Quiz: Critique of the Gotha Programme

11 questions drawn at random. Score 80% for a silver medal.

1. 1. What did the programme propose “to pave the way for the solution of the social question”?

   General strikes Nationalisation of all land Producers’ co-operative societies with state aid Emigration societies
2. 2. To whom did Marx send the critique in 1875, to be passed on to the party leaders?

   Karl Kautsky Wilhelm Bracke Ferdinand Lassalle Eduard Bernstein
3. 3. What does Marx criticise in the demand for a “normal working day”?

   It is too radical, and would drive German industry out of the world market 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
4. 4. 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 programme forgets that workers have no country and must disregard national frontiers altogether The struggle is national in form, but the programme shrinks internationalism to a phrase The programme ties the workers too closely to the Prussian state and should demand its immediate dissolution
5. 5. Who first published the critique, and when?

   Lenin, in 1917 Marx, in 1875 Engels, in 1891 Bebel, in Zurich in 1880
6. 6. How does Marx describe the programme’s political demands (universal suffrage, direct legislation, people’s militia)?

   The old democratic litany, echoing the bourgeois People’s Party Utopian dreams that no state on earth could ever put into practice A Lassallean invention, unknown to any democratic party before him A revolutionary programme going beyond anything the bourgeois parties demand
7. 7. In the first phase, what is the “equal right” to products according to labour still, in principle?

   Natural right Divine right Bourgeois right Feudal right
8. 8. What does Marx say about the bourgeois view of present-day distribution?

   The bourgeois regard it as a passing arrangement that later stages of production will make more equal The bourgeois call it “just”, and on today’s mode of production it is the only just one The bourgeois admit it is unjust, but say no other distribution is possible while the present mode lasts The bourgeois concede that the workers’ share ought to rise in step with the productivity of labour
9. 9. Complete: “Right can never be higher than …”

   the will of the majority as expressed through universal, equal and direct suffrage the economic structure of society and the cultural development conditioned by it the eternal and unchanging principles of justice laid down in the laws of nature itself the moral conscience of the individual men and women who together make up the society
10. 10. 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 labour develops socially, poverty grows for the worker and wealth for the non-worker As wealth accumulates on the side of the non-worker, a share of it always trickles down to the worker As labour develops socially, wages rise until the worker receives the undiminished proceeds of his labour
11. 11. What is Marx’s objection to “Labour is the source of all wealth and all culture”?

    Capital is just as much the source of use-values as labour Culture has nothing to do with labour Nature is just as much the source of use-values as labour Money is the source of all wealth, as the mercantilists held