Karl Kautsky

Karl Kautsky
Kautsky in 1915
Born	Karl Johann Kautsky 16 October 1854 Prague, Austrian Empire
Died	17 October 1938(1938-10-17) (aged 84) Amsterdam, Netherlands
Political party	SPD (until 1917; from 1920)
Other political affiliations	USPD (1917–1920) SPÖ (from 1875)
Spouse	Luise Kautsky ​ (m. 1890)​
Education
Alma mater	University of Vienna
Philosophical work
Era	Modern philosophy 19th-century philosophy 20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy Czech philosophy
School	Orthodox Marxism
Main interests	Political philosophy, politics, economics, history
Notable ideas	Evolutionary epistemology, social instinct, active adaption, hyperimperialism

Karl Johann Kautsky (/ˈkaʊtski/; German: [ˈkaʊtski]; 16 October 1854 – 17 October 1938) was a Czech-Austrian Marxist theorist. A leading theorist of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Second International, Kautsky advocated orthodox Marxism, and his views dominated European Marxism for about two decades, from the death of Friedrich Engels in 1895 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

Born in Prague, Kautsky studied at the University of Vienna. In 1875, he joined the Social Democratic Party of Austria, and from 1883 founded and edited the influential journal Die Neue Zeit. From 1885 to 1890, he lived in London, where he worked with Engels. He moved back to Germany in 1890 and became active in the SPD, and wrote the theory section of its Erfurt Program of 1891, a major influence on other European socialist parties. On the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Kautsky opposed the SPD's collaboration with the German war effort. In 1917, he joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), and rejoined the SPD in 1920. His influence dwindled during the 1920s, and he died in Amsterdam in 1938.

Kautsky's stagist interpretation of Marxism emphasized that history could not be hurried, and that workers had to wait for the suitable material conditions to develop before a socialist revolution. Under his influence, the SPD adopted a gradualist approach to achieving socialism, using bourgeois parliamentary democracy to secure improvements in the lives of workers until capitalism collapsed under its own contradictions. His stance sparked conflict with other leading Marxists, including Eduard Bernstein, who rejected revolution; Rosa Luxemburg, who championed revolutionary spontaneity; and Vladimir Lenin, whom Kautsky accused of launching a premature revolution in Russia in 1917 and leading the Soviet Union toward dictatorship.

Early life

Family and background

Karl Kautsky was born in Prague on 16 October 1854, then part of the Austrian Empire. His parents were Johann Kautsky, a Czech theatrical scene designer, and Minna Jaich, an Austrian actress and writer of Czech descent. The family moved to Vienna when Kautsky was seven years old in 1863. Despite Kautsky's later efforts in his memoirs to suggest a vague proletarian background, his immediate family was not working class. Though his parents faced some financial difficulties in their early married years, they had family connections to rely on. By the time Karl was six, his father provided a comfortable income, allowing for at least two servants. Karl was the eldest of four children, followed by Minna (b. 1856), Fritz (b. 1857), and Johann (b. 1864).

Kautsky maintained a particularly close intellectual relationship with his mother, Minna. She came from a family of actors and theatrical artists and, freed from household duties by the family's improved finances after 1860, turned to intellectual pursuits. She and Karl developed a shared interest in contemporary philosophy and natural science. When Karl received Ernst Haeckel's The History of Creation in 1874, they studied it together. Later, when Kautsky began writing his first socialist pieces, he would show them to his mother for advice. Minna Kautsky herself became a socialist writer, gaining a minor reputation for her romantic socialist fiction even before her son's work was known.

A common misconception, noted by Steenson, is that Kautsky was Jewish; he was not. His second wife, Luise Ronsperger, was Jewish, and their sons faced persecution under the Nazis, which may have contributed to this confusion.

Education and early influences

Kautsky was an avid reader from a young age. He was tutored at home until he was nine. In 1864, he began attending the Melk seminary, run by Benedictine monks, which he found oppressive. From 1866 to 1874, he attended the more progressive Academic Gymnasium in Vienna, where he studied religion, Latin, Greek, German, geography, history, mathematics, natural history, and philosophy. He was a mediocre student, partly due to chronic illness, poor eyesight, and a distrust of his teachers. His studies were also affected by his growing interest in extracurricular matters, such as the Paris Commune in 1871. He performed best in history and philosophy.

In the autumn of 1874, Kautsky entered the University of Vienna, intending to study "historical philosophy" to become a university lecturer or a middle-school teacher. He took courses in psychology, history, physical geography, and literature. A brief attempt to study law was abandoned due to illness and a self-professed lack of oratorical skill. He ultimately attended nine semesters but never took a degree, his growing socialist activities turning him away from academia. Kautsky himself felt he learned little at university due to conflicts with professors, believing that socialists were largely self-taught. Friedrich Engels later criticized Kautsky's university training for instilling a "frightful mass of nonsense" and a tendency towards hasty judgment, though he acknowledged Kautsky's efforts to unlearn these habits. However, Steenson argues that Kautsky's broad and somewhat unstructured university studies fostered his eclectic intellectual tastes, which suited him for his later role in popularizing Marxism.

During his university years, Kautsky briefly considered careers in art, like his father, and playwriting. He had written creatively from his seminary years. Inspired by his father's successful stage adaptation of Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, Karl wrote a scientific fantasy play, The Atlantic-Pacific Company, about the construction of a Panama-Nicaragua canal. It had limited success in Vienna, Graz, and Berlin in 1877–1878. Its failure, coupled with his increasing involvement in the socialist movement, led him to abandon playwriting.

Entry into socialism

Kautsky before 1895

Kautsky's immediate family was largely apolitical, though there was a sporadic Czech nationalism, a sympathy Karl initially shared. His political consciousness began to emerge in the summer of 1868 after a visit to rural Bohemia, where he was impressed by Czech nationalist sentiments and peasant agitation. For the next two years, he considered himself an "outspoken Czech nationalist", influenced by figures like František Palacký, who combined romantic nationalism with political liberalism. This Czech nationalism, however, did not last long in the predominantly German environment of Vienna.

Two events in early 1871 profoundly shaped Kautsky's radicalization: the Paris Commune and his reading of George Sand's romantic socialist novel, The Sin of M. Antoine. The Commune stirred his sympathies for the working class and pushed his political radicalism towards socialism. Sand's novel, which he reread many times, provided crucial emotional support during a period of isolation and family disapproval of his socialist leanings. It reinforced his ethical commitment to the oppressed and suggested that the coming of socialism would require a long process of study and development.

By late 1871, Kautsky's Czech nationalism had evolved into a vaguely socialist, democratic radicalism. In 1873–1874, he wrote unpublished articles and stories seeking to reconcile capital and labor through education, equality, and worker cooperatives, advocating for a federal republic with extensive freedoms.

Around this time, Kautsky came under the influence of positivism, materialism, and the scientific thought of the era, particularly the works of Charles Darwin, Ernst Haeckel, Ludwig Büchner, and Henry Thomas Buckle. Darwin's work, especially its elimination of a deity from explanations of origins, was crucial in shaping Kautsky's natural-scientific and anti-Christian worldview. He was impressed by Haeckel's attempts to apply natural science to human society, though he rejected Haeckel's racism and cruder forms of Social Darwinism. Büchner's monistic view of the world and near-socialist positions also appealed to him. Buckle's History of Civilization in England initially suggested a materialist outlook but ultimately emphasized the role of intellectual factors, a contradiction Kautsky would later address more consistently. Steenson notes that by 1885, Kautsky had clearly broken with the idea that natural laws could be directly applied to human society, emphasizing instead the historical specificity of social laws.

Austrian socialist movement and early writings

Kautsky joined the small Austrian Social Democratic Workers' Party in January 1875. The party, founded in 1874, was weak due to Austria's limited industrialization, economic depression, and internal divisions along national and tactical lines. Kautsky aligned himself with the radical faction, influenced by Andreas Scheu, and became a propagandist and lecturer, primarily on historical topics. His frustration with the party's impotence and state repression led to a brief flirtation with anarchist ideas.

His earliest published works appeared primarily in German socialist journals like Der Volksstaat (later Vorwärts) and Austrian socialist papers. These articles focused on natural science and its relation to socialism, and on Austrian political developments. A key early work was "Socialism and the Struggle for Existence" (1876), in which he critiqued anti-socialist interpretations of Darwinism, arguing that solidarity, not just individual struggle, was a factor in evolution and human society. Steenson notes that these early writings still showed strong romantic and idealist influences, with Kautsky's commitment to socialism being primarily moral.

Kautsky first read Karl Marx's Capital in 1875, but its influence was not immediately apparent in his writings. A more significant turning point was his encounter with Friedrich Engels's Anti-Dühring, serialized in Vorwärts from 1877 to 1878. Though Kautsky did not thoroughly study it until 1879–1880 with Eduard Bernstein, its ideas began to appear in his work by spring 1878, marking a shift towards a greater awareness of economic factors and Marxian analysis.

In 1879, through the wealthy German socialist Karl Höchberg, Kautsky was offered a subsidized position among exiled German socialists in Zurich, Switzerland. This offer, contingent on abandoning his quasi-anarchist sympathies, provided a market for his socialist writings and removed him from the increasingly anarchist-dominated Austrian socialist environment. He arrived in Zurich in January 1880.

Theoretician of German social democracy

Zurich and London exile (1880s)

The decade of the 1880s was pivotal for Kautsky, both personally and intellectually. He moved frequently between Zurich (1880–1882, 1884), Vienna (1882–1883, 1888–1889), Stuttgart (1883), and London (1885–1888), before settling in Stuttgart in late 1890.

In Zurich, Kautsky lived independently for the first time, supported by Höchberg. He became part of the German socialist émigré circle and earned the nickname "Baron Juchzer" for his somewhat fastidious dress and ebullient optimism. Höchberg acted as his first serious editor and introduced him to the work of Herbert Spencer and practical economics. Most importantly, Kautsky formed a close friendship and intellectual partnership with Eduard Bernstein. Together, they undertook an intense study of Engels's Anti-Dühring, which cemented their conversion to Marxism. Bernstein, with his party experience, also tutored Kautsky in the practicalities of the German movement.

Kautsky first visited Marx and Engels in London from March to June 1881. While Marx was unimpressed, viewing Kautsky as a "mediocrity", Engels recognized his eagerness and potential. This visit, and a subsequent one in 1884, deepened Kautsky's relationship with Engels and his desire for further study.

Kautsky was briefly considered as editor for Der Sozialdemokrat, the official newspaper of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) published in exile, but August Bebel and Engels ultimately found Bernstein more suitable for the political demands of the role, deeming Kautsky better suited for theoretical work.

Die Neue Zeit

In 1883, Kautsky co-founded and became the primary editor of Die Neue Zeit (The New Age), a Marxist theoretical journal published by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Dietz in Stuttgart. This provided Kautsky with a regular income and a crucial platform for developing and promoting his brand of Marxism. The journal was intended as an organ of scientific socialism, with Marx and Darwin as its "twin pillars". Wilhelm Liebknecht was a designated permanent contributor, and the editorial board initially comprised Dietz, Liebknecht, and Kautsky.

The early years of Die Neue Zeit were marked by Kautsky's financial struggles and conflicts over editorial control, particularly with Wilhelm Blos and Bruno Geiser who were installed by Dietz during Kautsky's brief return to Zurich in 1884. Kautsky, with crucial support from Bebel, successfully resisted attempts by the moderate wing of the SPD to dilute the journal's Marxist orientation.

From 1885 to 1888, Kautsky edited Die Neue Zeit from London, benefiting from close collaboration with Engels and the resources of the British Museum. This was a highly productive period for him. A key early theoretical debate published in the journal was Kautsky's (Engels-guided) critique of the state socialist ideas of Karl Rodbertus in 1884–1885, aimed at countering its appeal within the German socialist movement.

Erfurt Program

Kautsky played a central role in drafting the new party program for the SPD after the lapse of the Anti-Socialist Laws in 1890. The previous Gotha Program of 1875 was considered outdated. In January 1891, Engels sent Kautsky Marx's previously unpublished Critique of the Gotha Program, which Kautsky then published in Die Neue Zeit. This created considerable controversy within the SPD leadership, particularly with Wilhelm Liebknecht, due to its harsh criticism of the 1875 program and of Ferdinand Lassalle.

Despite the storm, Kautsky's draft for the new program, which emphasized orthodox Marxist principles, was largely adopted by the party commission at the Erfurt Congress in October 1891. He was entrusted with writing the theoretical section, while Bernstein and Bebel handled the tactical section. Following the congress, Kautsky was commissioned by the party's central committee to write a pamphlet explaining and amplifying the Erfurt Program. This resulted in Das Erfurter Programm (1892, translated as The Class Struggle), which became his most famous and widely translated work, establishing him as a leading interpreter of Marxism. In it, Kautsky outlined the origins of modern capitalism, the role of human action in history, the nature of the future socialist state (though he was reluctant to offer detailed plans), and the tactics of the working-class movement, emphasizing organization, education, reform, and parliamentary participation as leading to an "irresistible and inevitable" social revolution.

The peasant question

A major tactical and theoretical issue for the SPD in the 1890s was its approach to the peasantry. While some, particularly in South Germany led by Georg von Vollmar, advocated for an agrarian program to win peasant votes, Kautsky was consistently skeptical. He had argued since the 1870s that peasants' attachment to private property and their individualism made them unlikely allies for a socialist party.

At the SPD's Frankfurt Congress in 1894, a resolution was passed calling for an agrarian program. Kautsky opposed this, arguing that specific appeals to peasants would dilute the party's proletarian character and contradict its class-struggle basis. He maintained that most of the rural population was, or was becoming, a rural proletariat. He believed land, as a primary means of production, must ultimately be socialized. At the Breslau Congress in 1895, Kautsky's resolution rejecting the proposed agrarian program was passed, despite opposition from Bebel on this specific issue. Kautsky argued that while the party should agitate among the peasantry, it should not make promises it could not keep, such as the preservation of small peasant holdings. He further developed these ideas in his major work Die Agrarfrage (The Agrarian Question, 1899).

Revisionism debate

Eduard Bernstein

The most significant challenge to Kautsky's orthodox Marxism in this period came from his former close friend, Eduard Bernstein. Starting in 1896, Bernstein published a series of articles in Die Neue Zeit titled "Problems of Socialism", which questioned fundamental tenets of Marxism, including the theory of value, the inevitability of capitalist collapse, the intensification of class struggle, and the need for a purely proletarian revolutionary party. Bernstein advocated for an evolutionary, ethical socialism, famously stating, "the goal is nothing, the movement everything".

Kautsky was initially reluctant to publicly criticize Bernstein, due to their long friendship and Bernstein's exile. He first defended Bernstein against attacks by figures like Ernest Belfort Bax. However, as Bernstein's views became more explicit, particularly with the publication of Evolutionary Socialism (Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie) in 1899, Kautsky, urged by Bebel, felt compelled to respond.

The ensuing debate, which lasted until around 1903, covered nearly every aspect of Marxist theory. Kautsky argued that Bernstein's analysis, based on observations of England, was not applicable to Germany, where no significant democratic forces existed outside the working class. For Kautsky, theory (orthodox Marxism) served a practical function: it provided the German workers with self-confidence and the certainty of victory. He also developed his concept of Verelendung (immiserization), arguing that even if workers' material conditions improved, the social and political assaults by the ruling class would intensify class struggle. The SPD officially condemned revisionism at its Hanover (1899) and Dresden (1903) congresses. The debate permanently damaged Kautsky's friendship with Bernstein.

Kautsky also engaged in tactical debates concerning cooperation with bourgeois parties. He opposed participation in the Prussian Landtag elections under the restrictive three-class franchise in 1893 but argued in favor of it by 1897 to weaken the Junkers and fight for democratic reforms. He supported Jean Jaurès's engagement in the Dreyfus Affair but condemned Alexandre Millerand's entry into a bourgeois French government, seeing it as an unnecessary compromise. At the Second International's Paris Congress in 1900, Kautsky's resolution, which opposed electoral alliances but allowed for socialist entry into bourgeois governments under extraordinary circumstances with party approval, was adopted.

"Classical years" and challenges (1905–1914)

Russian Revolution of 1905 and mass strike debate

Kautsky (back row, third from right) at the Amsterdam Congress of the Second International, 1904

The Russian Revolution of 1905 significantly impacted European socialists, particularly in Germany, by highlighting the potential of the mass strike. Kautsky had paid some attention to Russia before, viewing it as backward but ripe for a bourgeois revolution, in which the proletariat would lead other classes. He had close ties with Russian Marxists like Pavel Axelrod, Georgi Plekhanov, and Rosa Luxemburg.

When the revolution broke out, Kautsky supported the revolutionaries and argued that the Russian peasantry, unlike Germany's, had revolutionary potential. He believed a worker-peasant coalition could achieve a liberal, capitalist Russia, which would then eventually lead to socialism.

The 1905 revolution, coupled with a surge in strike activity in Germany, fueled a major debate within the SPD on the mass strike. Trade union leaders, concerned about costs and employer retaliation, were cautious. The SPD leadership, increasingly conservative, also resisted adopting the mass strike. However, the party's radical intellectual wing, including Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, saw it as a way to vitalize the party and achieve democratic reforms.

Kautsky's position was nuanced. He had long considered the general strike a potentially useful, if dangerous, weapon. He argued that the growing interest in the mass strike was a response to the "growing disdain for parliamentarism" following the SPD's 1903 electoral victory, which had not translated into significant political change. He urged discussion of the mass strike not because he was eager to use it, but to ensure it was understood and not misused. He believed that in Germany, a successful mass strike was "only conceivable in a revolutionary situation". The SPD's Jena Congress in 1905 passed a Bebel-sponsored resolution that ambiguously accepted the mass strike as a defensive tactic and affirmed party superiority over trade unions. However, a secret agreement in February 1906 between party and trade union leaders effectively curtailed any organized mass action by the SPD, as the party accepted fiscal responsibility for political strikes it could not afford. At the Mannheim Congress in 1906, this agreement was essentially ratified, despite Kautsky's and Luxemburg's opposition.

Development of "centrism"

Rosa Luxemburg

The mass strike debate and its outcome led Kautsky to develop what became known as his "centrist" position, attempting to find a "true" course between reformism on the right and radicalism on the left. He believed that theory (Marxism) generated the necessary motivation for socialist action and that the party's main task was to prepare the workers for an inevitable, though not necessarily imminent, revolution by raising their consciousness and organizing them. He argued for a "strategy of attrition" (Ermattungsstrategie), where the party would win not by shock tactics but by outlasting the opposition through persistent aggressive political positioning.

This period saw a definitive break with Rosa Luxemburg. A debate in 1910 over franchise reform in Prussia, where Luxemburg advocated for mass action and Kautsky urged caution, escalated into a bitter personal and theoretical split. Kautsky articulated his centrist stance in an article titled "Between Baden and Luxemburg" (August 1910), arguing that the party must navigate between the reformist compromises of the South German SPD (who had voted for the Baden state budget) and the putschist tendencies of Luxemburg.

Imperialism and the path to war

As imperialism and militarism intensified in Europe, Kautsky devoted considerable attention to these issues. He initially associated colonial expansion with commercial-capitalist and agrarian-aristocratic interests. Under the influence of J. A. Hobson and particularly Rudolf Hilferding's Finance Capital (1910), his views evolved. He saw imperialism and nationalism primarily as bourgeois capitalist phenomena used by the German government to strengthen itself against the workers.

Kautsky opposed any form of socialist colonial policy, viewing it as a contradiction in terms and inherently exploitative, brutalizing, and racist. This was a consistent theme from his 1907 pamphlet Socialism and Colonial Policy. While he initially believed mature capitalism did not necessarily imply imperialism and militarism, by 1912 he accepted this connection. However, as the threat of war grew, his humanitarian aversion to war led him to seek ways to avoid it, arguing that the "armaments race is based on economic causes, but not on economic necessity". He believed that if war came, socialists should take an unpopular oppositional stance, which would ultimately position them to lead the revolution that would follow the war's inevitable collapse of capitalist society.

When World War I broke out in August 1914, Kautsky, though not a member of the SPD Fraktion (parliamentary group), was invited to its decisive meeting on war credits. He and Hugo Haase initially drafted a statement for refusing war credits. When it became clear that the majority would vote for credits, Kautsky urged abstention. Finally, when the Fraktion voted 78 to 14 for credit approval, he joined Gustav Hoch in an unsuccessful attempt to include a clause in the party's declaration demanding no annexations or violations of neutrality. Kautsky had lost, and the SPD accepted the Burgfrieden (civic truce).

World War I and party split

Opposition to the war

Karl Kautsky

Throughout World War I, Kautsky's main concern was to maintain as much theoretical integrity as possible and to prevent the SPD from completely succumbing to nationalist war fever. He distinguished between the legitimate defense of a "national state" and the aggressive "nationalistic state", arguing that workers had a right to national self-defense but must reject chauvinism and imperialism. He strongly opposed the Burgfrieden and the imperialistic war aims increasingly adopted by the SPD majority.

Kautsky believed the Second International had not been destroyed by the war but that its true nature and limitations had been revealed. He engaged in extensive polemics, primarily against the right-wing socialists (the Umlerner or "re-learners") who argued the party must change its theories to fit the new realities of war. Wartime censorship made it easier to criticize the right than the left. During the war, Kautsky re-established a close working relationship with Eduard Bernstein, who had also moved to an anti-war position. Conversely, his relationship with former collaborators like Heinrich Cunow, who became a leading proponent of war Marxism, deteriorated.

Founding of the USPD

As the war continued and the SPD majority increasingly suppressed dissent, Kautsky laid the theoretical groundwork for a party split. He argued that the majority's intolerance and violation of party custom by denying minority voices justified separation. In a series of articles in late 1915, he defended the right to dissent and warned that suppression bred extremism.

In April 1917, Kautsky, along with Bernstein, Haase, and other oppositionists, founded the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) at a congress in Gotha. Kautsky wrote the party's manifesto, which called for an international, democratic peace with self-determination and blamed the SPD majority for the split. He continued to develop his views on nationalism and democracy, arguing in The Liberation of Nations (1917) that self-determination was essential for both international democracy and the proletarian struggle. He also refined his distinction between political and social revolution.

Revolutions and post-war period

German Revolution

The German Revolution of 1918–1919 brought Kautsky into government service. He served as chairman of the Socialization Commission and as an advisor in the Foreign Office, tasked with publishing documents on war guilt. His work resulted in The Guilt of Wilhelm Hohenzollern (1919). Kautsky advocated for a democratic republic and opposed the attempts by the extreme left (Spartacists) to establish a council-based (Räte) system, which he viewed as undemocratic and likely to lead to civil war. He believed the workers' councils had an important economic role in gradual socialization but were unsuitable as permanent political bodies. His moderate stance and insistence on democratic processes put him at odds with the increasingly radicalized USPD, and he effectively broke with the party by mid-1919 when it endorsed the concept of a council dictatorship.

Kautsky's plan for socialization was gradualist, emphasizing orderly transition, compensation for expropriated property to maintain production, and adaptation to the technical development of different industries. He saw the state's role as facilitative rather than directly administrative in a socialized economy.

Critique of the Russian Revolution and Bolshevism

Kautsky was an early and persistent critic of the Bolshevik Revolution. While he had seen Russia as ripe for a political (bourgeois-democratic) revolution, he argued that the conditions for a socialist revolution were absent. His most comprehensive critique came in The Dictatorship of the Proletariat (1918). He argued that socialism's goal was the abolition of all exploitation and oppression, which required democracy, not a dictatorship of one faction of the proletariat over others and the peasantry. He contended that the Bolshevik reliance on will over objective conditions, their suppression of democratic forms like the Constituent Assembly in favor of soviets, and their violent methods would lead to an oppressive regime and ultimately fail.

This sparked a famous polemic with Vladimir Lenin, whose The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky (1918) fiercely attacked Kautsky as a betrayer of Marxism. Kautsky continued to criticize the Soviet regime throughout his life, predicting its eventual collapse due to internal contradictions.

Later years and exile (1924–1938)

Kautsky and his wife Luise with Georgian Mensheviks, Tbilisi, 1920

In 1924, Kautsky returned to Vienna, effectively retiring from active party politics. His concerns shifted to more abstract theorizing and continued criticism of Bolshevism. He urged Russian émigré opponents of Bolshevism, particularly Mensheviks, to unite and prepare for the communists' inevitable collapse. While he had little direct involvement in the Labour and Socialist International (LSI), he was an honored figure within it.

His magnum opus of this period was the two-volume Die materialistische Geschichtsauffassung (The Materialist Conception of History, 1927). In this work, Kautsky aimed to provide a systematic presentation of historical materialism, grounding it in the natural sciences but emphasizing the unique dialectical development of human society, driven by the interaction of human intellect (especially technology) and the environment. He reiterated his long-held view that the laws of nature and society were not directly interchangeable.

Kautsky struggled to understand the rise of fascism and Nazism, generally viewing them as counter-revolutionary phenomena born of post-revolutionary despair and the economic crisis, appealing to insecure petit bourgeois and peasant masses. He maintained an often-criticized optimism in the ultimate triumph of reason and socialism.

Following the Anschluss in March 1938, Kautsky and his wife Luise, aided by the Czech embassy, fled Vienna for Amsterdam. Karl Kautsky died in Amsterdam on 17 October 1938, from complications of pancreatic cancer, one day after his 84th birthday. Several family members, including his wife Luise (who died in Auschwitz) and son Benedikt (who survived Buchenwald), suffered severely under Nazi persecution.

Theoretical contributions and legacy

Sketch of Kautsky by Jan Veth

Kautsky was a pivotal figure in the history of Marxism, primarily as its leading popularizer and systematizer during the era of the Second International. He translated Marx's complex theories into a coherent doctrine for a mass party, most notably through his editorship of Die Neue Zeit and his work on the Erfurt Program. He was known in his time as the "Pope of Socialism".

His interpretation of Marxism emphasized historical evolution and the inevitability of socialism, but also stressed the need for conscious political action by an organized working class. He sought a balance between determinism and voluntarism, arguing that while objective conditions shaped history, human will, particularly in the political realm, was crucial. He consistently distinguished between political revolution (the seizure of state power) and social revolution (the longer-term transformation of economic structures), a distinction that became central to his critique of Bolshevism.

Kautsky's Marxism was characterized by a strong rationalist and humanist bent. He abhorred violence and believed socialism could only be achieved through democratic means by a conscious majority. This put him at odds with the Leninist model of a vanguard party and revolutionary dictatorship, leading to his denunciation by communists as a "renegade". Non-communist critics often faulted him for revolutionary rhetoric that was not matched by practical action, or for an overly deterministic, "fatalistic" view of history that underestimated the need for pragmatic reform.

Steenson concludes that Kautsky's greatest weakness was his "failure to see his theoretical positions translated into effective action" and to perceive that "practice tended to be self-perpetuating quite independently of theory". Despite his immense influence before 1914, no major movement called itself "Kautskyist". However, with the retreat of communism in the late 20th century, Steenson, in his 1991 preface, suggests that Kautsky's moderate, humanist interpretation of Marx might find renewed relevance as a counterpoint to the discredited Leninist tradition.

Personal life

Kautsky married Louise Strasser in April 1883. They lived together in Stuttgart and London. The marriage was often strained by financial difficulties and Kautsky's intense focus on his work. They divorced in 1888 after a period of growing estrangement; the split caused considerable distress among their socialist friends, particularly Friedrich Engels. Louise Strasser later remarried.

In March 1890, Kautsky married Luise Ronsperger, a friend of his mother's. This second marriage lasted until Karl's death and was by all accounts a close intellectual and personal partnership. Luise Kautsky was herself a socialist author and translator and acted as Karl's closest critic and collaborator. They had three sons: Felix (b. 1891), Karl Jr. (b. 1892), and Benedikt (b. 1894). Kautsky's family life was orderly; he devoted his mornings to writing, took afternoon walks (often with his sons), and evenings were for visiting or light reading. The Kautsky household hosted regular Sunday afternoon gatherings for socialist comrades and international visitors.

Works in English

• The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx. (1887/1903)
• Thomas More and his Utopia. (1888)
• The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program). Daniel DeLeon, trans. New York: New York Labor News Co., 1899.
• Communism in Central Europe at the Time of the Reformation. J.L. & E.G. Mulliken, trans. London: T.F. Unwin, 1897.
• Forerunners of Modern Socialism, 1895.
• Frederick Engels: His Life, His Work and His Writings. May Wood Simons, trans. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1899.
• On the Agrarian Question (1899), Pete Burgess, trans. London: Zwan Publications, 1988.
• The Social Revolution and On the Day After the Social Revolution. J. B. Askew, trans. London: Twentieth Century Press, 1903.
• Socialism and Colonial Policy (1907)
• The Historic Accomplishment of Karl Marx (1908)
• Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History. J. B. Askew, trans. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1909.
• The Road to Power A.M. Simons, trans. Chicago: Samuel A. Bloch, 1909.
• The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program). William E. Bohn, trans. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1909.
• Finance-Capital and Crises (1911)
• The High Cost of Living: Changes in Gold Production and the Rise in Prices. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1914.
• The Dictatorship of the Proletariat. H. J. Stenning, trans. London: National Labour Press, n.d. (c. 1918).
• The Guilt of William Hohenzollern. London: Skeffington and Son, n.d. (1919).
• Terrorism and Communism: A Contribution to the Natural History of Revolution. W.H. Kerridge, trans. London: National Labour Press, 1920.
• "Preface" to The Twelve Who Are to Die: The Trial of the Socialists-Revolutionists in Moscow. Berlin: Delegation of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists, 1922.
• Foundations of Christianity: A Study of Christian Origins. New York: International Publishers, 1925.
• The Labour Revolution. H. J. Stenning, trans. London: National Labour Press, 1925.
• Are the Jews a Race? New York: International Publishers, 1926.
• Communism vs. Socialism. Joseph Shaplen, trans. New York: American League for Democratic Socialism, 1932.

See also

• Terrorism and Communism (1920), a pamphlet written by Leon Trotsky in response to Kautsky's pamphlet by the same name.

References

Works cited

• Steenson, Gary P. (1991) [1978]. Karl Kautsky, 1854–1938: Marxism in the Classical Years (2nd ed.). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. ISBN 0-8229-5443-5.

Further reading

• Blumenberg (1960). Karl Kautskys literatisches Werk: eine bibliographische Übersicht (in German). 's-Gravenhage: Mouton & Co. doi:10.1515/9783112314180.
• Banaji, Jairus (January 1990). "Illusions about the peasantry: Karl Kautsky and the agrarian question" (PDF). Journal of Peasant Studies. 17 (2): 288–307. doi:10.1080/03066159008438422.
• Donald, Moira. (1993). Marxism and Revolution: Karl Kautsky and the Russian Marxists, 1900–1924. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Gaido, Daniel. "Karl Kautsky on capitalism in the ancient World." Journal of Peasant Studies 30.2 (2003): 146–158.
• Gaido, Daniel. "'The American Worker' and the Theory of Permanent Revolution: Karl Kautsky on Werner Sombart's Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?." Historical Materialism 11.4 (2003): 79–123. online
• Geary, Dick. Karl Kautsky (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987).
• Gronow, Jukka. On the Formation of Marxism: Karl Kautsky's Theory of Capitalism, the Marxism of the Second International and Karl Marx's Critique of Political Economy. [2015] Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2016.
• Kołakowski, Leszek, Main Currents of Marxism. P.S. Falla, trans. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2005.
• Nygaard, Bertel. "Constructing Marxism: Karl Kautsky and the French revolution." History of European Ideas 35.4 (2009): 450–464.
• Salvadori, Massimo L. Karl Kautsky and the Socialist Revolution, 1880-1938. Jon Rothschild, trans. London: New Left Books, 1979.

Primary sources

• Kautsky, Karl. Karl Kautsky on Democracy and Republicanism., edited and translated by Ben Lewis. Leiden: Brill, 2019.

External links

• Karl Kautsky at the Marxists Internet Archive
• Archive of Karl Kautsky Papers at the International Institute of Social History
• Newspaper clippings about Karl Kautsky in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW