Oktay MAMEDOV
Doctor of Economics (DSc), Professor, Head of the Department of Political Economy and Economic Policy, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia

TERRA ECONOMICUS, 2015, Vol. 13 (no. 3),

p. 6-15
DOI: 10.18522/2073-6606-2015-3-6-15

In spring 1875, a treasure of theoretical thought, a critical review of the draft programme of the United Workers’ Party of Germany, «Critique of the Gotha Programme» by Karl Marx, had enriched the political economy science. However, only 16 years after the public became acquainted with the «Critique of the Gotha Programme»: it was published by Engels in 1891 in «Die Neue Zeit» – German socialist theoretical journal of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. The author attracts the readers’ attention to those aspects of Marx’s work which are relevant in context of processes taking place in modern society. The socialist system of higher education has been thoroughly ideological, as, indeed, all the coordinates of Soviet life. It ruined, after all, higher education, as well as the Soviet society. But «the ideological Guinness record » took place: there was no a student of those years that didn’t flinch when hearing on Karl Marx’s «Critique of the Gotha Program». Though, if Marx’s work was read, we have fewer problems today. The author focuses on the issues such as relevance of the methodological potential of the work by K. Marx, relation of freedom of society and freedom of state, military-government despotism, failed prophecy and fate of Marx’s «Gothic» ideas in Russia. The author introduces categories of «Gothic society» and «Gothic economy» within the conceptual apparatus of modern social theory, referring to the presence of the characteristic features of which Marx had foreseen in the transition from capitalism to socialism.