Erfurt Program

Erfurt Program
Ratified1891
LocationErfurt
Author(s)August Bebel, Edward Bernstein, Karl Kautsky
SignatoriesSocial Democratic Party of Germany

The Erfurt Program was adopted by the Social Democratic Party of Germany during the SPD Congress at Erfurt in 1891. Drafted by theorists Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein, the program set out a Marxist view and superseded the party's Gotha Program of 1875. The Erfurt Program identified private ownership of the means of production as the source of social ailments, and advocated a political struggle with the goal of achieving a social revolution and an equal society without class divisions. Before this could be achieved, the program advocated reforms including universal suffrage, freedoms of speech and association, gender equality, separation of church and state, free education and medicine, and a progressive income tax. It also demanded labor protections including an eight-hour working day and the prohibition of child labor. The Erfurt Program was SPD's official program until 1921, when it was replaced by the Görlitz Program [de].

The program

The program declared the imminent death of capitalism and the necessity of socialist ownership of the means of production. The Party intended to pursue these goals through legal political participation rather than by revolutionary activity. Kautsky argued that because capitalism, by its very nature, must collapse, the immediate task for socialists was to work for the improvement of workers' lives rather than for the revolution, which was inevitable.[citation needed]

Reception and response

The draft program was criticised by Friedrich Engels for its opportunist, non-Marxist views on the state in a criticism he sent to Kautsky on 29 June 1891.[1]

Official commentary

Main article: The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program)

Kautsky wrote the official SPD commentary on the program in 1892, which was called The Class Struggle. The Marxism exemplified by The Class Struggle was often referred to by later critics as "vulgar Marxism" or "the Marxism of the Second International."[2] The popular renderings of Marxism found in the works of Kautsky and Bebel were read and distributed more widely in Europe between the late 19th century and 1914 than Marx's own works. The Class Struggle was translated into 16 languages before 1914 and became the accepted popular summation of Marxist theory. This document came to represent one of the core documents of 'orthodox' Marxist theory before the October Revolution of 1917 caused a major split in the international socialist movement.

See also

References

  1. ^ Lenin, Vladimir I (1917). "4.4 Criticism of the draft of the Erfurt Programme". The State and Revolution.
  2. ^ Korsch, Karl (1923). Marxism & Philosophy. New York: Monthly Review Press. p. 55. ISBN 978-0-85345-153-2. Marxist theory in the second half of the nineteenth century became gradually impoverished and degenerated into vulgar-marxism.
  • Kautsky, Karl Das Erfurter Programm Dietz Nachf. Verlag, Stuttgart, 1920
  • Sassoon, Donald One Hundred Years of Socialism. The New Press, New York, 1996.