Quiz: Critique of the Gotha Programme

All 37 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. 1. What does Marx say about “education of the people by the state”?

   Altogether objectionable: government and church alike should be kept out of the school Acceptable only if the teachers are elected by the workers and paid from party funds The best demand in the programme, provided the state is first made free and democratic Unnecessary, since the church already provides elementary schooling for the whole people
2. 2. Which part of the social product does Marx expect to grow as the new society develops?

   What is paid out to individual producers as private savings and inheritances What goes to the general costs of administration not belonging to production What is spent on armies and fortifications for the defence of the new society What serves common needs, such as schools and health services
3. 3. Whose book does Marx mention as wrongly making him responsible for the Eisenach party’s programmes?

   Bakunin’s Dühring’s Mazzini’s Proudhon’s
4. 4. What kind of communist society is Marx describing in the first phase?

   One founded from scratch by voluntary colonies, as the utopians proposed One just emerging from capitalist society, still stamped with its birthmarks One modelled on the primitive communism of the ancient village communities One already developed on its own foundations, free of the old society’s defects
5. 5. What, according to Marx, does freedom consist in, regarding the state?

   Strengthening the state so that it can protect society against the growing power of capital Converting the state from an organ above society into one completely subordinate to it Abolishing all laws and state organs at once, on the morrow of the revolution Making the state “free”, independent of the classes and parties within society
6. 6. Which proposition does Marx call “the law of all history up to now”?

   As production grows, every class in turn rises to power and then gives way to the class beneath it As wealth accumulates on the side of the non-worker, a share of it always trickles down to the worker As labour develops socially, poverty grows for the worker and wealth for the non-worker As labour develops socially, wages rise until the worker receives the undiminished proceeds of his labour
7. 7. What did the programme leave out when it said the instruments of labour are the monopoly of the capitalist class?

   The landowners The church The Prussian state The peasants
8. 8. What does Marx criticise in the demand for a “normal working day”?

   It is indefinite; workers’ parties elsewhere always fix the length they think normal It merely repeats what the factory laws of the German Empire already require It ignores the agricultural labourers, who still form the majority of German workers It is too radical, and would drive German industry out of the world market
9. 9. What did the programme propose “to pave the way for the solution of the social question”?

   Producers’ co-operative societies with state aid Nationalisation of all land General strikes Emigration societies
10. 10. Which Lassallean phrase about the other classes does Marx attack?

    That the middle classes will gradually be absorbed into the working class without struggle That in relation to the working class all other classes are “only one reactionary mass” That the bourgeoisie remains a progressive class with which the workers must ally That the peasants, not the industrial workers, are the true revolutionary class in Germany
11. 11. What did Engels do with some sharply personal expressions in the manuscript?

    Kept every word unchanged Replaced them with dots Moved them to the footnotes Printed them in italics with a warning note
12. 12. What does Marx point out about “the working people” in Germany?

    They are mostly factory workers in the big towns Most are peasants, not proletarians They are mostly emigrants to America They already control the state through their votes
13. 13. Who first published the critique, and when?

    Lenin, in 1917 Marx, in 1875 Engels, in 1891 Bebel, in Zurich in 1880
14. 14. What should the paragraph on schools at least have demanded, according to Marx?

    Separate schools for workers’ children, run by the unions Universities in every town Religious instruction Technical schools combined with the elementary school
15. 15. What is Marx’s view of a general prohibition of child labour?

    Already achieved in Germany, so its inclusion in the programme is superfluous Possible only in agriculture, where families can do without the children’s wages The most important demand of all, to be carried out at once and without any exception Incompatible with large industry: a pious wish, and reactionary if done
16. 16. What is Marx’s objection to “Labour is the source of all wealth and all culture”?

    Culture has nothing to do with labour Money is the source of all wealth, as the mercantilists held Capital is just as much the source of use-values as labour Nature is just as much the source of use-values as labour
17. 17. To whom did Marx send the critique in 1875, to be passed on to the party leaders?

    Eduard Bernstein Karl Kautsky Ferdinand Lassalle Wilhelm Bracke
18. 18. Why, according to Marx, do the bourgeois have good reason to ascribe supernatural creative power to labour?

    Because a man who owns only his labour-power must be the slave of those who own the means of labour Because labour, as the sole source of value, entitles the owners who direct it to the whole social product Because the phrase persuades workers that their wages already equal the full value of what they produce Because labour performed under their direction is the source of all culture and all of society’s wealth
19. 19. What does Marx compare the programme’s retention of the iron law of wages to?

    Rebel slaves arguing slavery must end because upkeep has a low maximum A builder who discovers his timber is rotten and still raises the roof on top of it A doctor who knows the cure but goes on prescribing the very remedy that has killed his patients Sailors who have found the true chart but still steer by a compass they know to be broken
20. 20. How does Marx describe the programme’s political demands (universal suffrage, direct legislation, people’s militia)?

    A Lassallean invention, unknown to any democratic party before him The old democratic litany, echoing the bourgeois People’s Party Utopian dreams that no state on earth could ever put into practice A revolutionary programme going beyond anything the bourgeois parties demand
21. 21. Why is the equal right of the first phase still a right of inequality?

    Unequal people measured by an equal standard get unequal results The state still keeps back most of the product before anything is distributed Workers are paid in different currencies according to the trade they practise Only the labour of men, not of women and children, counts as a contribution
22. 22. What slogan does Marx say society can inscribe on its banners in the higher phase of communism?

    “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” “To each according to his work” “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!” “He who does not work, neither shall he eat”
23. 23. How does Marx criticise the programme’s view of the national state?

    The programme neglects national unity, which the workers must complete before they turn to socialism The struggle is national in form, but the programme shrinks internationalism to a phrase The programme forgets that workers have no country and must disregard national frontiers altogether The programme ties the workers too closely to the Prussian state and should demand its immediate dissolution
24. 24. Whose newspaper was “entirely right”, according to Marx, to announce that the German workers’ party had forsworn internationalism?

    The Times The liberal Kölnische Zeitung The Volksstaat Bismarck’s Norddeutsche
25. 25. Which of these is not among the deductions Marx says must first be made from the total social product?

    Profit for the capitalist Cover for replacing used-up means of production A reserve or insurance fund An additional portion for expanding production
26. 26. Complete Marx’s maxim in the letter to Bracke: “Every step of real movement is more important than …”

    a hundred speeches a thousand books a dozen programmes any election
27. 27. What does Engels say the manuscript sets out clearly for the first time?

    Marx’s plans for the later volumes of Capital and their order Marx’s theory of value Marx’s position on the course Lassalle took in the agitation Marx’s view of the Paris Commune
28. 28. What does Marx say belongs to Lassalle in the “iron law of wages”?

    Nothing but the word “iron”, borrowed from Goethe The proof The statistics The whole theory
29. 29. What does Marx say about the bourgeois view of present-day distribution?

    The bourgeois concede that the workers’ share ought to rise in step with the productivity of labour The bourgeois admit it is unjust, but say no other distribution is possible while the present mode lasts The bourgeois call it “just”, and on today’s mode of production it is the only just one The bourgeois regard it as a passing arrangement that later stages of production will make more equal
30. 30. In the first phase, what is the “equal right” to products according to labour still, in principle?

    Natural right Divine right Feudal right Bourgeois right
31. 31. What, by the end of Marx’s list of deductions, has happened to the “undiminished proceeds of labour”?

    They have been paid out in full, without any deduction They have increased with productivity They have been abolished by law They are now “diminished”
32. 32. What does Marx say the state of the political transition period between capitalism and communism can be?

    Nothing other than a free people’s state resting on universal suffrage No state at all, since the state must be abolished along with the old society Nothing other than a constitutional monarchy with a responsible ministry Nothing other than the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat
33. 33. What does Marx say Lassalle knew by heart?

    Hegel’s Logic Ricardo’s Principles The Communist Manifesto The Prussian constitution
34. 34. What example does Marx give of “useful labour” performed outside society?

    A savage who kills an animal with a stone or gathers fruit A sailor alone at sea A shepherd guarding sheep A monk copying manuscripts
35. 35. With which Latin phrase does Marx end the critique?

    Dixi et salvavi animam meam Quod erat demonstrandum De omnibus dubitandum Veni, vidi, vici
36. 36. Complete: “Right can never be higher than …”

    the moral conscience of the individual men and women who together make up the society the eternal and unchanging principles of justice laid down in the laws of nature itself the economic structure of society and the cultural development conditioned by it the will of the majority as expressed through universal, equal and direct suffrage
37. 37. Why does Marx think it a mistake to put the main emphasis on distribution?

    Workers care far more about the length of the working day than about their share of the product A just distribution can only be secured after the state has first been made free and democratic Distribution is fixed by natural laws of the market and cannot be altered by any political programme Distribution of consumption goods only follows from the distribution of the conditions of production