The Critique of the Gotha Program on capitalism vs communism: An Analysis and Commentary

Abstract

Karl Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program is largely about the differences between capitalism and communism, and the changes that will be needed to effect a revolutionary transformation of capitalism into communism. Because the author believes that these aspects of the Critique are still not widely understood or internalized, the paper undertakes a close reading of them. The reading is informed by Marx’s conception of the relation between a society’s economic basis and its political and legal superstructure, and it calls attention to ways in which his critique draws on his concepts of directly and indirectly social labor and his value theory.