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    Karl Kautsky

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    Karl Kautsky was a German Marxist theorist who initially helped spread Marxist ideas but later became a renegade from revolutionary Marxism. He moved from a L assallean position to accepting Marxism in the 1880s while working closely with Marx and Engels. However, he began making opportunistic errors and vacillated in his response to Bernstein's revisionism. By World War I, Kautsky had rejected revolutionary Marxism and supported social chauvinism. He denied connections betw een monopolies, imperialism, and contradictions of capitalism. Kautsky opposed the October Revolution and supported preserving Germany's capitalist structure. H e spent his later years opposing unified workers' fronts

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    Karl Kautsky

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    swarajcha
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    Karl Kautsky was a German Marxist theorist who initially helped spread Marxist ideas but later became a renegade from revolutionary Marxism. He moved from a L assallean position to accepting Marxism in the 1880s while working closely with Marx and Engels. However, he began making opportunistic errors and vacillated in his response to Bernstein's revisionism. By World War I, Kautsky had rejected revolutionary Marxism and supported social chauvinism. He denied connections betw een monopolies, imperialism, and contradictions of capitalism. Kautsky opposed the October Revolution and supported preserving Germany's capitalist structure. H e spent his later years opposing unified workers' fronts

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    Karl Kautsky

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    Karl Kautsky was a German Marxist theorist who initially helped spread Marxist ideas but later became a renegade from revolutionary Marxism. He moved from a L assallean position to accepting Marxism in the 1880s while working closely with Marx and Engels. However, he began making opportunistic errors and vacillated in his response to Bernstein's revisionism. By World War I, Kautsky had rejected revolutionary Marxism and supported social chauvinism. He denied connections betw een monopolies, imperialism, and contradictions of capitalism. Kautsky opposed the October Revolution and supported preserving Germany's capitalist structure. H e spent his later years opposing unified workers' fronts

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    240 views1 page

    Karl Kautsky

    Uploaded by

    swarajcha
    Karl Kautsky was a German Marxist theorist who initially helped spread Marxist ideas but later became a renegade from revolutionary Marxism. He moved from a L assallean position to accepting Marxism in the 1880s while working closely with Marx and Engels. However, he began making opportunistic errors and vacillated in his response to Bernstein's revisionism. By World War I, Kautsky had rejected revolutionary Marxism and supported social chauvinism. He denied connections betw een monopolies, imperialism, and contradictions of capitalism. Kautsky opposed the October Revolution and supported preserving Germany's capitalist structure. H e spent his later years opposing unified workers' fronts

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    Kautsky, Karl

    Born Oct. 16, 1854, in Prague; died Oct. 17, 1938, in Amsterdam. One of the leaders and theoreticians of the GermanSocial Democratic movement and the Secon
    d International; an ideologist of centrism. At first a Marxist, but later became arenegade.
    In 1874, while he was a student at the University of Vienna, Kautsky joined the socialist movement, and during this periodhe was close to Lassalleanism. At the en
    d of the 1870s, and especially after he became acquainted with K. Marx and F.Engels in 1881, he began to shift to Marxist positions. At that time Marx and Engels
    already noted in Kautsky such negativetraits as pedantry and a penchant for scholastic argumentation. From 1883 to 1917, Kautsky was the editor of Die NeueZeit
    , the theoretical journal of the German Social Democratic movement. During 188588 he lived in London, where heassociated with Engels. In 1890 he moved to G
    ermany. During the 1880s and 1890s he wrote a number of works andarticles that propagated Marxist ideas, such as The Economic Doctrine of Karl Marx (1887;
    Russian translation, 1956),Thomas More and His Utopia (1888; Russian translation, 1905), Commentaries on the Erfurt Program (1892; Russiantranslation, 1956)
    and Precursors of Modern Socialism (vols. 12, 1895; Russian translation, vols. 12, 192425). KautskysThe Agrarian Question (1899; Russian translation, 1900)
    was favorably appraised by V. I. Lenin. However, even at thatperiod Kautsky was making opportunistic errors. After E. Bernsteins display of revisionism, Kautsky j
    oined in the struggleagainst him, but only after prolonged vacillation. Kautskys book Bernstein and the Social Democratic Program (1899;Russian translation, 190
    6) in general played a positive role in the fight against revisionism, but it avoided the question ofBernsteins revision of the Marxist doctrine of the state and the dict
    atorship of the proletariat. After the Second Congress ofthe RSDLP (1903), Kautsky supported the Mensheviks.
    Early in the 20th century Kautsky published a number of works that were written, despite individual deviations, in the spiritof revolutionary Marxism: for example, th
    e article The Slavs and Revolution, printed in 1902 in Lenins newspaper Iskra,the pamphlets Driving Forces and Prospects of the Russian Revolution (190607;
    Russian translation, 1907, edited and witha foreword by V. I. Lenin), and The Road to Power (1909; Russian translation, 1959).
    During the years preceding World War I, Kautsky departed even further from the revolutionary workers movement, followinga line of reconciliation with the revision
    ists, supporting the liquidators in the Russian Social Democratic movement, denyingthe party spirit of Marxist philosophy, and so forth. In supporting anti-Marxist th
    eories of violence, such as SocialDarwinism, Kautsky attempted to demonstrate the compatibility of scientific socialism with non-Marxist philosophicalsystems. Kau
    tsky became the ideologist of centrism, which combined a verbal acknowledgment of Marxism with anadaptation to opportunistic elements. With the beginning of t
    he war Kautsky made a final break with revolutionary Marxismand justified the alliance with the overt social chauvinists.
    Kautskys denial of the connection between the rule of monopolies and the predatory policy of the imperialist states, as wellas his attempt to reduce imperialism to
    a variant policy of modern capitalism, as Lenin pointed out (Poln. sobr. soch., 5thed., vol. 27, pp. 387, 40920), led to his obscuring the radical contradictions char
    acteristic of the monopoly stage of thedevelopment of capitalism. Just as apologetic and reformist was Kautskys theory of ultraimperialism, which falselypredicted
    the onset of a new phase constituting the peaceful development of capitalism and the elimination of itscontradictions. Kautsky sowed pacifist illusions and in essen
    ce denied the inevitability of proletarian revolution. Kautskywas hostile in his attitude toward the October Socialist Revolution; he opposed the establishment of the
    dictatorship of theproletariat and defended bourgeois democracy. Kautskys desertion of Marxism was exposed by Lenin in his work entitledThe Proletarian Revolu
    tion and the Renegade Kautsky (ibid., vol. 37, pp. 235338).
    In 1917, Kautsky took part in the establishment of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany. During the periodof the November Revolution of 1918 he
    actually supported the counterrevolutionary policy of the Scheidemann group andopposed the establishment of friendly relations with Soviet Russia. While he took
    charge of a commission on socialization,Kautsky in fact pursued the line of preserving the capitalist structure in Germany. In 1922 he heralded the merger of therig
    ht wing of the Independents with the Social Democratic Party. He opposed the establishment of a unified workers frontin the struggle against fascism. In 1924, K
    autsky moved to Vienna. After the seizure of Austria by Nazi Germany (March1938) he moved to Prague and later to Amsterdam.
    Contemporary right-wing socialist leaders use the opportunist and revisionist views of Kautsky to substantiate their reformistpolicies.

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