KARL
KAUTSKY –- RENEGADE
OR REVOLUTIONARY?
Hans-Jürgen Mende
Sketch
of his theoretical and political work
Karl Kautsky – Renagat oder Revolutionär?,
Diskussionsangebot der PDS, pamphlet published by the Komission Politische Bildung (Commission
on Political Education) of the Parteivorstand
der PDS (the executive of the Party of Democratic Socialism). Berlin,
Undated. Translation by Morton H.
Frank, Philadelphia, with the aid of Brigitte Weber, Berlin.
Translator's
Note: Written in the immediate
aftermath of the demise of the German Democratic Republic, this booklet records
the author's urgent effort to reevaluate earlier positions. Not only does the document provide an
intimate portrait of left thinking during Kautsky's life, it is itself a living
piece of history. In 1985 Mende had
been a hard-line critic of Kautsky, being the author of a volume named Karl Kautsky – vom Marxisten zum Opportunisten;
Studie zur Gestichte des historischen Materialismus (Karl Kautsky – From
Marxist to Opportunist; A Study in the History of Historical Materialism),
Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1985. The present
booklet shows how shaken up Mende was, advocating positions that he had only
recently scorned.
Hans-Jürgen Mende is a
philosopher. During GDR times he taught
Marxism-Leninism at the Kunsthochschule
Berlin Weißensee (Berlin College of Arts).
After the Wende (the political
"turn") he became active in the Social-Democratic Platform, a short
lived grouping within the PDS around the time of its formation, which was
concerned chiefly with studying the theoretical heritage of social democracy in
the German working class movement. In
this connection, he prepared the present booklet, which was used during GDR
times, and is still used, for political education, both within the Party and
outside. The front cover of the German
text describes it as a Diskussionsangebot,
a prompter for discussion.
After the activity of the
Social-Democratic Platform had come to an end, Hans Jürgen Mende became head of
the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein
(Luisenstadt Educational Society), concerned with the history of Berlin, and in
a larger sense with political education.
Hans-Jürgen Mende is the editor of Karl Kautsky: Vorläufer des neueren
Sozialismus (Karl Kautsky: Forerunner of Modern Socialism) published in
1990 by Dietz Verlag, Berlin. This is a
volume in the series Soziales Denken im
19. u. 20. Jahrhunderten. (Socialist Thought in the 19th and 20th
Centuries).
*Information
provided by the PDS.
CONTENTS (with
pagination of the German original)
1. A Successor to be Reconsidered
The discarded Kautsky 3
The "generally known" Kautsky 3
Why Kautsky merits our interest 4
2. Over Six
Decades as a Committed Social Democrat
The second generation 6
Kautsky's path to social democracy ........... 6
How he became a Marxist 7
The "Pope" of Marxism ............ 8
The trauma of August 4, 1914 9
The Revolution and Kautsky the statesman ........... 10
Anti-Communist and candidate for the Nobel Prize ........... 11
3. Karl
Kautsky the Marxist
Marxist, centrist and renegade.. 13
Kautsky as a Marxist ........... 13
4. Karl Kautsky the Centrist
Veiled opportunism? ..... 17
The strategy of attrition 18
Imperialism - progress or reaction? ........... 19
For the credits, against the war ..... 20
Ultra-imperialism - an alternative?........... 21
A changed Kautsky? 23
Putting brakes on the radicals, motivating the faint hearted
24
The end of the USPD 24
A differentiated judgment is needed ........... 25
5. The Renegade Kautsky
Lenin's damning judgment. 26
An incorrigible Marxist?..
27
Tragic-realistic prognoses
28
The end of a legend? ........... 29
List of the
Most Important Writings by Karl Kautsky . 30
CONTENTS (with
pagination of this translation into English)
1. A Successor to be Reconsidered
The discarded Kautsky 1
The "generally known" Kautsky 2
Why Kautsky merits our interest.. 2
2. Over Six
Decades as a Committed Social Democrat
The second generation ............ 4
Kautsky's path to social democracy ........... 4
How he became a Marxist . 4
The "Pope" of Marxism............ 4
The trauma of August 4, 1914 . 6
The Revolution and Kautsky the statesman............ 7
Anti-Communist and candidate for the Nobel Prize ............ 8
3. Karl
Kautsky the Marxist
Marxist, centrist and renegade 9
Kautsky as a Marxist 9
4. Karl
Kautsky the Centrist
Veiled opportunism?...... 12
The strategy of attrition 13
Imperialism - progress or reaction? 14
For the credits, against the war...... 15
Ultra-imperialism - an alternative?........... 16
A changed Kautsky?........... 17
Putting brakes on the radicals, motivating the faint hearted
18
The end of the USPD ........... 18
A differentiated judgment is needed ........... 19
5. The
Renegade Kautsky
Lenin's damning judgment..
19
An incorrigible Marxist? 20
Tragic-realistic prognoses ........... 21
The end of a legend?........... 22
List of the
Most Important Writings by Karl Kautsky ................... 22
1. A Successor to be Reconsidered
The discarded Kautsky
In the official Party history as it
has been written in the past, Karl Kautsky was the best known among those who
were unknown. Regarded as a renegade,
he was considered as the incarnation of betrayal of the Marxist theory of the
state, class struggle and revolution.
As known to us by way of Lenin, Karl
Kautsky's attack on the dictatorship of the Bolsheviks as the young state power
struggled to survive appears disgusting, especially to people who received
their schooling under the auspices of so-called existing socialism. It was precisely his prognosis of Soviet
collapse that seemed absurd in view of the success of Soviet power in the
collectivization and industrialization of Russia, its historically outstanding
accomplishments in freeing Europe from Hitler fascism, in shattering the
colonial system, in the attainment of nuclear parity and not least the outcome
at Yalta, "the socialist community of states."
Still, from the time that Gorbachev
initiated perestroika and glasnost in the mid-eighties until so-called existing
socialism collapsed in eastern Europe, it has become evident to those in the
tradition of Marx, Engels, Bebel, Rosa Luxemburg and V. I. Lenin, who
previously oriented themselves toward the administrative, command style of
socialism – the writer of these lines included – that the social and human
costs exacted for this experiment conducted in the name of socialism have been
too high. A critical reevaluation of
the history of socialism has not only become possible, but also urgently
necessary.
Karl Kautsky comes into our field of vision because, on the basis of his understanding of Marxist positions, he was the most uncompromising and influential social democratic critic of the October Revolution and its consequences. Yet, for the vindication of the idea of socialism, the following questions can and must now be posed and answered, even though belatedly: Where was Kautsky's critique valid and where was it wrong? Where did he, already then, lay bare the roots and origins of the breakdown of the Soviet model of socialism? Moreover, eastern Europe provides fresh food for thought, so that Kautsky's hitherto singular line of anti-Communist and anti-Soviet argumentation is no longer possible. His arguments have been known to us simply through excerpts cited by Lenin and his followers in classical works for purposes of intimidation and exhortation of Party members. Nearly everything that Kautsky published after 1917 was inaccessible to the general public. Where it could be found, it was situated behind poisoned barriers of scientific institutions. Despite the many historically outmoded elements of his critique, whoever reads the political journalism that Kautsky sustained over seven decades, anti-Bolshevik and anti-Soviet though it was, can still trace his concern and anxiety for the dictatorship operating in the names of Marx and Engels, through his writings as the teacher of the Bolsheviks – for he was so regarded by Lenin and his associates until the first world war.
The "generally known" Kautsky
Yet, it is not simply the
"renegade" Kautsky, hitherto unknown to us, who deserves our
attention, but also Kautsky the Marxist, who supposedly is known. Indeed, the former official Party history
did include the Marxist Kautsky – for he was counted as such from the 1880s
until around 1910 – in the pantheon of leading personalities of the Second
International, although his historically significant theoretical and political
contribution to the workers' movement in this period was not recognized.
In the forty year history of the GDR
only a single work by Karl Kautsky has appeared – his "Remarks on the
Erfurt Program," edited with an instructive epilogue by Horst Bartel, and
published by Dietz Verlag in 1965. In
the FRG, on the other hand, recent editions have appeared of nearly all his
significant writings from 1910. Because
of photomechanical methods of reprinting, every year's issues of Neue Zeit ("New Times"), Kautsky's journal, including all his articles,
are readily available to anyone who is interested. Omitted entirely from consideration [in the GDR] is the
historical significance of this new edition of the journal for further
investigation into the history of the theory and practice of socialism during
the period of the Second International.
There have certainly been enough
ways to demean noteworthy contributors to the development of Marxism, treat
them lightly, denigrate them, tear to pieces any weaknesses in their
social-theoretical conceptions, and simply denounce every criticism of
Bolshevism on their parts as abandonment of Marxism. This sort of treatment affected not only Karl Kautsky, but
extended from Eduard Bernstein to Nikolai Bukharin. Leninism was thus depicted as the direct and only possible
continuation of Marxism. Stalin and his
successors down to Erich Honecker considered themselves qualified to justify
their politics as directly inherited from Marx, Engels and Lenin. Every criticism of the dictatorship of the
Communist party was dismissed as a defamation of Marxism. Excellent works have been carried out by
historians of philosophy in the GDR, initiated above all by Vera Vrona (Wrona),
on the contradictory nature of the development of Marxism after the death of
Friedrich Engels, but even these were virtually unable to modify this picture
of Marx and his successors that dominated the public discourse.
Without question, after the death of
Friedrich Engels, Karl Kautsky stood out as the most influential theorist of
the Second International. Even in his
own lifetime, Kautsky was a legend for those who belonged to the workers
movement, a monument of Marxism, an institution of German and international
social democracy in questions of theory and the practical movement. He left behind a body of journalistic and
scholarly work which in quantity exceeds the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich
Engels and V.I. Lenin. Kautsky corresponded
with personalities all over the world, especially with leading representatives
of German and international social democracy.
About 13,300 letters and cards exchanged with about 2,300
correspondents, which are available in the Kautsky Archive alone of the Institut für Sozialgeschichte (Institute
for Social History), are persuasive witness to that.
Kautsky was a contemporary observer
of the Paris Commune, the founding of the German empire, Bismark's
anti-socialist law, the rise of imperialism, the first world war, the October
Revolution in Russia and the November revolution in Germany. He witnessed the collapse of the Russian,
German and Austrian feudal-aristocratic military despotisms and the new political
order in Europe that resulted from that. He was alive during the founding and
development of the Weimar and Austrian republics, Hitler's seizure of power,
and eventually the occupation of Austria by the Nazi-fascists, from whose
persecution he was able to save himself only by fleeing into exile in Holland,
where he died in October of 1938.
It is quite remarkable that someone
of the stature of Karl Kautsky, who co-authored such diverse chapters in the
history book of German and international social democracy, has barely been
noticed. That is enough to emphasize
that a scientific elaboration of the history of the theory and practice of
socialism cannot do without Karl Kautsky.
It needs to be emphasized that
– historically significant documents of the workers movement are associated with his name. Recall merely the "Erfurt Program" of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1891, the "Founding Manifesto" of the Independent Socialist Party of Germany (USPD) in 1917 and the SPD "Heidelberg Program" of 1925;
–
Kautsky is one of the spiritual fathers of the idea of democratic socialism;
–
the major considerations that went into his assessment of the October
Revolution have today turned out to be historically justifiable;*
–
a critical examination of the controversy between Kautsky and Lenin over the
October Revolution and its aftermath would provide a crucial point of departure
for an objective analysis of the sources and essence of Stalinism and evidence
regarding lines of continuity between Lenin and J.V. Stalin;
–
Kautsky's characterization of the essence of the October Revolution and his
critique of the dictatorship of the Bolsheviks were based on his own
understanding of the theory and methods of Marxism;**
– analysis of the posture of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the Socialist Unity Party of the GDR (SED) toward the work and creative activity of Karl Kautsky could illuminate how and why it could have happened that many "Marxist-Leninist" social scientists – willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or unknowingly – become apologists for so-called existing socialism, and social science became the maidservent of the politics of dictatorship.
---------------
* That applies also to his criticism of the dictatorship of the Bolsheviks established by Lenin and made more pronounced by Stalin.
** An analysis of his relevant conceptions could lend significant support to the assurance that it was not the overall realization of the idea of socialism that ran aground in the collapse of the Soviet model, but merely one specific attempt to carry it out.
2. Over Six Decades as a Committed
Social Democrat
The
second generation
Karl Kautsky represents the second
generation of theorists of scientific socialism. A generation which, as its activity began in and for the workers
movement, already had at hand the most weighty fundamentals for the
emancipation of the working class, thanks to the personal initiative and
support of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: the Marxist conceptions of history
and political economy as they had been elaborated by national social democratic
parties and organizations. These
historical facts alone already imply that Kautsky and other Marxist theorists
of the second generation took a different route to scientific socialism than
that trod by Marx and Engels, let alone their respective individual paths and
points of entry.
Kautsky's
path to social democracy
Karl was born in Prague on October
16, 1854. His painter father and
actress mother then lived in extreme poverty.
Ten years later their situation improved fundamentally due to an
inheritance and the father's appointment as scene painter at the Court theater
in Vienna. Presently the mother became
successful and celebrated as the first socialist woman author.
The parents made every effort to
obtain the best possible education for their son. Private teachers, private schools, the cloister at Melk and the
gymnasium at Vienna were stations for the schoolboy Kautsky. From 1874 on he studied law, philosophy,
history and economics among other subjects at the University of Vienna.
In 1875 the student Kautsky embraced
social democracy, to which he swore until his death in 1938, retaining his
constancy through all the storms and upheavals of the movement. The conception of socialism that occasioned
this step and determined his journalistic activity was influenced by the
occurrence of the Paris Commune, the socialist fiction of George Sand, the
writings of Luis Blanc and Ferdinand Lasalle, the petty bourgeois socialists
Johann Most and Andreas Scheu, the social reformer Karl Höchberg, the
co-founder of neo-Kantianism Friedrich Albert Lange, the natural-historical
materialism of Ernst Haeckel, the positivists Henry Buckle and Herbert Spencer,
the petty bourgeois socialist Eugen Dühring, the Katheder socialist Albert Schäffle and the bourgeois economists
Adam Smith, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill.
Still, this enumeration of events,
currents and individuals only establishes some of the influences in the Zeitgeist, the spirit of those times,
which went to form the personality of the young Kautsky.
Finally, it was the natural-scientific discoveries of Darwin during the latter half of the seventh decade of the century that exerted the dominant influence on the formation of Kautsky's social-theoretical conceptions. The conception of history that he developed at the time was, as he later emphasized, meant to be "nothing other than the application of Darwinism to social development."
How
he became a Marxist
Kautsky's bold affirmation of social
democracy dashed all hopes of a middle class career after the conclusion of his
university education. Deliverance for
the time being came from Zurich, where, from January 1880 until the spring of
1882, he was employed as scientific secretary to Karl Höchburg, who was
supporting the journalistic activity of German social democracy with a
substantial financial expenditure.
Kautsky's stay in Zurich was decisive for his development to Marxism: First of all (as one of many
consequences of the anti-socialist law of 1878), the Sozialdemokrat, the official party organ, was edited here from 1879
on. His contacts with the leaders of
German social democracy became ever more intensive. On this basis a lifelong cooperation arose between him and August
Bebel. Secondly, it was here that he found in Eduard Bernstein his first
true teacher in the study of Marxism. Thirdly, Zurich was a place of refuge
for adherents of diverse revolutionary movements, especially from eastern
Europe. Added to his developing
participation in German social democracy, Kautsky's encounters with these
revolutionaries broadened his political horizon and made for friendships which
were to last for decades. In the fourth place, August Bebel and
Wilhelm Liebknecht in Zurich arranged in 1881 for Kautsky to pay a personal visit
to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in London.
Its most important outcome was the fact that he found in Engels the best
mentor for the further study of Marxist theory and method, and a few years
later was associated with him in a mutually productive working
relationship. This was true above all
for their interests in ethnology, pre- and early history, and the development
of social movements and theories. Finally, he was able to win the support
of Friedrich Engels, August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht and Johann Wilhelm Dietz
for the publication of a scholarly journal.
The first number of Neue Zeit
appeared in January 1883 with Kautsky as chief editor, a post he held until
1917. Over a period of eighty years Neue Zeit developed into a theoretical
organ of Marxism of the German and international working class. He secured his livelihood chiefly from this
journal in the decades that followed.
To be sure, it was not due simply to coincidence, in the form of the
invitation from Höchberg, that Kautsky was able to develop himself into a
theorist of Marxism. For one thing, he
was qualified for the task by passion, readiness for sacrifice, journalistic
capability, scholarly aptitude and organizational talent. For another, there is impressive
documentation in the correspondence between Friedrich Engels and Karl Kautsky
of how closely and sympathetically the founders of scientific socialism
concerned themselves with the rising generation of theorists of the working
class movement. After leaving Zurich in
1882, Kautsky lived chiefly in London, Vienna and Stuttgart. He found the provincial narrowness of
Stuttgart especially stifling – in stark contrast to cosmopolitan London. Only at the turn of the century did he
succeed in persuading Dietz, his publisher, who had his publishing house in
Stuttgart, together with the party executive committee, to let him go to
Berlin, the center of the German and international working class movement. Here he lived and worked until 1924.
The
"Pope" of Marxism
By the end of the 1880s, Karl
Kautsky, through his journalistic and theoretical activities, had acquired an
acknowledged standing in social democracy as a theorist of Marxism. The basic part of the party program adopted
at the 1891 Erfurt party congress issued from his pen. All this, together with the fact of general
approval attests to the authority he had won in the German social democratic
movement. After the death of Friedrich
Engels in 1895, though Kautsky was often reviled, it was undisputed that he had
become the leading theorist of Marxism in the German and international workers
movement.
Collaborating closely with August
Bebel, his influence also grew on the practical activity of German social
democracy. At virtually every party
congress he played a critical role in preparing and championing the most
important decisions. This also was true
for the congresses of the Second International. From the turn of the century he participated in the International
Socialist Bureau, the executive of the Second International. Here too, his influence was enormous as
representative of the most powerful social democratic movement.
At the turn of the century his
residence in Berlin became the nerve center of German and international social
democracy. He was accepted as the recognized
authority on all questions of Marxism, which - in the view of the great
majority of social democrats - he had substantiated impressively in many
theoretical and political debates, especially in debates with Bernstein. Thanks to his position as chief editor of Neue Zeit, Kautsky was also the
politician best informed on the affairs of international social democracy. Though Kautsky was defamed in his time as
the "Pope of Marxism" by foes in and out of social democracy, the
special standing thus accorded him nevertheless strikes a chord up to this day.
The
trauma of August 4, 1914
Though Karl Kautsky was neither a
member of the party executive nor the SPD Reichstag fraction, his counsel
nevertheless came to be sought frequently by these bodies. So too on the eve of August 4, the start of
the war, it seemed important to the leadership of the party and the party group
in the Reichstag to draw him, as the leading theorist of the movement, into
their declaration of consent to war credits for the government. Accordingly, he found himself in a
dilemma. On the one hand, ever since
1907 he had established from the increasingly acute antagonisms of imperialist
politics of the major capitalist countries that the wars which were then in
prospect would contradict the interests of the working class, from which he
resolutely deduced that they had to be condemned and resisted. Armed with this understanding, he had
resolutely fought against national chauvinist tendencies within the ranks of
social democracy, especially as propagated by Gustav Noske. On the other hand, he had championed the
view in the prewar years that if the working class proved too weak to block the
political course leading to war, it would likewise not be strong enough for
successful resistance right after the war had broken out. In addition, those governments interested in
war had been successful in using the slogan "defence of the
fatherland" to mask their responsibility for its outbreak.
War euphoria was general, even among
the workers. In addition, so it seems
to this writer, the problem of national identity within the working class
(understood positively here) had been undervalued by the left social democrats
due to an overemphasis of the international aspect. Kautsky sought a "golden mean" for resolution of how
and if the war credit could be accepted.
His suggestion, while undoubtedly statesmanlike for the situation, was
nevertheless illusory. It ran like
this:
Acceptance yes, but only if the war
goals of the government were announced and a binding commitment undertaken that
these were exclusively defense of the homeland, with no annexations sought or
undertaken. This recommendation was
unceremoniously turned down by the majorities of the parliamentary group and
the party executive. Kautsky then
complied with the majority decision. In
subsequent years the stance he had taken on August 4th became publicly known
and got him embroiled in a series of disputes.
During the earliest war years Kautsky distanced himself from the
social-chauvinistic politics of the government socialists, asserting pacifistic
beliefs and publicly supporting demands for a just peace without
annexations. Regarding Germany, Kautsky
followed with great apprehension the growing radicalization of the masses and
their increasing indignation at the policy of civic truce. After a solution within the party to the
rigid attitude of the leadership, which violated the party statutes, had proven
impossible, this tendency led in due course to the founding of the USPD in 1917,
in which Kautsky participated. This
provided a safeguard against the developing desperate radicalization and drew
together those who were protesting. In
response, the SPD executive took Kautsky's defection to the USPD as an excuse
to deprive their most influential critic in the German worker's movement of his
most powerful weapon, the Neue Zeit. Without delay they dismissed him as chief
editor.
In this connection, nevertheless, a
differentiated analysis of the position of social democracy regarding August 4
is still needed, along with a considered judgment about the pacifist tendency
in social democracy during World War I.
No exoneration of the leadership of German and international social
democracy for irresponsible and incorrect decisions, with abandonment of vital
positions, should be allowed to become the last word. It is only valid to work up this chapter of the history of social
democracy objectively, without trying to settle who was right and who wrong
through ideological trench fighting.
The
Revolution and Kautsky the statesman
The October revolution turned Kautsky firmly against any acceptance of the experiences and methods of the Bolsheviks into the German workers movement. He drew a frightening picture of the consequences of the revolution in Russia, using that depiction to dampen the revolutionary energy of the masses, directing it into peaceful channels. His fear that a radical revolution of political and economic relations in Germany would bring chaos led him to pose an alternative conception: a recovery of capitalist production from the aftereffects of the war, side by side with socialization of those areas of the economy that were already the most highly developed (entwickelsten).
It was undoubtedly his firm and shared conviction in the practicality of stepwise socialization of the privately owned means of production in and through parliamentary democracy that made it possible for him to assume the chairmanship of the Socialization Commission immediately after the German revolution of November 1918. His great authority as a theorist of social democracy undoubtedly contributed to the fact that sections of the workers movement placed their hopes on such a route to socialism. Yet, already by the spring of 1919, this vision was shown to be illusory. The USPD left the government, so Kautsky lost his place on the Socialization Commission as well as his position as outside advisor in the foreign office, which he had utilized chiefly to unearth, safeguard, publish and comment on existing documents that were available on the outbreak of the war.
Kautsky later sought to attribute
the failure of his conception to inadequate time for the Socialization
Commission to function effectively. But
the facts spoke a different language.
Serious steps toward socialization were neither begun nor were they even
possible under the concrete historical conditions of those times. Kautsky was unable to avoid an experience
similar to Plato's twenty-five centuries earlier (details in his Vorläufern des Neueren
Sozialismus/Forerunners of Modern Socialism) his conception of social
transformation broke down in the face of objective and subjective
conditions. Nevertheless, Kautsky
continued to develop models of socialization that were intended to influence
what was actually happening.
Kautsky's hopes for a reconstitution
of society leading toward social progress which had been bound up with the
November revolution had thus come to nothing.
And after 1919 Kautsky himself was in a complicated situation. He held neither party nor public office, nor
was he was successful in founding a new paper despite many efforts. The leadership of the SPD kept its distance
from him. For his own part, Kautsky
turned decisively away from those forces in the SPD leadership represented by
Noske, and condemned their policies of suppression. Again, in the USPD he felt increasingly uncomfortable with the
left forces in the party, which were getting stronger and orienting themselves
increasingly toward the Bolsheviks.
Kautsky's anti-Sovietism drew him into a deepening isolation.
Only once more was he to feel
connected to the pulse beat of revolutionary events. This was during the months at the turn of the year 1920/21, when
he visited Georgia as guest of the Menshevik government. Nevertheless, he was deceived in his hope
that social democracy might here carve out an alternative to the Bolshevik
path, i.e., that the forces of a democratic socialism could be successful. Shortly after he departed Georgia, Stalin's
terror was applied there too to erect a dictatorship of the Bolsheviks. Back in Germany, now almost seventy years
old and with his health failing, he was no longer called upon.
Anti-Communist
and candidate for the Nobel prize
In the ranks of German social
democracy Kautsky was one of the first critics of the October revolution. Until the first world war he was undoubtedly
the most significant Marxist theorist to the Russian workers and left
intellectuals, far better known to them than Lenin. Hence, the Bolsheviks regarded their debate with Kautsky as the
most important one on the "theoretical front" against
counterrevolution. In his blind rage
and furious hatred for the Bolsheviks he often abandoned the ground of theoretical
criticism, even going so far as to justify and propagandize for
counterrevolution.
The facts which have recently become
known on the history of the Bolsheviks/CPSU and the Soviet Union compel a fresh
evaluation of Kautsky's reflections.
Still, it must be noted that Kautsky's critique of the October
revolution, at a time when the progressive world was greeting this event in
Russia as the opening of a new epoch in human history, was essentially
destructive. Many of his most intimate
friends would not and could not go along with his biased and strident
anti-Sovietism and anti-communism. Was
he more opinionated or farsighted than they?
In 1924, on the occasion of his 70th
birthday, he received numerous tributes from representatives of the social
democratic movement, whose ranks he had joined again. Friend and foe insisted on expressing their views of his work and
his place in history. Still, he was no
longer the theorist of social
democracy. And it cannot be overlooked
that to many social democrats Kautsky's personal conception of Marxism no longer
seemed up to date. Consequently, in the
mid-twenties he returned to Vienna, where he had begun his political life. Though hindered by a long illness he sought
to complete his life's work there.
Alongside his principal work of that period The Materialist Conception of History (1927), which represented the
"quintessence," as it were, of his social-theoretical research, were
chiefly his investigations of the relation between dictatorship and democracy
(with a series of books and articles, beginning in the thirties, on actual
problems of development, in particular pertinent problems in Soviet Russia and
Germany). There was also his journalism
on the relation between communists and social democrats and his peace research. Though he no longer stood at the peak of the
movement, his works in the twenties did exert an influence on social democratic
politics and thinking.
It was his public commitment to
pacifism and his peace research, as evidenced by his two comprehensive works War and Democracy (1932) and Socialists and War (1937), that induced
Kautsky's friends to begin a move for his candidacy for the 1938 Nobel Peace
Prize It did not seem hopeless to them
that at the very least he met the necessary requirements, and influential personalities
around the world supported the move (though Albert Einstein in the USA, when
asked for his support, firmly refused).
All the same, the nomination brought no result. Though there are many speculations, there is
no exact knowledge of the reasons. It
was with deep joy and pride that Karl Kautsky experienced his nomination for
the Nobel peace prize and the broad affirmative movement in its support.
Karl Kautsky's books were among
those that the Nazis publicly threw on the pyre in 1933. They hated him not only because he was a
Marxist social democrat, but also on account of the sharp criticism he had
directed at fascism, especially its German form. In 1938, with the Anschluss
("accession") of Austria to Germany, the Hitler fascists had the
chance to make Kautsky follow his books into the pyre. Flight, however, allowed him to avoid their
grasp. By way of Prague Kautsky managed
to reach Amsterdam, the final station of his exile, where he died on the 17th
of October, one day after his 84th birthday.
In 1944 his wife Luise was murdered at Auschwitz.
3. Karl Kautsky the Marxist
Marxist,
centrist and renegade
It has been the custom among social
and political scientists of the GDR (including the author of this booklet),
primarily following Lenin, to divide the conceptions of the theoretical leader
of the Second International into three stages: Marxist, centrist and
renegade. The Marxist stage was said to
have lasted approximately until 1910 (Kautsky himself understood his Marxism to
have been lifelong from the 1880s). The
centrist stage was held to have lasted approximately until the October
revolution (Kautsky designated as centrism his concept of the Marxist center in
social democracy). The stage of
renegacy (so designated by Lenin in response to Kautsky's critique of the
October revolution and the dictatorship of the Bolsheviks) lasted from 1917 on.
Though such a labeling of the
periods of Kautsky's activity has since become untenable, the old usage will be
helpful in this description of his work and influence.
Kautsky
as a Marxist
Although, as noted earlier, Kautsky
has been acknowledged overall in the official historiography of the Party as a
Marxist, albeit with reservations, his role in the succession of Marxist
thinkers has been cast into oblivion.
This is quite unjust. His work
as a Marxist during this period was neither slight nor unimportant. This short booklet, intended simply to
promote discussion, can provide no more than an insight into his extensive
achievements, an account of his most important contributions to the
popularization, vindication and creative application of Marxism. It is a stimulus, so to speak, to further
pursuit of his work.
First
of all, there is his editorship of the Neue
Zeit. Initially a monthly, then a
weekly after the anti-socialist law went into effect, this journal served
German and other social democrats as their forum for discussion of the theory
and practice of socialism. It had a
singular influence on the programmatic ideas generated by social democratic
organizations in central and eastern Europe, and on the strategy and tactics of
the German and international workers movement.
While the Neue Zeit reached a
printing of "only" 10,000-11,000 in its best years, its influence was
nevertheless extraordinary. It was through
this journal that the leaders of parties and trade unions, parliamentary
deputies and theorists of the SPD, as well as the intellectuals of many
countries interested in revolutionary change, were able to exert their
influence (Neue Zeit was even read in
Siberia by those under banishment and was regarded by them as their most
significant intellectual and political bridge to Europe). These leaders and thinkers contributed to it
and added authority through their own published papers, and were also able, in
their own activity, to use Neue Zeit
to influence the basic convictions and strategies of others. The status of the Neue Zeit as theoretical organ of social democracy is also
indicated by the use made of it by the journalists and editors of party and trade
unions papers. They had significant
articles from it reprinted in the publications that they were responsible
for. At the very least, they took
important statements on the theory and practice of socialism as their own and
publicized them.
Secondly,
Karl Kautsky provided generations of German and international social democrats
with access to an understanding of Marxist political economy and the Marxist
conception of history, and familiarized new generations with the history of the
movement. In this connection, his most
important writings include: The Economic
Doctrines of Karl Marx, Plainly Presented and Explained (1887) – the introduction to Capital; The Class Struggles of 1789, On the Hundredth Anniversary of
the Great Revolution (1889); Protection
of Labor, Especially International Labor Protection Legislation and the Eight
Hour Day (1890); The Erfurt Program,
With Its Basic Sections Explained (1892); Parliamentarianism, Public Legislation and Social Democracy
(1893). These writings, and others indicated
below, reached mass editions which were enormous for those times and which were
translated into more than fifteen languages.
This is documentary proof of the influence that Kautsky exerted on how
Marxism was understood in the Second International. That the influence of his specific version of Marxism was also
accompanied by specific weaknesses, and which were not without effect, should
not be denied. Nevertheless, to go into
this more closely here would exceed the space limits of this booklet.
In
the third place, there is Kautsky's controversy with Eduard Bernstein. Proceeding from new social phenomena
associated with the rise of imperialism at the turn of the century, the latter
had sought to provide a basis for a revision of essential concepts of
Marxism. The attempt here was to induce
social democracy to forsake the methods of revolutionary class struggle. Kautsky demonstrated that Marxist theory
continued to be valid under the new social conditions as well. In his Bernstein
and the Social Democratic Program, An Anti-Critique (1899) he utilized the
controversy to expound on the fundamentals of Marxism. This led to his work The Social Revolution (1902), an initial analysis of imperialism
with evidence for the sharpening of the class struggle and the necessity for
social revolution as the solution. It
was here that he first developed concepts on the task of transforming society
after the political revolution of the proletariat, ideas which deserve more
than historical interest.
Fourth,
the editorial preparation and publication of the more important writings of
Marx and Engels. The most noteworthy
achievement here was the publication of Marx's Theories of Surplus Value (1904 to 1910). To be sure, Party historians of the CPSU and the SED perceived
this
quite
differently, even into the seventies.
Faithful to the idea that a renegade should not be trusted on anything,
the story was spread for decades that Kautsky had provided a false approach to
the place and the classification of the Theories
... in the scheme of Marxist economics, that he had used arbitrary methods
with the manuscript, that he had not been painstaking enough in making out
Marx's handwriting, and so on.
Kautsky's efforts were defamed from the start, and the historical fairness
due him was denied. This picture was
first set right in connection with publication of the Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels Collected Works (Marx, Engels Gesamtausgabe, or MEGA).
In the fifth
place,
there is his creative application of Marxist political economy to the analysis
of trends in agricultural development during the period of capitalist
ascendency. Like many works of his
mentioned above, Kautsky's The Agrarian
Question (1899) must be included among those that have been forgotten. Presented here are his reflections and
insights on the limits of the natural environment to sustain human life by
agriculture and his ideas on the relation between the size of farms and
agricultural production. These writings
too remain of value today. But we must keep
in mind that Kautsky, basing himself on the developmental tendencies of
capitalism, also concluded that social democracy did not need of any special
agrarian program, and that he used his whole authority in the mid-nineties to
disseminate that conviction within German social democracy. For that reason it took a long time for
social democracy to develop a constructive agrarian policy.
In the sixth place is his creative application of the Marxist theory
of class struggle and revolution to the conditions of monopoly capitalism. A noteworthy example of this was his
analysis of the motive forces for the Russian revolution of 1905 and his
determination of its prospects.
His scientific substantiation of the
position of social democracy on patriotism, internationalism and war and peace
in the age of imperialism was a further theoretical achievement. Kautsky advanced evidence of the dawn of the
epoch of proletarian revolution in Europe and set forth the conditions necessary
for a revolutionary situation. He
summarized his insights and conclusions on these topics in 1909, in his The Road to Power. Some comments are in order:
With what was termed his
"latest Marxist work" a hitherto unprecedented battle started between
the Central Committee of the Social Democratic Party and its leading
theorist. Barely had the first copies
of The Road to Power been delivered
when the Central Committee resorted to sleazy arguments in prohibiting any
additional printing. Never before had
Kautsky been treated in such patronizing fashion. It was plain to see that for the majority of the Central
Committee that work was too revolutionary.
This conflict between Kautsky and the leadership, kept from the party
public and still not completely traceable due to the lack of documents, led to
a foul compromise: The Road to Power
appeared, but with changes demanded by the Central Committee. Kautsky's capitulation was obvious, although
visible at the time only to those involved.
He put the fundamental statements of his work into the preface,
designating them merely personal views.
Thus did Kautsky avoid an open debate with the party leadership.
On the one hand, his book breathed
confidence in the approaching revolution.
On the other, not only did Kautsky give way in this specific situation,
but he also shrank from initiating an open controversy within the party over
the means to be employed in the revolution itself. For that matter, Kautsky's controversy with the party leadership
also marks a turning point in his position as the leading theorist of the
party. That too was an outcome of the
controversy. The outcome also reflected
a new relationship of forces among the various tendencies within social democracy
as represented in the party leadership.
Although not all the considerations that led Kautsky to this foul
compromise are covered in the documents, the fact that he drew back from a
radicalization of the party sums it up.
In
the seventh place, there were his exemplary historical works. The most important ones include: Thomas More and His Utopia (1888), Miners and the Peasant War, With Special
Reference to Thuringia (1889); Forerunners
of Modern Socialism (1895) and Foundations
of Christianity; An Historical Investigation (1908).
In the eighth place were his pioneering achievements in developing Marxist ideas in ethics,
sociology, demography and the national question. This is shown especially in his works The Intelligentsia and Social Democracy (1895), Bernstein and the Social Democratic Program;
An Anti-Critique (1899), Ethics and
the Materialist Conception of History (1906) and Reproduction and Development in Nature and Society (1910). Also deserving of our recognition is
Kautsky's consistent struggle against racism and anti-Semitism. Not only was he the most consistent among
the social democratic theorists of his time on these subjects, but he was also
the one who sought to bring out the factual root causes of these phenomena in
order that they be correctly understood.
His work Jews and Race (1914)
provides impressive documentation of this.
Oddly enough, the accomplishments of Kautsky's referred to here were
almost completely ignored [in the GDR] during the period of
"Marxist-Leninist" social science.