'KARL KAUTSKY AND SOCIALIST REVOLUTION, 1880New Left Books, £9.50 hardback.
FEW SOCIALISTS will think of Karl Kautsky other than as an object of the polemics of Lenin — as a renegade, 'counter-revolutionary' 'agent of the bourgeoisie'.
Therefore all the important that New Left Books have decided to translate Salvadori's Karl Kautsky Socialist Revolution, which came out at the beginning of this year.
Salvadori didn't want to write an intellectual biography, as he indicates himself in HI OUTCOME examines the relationship socialism and democracy in Kautsky's thinking — a project that requires a detailed explanation of the development of all of Kautsky's fundamental political thinking. Illegal Kautsky's dominant ideological influence began in the years of the 'Sozialistengesetze' when the workers movement pronounced illegal by Bismarck. In Neue which following years became the most important theoretical Marxism on an international level During this time he formulated the basis of what was later considered as the kernel of the interpretation of Marxism dominating the Second International.
According to Kautsky, capitalism leads of necessity to destruction and therefore socialism, just as winter is followed by spring. All Marxism would need to do would be to recognise the real social processes, and the social-democratic party would have to be the 'organiser of the effort to translate the dictates of historical evolution into practice, as Salvadori puts it.
Kautsky at this time bluntly the inevitability revolutionary violence, the destruction of the bourgeois draconian measures against the old ruling classes in order to open the way to 'historical necessity'.
The Erfurt Programme of the German Social Democracy, and his friend Eduard BRUILSKY Bernstein after the 'Sozialistengesetze' in 1890, became a classical example of orthodoxy.
It was divided into two parts: a minimum programme of democratic reforms, theoretical part where the nistic contradictions society, the historical role working class, and the necessity of socialism are explained.
The connection between the two parts was left to the objective dynamic of the development of society.
Peaceful In fact, Europe at that time was in a state of relatively peaceful stable capitalist expansion, which had been followed by a rapid growth of working class organisations. between 1880 and 1900 the number of unionised workers tripled in Germany from 230,000 to 700,000.
The number of votes for Social Democracy seemed automatically: from 1.4m in 1890 to 1.8m in 1893; from 2.2m in 1898 to 3m 1903. The Increase of political power of the working class be consequence of the expansion of the capitalist economy.
Kautsky became the ideologue of this period. He warned against any adventurist temptation to break the law, and showed more and more inclination to a gradualist concept of the taking of power by the proletariat.
According Kautsky, democratic parliament çould easily be transformed from an instrument of power for the bourgeoisie instrument of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
According to Kautsky, democratic parliament could easily be transformed from an instrument for the bourgeoisie to an instrument of the more Massimo He between (Socialist Laws), was of Kautskyan own spoke and written abolition of the Marxist and antagocapitalist dictatorship of the proletariat. the and showed that capable of Thus struggle.
11l1 Calc of revolutionary bourgeois society. the Rosa unavoidable 1905, movement 1011radicals in the party.
the pamphlet, to of 1905 ment and the upheavals.
between Kautsky and Rosa burg. same Kautsky defended Marxist orthodoxv against the revisionism of Eduard Bernstein. In opposition to Bernstein's thesis, he capitalism was overcoming contradictions, and that there were no signs of a weakening in the class Accordingly, Kautsky also rejected the idea of the transformation of the SPD into a multi-class people's party, and he defended the necessity breaks right.
Luxemburg was then
fighting on Kautsky's side. Revisionism was rejected by the party and the International. Even in the years after German labour few became more radical following the first Russian revolutKautsky was on the side of the In 1909 he published a famous The Road to Power, which he explained that the revolution was had closed the preceding phase of peaceful capitalist developopened period conflicts and Just one year later came the split • LuxemThey differed over evaluation of political mass strikes as weapons in the fight for a democratic electoral system in Prussia. Kautsky opposed the radical left's that the 'alte bewährte Taktik" (the old, proved tactics) be re-thought and importance be given extra-parliamentary mobilisations. Centrist From then on Kautsky took a position, revolutionary left and the opportunist The ideological debates on the mass strike anticipated the later split unte German during the war, but at that time very people were aware importance of these debates. Lenin Kausky faky support in mis contice Trotsky, example, with Rosa Luxemburg.
Kautsky's defence of the former policy of the SPD corresponded to the conservative thinking of an important section of the party apparatus, accustomed to electoral campaigns and economic struggles, but which hated the idea of any extraparliamentary action _ this have endangered the legality of the and therefore the existence of the party bureaucracy.
the Eventually, this logic determined the SPD's position imperialist war. As is well known, on August 1914 demand Democratic deputies voted for war credits, and the party supporter the policy of government.
Salvadori describes
attemol lo two main positions in the SPD. He wanted to avoid a head-on clash with the the ruling class, abstaining on the vote.
L Ne end, approval of the war demanded that the party should ask the government not to pursue aims of conquest but only those of defence.
the Kautsky maintained this middle position throughout the war, which provoked the polemics of Lenin against the 'centre' and sharpened the differences with the left around Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.
Kautsky 'theoretician
which swamp.
His assertion revealing the political bankruptcy of the Second International, events had would only shown that an International is only able to material peace provoked Luxemburg to the following comment:
(Independent Germany shed.
forced isolation. Assembly His diminish.
workers He on, Bolsheviks became occupation.
After Constituent A Break?
the idea of a that this real Kautsky'.
over the the than doubtful.
Despite the imperial unequivocally Kautsky's stability and advocated movement.
accepted une credits but degeneration well-known violent theoretical Luxemburg called the that, far the times Manifesto needs essential amendment and now, after the Kautskyist correction, reads like this: 'Workers of all countries, unite anothers throats in time of war!?ne peace Although Kautsky sharpened his criticism of the policy of the SPD leadership during the war, and despite the fact that he was involved in the foundation of the centrist USPD Socialist Party Germany), his ideological influence in well aI international le el rapidly diminiHis conflict with the SPD had relinquish the editorship of New. Zeit, and in the USPD as well he remained isolated During the last 20 years of his life -he died in Amsterdam in 1938 Kautsky was not ablet - overcome this literary activity did Salvadori and paes his numerous articles pamphlets council Germany in 1919 — Kautsky bei vec that a national assembly under Se. al Democratic hegemony would be a. e to socialise the economy and lay tt foundations of a socialist republic considered that the biggest danger for the working class resides in the lack of unity of the labour movement, for which in his view the responsibility Spartacists and later the KPD, the German Communist Party.
Despite hard criticism of Noske and the right-wing majority socialists at the time of revolution, he rejoined the SPD in 1922, together with the right wing of the USPD (the left wing had fused with the KPD). From then polemicising against and the Comintern his main political preSalvadori speaks of "crusade against the domestic and foreign policies of the Soviet state'.
the dissolution of the Assembly by the Bolsheviks in January 1918 the young Soviet state was, in Kautsky's eyes, nothing more than a barbaric tyranny that had less and less to do with the international fight of the working class and socialism.
In his book, Salvadori argues that thinking in 1914 was He denies the renegade charge advanced derives fictitious Kautsky to what had always been the It is certainly correct to seek the roots of Kautsky's later positions in his pre-1914 ideas, but to conclude from this that there had been no break all and that his positions in th 1890s had 'inevitably' led to his late anti-revolutionary crusade all his weaknesses, Kautsky's early position in the class struggle was absolutely clear: he was side working class and its mobilisations. After 1914 he constantly defended the of the bourgeois order revolutionary workers on purely theoretical level, may seem to be a gradual development is a clear breal from a political point of view.
It is also wrong to say that this was "inevitable' It for aare been perfecto me sibis Kautsky overcont weaknesses under the pressure of the experiences international class struggle. After all the revolutionary wing of the German workers' movement also came out of tradition of the Second But this should not at all diminish the importance of Salvadori's book. Giving access to this largely forgotten part of the history of international socialism is of great merit.
Socialist Challenge 28 June 1979 Page 13
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