Critique of the Gotha Program (Spectre)

Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program is a revelation. It offers the fullest elaboration of his vision for a communist future, free from the shackles of capital, but also the state. Neglected by the statist versions of socialism, whether Social Democratic or Stalinist that left a wreckage of coercion and disillusionment in their wake, this new annotated translation of Marx’s Critique makes clear for the first time the full emancipatory scope of Marx’s notion of life after capitalism. An erudite new introduction by Peter Hudis plumbs the depth of Marx’s argument, elucidating how his vision of communism, and the transition to it, was thoroughly democratic. At a time when the rule of capital is being questioned and challenged, this volume makes an essential contribution to a real alternative to capitalism, rather than piecemeal reforms. In the twenty-first century, when it has never been more needed, here is Marx at his most liberatory.

Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, and socialist revolutionary. Author of The Communist Manifesto.

Kevin B. Anderson is Professor of Sociology at University of California, Santa Barbara, with appointments in Feminist Studies and Political Science. He is the author of Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution (with Janet Afary), and Marx at the Margins.

Karel Ludenhoff is an Amsterdam-based labor activist and a writer on Marx's critique of political economy whose essays have appeared in Logos and other journals.

Peter Hudis is Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Oakton Community College and author of Marx's Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism and Frantz Fanon: Philosopher of the Barricades. He edited The Rosa Luxemburg Reader and The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg.

Peter Linebaugh is the coauthor of Albion’s Fatal Tree, and is the author of The London Hanged, The Many-Headed Hydra (with Marcus Rediker), The Magna Carta Manifesto, and introductions to Verso’s selection of Thomas Paine’s writings and PM’s new edition of E.P. Thompson’s William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary. He lives in the region of the Great Lakes and works at the University of Toledo in Ohio.