The Gotha Program was the party platform adopted by the nascent Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) at its initial

party congress The terms party conference (UK English), political convention ( US and Canadian English), and party congress usually refer to a general meeting of a political party. The conference is attended by certain delegates who represent the party membe ...

, held in the town of

Gotha Gotha () is the fifth-largest city in Thuringia, Germany, west of Erfurt and east of Eisenach with a population of 44,000. The city is the capital of the Gotha (district), district of Gotha and was also a residence of the Ernestine House of Wet ...

in 1875. The program called for

universal suffrage Universal suffrage (also called universal franchise, general suffrage, and common suffrage of the common man) gives the right to vote to all adult citizens, regardless of wealth, income, gender, social status, race, ethnicity, or political stan ...

freedom of association Freedom of association encompasses both an individual's right to join or leave groups voluntarily, the right of the group to take collective action to pursue the interests of its members, and the right of an association to accept or decline mem ...

, limits on the

working day The weekdays and weekend are the complementary parts of the week devoted to labour and rest, respectively. The legal weekdays (British English), or workweek (American English), is the part of the seven-day week devoted to working. In most of t ...

, and for other laws protecting the rights and health of workers. The Gotha Program was explicitly

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...

: "the socialist labor party of Germany endeavors by every lawful means to bring about a free state and a socialistic society, to effect the destruction of the

iron law of wages The iron law of wages is a proposed law of economics that asserts that real wages always tend, in the long run, toward the minimum wage necessary to sustain the life of the worker. The theory was first named by Ferdinand Lassalle in the mid-nine ...

by doing away with the system of

wage labor Wage labour (also wage labor in American English), usually referred to as paid work, paid employment, or paid labour, refers to the socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer in which the worker sells their labour power under ...

, to abolish exploitation of every kind, and to extinguish all social and political inequality". It was superseded by the

Erfurt Program The Erfurt Program was adopted by the Social Democratic Party of Germany during the SPD Congress at Erfurt in 1891. Formulated under the political guidance of Eduard Bernstein, August Bebel, and Karl Kautsky, it superseded the earlier Gotha Pr ...

in 1891.

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

famously attacked the platform, which he had read in draft form, in his ''

Critique of the Gotha Program The ''Critique of the Gotha Programme'' (german: Kritik des Gothaer Programms) is a document based on a letter by Karl Marx written in early May 1875 to the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (SDAP), with whom Marx and Friedrich Engels wer ...

''.

References

External links

German text of ''Gotha Program'' at Marxists Internet Archive
{{Authority control Social Democratic Party of Germany Party platforms program 1875 documents 1875 in politics 1875 in Germany