I. The Preamble, in Ten Paragraphs

The present draft differs very favourably from the former programme. The strong remnants of outlived tradition—specifically Lassallean as well as vulgar-socialist—have in essence been removed; on its theoretical side the draft stands, on the whole, on the ground of present-day science, and can be discussed from that ground.

It falls into three sections: 1. Preamble; 2. Political Demands; 3. Demands for the Protection of Labour.

In general these suffer from the attempt to unite two incompatible things: to be at once a programme and a commentary on the programme. People are afraid of not being clear enough if they are brief and telling, and so they put explanations in, which make the thing long-winded and dragging. In my view the programme should be as short and precise as possible. Even if a foreign word occurs now and then, or a sentence whose whole bearing cannot be grasped at first sight, that does no harm. The spoken word at meetings and the written explanation in the press see to everything necessary, and the short, pithy sentence, once understood, then fixes itself in the memory and becomes a watchword, which never happens to a lengthier exposition. One should not sacrifice too much to considerations of popularity; one should not underestimate the intellectual gifts and the level of education of our workers. They have understood far harder things than the shortest, tersest programme can offer them; and if the period of the Anti-Socialist Law has made the full training of the masses who have newly joined us harder, and here and there prevented it, that will soon be made good under the guidance of the old hands, now that our propaganda writings can once again be kept and read undisturbed.

I shall try to put this whole passage somewhat more briefly and, if I succeed, enclose it or send it on afterwards; and I now turn to the separate paragraphs, numbered 1 to 10. In Appendix I my proposals have been set into the draft.

Paragraph 1. “The separation”, etc. “Bergwerke, Gruben, Minen” [mines, pits, mines]—three words for one thing; two should go. I would let Bergwerke stand, since with us they are called that even on the flattest plain, and would cover everything with the most usual expression. On the other hand I would add: “railways and other means of transport.”

Paragraph 2. Here I would put: “In the hands of their appropriators (or their owners) the social means of labour”, and likewise afterwards: “dependence … on the owners (or appropriators) of the means of labour”, and so on.

That these gentlemen have appropriated those things as their “exclusive possession” has already been said under 1, and can only be repeated here if one absolutely insists on bringing in the word “monopolists”. Neither the one word nor the other adds the least thing to the sense. But what is superfluous in a programme weakens it.

“The means of labour necessary for the existence of society”: these are always those that happen to exist. Before the steam engine people managed without it; now we could not. Since today all means of labour are, directly or indirectly—either by their construction or by way of the social division of labour—social means of labour, these two words sufficiently express what exists at any given moment, correctly and without any misleading secondary meaning.

If the conclusion follows the preamble of the Statutes of the International, I would prefer that it do so completely: “social misery (this is No. 1), mental stunting and political dependence”. Physical stunting is included in social misery, and political dependence is a fact, whereas political rightlessness is a declamatory phrase of only relative validity, such as does not belong in a programme.

Paragraph 3. In my view the first sentence must be changed. “Under the rule of the exclusive owners.” Firstly, what follows is an economic fact, which is to be explained economically. But the expression “rule of the exclusive owners” brings in the false appearance that the political rule of that gang of robbers has caused it. Secondly, these exclusive owners include not only “capitalists and big landowners” (what are the “bourgeois” doing after them? Are they a third class of exclusive owners? Are the big landowners “bourgeois” too? And, once big landowners are mentioned, are the colossal remnants of feudalism to be ignored, which give our whole political mess in Germany its specifically reactionary stamp?). Peasants and petty bourgeois are “exclusive owners” too, at least as yet; but they do not figure anywhere in the programme, and therefore it must be so expressed that they are not included at all in the sort of exclusive owners that is being spoken of.

“The accumulation of the means of labour and of the wealth produced by the exploited.” “Wealth” consists of 1. means of labour, 2. means of subsistence. It is therefore ungrammatical and illogical first to speak of one part of wealth, and then not of the other part but of wealth as a whole, and to join the two by and.

“Increases … in the hands of the capitalists with growing speed.” What has become of the “big landowners” and the “bourgeois” from above? If the capitalists are enough here, they should have been enough above too. But if one goes into detail, they are not enough at all.

“Ever greater grows the number and the misery of the proletarians.” This is not correct, put so absolutely. The organisation of the workers, their constantly growing resistance, will possibly set up a certain dam against the growth of misery. But what certainly grows is the insecurity of existence. That I would put in.

Paragraph 4. “The planlessness rooted in the nature of capitalist private production” needs strong improvement. I know capitalist production as a form of society, as an economic phase; and capitalist private production as a phenomenon occurring in one form or another within that phase. What, then, does capitalist private production mean? Production by the individual entrepreneur; and that is already becoming more and more the exception. Capitalist production by joint-stock companies is already no longer private production, but production for the associated account of many. And when we pass from the joint-stock companies to the trusts, which dominate and monopolise whole branches of industry, then not only does private production cease there, but planlessness too. Strike out “private”, and the sentence may pass at a pinch.

“The ruin of wide strata of the people.” Instead of this declamatory phrase, which looks as if we were still sorry for this ruin of bourgeois and petty bourgeois, I would state the simple fact: “which, by ruining the urban and rural middle strata, the petty bourgeois and small peasants, widen (or deepen) the abyss between the possessing and the propertyless”.

The two closing sentences say the same thing twice. In Appendix I, I give a proposal for amending them.

Paragraph 5. “Of the causes” must read “of its causes”, which is no doubt only a slip of the pen.

Paragraph 6. “Bergwerke, Minen, Gruben”, as above under 1. “Private production” as above under 4. I would say: “The transformation of the present capitalist production for the account of individuals or joint-stock companies into socialist production for the account of society as a whole and according to a plan determined in advance, a transformation, etc. … creates, and through which alone the emancipation of the working class, and with it the emancipation of all members of society without exception, is accomplished.”

Paragraph 7. I would put it as in Appendix I.

Paragraph 8. Instead of “class-conscious”, which is indeed an abbreviation easily understood in our circles, I would say, in the interest of general understanding and of translation into foreign languages: “with the workers who have attained consciousness of their class position”, or something of the kind.

Paragraph 9. Closing sentence: “… puts, and thereby unites in one hand the power of economic exploitation and of political oppression.”

Paragraph 10. After “class rule” there is missing: “and of classes themselves”. The abolition of classes is our fundamental demand; without it the abolition of class rule is an economic absurdity. Instead of “for the equal right of all” I propose: “for equal rights and equal duties of all”, etc. Equal duties are for us a quite particularly essential complement to the bourgeois-democratic equal rights, and take from them their specifically bourgeois meaning.

The closing sentence, “In its struggle … are suited”, I should prefer to strike out. In its vagueness—“which are suited to improve the condition of the people in general” (who is that?) “…”—it can embrace everything: protective tariffs and free trade, guilds and freedom of trade, land credit, exchange banks, compulsory vaccination and the prohibition of vaccination, alcoholism and anti-drink, etc. What it is meant to say is already contained in the preceding clause; and that whoever wants the whole also takes every single piece of it along surely need not be said separately—I think it weakens the impression. But if the sentence is wanted as a transition to the particular demands, one might say something like: “Social-Democracy champions all demands which bring it nearer to this goal” (striking out “measures and institutions” as a repetition); or, what is better still, one says outright what it is about: that we have to make up the work the bourgeoisie has neglected. In that sense I have put a closing sentence in Appendix I, which I consider important because of my remarks in the following section, and as grounds for the proposals I make there.