Jump to content

Erfurt Program

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Erfurt Programme)

Erfurt Program
Title page of the published minutes of the Erfurt Congress
Original titleErfurter Programm
Ratified20 October 1891
LocationErfurt, German Empire
Author(s)Karl Kautsky (theory sections)
Eduard Bernstein (tactical sections)
SignatoriesSocial Democratic Party of Germany
Media typeParty platform

The Erfurt Program (German: Erfurter Programm) was the party platform adopted by the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) at its party congress in Erfurt in 1891. Drafted under the political leadership of August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, and its principal architect, the theorist Karl Kautsky, the program officially committed the SPD to Marxism.[1] It was the first and most prominent in a series of similar Marxist-inspired platforms adopted by socialist parties across Europe.[2]

The program represented a stark break from its predecessor, the Gotha Program of 1875, by rejecting the Lassallean idea of achieving socialism through state aid.[3] Instead, it declared the impending death of capitalism and the necessity of class struggle.[4] The program was divided into two parts. The first, the "maximalist" section, outlined the unalterable principles of a socialist transformation based on Marxist theory. The second, "minimalist" section, detailed a series of practical legislative goals to be pursued within the existing framework of the German Empire.[5]

This dual structure allowed the Erfurt Program to accommodate the competing ideological currents within the party. It provided a theoretical justification for long-term revolutionary goals while enabling a practical, reformist political strategy.[6] This "Erfurt Synthesis" guided the SPD's policies through the final decade of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th. However, the internal contradictions between its revolutionary theory and its gradualist practice became increasingly apparent, particularly in the face of the rise of Revisionism on the right and a new revolutionary left after 1905.[7] The synthesis ultimately broke down, culminating in the formal split of the party during World War I.[8] The program was formally superseded by the Görlitz Program [de] of 1921.

Background

[edit]

The unification of the German socialist movement in 1875 was achieved under the Gotha Program, a platform that was more heavily influenced by the ideas of Ferdinand Lassalle than by those of Karl Marx.[9] The Gotha Program called for the "abolition of the iron law of wages through the cooperative control of collective labor" and pledged the party to work for a "free state" through "every legal means", without articulating a clear class character for the state or mentioning revolution.[9]

The German socialist movement only became truly receptive to Marxism after Otto von Bismarck enacted the Anti-Socialist Laws in 1878.[9] The twelve years of repression under these laws, which lasted until 1890, compelled the Socialists to operate illegally and fostered a growing revolutionary sentiment within the party and its working-class base.[9] At its 1880 congress-in-exile in Wyden, Switzerland, the party unanimously voted to remove the phrase "by all legal means" from its program, and three years later at its Copenhagen congress, it declared itself to be a revolutionary party.[9] During this period, the party's electoral support grew significantly, from 311,961 votes in 1881 to 1,427,298 in 1890.[9]

With the lapse of the Anti-Socialist Laws in 1890, the party faced a new political landscape. It needed a program that could reconcile the revolutionary fervour engendered by the years of persecution with the practical need for a reformist approach in a fundamentally non-revolutionary period.[1] Marxist theory was seen as singularly appropriate for this task.[1] Friedrich Engels, a key intellectual leader for the German socialists, took the opportunity to publish Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program, which had previously been withheld from the party membership, to discredit the lingering Lassallean ideas.[1] This paved the way for the adoption of a new, explicitly Marxist program at the 1891 party congress in Erfurt.[1]

Drafting and adoption

[edit]
Karl Kautsky

The principal architect of the new program was the theorist Karl Kautsky, the editor of the party's theoretical journal Die Neue Zeit.[1] Kautsky had been attracted to socialism as a student in Vienna and joined the German Social Democratic movement in the early 1880s, founding Die Neue Zeit in 1883. He quickly became the party's leading intellectual figure, skilled in using dialectical thinking to reconcile antagonistic tendencies within the movement.[10]

Engels, who maintained a close relationship with the German party leaders, was an influential proponent of the new program, having long sought to replace the Gotha Program with one more aligned with Marxist principles.[1] The drafting of the program at Erfurt was the first of several occasions where Kautsky acted as the primary theorist who could craft a synthesis that balanced the party's various factions.[4] The program was formally adopted by the SPD at its congress held in Erfurt from 14 to 20 October 1891.[1]

Content and ideology

[edit]

The Erfurt Program's core was a synthesis designed for a non-revolutionary period, balancing the ideal of a complete societal transformation with the practical, day-to-day political and economic interests of the working class.[6] It was a compromise that could simultaneously tell revolutionaries to be patient, as history was on their side, while instructing reformists that pursuing immediate gains was their first task, so long as they did not lose sight of the final goal.[6] This "Erfurt Synthesis" was structured into two distinct parts: a theoretical, or "maximalist", section and a practical, or "minimalist", section.[4]

Part I: Maximalist principles

[edit]

The first part of the program, inspired by the Communist Manifesto, articulated the party's long-term revolutionary principles.[4] It drew a bleak picture of capitalist society, arguing that while workers' productivity was increasing, the growth of monopolies was robbing them of the fruits of their labour.[4] The program predicted that this would lead to "mounting insecurity, misery, pressure, subordination, debasement and exploitation" for the proletariat and the declining middle class.[4]

Economic crises were predicted to become increasingly severe, leading to an "ever more bitter" class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.[4] According to the program, the only solution to these problems was the "transformation of capitalist private property in the means of production—land, mines, raw materials, machines, transportation—into social ownership".[4] This transformation, it asserted, could only be "the work of the working class alone", as all other classes were bound to the principle of private property.[4] The struggle was defined as a political one, as the ultimate goal could only be achieved through the acquisition of political power.[4]

Part II: Minimalist demands

[edit]

The second part of the program outlined a series of immediate objectives to be pursued within the existing capitalist framework.[4] These practical demands were divided into political and economic goals.

The political demands differed little from those of the preceding Gotha Program.[4] They included:

The economic demands included:

The program theorised that the link between these two parts—the revolutionary goal and the reformist practice—was the development of capitalism itself. As capitalism expanded, it would simultaneously isolate and depress the workers, thereby developing in them the consciousness of the need for socialism and the strength to achieve it.[6]

Official commentary

[edit]
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 referred to, in particular by later critics, as "the Marxism of the Second International," in distinction to Marx's own.[12] Marxist historian Isaac Deutscher has referred to it as "vulgar Marxism."[full citation needed] 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 what is called orthodox Marxist theory before the split between self-declared Marxist parties and organisations during World War I, especially after 1917.

Reception and influence

[edit]

The draft program was praised by Friedrich Engels for its improvements over its predecessor, the Gotha Program, specifically as regards its removal of "outmoded traditions," both "Lassallean and vulgar socialistic." At the same time, however, he critiqued its opportunist, non-Marxist views on the state, as expressed in a criticism he sent to Kautsky on 29 June 1891.[13]

The Erfurt Program was a significant success for the SPD. It provided a coherent ideological framework that allowed the party to grow rapidly while navigating the political realities of the German Empire. Under this program, the SPD established a "tactic of pure opposition", using parliament primarily as a platform for agitation rather than as a legislative body.[14] The party refused to vote for the national budget or participate in ceremonies like the Hoch to the Kaiser.[14]

This strategy proved highly effective. The party's share of the vote in Reichstag elections grew steadily, from 19.7% in 1890 to 31.7% in 1903.[14] This electoral success cemented the party's attachment to what became known as its "tried and true (altbewährte) tactic".[14] The synthesis was stable as long as two conditions held: the German state continued to treat the working class as a pariah group, and the expanding capitalist economy provided enough material benefits to prevent the workers from being driven to revolt.[15]

Challenges and breakdown

[edit]

The Erfurt Synthesis began to face serious challenges in the late 1890s and particularly after 1905, as the political and economic context in Germany shifted.[6]

Revisionism and challenge from the right

[edit]
Eduard Bernstein

The unprecedented prosperity and rising real wages of the late 1890s began to undermine the Erfurt Program's core prediction of ever-increasing misery for the proletariat.[16] This gave rise to Revisionism, a theoretical challenge articulated by Eduard Bernstein. Bernstein argued that capitalism was not heading for an imminent collapse but was, in fact, developing a capacity for adjustment and a more equitable distribution of wealth.[17] He challenged the party to abandon its revolutionary rhetoric and to embrace a fully reformist, democratic-socialist path.[17]

In southern Germany, where class lines were less sharply drawn, a reformist wing of the party had already emerged. They challenged the Erfurt Program's thesis that the peasantry was doomed and advocated for policies to protect small agricultural holdings.[18] The party's right wing, including Bernstein and the southern reformists, thus attacked the revolutionary theory of the Erfurt Program in favour of its gradualist practice.[19]

Challenge from the left

[edit]
Rosa Luxemburg

A more fundamental challenge to the Erfurt Synthesis came from the left after 1905. The 1905 Russian Revolution and a period of intense domestic labour strife in Germany breathed new life into the party's revolutionary elements.[19] Figures like Rosa Luxemburg began to challenge the party's traditional tactic of passive opposition that had grown out of the Erfurt Program.[19] They argued that the time for "patience" was over and that the party must actively pursue a revolutionary course through tools like the mass strike.[20] This "Revisionism of the left" represented a permanent challenge to the Erfurt Synthesis, attacking its gradualist practice in favour of its revolutionary theory.[21]

Legacy

[edit]

The competing pressures from the reformist right and the revolutionary left pulled the Erfurt Program's internal contradictions apart.[8] The synthesis of revolutionary theory and gradualist practice, which had held the party together for over two decades, ultimately proved untenable. The tensions culminated in the party's split during World War I, with the majority supporting the war effort in a reformist-nationalist turn, and the minority opposition clinging to the principles of proletarian internationalism.[8]

When the anti-war opposition formed the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) in 1917, it readopted the Erfurt Program as its platform.[22] However, in the context of war and approaching revolution, the program was no longer suitable. It had been designed for a period in which the state was stable and the masses, while discontented, were not actively revolutionary.[22] The legacy of the Erfurt Program was thus the schism in German socialism and the creation of a "centrist" ideological position, embodied by figures like Kautsky, who were ultimately trapped between the two magnets of reform and revolution.[23]

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Schorske 1955, p. 4.
  2. ^ Schorske 1955, p. 355.
  3. ^ Schorske 1955, pp. 3–4.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Schorske 1955, p. 5.
  5. ^ Schorske 1955, pp. 5–6.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Schorske 1955, p. 6.
  7. ^ Schorske 1955, pp. 16, 46.
  8. ^ a b c Schorske 1955, p. 340.
  9. ^ a b c d e f Schorske 1955, p. 3.
  10. ^ Schorske 1955, pp. 4–5.
  11. ^ Schorske 1955, pp. 5, 158.
  12. ^ 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. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
  13. ^ Lenin, Vladimir I (1917). "4.4 Criticism of the draft of the Erfurt Programme". The State and Revolution.
  14. ^ a b c d Schorske 1955, p. 7.
  15. ^ Schorske & 1-55, p. 6.
  16. ^ Schorske 1955, p. 16.
  17. ^ a b Schorske 1955, p. 17.
  18. ^ Schorske 1955, p. 25.
  19. ^ a b c Schorske 1955, p. 46.
  20. ^ Schorske 1955, pp. 54, 76.
  21. ^ Schorske 1955, p. 54.
  22. ^ a b Schorske 1955, p. 316.
  23. ^ Schorske 1955, p. 329.

Works cited

[edit]
  • Schorske, Carl E. (1955). German Social Democracy, 1905–1917: The Development of the Great Schism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. OCLC 721994.

Further reading

[edit]
  • Kautsky, Karl Das Erfurter Programm Dietz Nachf. Verlag, Stuttgart, 1920
  • Sassoon, Donald One Hundred Years of Socialism. The New Press, New York, 1996.
[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Erfurt_Program&oldid=1300743440"