Manifesto of the Gotha Program

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MIA Editor's note

No official title or context is known for this important work, which is one of the earliest popularizations of Marxist theory and political objectives available in English not written by Marx or Engels themselves. While a 1994 reprint in Wilhelm Liebknecht... A Documentary History titled this piece simply as “Socialism,” after the title of the compilation it first appeared in in English, I have opted to use a new title that better expresses what it appears to be: a political manifesto for the newly united Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany, on the basis of its newly adopted Gotha Program of 1875 (the status of official party endorsement for Liebknecht’s manifesto is unknown). An extended endnote dealing with the Gotha unification congress and its misconceptions is linked below.

This sole English translation by May Wood Simons, unfortunately, is rather lackluster. While this specific 1875 work has never been retranslated, Liebknecht’s speech to the 1891 Erfurt congress from later in the source pamphlet has, and a comparison with Erich Hahn’s 1994 translation reveals, alongside generally sloppy word choice and sentence structure, that the “passages of German interest only which have been ommitted from the translation” were sometimes anything but. This subpar translation quality was not unusual for the time period, however, and Simons’ translation, together with her husband’s co-translation of Liebknecht’s No Compromise, seem to have had an outsize impact on the political strategy of the early Socialist Party of America.

MIA Contextual Note

The Gotha unification congress of 1875 marked the fusion of the two largest socialist parties in Germany: the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany (SDAP), better known as the “Eisenachers” after the city of their 1869 founding congress and counting Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel as prominent leaders, and the General Association of German Workers (ADAV), the posthumous followers of Ferdinand Lassalle. The new party was proposed to adopt the organizational structure of the Eisenachers, which was less rigidly centralized than the Lassallean party and more tolerant of open debate and local initiative. The draft political program however contained numerous concessions to the Lassalleans, such as a demand for state-sponsored cooperatives and nods to Lassallean theoretical hallmarks like the Iron Law of Wages. Against these proposed compromises Karl Marx wrote his famous private letter to the Eisenacher leaders that was later published in 1891 as the Critique of the Gotha Program. While Liebknecht agreed that “what [Marx] said theoretically against the plan was correct to the last letter,” he insisted that theoretical concessions were worth making for the cause of uniting the socialist movement of Germany under one party, and the draft Gotha Program was ratified with only superficial amendments.

The immediate impact of the Gotha unification congress was a huge increase in membership and influence for the newly united party, as shown in these statistics sourced from Raymond Dominick’s 1982 biography of Wilhelm Liebknecht. Compared with the combined total of the two separate parties before, party membership soared by 54 percent in the year following the congress; vote totals (slightly later in early 1877) rose 40 percent; the circulation of the party press more than doubled. This growth continued apace, despite an initial setback caused by the enactment of the Anti-Socialist Laws (1878-1890), until the Social Democrats became the largest party in Germany by vote totals in 1890.

Marx and Engels, for their part, did not go through with their threat to publicly disclaim the unified party after the Gotha congress, and once it became clear, contrary to their fears, that a union on that basis would last more than a year, they were not afraid to publicly endorse the party and write for its press. Notably, Marx did not object when an interviewer in 1879 called the Gotha Program “the clearest and most concise exposition of socialism [he] had ever seen”, and Marx proceeded to strongly endorse the program as a whole, while disclaiming any specifically Lassallean language within it.

This public endorsement, however, did not necessarily entail their after-the-fact approval of Liebknecht’s plan for unity under a compromise program. Engels remained sharply critical of the unity congress in a private letter to August Bebel of May 1-2, 1891, maintaining his 1875 opinion that only common action should have been organized between the two parties, not a common program or ballot line, until a future date when a theoretically cohesive unity program could be adopted. Karl Marx presumably shared Engels’ view, although some indirect statements by Liebknecht seemingly imply otherwise. (See his Exposition of the Erfurt Program and Karl Marx: Biographical Memoirs).

Liebknecht's speech

First of all, a few remarks concerning the name of our party. It is called the social democratic or socialist labor party. Our banner is that of social democracy, or socialism. Social democratic and social democracy signify more than democratic and democracy. Democracy, means, first, a government by the people; second, the society that is the outgrowth of such a government. Democratic demands are those which are sought through the sovereignty of the people.

The word democracy, derived from the Greek, is frequently translated “rule of the people.” This is not, however, wholly correct. At any rate it does not correspond with the logical conception of the idea of democracy. The “people” is composed of all the members of the state, and the whole cannot rule, since there is no one outside them to be ruled. A ruler necessarily presupposes a subject. Where there is no one to be ruled, because all have a part in the governing, there is, as a matter of course, no domination.

It is by all means a reasonable demand that all subjects of the state, minors naturally excluded, should have an equal part in the rule of the state, and, further, it cannot be denied that the carrying out of such a system would bring about the destruction of social misery.

Why not, then, retain the name democracy, which has a history? Just because it has a history. Since the rise of modern industrial society with the opposition of classes and class struggle, the banner of democracy has been made use of many times to veil the eyes of the people to the chasm that yawns between the divided classes of society. Yes, we have lived to see the enemy of the working people fight them under the flag of democracy. Even in the mouth of those democrats who honestly wish the rule of the people the word democracy has an essentially narrowed sense, covering only the political and governmental sphere. It is this illogical conception, however, which exists at present, and the name democracy cannot therefore satisfy a party which really strives for the rule of the people, but has also perceived that the governing is not the end but the means, that the end of the state is to secure to all its subjects the highest possible sum of well-being and that this end can be realized only through a just regulation of the necessary social labor.

In a word, social democracy, social democratic, expresses this view. Social signifies association (gesellschaftlich), that is referring to society. Social democracy means the rule of the people in the province of the social relations of men as well as in that of politics, the just, wise, dignifying arrangement of state and society. Socialism is the science of society, the science of the irrational regulation of it at present and of the reasonable order to be brought about through us; socialistic, in relation to this science, means developing in that sense; a socialist, one who seeks to reorganize society according to the principles of socialism — so that socialistic and socialist in the essentials mean the same as social democratic and social democrat.

We call ourselves the labor party because the vital interest and the strength of numbers of the working class alone have the power to establish the order aimed at by socialism. And mark well, under working people we do not understand merely the hand workers, but every one who does not live on the labor of another. Besides the city and country laborers must be included also the small farmers and traders who groan under the burden of capital, even as the laborers proper. Yes; in many cases yet more. There are hundreds of thousands of small masters who are obliged on Saturday to run about for hours in order to borrow the week’s pay for their workers and who are happy if their profit is equal to the wages of a factory laborer.

Now to that which we propose to do.

From May 22 to 27, 1875, delegates (127 in number) from the whole democratic body of Germany, met in Gotha and accepted unanimously, after mature deliberation, the following programme:

I. Labor is the source of all wealth and all culture, and since universal productive labor is possible only through society, therefore to society, that is to all its members, belongs the collective product of labor. With the universal obligation to labor, according to equal justice, each should have in proportion to his reasonable needs.

In the present society the means of labor are the monopoly of the capitalist class; the servitude of the laboring class, which is the outgrowth of this, is the cause of misery and of slavery in all forms.

The liberation of labor demands the transformation of the means of production into the common property of society and the associative regulation of the collective labor with general employment and just distribution of the proceeds of labor.

The emancipation of labor must be the work of the laboring class, opposed to which all other classes are only a reactionary body.

II. Proceeding from this principle the socialist labor party of Germany seeks through all legal means the free state and the socialist society, the destruction of the iron law of wages, the overthrow of exploitation in all forms and the abolition of all social and political inequality.

The socialist labor party of Germany, though working chiefly in national boundaries, is conscious of the international character of the labor movement and is resolved to fulfill every duty which is laid on the workers in order to realize the brotherhood of humanity.

The socialist labor party of Germany demands as a step to the solution of the social question the erection, with the help of the state, of socialistic productive establishments under the democratic control of the laboring people. These productive establishments are to place industry and agriculture in such relations that out of them the socialist organization of the whole may arise.

The socialist labor party of Germany demands as the foundation of the state:

• I. Universal, equal and direct suffrage, with secret, obligatory voting by all citizens at all elections in state or community.
• II. Direct legislation by the people. Decision as to peace or war by the people.
• III. Common right to bear arms. Militia instead of the standing army.
• IV. Abolition of all laws of exception, especially all laws restricting the freedom of the press, of association and assemblage; above all, all laws restricting the freedom of public opinion, thought and investigation.
• V. Legal judgment through the people. Gratuitous administration of law.
• VI. Universal and equal popular education by the state. Universal compulsory education. Free instruction in all forms of art. Declaration that religion is a private matter.

The socialist labor party of Germany demands within the present society:

• I. The widest possible expansion of political rights and freedom according to the foregoing demands.
• II. A progressive income tax for state and municipality instead of all those existing, especially in place of the indirect tax which burdens the people.
• III. Unrestrained right of combination.
• IV. Shortening of the working day according to the needs of society. Abolition of Sunday labor.
• V. Abolition of child labor and all female labor injurious to health and morality.
• VI. Protective laws for the life and health of the worker. Sanitary control of the homes of the workers. Supervision of the mines, factories, workshops and hand industries by an officer elected by the people. An effectual law of enforcement.
• VII. Regulation of prison labor.
• VIII. Full autonomy in the management of all laborers’ fraternal and mutual benefit funds.

Who that honestly wishes the welfare of his fellow-men can refuse his consent to this programme? Who that is not satisfied with his own slavery and exploitation or not interested in that of his fellow-men can deny that the fulfillment of this programme would be a blessing to the world?

Let us examine the state and society as they are. All power and means of life are to be found in the hands of a small minority, and this minority naturally use their power to secure and maintain that monopoly of all advantages which domination in state and society gives, and to prevent the subject majority obtaining political and social rights.

Who exercises the political power? A scanty minority whom birth and wealth have made a privileged class. The great majority of the people are absolutely helpless, and, because helpless, also without rights, for a right to which the power of enforcement is not attached is only a picture, a play, a misleading fantasy. What meaning, for example, has the right to choose a legislative representative who can only speak but cannot exercise the slightest influence on the government of the land? The governing minority rules for itself, not for the subject majority. Between rulers and ruled there exist as little community of interest as between the plantation owner and the negro slave. The interest of the negro does not come in question for the plantation owner; his own interest is determinative for him and he handles the negro as his interest demands. Just so in the present state. The interest of the people does not come in question, but exclusively the interest of the ruling minority.

To make the interests of the ruled subservient to the interests of the rulers is the foundation and purpose of rule — is the meaning of ruling. So long as there are rulers and ruled it must be so, for rule is by its very nature exploitation. It follows therefrom that the interests of the subject people demand the transformation of the state from its foundation, according to their interest. It must cease to be the possession of a few persons of position and class and must become the possession of citizens with full and equal rights, of whom no one rules over the other, and none will be ruled by another.

For this the social democracy strives. In place of the present class rule we will institute a free government of the people.

The clear statement of our party programme stamps as a slander the assertion of our opponents that socialism will secure the ruling power in the state for the laboring class. We have already said that the idea of mastery is above all undemocratic and consequently in opposition to the principles of socialism. All demands for liberty made by democracy are likewise demands of the social democracy. The difference between democratic and social democratic is that the latter sees the consequences which the former, entangled in civil prejudices, has not the courage to see. Social democracy is consequently actual democracy.

It will bring into existence an organization of the state and society, which, resting on the equality of all men, will choke the source of inequality, will tolerate neither ruler nor servant and will found a fraternal community of free men. In order to make this possible the present manner of production must be brought to an end. The economic basis of society — that is, the system of wage labor — must be transformed.

The mother of all social wealth, of all culture, is labor. Whatever we are and have, we are and have through labor. We have labor to thank for everything. Not our personal labor, at least only to an inconsiderable degree, but the general social labor. It is very possible indeed — and we see it frequently enough — to enjoy the blessings of culture without personal work; but it is also absolutely impossible for the most industrious and efficient worker with the most strenuous toil to live as men of culture live without the general social labor that first created culture and without which we were beasts, not men. From this we see the communistic nature of labor, its essentially associative character, on which all state and society rests. Labor has always had this communistic character, with the ancient slave and the vassal of the middle ages as well as with the modern wage-earner. But he did not have the product of his labor, nor has he it yet. The ancient slave worked for his master, the mediæval vassal for the lord of the manor, and the modern wage slave works for the capitalist. Here is the inconsistency, here the injustice to remedy which is the object of the social democracy. The social communistic character of labor must be extended to the product of labor, the product of labor shall be the property of labor, labor no longer be the companion of misery but of enjoyment.

One can see how absurd the allegation is that we propose to abolish property. Not the abolition of property is sought but the abolition of the deprivation of property, the false property which is the appropriation of others’ property; the social thievery. “Expropriation of the expropriator,” Marx has called it. Above all, those who call themselves Christians have no right to cry out against this “division,” for the New Testament preaches communism in the roughest, most primitive form, and the first Christian communities that had yet the “whole pure teachings” carried out “division” with the greatest thoroughness.

Let us look at present conditions. Who will deny that the majority of mankind live in the greatest wretchedness and that only a minority have the means of attaining an existence worthy of human beings? We would refer the doubter to the statistics whose figures admit of no reply and can be ignored only by the ignorant or the evil disposed.

The economic inequality is not, however, the worst thing. Labor creates all wealth, and were those who do not work poor this inequality would have a certain justification; in reality the situation is turned about. As the bourgeois political economist, John Stuart Mill, who is honored as an authority by our opponents, has explained with keen insight, in our present society goods are proportioned in inverse ratio to the heaviness of the labor performed. He who works the hardest generally has the least; he who does not work at all and can have others working either directly or indirectly for him has much. Poverty is the share of labor, riches the portion of the idle. The workers who have created the so-called national wealth are shut out from it. It is the monopoly of the non-workers. In this way the inequality becomes the most revolting injustice. And this injustice is a scar on our famed civilization, that every one who has a spark of the sense of justice must strive to clear away. Palliative measures that merely touch the surface merely reduce the symptoms, make the evil worse; this must be seized and torn out by the root. All wealth is the fruit of labor, teaches political economy — labor shall reap the fruit of labor, demands justice, demands socialism. The present inequality springs from this: That labor does not work for itself; that it must sell itself to the idle for wages and by them be exploited. In a word, it springs out of the system of wage labor. The present injustice is only to be abolished in this way, that labor cease to work for the idle and that instead it work for itself.

Individual labor is unproductive. Work, as we have seen, must according to its nature be communistic. Therefore we must have united labor for the advantage of every individual, united labor and united enjoyment of the fruits of labor. This it is which we would establish in place of the present system of exploitation. Socialistic co-operation in place of wage labor!

But what becomes of capital?

It remains where it belongs, with labor. There is no capital but through labor. There shall be no capital except for labor. It has been asserted by charlatans that capital creates value as well as labor — the test can be easily made. The worshiper of capital may sweep together in a heap his capital, he may gather all the capital of the earth, and after the space of a year there would not have grown a penny more of value from it, but indeed the worth of the idle mass would be considerably decreased. Capital is not merely the child of labor; it cannot grow or continue without it. Capital has in relation to labor no rights, while labor in relation to capital has the right of ownership.

The tyrannous manner of production has overturned the natural relation between capital and labor and made labor the slave of capital. Is our wage-labor not slavery? Is the modern wage-laborer, because he can change his master, in any regard more free than the ancient slave? Does not hunger fasten him more firmly and more mercilessly to labor than the strongest iron chain? Yet our opponents often rejoin: “The worker is in a better condition to-day than in the last century.” Whether the assertion is true or false we leave undebated. Even if true, it would prove nothing. It is not better position the socialist worker demands, but equal position. He will work no longer for another; he insists that each shall enjoy in equal measure the fruits of labor and the blessings of culture. He has enough logic and sense of justice to lay no claim to a favored place; he will also, however, accept no inferior one.

The continuance of the present manner of production is not consistent with the continuance of society. The great capitalist production was an advance. It has, however, become an obstruction. It no longer satisfies the economic needs of society, and by society we mean not the small minority of privileged persons who are pleased to call themselves “society,” but the whole people.

Wholly aside from the unjust distribution of the products of labor, capitalist production is incapable of providing all members of society with the things requisite to an existence worthy of mankind and must be displaced by a higher form of production which fulfills these conditions. And this is possible only through communistic, social production, and the socialist organization of labor which turns the concentrated capital of the community to the advantage of society.

It is an error which arises from the confusing of society with the privileged minority, that is with the ruling classes, that we are charged with the intention of overthrowing all existing things and proceeding tabula rasa to erect a fantastic structure upon the ruins. We only wish to remove whatever hinders the sound, intelligent development of society and to bring about a condition in which the interests of the great majority shall no longer be sacrificed to those of the minority. And instead of privileged individuals, instead of political social monopolies, we would establish the rights and interests of all and justice as the highest law of state and society. Whatever has outlived itself and no longer satisfies the growing cultured needs of society shall cease to withhold air and sun from the struggling new life. We will make possible the organic evolution of our culture that is prevented by the present class rule.

Whoever would propose to-day to abolish machinery in order to re-establish the small industry of mediæval times would be considered insane, for every one knows that the small industry has been succeeded by a higher, more productive method, the great industry. Whoever in the middle ages, however, or even the first half of the present century, had said that the system of small-industries was too costly, too unproductive, and must be wiped from the earth through an industrial revolution that should bring another system of production to the ruling position, would have been considered as — well, much as the fanatics of the present social order, or, more properly, disorder, consider us.

Whoever in fifty years from now should recommend the introduction of our present conditions would be in danger of making the acquaintance of the insane asylum. And we who demand the reform of these present conditions are slandered and persecuted. Yet it is just as certain and just as necessary that the present manner of production should be supplanted by a higher, as that the mediæval manner of production should be supplanted by the present one. It is not we who are Utopians, impracticable dreamers, as they so gladly call us. Those are rather to be so called who hold outgrown forms to be eternal and believe that they can prevent them from destruction through forcible measures.

We set up no especial principles according to which the movement shall model itself. Our theoretical propositions rest in no way upon “ideas” or “principles” that this or that reformer has “discovered.” They are only universal expressions of actual relations of an existing class struggle — of an historical movement going on before our eyes.

After this explanation no one will fail to understand the first part (I. and II.) of our programme. The truth of the statement that the economic dependence of the laboring class on capital is the cause of misery and servitude in all forms (especially of political slavery) may be proven by means of a simple example. Having taken for granted that all political freedom, equal universal suffrage, freedom of the press, right to unite and convene, etc., should be guaranteed to all persons, allow the system of capitalistic production and of wage labor to remain — what would be the consequence? Inequality; the misery of the masses and the disproportionate wealth of the few would continue. The laboring majority of the people would be economically dependent upon the propertied minority, and this economic dependence would make all political freedom purely illusory and rob it of its practical worth.

Have we not learned to our satisfaction, by experience at the Reichstag’s elections, that the oppression which the capitalist exercises on his wage-slave is stronger than that exercised by the most reactionary state?

Let us suppose a different case. Political freedom is withheld from the people, but labor, on the other hand, is set free in the manner in which we demand it should be — that is, through socialistic production and distribution of the product of labor, the full proceeds of his work being assured to every laborer as far as the interests of society allow — what would be the result? The ruling minority would lose its means of power, which has its roots exclusively in the present manner of production and the exploitation of labor through capital. Economic independence would very soon bring the mass of the people into a position to gain their political independence also. This case can no more exist in reality, however, than the other, for the social question is inseparable from the political, and a reasonably organized society is thinkable only in a free state.

On whom does the iron yoke of the present class state not rest, oppressing and dishonoring? What do the people count for to-day? A prince covets his neighbor’s land. The people beg in vain for freedom. The wishes and the happiness of a million on one side of the balance, the will and caprice of one on the other, and light as a feather the scale rises with the wishes, happiness and well-being of a million. The fury of war is unchained, thousands are plunged into death and hundreds of thousands into misery. Should this be so? The social democracy insists that no war be carried on except in vindication of the freedom and rights of the people. They wish, therefore, the POWER to declare war — for here we cannot speak of a right — to belong to the people and their deputies.

The strongest part of the nation, the men in the bloom of life, are torn away from their occupation for years, withdrawn from useful productive labor, placed in the standing army and drilled to blind obedience.

What is the outcome? War upon war, by means of which all violent passions are unchained and all good customs are shaken to their very foundations. Shall this continue? Socialism provides that the standing army, this means of subjugation and conquest, be disbanded, and that it be replaced, so long as the possibility of war exists, by an army of the people. Each citizen, from his youth, shall be exercised in the use of arms and become qualified for military action. If every citizen is a soldier then every soldier is a citizen, and no tyrant will ever be in a position to offer violence to the people.

At present education is the privilege of a few, and for this few it is not a training for humanity but a preparation to exercise class rule. The great majority of the population receive only a shamefully perverted and insufficient education and are systematically hindered in the development of their talents, since an educated people, a truly well-bred, cultured people, would not bear patiently the present tyrannous political and social condition. For education, true education — not the systematic perversion and doggish breaking-in that to-day is pleased to boast the name of education — is the mother of freedom, justice and equality, and therefore not consistent with the existence of the present class state. Social democracy would provide the highest possible education for each and all, free instruction in the best possible common and high schools (polytechnical, professional and grammar schools, academies and universities). It proceeds from the position that it is the end of the state to care for the physical and spiritual welfare of its members. The socialistic state is therefore in its foundation a great universal educational institution.

In the present class state justice is a mockery of the name. Justice means literally rightness. But how can there be talk of justice in the midst of conditions which in whole and in part, in their nature and in their appearance, strike the smallest demand of justice in the face? Only hypocrisy or thoughtless inconsistency can find that punishable in an individual which either is a recognized practice and moral in the state and society, or is the necessary result of the neglect of duty by the state (defective education) and the wrong social organization (poverty). The present fundamental injustice of the state and society at once stamp what is called justice as injustice (ungerechtigkeit). Is this right? Socialism insists that justice shall become rightness; and it creates the essential preliminary condition for this in the free democratic state for which it strives.

As the right to make and carry out the laws belongs to the people, so likewise they have the right to administer the law.

The giving of judgment and also legislation, rule and administration must be taken from the hands of privileged persons, positions and classes, who sacrifice the general justice and interest to their own peculiar interest. Until an intelligent natural organization of the state and society has removed the cause of the so-called crimes and misdeeds, which in reality, when not arising from physical sickness, are only social illness, socialism demands the popular court (civil and criminal so far as possible) and free administration of justice. The popular court which we insist on is as different from the present jury as the present state is different from the people’s state. The jury shall not be the monopoly of the propertied class, not the stage setting for the performance of a shameful farce on justice — class justice, where the deputies of the propertied class sit in judgment over those of the disinherited people and hide their class hatred and interests under the toga of law. No; the jurors shall be chosen by free universal election out of the body of the people in order that it be in truth a tribunal of the people.

In a municipality, which is a state within a state, the subordination of the subject majority to the special interests of the ruling minority stands out more plainly than in a great state, since ruler and ruled, physically nearer, are in direct personal contact with each other.

The ruling minority tax, according to their desire, the subject majority, burden them with the principal weight of taxation, turn the proceeds to their own profit and throw down at most only the crumbs to “the wretched tax-paying plebs.” From the sweat of labor they erect advanced academies for the children of the wealthy, from which the children of the poor are shut out. In order to indulge to their satisfaction they build theaters, whose entrance price frightens the worker at the threshold, but to be sure this is no great disadvantage to him, since the modern theater (exceptions confirm the rule) does service only to the most corrupt taste, for it has become degraded to a refined brothel by the ruling class. In short, the ruling minority proceed in the city after the self-same egotistic, pernicious principle as in the state. This must be remedied. The social democracy demands, therefore, as for the state so for the municipality, universal, equal, free and direct suffrage, complete privilege and equalization, as for the citizen of the state so for the inhabitant of the city — a free community in a free state.

In order, however, to make the state and community what they should be — that is to say, an association of free and equal men, who in brotherly solidarity and fraternal co-operation, “each for all and all for each,” strive for the highest possible spiritual and physical well-being of every individual — it is essential that the economic foundation of the present society be altered, for on it rest the present state and city whose abuse and injustice are the necessary consequence of the social and economic abuse and injustice.

What sort of picture does present society offer?

War and right of force rule between the people, between classes and between individual men. Through capitalistic production there is war between bourgeoisie and worker; through competition bourgeois is in strife with bourgeois, the laborer with the laborer. Socialism would set permanently a limit to this war of all against all. It insists on peace between men, peace between nations, peace between classes. No peace, however, is to be hoped for so long as the cause remains which gives rise to the conditions of war.

The cause is the present class rule, with its wage slavery, business frauds, its deceit in all lines of traffic, its adulteration of all physical and spiritual necessities of life, its strikes and lockouts, the murder of the laborers in a mass through hunger, infected dwellings and workrooms.

On the basis of the wage system towers the giant structure of present social and political institutions for the subjugation and exploitation of the laboring people — the Castle of Uri of the proletariat, the gloomy Bastille of the class state, which has taken prisoner the bulk of the people, killed thought, broken and destroyed character and directed its cannon threateningly upon every one who did not bow himself in the dust before the ruling injustice.

The wage system must be done away with if peace, order, freedom and justice are to count for anything in the state and society. Thanks to this wage system and the monopolization of the instruments of labor (tools, machines, land, mines, railroads, etc.) by the minority, labor, which creates all value and wealth, is condemned to poverty and slavery. The employer enriches himself through the labor of his wage slaves, to whom he pays in the form of wages only a part of the proceeds of their work; the unpaid remainder he puts in his pocket as “profit” — a robbery which differs from the usual robbery only in this, that he is not punished by the present class laws. Or is there, forsooth, an essential difference between the employer who withholds from his laborers a part of the product of their labor and himself appropriates this part, and the “humane” highway robber who satisfies himself with relieving the traveler, through the logic of a drawn pistol, of only a part of his goods, but who before the law is not, therefore, less a highway robber?

The present manner of production, resting on the basis of the wage system, has as a result on the one hand the accumulation of property in the hands of a few and the corruption of these few as a result of excessive possessions; on the other hand, there is impoverishment of the masses and pauperism. The worker, in the midst of the riches which he has created, cannot satisfy his smallest necessity; privation, unhealthful workshops and factories steal his life strength, as the employer steals from him the proceeds of his labor; lingering sickness and an early death await him. He has no family life, for, since his wages do not suffice for existence, wife and child must follow him into the factory. For the budding daughter he has the prospect of the short, glittering misery of prostitution, or the long, leaden, sunless misery of the life of a proletarian’s wife.

Who that groans under the pressure of these conditions unworthy of mankind will not unite with us in the call: “Down with the wage system!”

“Down with the wage system!” That is the fundamental demand of social democracy — the Alpha and Omega of our agitation. Co-operative labor and association shall take the place of the wage system with its class rule.

The instruments of production must cease to be the monopoly of a class — they must be the public property of all. There shall be no more exploiter or exploited. Production and distribution of the produce [sic] must be regulated in the interest of the whole. As the present production, exploitation and robbery must be abolished, so likewise must the present traffic, which is only fraud.

In the order of equality the worker will perform all the labor necessary for the whole body of citizens. In place of the employer and his humble subservient or rebellious wage slaves there will be free comrades. Labor will be the torture of no one, but the duty of all. An existence worthy of a human being will be provided for every one who performs his duty to society. Hunger will become henceforth not the curse of labor but the punishment of the idle.

And in order that this may be realized the people’s state must exist — the state composed of all and for all, the state, which consists of the wise and just organization of society, the universal guaranteed establishment of happiness and culture, and the fraternal association of free and equal men.

After what has been said it is superfluous to go through one by one the demands arranged in the two parts of our programme. They are very plain to every one who is half-way educated and capable of thought. As with every party and class that ever opposed the ruling abuses and took for their object the removal of those abuses, so it is with the social democracy. It is slandered and abused by the selfish and deluded adherents of the maladjusted state and society; it brings disorder, class strife, destruction of property, ruin of the family and of culture, most sensual enjoyment, the deepest degradation of woman. The truth could not be more completely and shamefully perverted. The old society throws its crimes at us, for on their account we have condemned it to death.

Disorder rules; socialism demands order.

War and class struggle prevail; socialism insists on peace and harmony of interests, doing away with class struggle through the abolition of classes.

Property is to-day a lie for the majority of men, a robbery for the minority. Socialism would make property the possession of every one. It would convert it into a truth, secure to the worker within society the full proceeds of his labor and destroy the capitalistic system of plunder from its foundation.

The present society separates the family — socialism, since it removes demoralizing class rule, will give value to the rights of the family.

State and society compete with each other to nip in the bud the culture of men, to stunt spiritually and physically the enormous majority of the people and to corrupt the ruling minority — socialism insists on equal and the best possible training for every individual; the practical development of their faculties for all men; the systematic advance of art and science, and will make art and science the common possession of the people.

Thanks to the wrong conditions of society and the state, woman is to-day without rights and in countless cases is condemned to wedded or unwedded prostitution. The intercourse of the sexes is unnatural and immoral — socialism will bring the emancipation of woman as well as of man. It insists on her complete political and social equality and equal position with man. It will destroy prostitution, whether it walk ashamed under the mantle of marriage for wealth or convenience, or whether it run shameless painted and naked upon the street.

Enough. Beginning with real conditions; not following Utopian will-o’-the-wisps, but building on the acquisition of culture, we strive for the abolition of the class state, class legislation and class rule.

Our end is: The free democracy with equal economic and political rights; the free society with associative labor. The welfare of all is for us the one end of the state and society.

In order to accomplish our object we must organize ourselves. There can be no efficient propaganda or action without organization. Unified organization is the accumulation of strength, its gathering into a focus. Isolation makes each one powerless; divided strength is no strength. Union not only adds to strength but multiplies it many fold.

The economic and, accordingly also, the political conditions are essentially the same in all civilized lands. No state in the present day is shut off from the others by a Chinese wall. Notwithstanding the artificial boundaries, all civilized nations have a common evolution and a common history. Every land affects all others and is affected by them. All parties are, therefore, to-day more or less international. And ours is so in a greater measure than all other parties, since it does not recognize national boundaries, and, standing on the position of pure humanity, adhering in all to strictly human measures, sees in the members of the divided nationalities only men and brothers.

Although we have the nearest direct sphere of out activity in the state of which we are citizens, nevertheless we do not forget the citizens of the world and the universal brotherhood of man. And we know wherever there is a struggle for the cause of labor and the oppressed people there our cause is at stake.

We seek justice and fight injustice.

We seek free labor and attack wage-slavery.

We seek the prosperity of all and struggle against misery.

We seek the education of all and fight ignorance and barbarism.

We seek peace and order and combat the murder of people, the class war and the social anarchy.

We seek the socialist people’s state and attack the despotic class state.

Whoever desires these things, and struggles for them, let him unite with us and work with all his strength for our cause — for the cause of socialism — for the cause of humanity, whose victory will soon be gained.