Approximately twenty-five thousand members were represented at Gotha by nearly 130 delegates with a rougly sixty-forty split in favor of the ADAV [Lassalleans]. The new party that was formed [a merger of the ADAV and SDAP], the Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (SADP), was an amalgamation of the two old parties… The party program adopted at Gotha was primarily Lassallean — the iron law of wages, “one reactionary mass” (the notion that all other classes formed a solid bloc in opposition to the workers), and state-financed producers’ cooperatives were included, but an explicit tie to the trade unions was not. Few concessions to the Eisenachers’ point of view were won by its backers, although Liebknecht did manage to win a stronger commitment to working class internationalism. Judged by its program, the new party was a victory for the ADAV, and this was certainly the evaluation of Marx and Engels, who were sitting in England. In fact, the two “old ones”, as they were called in party circles, had tried to forestall the program by sending severe criticisms of the draft to Bebel, Liebknecht, Bracke, and others in the SDAP with whom they had some influence… Marx and Engels denounced the new program as confused, state-socialistic, and too great a concession for the unity even they considered necessary.
Gary P. Steenson, “Not One Man, Not One Penny!”: German Social Democracy, 1863-1914, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981, pp. 31-32.
