Kautsky, Karl (1854–1939)

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KAUTSKY, KARL
(1854–1939)

Karl Kautsky was, with the exception of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the leading theorist of orthodox Marxism before World War I. Born in Prague of Czech and German parentage, Kautsky studied at Vienna and showed much interest in social Darwinism and socialism. As an evolutionist and materialist, he found Marx's combination of dialectical materialism and economic determinism irresistible, and he worked with Engels himself during the 1880s. From 1883 to 1917 Kautsky was the editor of Die neue Zeit, the official organ of the German Social Democratic Party and the most influential socialist journal of the day. He edited and published the literary remains of Marx after Engels's death. In 1891 Kautsky wrote the famous first, or theoretical, part of the Erfurter Programm, the official policy statement of the German party. This document established that the greatest socialist party in history should be orthodox Marxist.

Kautsky, more than any other theorist of repute, accepted Marx's method and conclusions as he found them. The natural laws of economic development resulted in certain inevitable contradictions in capitalism that must necessarily lead to its destruction and replacement by socialism. This would occur, Marx and Kautsky held, because competition and technical improvements, together with the availability of surplus labor, would lead to the concentration of capital and the progressive immiserization of the proletariat, as well as the polarization of society into a few monopolists opposed by vast masses of starving workers. Recurrent depressions and economic catastrophes would finally destroy capitalism. Such crises would be caused mainly by the inability of the workers to purchase the products of their labor. The united proletariat, trained by its socialist leaders, would see that only social ownership of the means of production could end the contradiction between capitalism's ability to produce wealth and its inability to distribute that wealth through private ownership. Like Marx and Engels, Kautsky held that religion, philosophy, and ethics are reflections of the substructure of class interest and position and that the state is the puppet of the dominant social class.

Kautsky, the "defender of the faith," fought attempts of fellow socialists to make basic alterations in their Marxian heritage. He led the German Social Democratic Party in its struggle against Eduard Bernstein and the revisonists, who believed that the facts of European capitalism no longer supported his orthodox views and that parliamentary action and pragmatic flexibility could bring extensive and permanent reform. Kautsky was able to maintain the preeminence of orthodox Marxism in party theory, although the revisionists increasingly dominated party tactics and action. In the early years of the twentieth century, Kautsky and the orthodox centrists had increasingly to contend with the radical left wing of the party under Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. This group held strictly to Marx's economic teachings but rejected orthodox political tactics in favor of more immediately revolutionary doctrines. They hoped for more radical positions on questions before parliament and for greater encouragement of spontaneous revolutionary and general strike activity. Kautsky did not believe that the contradictions of capitalism or the class consciousness of the workers were advanced enough for such tactics. He did join the Left in parliament on various crucial questions, notably in its refusal to sanction the continuance of World War I as a war of conquest.

During the Weimar Republic, Kautsky lost his preeminent position as the reformists dominated the party and Leninism captured the Left. He was attacked by V. I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky for his castigation of their dictatorial and terroristic methods and their conquest of Georgia, then an independent socialist-controlled state. Forced into exile by the Nazis, Kautsky died in Amsterdam.

Bibliography

works by kautsky

Das Erfurter Programm. Stuttgart, 1899.

The Social Revolution. London: Twentieth Century Press, 1909.

Bernstein und das sozialdemokratische Programm. Stuttgart, 1919.

Ethik und materialistische Geschichtsauffassung. Berlin, 1922.

Die Materialistische Geschichtsauffassung. Berlin, 1927. Translated by Raymond Meyer with John H. Kautsky as The Materialist Conception of History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988.

Die Geschichte des Sozialismus. Berlin, 1947.