would allow) into their International Workingmen's Association (IWA). Platform and organization The SDAP was typically deemed Marxist by most observers, although this term was somewhat amorphous during Marx's lifetime. The party was described as such mainly because of its IWA membership and Liebknecht's close personal relationship with Marx. The true nature of Eisenacher Marxism was closer to democratic socialism than the communist parties of later decades. The party platform called for a free people's state (freier Volkstaat), which could align private cooperatives with state organizations. The party primarily supported trade unionism as the utility by which workers could prosper in the context of capitalism. Der Volksstaat The party press was a vital element of the SDAP's political strategy. The party's newspaper was first called Demokratisches Wochenblatt (Democratic Weekly Paper) and later Der Volksstaat (The People's State) and was edited by Liebknecht. The paper was published in Leipzig from 2 October 1869 to 23 September 1876. The party did not yet have its own printers, but Liebknecht was ambitious in his efforts to promote its publications on a wide scale as educational tools for workers. Although most issues of Der Volksstaat were primarily composed of incendiary writing about the German political situation, Liebknecht attempted as much as possible to include essays on political theory, transcripts of academic lectures, and even some popular fiction. Congress at Gotha Despite their differences, the SDAP and Lassalle's ADAV shared a largely identical interpretation of socialism. The similarity was significant enough to mean that they were both routinely monitored and considered equally suspicious by the authorities. The two parties were vying for the same audience among the working class, and they were doing so simultaneously with several more moderate liberal organizations. The critical distinction among all the groups' positions was their level of commitment to the right to strike. SAPD and SPD The competition between moderate and radical factions reached a boiling point when SDAP and Lassalle's ADAV finally merged to form a united front. In a convention at Gotha in 1875, the new fusion party was renamed the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (German: Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, SAPD). The resultant Gotha Program was a mixture of socialist and liberal capitalist ideas. Though it largely satisfied the conventioneers, the new policies were denounced by Marx himself in the scathing essay Critique of the Gotha Program (1875). Despite its relatively moderate stance, the SAPD organization was deemed