View source for Erfurt Program

{{Short description|SPD party platform agreed in 1891}}
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{{Infobox document | document_name = Erfurt Program | image =Protokoll des Parteitages der SPD in Erfurt (14. bis 20. Oktober 1891).jpg| image_size = 200px | image_alt = | caption = | image2 = | image2_size = | image2_alt = | caption2 = | orig_lang_code = de| title_orig = | date_created = | date_presented = | date_ratified =1891 | date_effective = | date_repeal = | location_of_document = Erfurt| commissioned = | writer = August Bebel, Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky| signers = [[Social Democratic Party of Germany]] | media_type = | subject = | purpose = }}

The '''Erfurt Program''' was adopted by the [[Social Democratic Party of Germany]] during the SPD Congress at [[Erfurt]] in 1891. Drafted by theorists [[Karl Kautsky]] and [[Eduard Bernstein]], the program set out a [[Marxism|Marxist]] view and superseded the party's [[Gotha Program]] of 1875. The Erfurt Program identified private ownership of the [[means of production]] as the source of social ailments, and advocated a political struggle with the goal of achieving a social revolution and an equal society without class divisions. Before this could be achieved, the program advocated reforms including [[universal suffrage]], [[Freedom of speech|freedoms of speech]] and [[Freedom of association|association]], [[gender equality]], [[separation of church and state]], [[free education]] and [[Universal health care|medicine]], and a [[Progressive tax|progressive income tax]]. It also demanded labor protections including an [[Eight-hour day movement|eight-hour working day]] and the prohibition of [[Child labour|child labor]]. The Erfurt Program was SPD's official program until 1921, when it was replaced by the {{ill|Görlitz Program|de|Görlitzer Programm}}.

==The program==
The program declared the imminent death of [[capitalism]] and the necessity of [[socialist]] ownership of the [[means of production]]. The Party intended to pursue these goals through legal political participation rather than by revolutionary activity. Kautsky argued that because capitalism, by its very nature, must collapse, the immediate task for [[socialist]]s was to work for the improvement of workers' lives rather than for the [[revolution]], which was inevitable.{{Citation needed|date=August 2023}}

==Reception and response==
The draft program was praised by [[Friedrich Engels]] for its improvements over its predecessor, the Gotha Programme, 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.<ref>{{cite book |last=Lenin |first=Vladimir I |title=The State and Revolution |url=https://archive.org/details/TheStateAndRevolutionVladimirLenin |year=1917|chapter=4.4 Criticism of the draft of the Erfurt Programme}}</ref>

===Official commentary===
{{main|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.<ref>{{cite book |last=Korsch |first=Karl |title=Marxism & Philosophy |publisher=Monthly Review Press |year=1923 |isbn=978-0-85345-153-2 |location=New York |pages=55 |quote=Marxist theory in the second half of the nineteenth century became gradually impoverished and degenerated into vulgar-marxism.}}</ref> Marxist historian Isaac Deutscher has referred to it as "[[vulgar Marxism]]."  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 Marxism|orthodox]] Marxist theory before the split between self-declared ‘Marxist’ parties and organisations during WWI, especially after 1917.

== See also ==
* [[Frankfurt declaration]]
* [[Gotha Program]]
* [[Maximum program]]
* [[Minimum program]]
* [[Transitional program]]

== References ==
<references />
* Kautsky, Karl ''Das Erfurter Programm'' Dietz Nachf. Verlag, Stuttgart, 1920
* Sassoon, Donald ''One Hundred Years of Socialism''. The New Press, New York, 1996.

==External links==
*[http://marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/1891/erfurt-program.htm The Erfurt Program]
*[http://www.connexions.org/CxArchive/MIA/marx/works/1891/06/29.htm ''A Critique of the Erfurt Program'' by Friedrich Engels]
*[http://marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1892/erfurt/index.htm ''The Class Struggle'' by Karl Kautsky]

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[[Category:1891 in politics]]
[[Category:Marxism]]
[[Category:Party platforms]]
[[Category:Social Democratic Party of Germany]]
[[Category:History of Erfurt|Program]]
[[Category:1891 documents]]