . The last two phrases repeat the same thing. In the Appendix to Section 1, I give a draft amendment. The closing sentence: In their struggle ... are capable, would be better deleted. The imprecise wording which are capable ... of improving the position of the people in general (who is that?), can be taken to embrace everything, protective tariffs and free trade, guilds and freedom of enterprise, loans on landed security, exchange banks, compulsory vaccination and prohibition of vaccination, alcoholism and prohibition, etc., etc. What should be said here, has already been said earlier, and it is unnecessary to mention specifically that the demand for the whole includes every separate part, for this, to my mind, weakens the impact. If, however, this sentence is intended as a link to pass on to the individual demands, something resembling the following could be said: Social Democracy fights for all demands which help it approach this goal ( measures and arrangements to be deleted as repetitious). Or else, which would be even better: to say directly what it is all about, i.e., that it is necessary to catch up with what the bourgeoisie has missed; I have included a closing sentence to this effect in Appendix I. I consider this important in connection with my notes to the next section and to motivate the proposals put forward by me therein. II. Political Demands The political demands of the draft have one great fault. It lacks precisely what should have been said. If all the 10 demands were granted we should indeed have more diverse means of achieving our main political aim, but the aim itself would in no wise have been achieved. As regards the rights being granted to the people and their representatives, the imperial constitution is, strictly speaking, a copy of the Prussian constitution of 1850, a constitution whose articles are extremely reactionary and give the government all the real power, while the chambers are not even allowed to reject taxes; a constitution, which proved during the period of the conflict that the government could do anything it liked with it. The rights of the Reichstag are the same as those of the Prussian chamber and this is why Liebknecht called this Reichstag the fig-leaf of absolutism. It is an obvious absurdity to wish to transform all the instruments of labour into common property on the basis of this constitution and the system of small states sanctioned by it, on the basis of the union between Prussia and Reuss-Greiz-Schleiz-Lobenstein, in which one has as many square miles as the other has square inches. To touch on that is dangerous, however. Nevertheless, somehow or other, the thing has to be attacked. How necessary this is is shown precisely at the present time by opportunism, which is gaining ground in a large section of the Social-Democratic press. Fearing a renewal of the Anti-Socialist Law, or recalling all manner of over-hasty pronouncements made during the reign of that law, they now want the party to find the present legal order in Germany adequate for putting through all party demands by peaceful means. These are attempts to convince oneself and the party that present-day society is developing towards socialism without asking oneself whether it does not thereby just as necessarily outgrow the old social order and whether it will not have to burst this old shell by force, as a crab breaks its shell, and also whether in Germany, in addition, it will not have to smash the fetters of the still semi-absolutist, and moreover indescribably confused political order. One can conceive that the old society may develop peacefully into the new one in countries where the representatives of the people concentrate all power in their hands, where, if one has the support of the majority of the people, one can do as one sees fit in a constitutional way: in democratic republics such as France and the U.S.A., in monarchies such as Britain, where the imminent abdication of the dynasty in return for financial compensation is discussed in the press daily and where this dynasty is powerless against the people. But in Germany where the government is almost omnipotent and the Reichstag and all other representative bodies have no real power, to advocate such a thing in Germany, when, moreover, there is no need to do so, means removing the fig-leaf from absolutism and becoming oneself a screen for its nakedness. In the long run such a policy can only lead one s own party astray. They push general, abstract political questions into the foreground, thereby concealing the immediate concrete questions, which at the moment of the first great events, the first political crisis automatically pose themselves. What can result from this except that at the decisive moment the party suddenly proves helpless and that uncertainty and discord on the most decisive issues reign in it because these issues have never been discussed? Must there be a repetition of what happened with protective tariffs, which were declared to be a matter of concern only to the bourgeoisie, not affecting the interests of the workers in the least, that is, a matter on which everyone could vote as he wished? Are not many people now going to the opposite extreme and are they not, in contrast to the bourgeoisie, who have become addicted to protective tariffs, rehashing the economic distortions of Cobden and Bright and preaching them as the purest socialism the purest Manchesterism? This forgetting of the great, the principal considerations for the momentary interests of the day, this struggling and striving for the success of the moment regardless of later consequences, this sacrifice of the future of the movement for its present, may be honestly meant, but it is and remains opportunism, and honest opportunism is perhaps the most dangerous of all! Which are these ticklish, but very significant points? First. If one thing is certain it is that our party and the working class can only come to power under the form of a democratic republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the Great French Revolution has already shown. It would be inconceivable for our best people to become ministers under an emperor, as Miquel. It would seem that from a legal point of view it is inadvisable to include the demand for a republic directly in the programme, although this was possible even under Louis Phillippe in France, and is now in Italy. But the fact that in Germany it is not permitted to advance even a republican party programme openly, proves how totally mistaken is the belief that a republic, and not only a republic, but also communist society, can be established in a cosy, peaceful way. However, the question of the republic could possibly be passed by. What, however, in my opinion should and could be included is the demand for the concentration of all political power in the hands of the people s representatives. That would suffice for the time being if it is impossible to go any further. Second. The reconstitution of Germany. On the one hand, the system of small states must be abolished just try to revolutionise society while there are the Bavarian-W rttemberg reservation rights and the map of present-day Thuringia, for example, is such a sorry sight. On the other hand, Prussia must cease to exist and must be broken up into self-governing provinces for the specific Prussianism to stop weighing on Germany. The system of small states and Prussianism are the two sides of the antithesis now gripping Germany in a vice, in which one side must always serve as the excuse and justification for the existence of the other. What should take its place? In my view, the proletariat can only use the form of the one and indivisible republic. In the gigantic territory of the United States, the federal republic is still, on the whole, a necessity, although in the Eastern states it is already becoming a hindrance. It would be a step forward in Britain where the two islands are peopled by four nations and in spite of a single Parliament three different systems of legislation already exist side by side. In little Switzerland, it has long been a hindrance, tolerable only because Switzerland is content to be a purely passive member of the European state system. For Germany, federalisation on the Swiss model would be an enormous step backward. Two points distinguish a union state from a completely unified state: first, that each member state, each canton, has its own civil and criminal legislative and judicial system, and, second, that alongside a popular chamber there is also a federal chamber in which each canton, whether large or small, votes as such. The first we have luckily overcome and we shall not be so childish as to reintroduce it, the second we have in the Bundesrat and we could do very well without it, since our federal state generally constitutes a transition to a unified state. The revolution of 1866 and 1870 must not be reversed from above but supplemented and improved by a movement from below. So, then, a unified republic. But not in the sense of the present French Republic, which is nothing but the Empire established in 1799 without the Emperor. From 1792 to 1799 each French department, each commune, enjoyed complete self-government on the American model, and this is what we too must have. How self-government is to be organised and how we can manage without a bureaucracy has been shown to us by America and the First French Republic, and is being shown even today by Australia, Canada and the other English colonies. And a provincial and communal self-government of this type is far freer than, for instance, Swiss federalism, under which, it is true, the canton is very independent in relation to the federation, but is also independent in relation to the district and the commune. The cantonal governments appoint the district governors and prefects, which is unknown in English speaking countries and which we want to abolish here as resolutely in the future as the Prussian Landr te and Regicrungsr te. Probably few of these points should be included in the programme. I mention them also mainly to describe the system in Germany where such matters cannot be discussed openly, and to emphasise the self-deception of those who wish to transform such a system in a legal way into communist society. Further, to remind the party executive that there are other important political questions besides direct legislation by the people and the gratuitous administration of justice without which we can also ultimately get by. In the generally unstable conditions these questions may become urgent at any time and what will happen then if they have not been discussed by us beforehand and no agreement has been reached on them? However, what can be included in the programme and can, at least indirectly, serve as a hint of what may not be said directly is the following demand: Complete self-government in the provinces, districts and communes through officials elected by universal suffrage. The abolition of all local and provincial authorities appointed by the state. Whether or not it is possible to formulate other programme demands in connection with the points discussed above, I am less able to judge here than you can over there. But it would be desirable to debate these questions within the party before it is too late. To item 2. Nowhere more so than in Germany does the right of association require guarantees also from the state. The closing phrase: for the regulation , etc., should be added as item 4 and be given a corresponding form. In this connection it should be noted that we would be taken in good and proper by labour chambers made up half of workers and half of entrepreneurs. For years to come the entrepreneurs would always have a majority, for only a single black sheep among the workers would be needed to achieve this. If it is not agreed upon that in cases of conflict both halves express separate opinions, it would be much better to have a chamber of entrepreneurs and in addition an independent chamber of workers. In conclusion I should like to request that the draft be compared once more with the French programme where some things seem better precisely for Section III. Being pressed for time, I unfortunately cannot search for the Spanish programme, which is also very good in many respects. Appendix to Section I
A Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Program of 1891 by Engels