Bernstein and Kautsky – Different Sides of the Same Coin

[Invariance]

Edit: I hope people don't mind, but I'm going to divide it up into separate posts so its more readable.

Introduction:

Reading a couple of books recently on the disaster that we know as the SPD, I came across this poignant comment:
‘The distinction between the contenders [Bernstein and Kautsky] remained largely a subjective one, a difference of ideas in the evaluation of reality rather than a difference in the realm of action.’

Schorske, German Social Democracy, 1905-1917 (Cambridge, Mass., 1955).
And I think Schorske has a point – Bernstein and Kautsky had somewhat similar theoretical ideas, particularly on some of the most striking matters (this is a pun – you’ll get it later). More importantly, their practical tactics were almost in complete accord – Bernstein’s great betrayal was really only wanting to revise the SPD’s theory in light of what he considered, its already reformed, practice. The following isn’t necessarily a complete analysis, but a collection of random thoughts…I didn't address the area of Luxemburg's struggle with the union leaders, which is pretty essential to looking at the increasingly bourgeoisie nature of the SPD...

(As a side note, I think it is very telling that people are apt to ignore the lessons of the capitulation of the SPD to national chauvinism – I think the collapse of the Second International was one of the most important lessons of the history of 20th century Marxism; people are quick to blame personalities rather than the actual practices of the SPD. And it is obvious why – most leftist parties still follow the tactics of German Social Democracy – they are… just less successful).

[Invariance]

Bernstein’s Views:

Bernstein, as editor of the party’s official paper Sozialdemokrat from 1881 and Kautsky, as editor of Neue Zeit, founded in 1883, occupied top-ranking positions in the SPD (formed at the Gotha Congress of 1875, if anyone wonders where Marx’s ‘Critique of the Gotha Program’ has its historical roots). At the Erfurt Congress (1891) Kautsky had a monopoly on theory, Bernstein on practice; Kautsky emphasizing the traditional views of the drive to monopoly, the decline of the middle-class, increasing immiseration of the proletariat, and the inevitability of socialism etc. Bernstein emphasizing demands for universal suffrage, freedom of speech, free-school and a progressive income tax. No sooner had this passed, that Bernstein wanted it to be revised – to match theory with practice.

Undoubtedly, Bernstein was influenced by the English Fabians – he saw the world through ‘English spectacles’ as Luxemburg put it. In 1895 Bernstein began the Revisionist controversy by writing an article on the 1849 French revolution, taking a view opposite to Marx’s views in The Class Struggles in France; he preferred Blanc to Blanqui and the June days were a case of ‘unnecessary adventurism.’ These series of articles, entitled ‘Problems of Socialism’ were published in Kautsky’s Die Neue Zeit, later on expanded in a book.

It is important to note here of Kautsky’s encouragement of Bernstein. In a letter to Bernstein, quoted in Steinberg’s Sozialismus und deutsche Sozialdemokratie, 3rd ed, (Bonn, 1972) p. 78, Kautsky writes (to Bernstein): ‘You have overthrown our tactics, our theory of value, our philosophy; now all depends on what it is new that you are thinking of putting in place of the old.’ In other words, Kautsky’s friendship to Bernstein prevented him from immediately criticizing the revisionism of Bernstein, which I will now address.

Bernstein was influenced by the marginalist theories of Jevons (marginalism attaches value to utility and the relationship of the ‘equilibrium, of supply and demand’, essentially coming to the conclusion that the market knows best and maximizes social welfare). Bernstein also accepted Eugen Bohm-Bawerk’s (Austrian marginalist) argument that the notion of value had no objective existence but was simply a quantitative relation between use-values. This led Bernstein to view Marx’s theory as an abstract hypothesis, ‘a purely abstract concept’ and the LTV ‘can claim acceptance only as a speculative formula or a scientific hypothesis.’ Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism (New York, 1961) p. 29. Hence, the LTV could not give an account of the value of social production. On the other hand, Bernstein recognized a rise in real wages that started in 1895 which created a ‘labour aristocracy’ with the political implications of that.

Bernstein rejected the idea of impoverishment enunciated in the Erfurt Programme. Impressed by the prosperity of the Reich in the late 1890s Berstein denied real wages were falling. Real wages did rise, but it was short-lived and relative impoverishment was a fact of the early 1900s. Kautsky never held a doctrine of absolute impoverishment – did claim that the surplus value produced by capitalism was larger than ever, workers might force reforms, increased technology necessarily meant increased exploitation and therefore the proportion of the GNP accruing to the working class would decline.

Bernstein had a loose definition of class – a 'similarity of living conditions.' He considered the middle class to be increasing:
‘Where does this mass of commodities go which is not consumed by the magnates and their stooges?’ (ignoring the reinvestment of surplus): ‘If it does not go to the proletarians in one way or another, it must be absorbed by other classes. Either a relative decrease in the number of capitalists and an increasing wealth in the proletariat, or a numerous middle class – these are the only alternatives which the continuous increase of productivity allows.’
Bernstein saw that with the growth of cartels, trusts and monopoly capital, and the separation of ownership and control, the increase in credit facilities, led to idea that capitalism was gaining an ability to regulate itself. Capital was not being centralized. Hence:
‘It is thus quite wrong to assume that the present development of society shows a relative or indeed absolute diminution of the number of the members of the possessing classes. Their number increases both relatively and absolutely. If the activity and the prospects of social democracy were dependant on the decrease of the ‘wealthy’, then it might indeed lie down to sleep. But the contrary is the case. The prospects of socialism depend not on the decrease but on the increase of social wealth.’
Hence, this harmonious development of capitalism could lead uninterrupted to socialism. Hence, the title of Bernstein’s seminal work ‘Evolutionary Socialism.’

[Invariance]

Kautsky’s Views:

After Kautsky’s initial encouragement of Bernstein, he was compelled to defend Marxism, or rather the SPD’s brand of Marxism, against Bernstein’s revisionism. Kautsky maintained that although the number of small enterprises was not necessarily less, their 'economic domain' was decreasing as they were often on the last refuge of the lower middle class on the verge of proletarianisation. Periodic depression would squeeze small businesses out of existence and via the increase in the minimum necessary capital to reinvest; i.e the increasing amount of constant capital required as industry became mechanicized. This was a view similar to Luxemburg’s, to quote:
‘The struggle of the average-size enterprise against big capital cannot be considered a regularly proceeding battle in which the troops of the weaker party continue to melt away directly and quantitatively. It should rather be regarded as a periodic mowing down of small capital, which rapidly grows up again only to be mowed down once more by large industry. The two tendencies play catch with the middle capitalist layers. As opposed to the development of the working class, the descending tendency must win in the end. The victory of the descending tendency need not necessarily show itself in an absolute numerical diminution of the middle-size enterprises. It shows itself, first, in the progressive increase of the minimum amount of capital necessary for the functioning of the enterprises in the old branches of production; second, in the constant diminution of the interval of time during which the small capitalists conserve the opportunity to exploit the new branches of production. The result, as far as the small capitalist is concerned, is a progressively shorter duration of his economic life and an ever more rapid change in the methods of production and of investment; and, for the class as a whole, a more and more rapid acceleration of the social metabolism.’
To Kautsky, the cartels and monopoly were evidence of the end of free competition and the imminence of collapse. He admitted later (as against Rosa Luxemburg) that domestic consumption could absorb increased production. But in his argument with Bernstein, maintained that an increase in production was inevitable with the further introduction of machinery and that the consumption capacity of the working class could not rise concurrently, since the system tended to depress wages as far as possible.

The resulting surplus produce could not be absorbed by the capitalists, who had to reinvest more and more, and an eventual collapse was inevitable.

Kautsky linked these underconsumptionist views with idea that capitalism would not evolve in a liberal, cooperative direction – pointing out the annexation of overseas territories, the home-market being insufficient. He was also one of the first to emphasize the importance, for groups outside industrial capitalists – military, bureaucracy and finance capitalists –, of colonial expansion which enabled the expansion of surplus goods and also the capital to buy them. In the Austrian school, Hilferding was putting forth similar views (in his most important work Finanzkapital):
·‘Finance capital does not aim at freedom but domination; it has no feeling for the independence of the individual capitalist, but requires his subordination; it avoids the anarchy of competition and aims at organisation – though, of course, only in order to take up competition again at an ever higher level. But in order to achieve this, in order to increase and maintains its domination, it needs the State whose function is to guarantee it the internal market through its customs and tariffs policies and make easier the conquest of external markets. It needs a politically powerful State which in its trade policies is not obliged to take account of the opposed interest of other States. Finally, it needs a strong State which can enforce its financial interests abroad, and use its political power in order to enforce on smaller states suitable treaties of supply trade, a State which can intervene everywhere in the world in order to able to transform the whole world into a sphere for the implantation of its finance capital. Finance capital needs a State which is strong in order to conduct a policy of expansion and incorporate new colonies in its sphere of influence.’
Kautsky's views, as we know, changed – perhaps in proportion as the SPD became increasingly a party collaborating with other bourgeoisie parties in the electioneering. By 1912, with a slightly more calm international climate, Kautsky was asserting that colonies were in the long run detrimental even to the capitalist system. Capitalism needed peace to develop, and therefore capitalists sufficiently aware of their own interest could prevent both the arms race and war by inaugurating a phase of ‘ultra-imperialism’.

For example:
There is no economic necessity for continuing the arms race after the World War, even from the standpoint of the capitalist class itself, with the exception of at most certain armaments interests. On the contrary, the capitalist economy is seriously threatened precisely by the contradictions between its States. Every far-sighted capitalist today must call on his fellows: capitalists of all countries, unite ! For, first of all, there is the growing opposition of the more developed of the agrarian zones, which threatens not just one or other of the imperialist States, but all of them together. This is true of the awakening of Eastern Asia and India as well as of the Pan-Islamic movement in the Near East and North Africa.
And
What Marx said of capitalism can also be applied to imperialism: monopoly creates competition and competition monopoly. The frantic competition of giant firms, giant banks and multi-millionaires obliged the great financial groups, who were absorbing the small ones, to think up the notion of the cartel. In the same way, the result of the World War between the great imperialist powers may be a federation of the strongest, who renounce their arms race.

Perhaps this notion of 'ultra imperialism' or 'hyper imperialism' has relevance today, when the world bourgeoisie has, since the overthrow of the USSR, become more and more solidified into one camp. However, at the time Kautsky was to be proven wrong.

To Kautsky imperialism was neither inevitable nor the last stage of capitalism. Lenin was to later criticize Kautsky’s views on this matter. In Sozialismus und Kolonialpolitik, argued that capital was being exported to limit productivity and stabilize the system. He also emphasised the imbalance in expansion between the industrial and the agricultural sectors of the world market, the slow expansion of the latter being unable fully to supply the market or raw materials of the former. His details on this are set out in the 1914 article 'Ultra Imperialism.'

One area of agreement I have with him, as did Lenin at the time, was Katusky's views on the peasantry. South German reformists, such as Eduard David, supported collaboration with the peasantry whose votes were important to the SPD in those areas. In Die Agrarfrage (‘The Agrarian Question’), 1899, Kautsky argued that the interests of the peasantry – protective tariffs and the maintenance of private ownership – were directly opposed to that of the proletariat.

[Invariance]

The Merger of Bernstein and Kautsky: Different Sides of the Same Coin

Where Bernstein and Kautsky merged was in practice, but this was a necessary result of their theoretical ideas.

In Problems of Socialism (1898), Bernstein wrote:
‘Although no doubt social catastrophes could and no doubt also would very much hasten the process of development, they could still never create overnight the homogeneity of relationships that would be necessary for a simultaneous transformation of economics and today at least are not yet present.’
Hence, Bernstein rejected revolutionary politics; the material circumstances, according to him, were just not right.

This deterministic attitude of Bernstein also had some persuasion with Kautsky. As Kautsky put it:
‘The task of Social Democracy consists, not in bringing about the inevitable catastrophe, but in delaying it as long as possible, that is to say, in avoiding with care anything that could resemble a provocation or the appearance of a provocation.’
Le Marxisme et son critique Bernstein (Paris, 1900) p. Xii.

This fatalistic view of the inevitability of proletarian victory became an argument for inaction as the conditions were not ‘mature’ enough for intervention. Both supported parliamentary democracy, Kautsky argued that parliamentary democracy with its electoral battles heightened class consciousness and conflict. The opposite - that is, that it encouraged collaboration with the bourgeoisie and allowed the party executive to be taken over by Ebert & Co, is certainly an arguable position.

Unlike Lenin, who wanted to construct a party which was able to lead a revolution, Kautsky considered that whilst the SPD was a revolutionary party it was not a party preparing for revolution. Even in his most radical publication ‘The Road to Power’, 1909, it was quite passive – and even still the SPD executive tried to censor it!

We can see the merger of Kautsky and Bernstein clearly in their agreement on the mass strike.

Whilst Kautsky 'defended' the mass strike in 1905-06, he never once advocated it in any specific situation, and appended a long string of preconditions before it could be successful: participation of all workers, general disaffection of all members of society, weak government. Unlike Luxemburg, the mass strike was only ever a defensive measure to be used as the last resort if the democratic rights of the working class were threatened.

Parvus (a left radical, a Russian Menshevik, a German Social Democrat, and a German intelligence agent!) summed up the contradiction in the SPD as early as 1898:
‘At the source of all opportunistic errors inside the socialist workers’ movement can be found a common trait: the incapacity to connect in an organic plan the present work of the party with its social revolutionary goal. In their eyes this splits in two: here “goal”, there “present tasks.” The most they recognise is parallelism: agitation for social revolution and activity inside the capitalist state.’
Ultimately, this conflict was resolved in favour of the social chauvinists of the party, and was, in my mind, related to the views and practices advocated by Bernstein and Kautsky.

[Tower of Bebel]

I don't know whether or not the conclusion also includes the idea that Kautsky has always been the politician we know as "the renegade Kautsky"? Your third post mentions some changes while the others more-or-less stress some sort of continuity between his earlier ideas (before 1910) and his centrist policy (after 1910). You also mentioned The Road to Power (1909) and the response from the party's central committee (to which he eventually gave in). This makes me think of a second question very much related to the first one: do you think Kautsky's centrism* was a consequence of his marxist fallacies or the rise of a bourgeois tendency within the party (the trade union leadership of which bloody Noske and Ebert were part of)?

* Kautsky's centrism but of course also that of Bebel noticing that on the one hand it was essentially Bebel who pushed Kautsky to attack Bernstein's revisionism, while on the other hand the old man, years later, was also the one who developed the centrist compromise with the right on the question of the mass strike ("the mass strike was only ever a defensive measure to be used as the last resort if the democratic rights of the working class were threatened").

[Invariance]

This makes me think of a second question very much related to the first one: do you think Kautsky's centrism* was a consequence of his marxist fallacies or the rise of a bourgeois tendency within the party (the trade union leadership of which bloody Noske and Ebert were part of)?

Thank you for addressing such an interesting issue! And it really is the 'million dollar question', isn't it?

To put it briefly, I don't think any comprehensive answer can take an 'either / or' approach; Kautsky's revisionism reciprocally affected the party's practices, and the party's practices reciprocally affected the party's ideology. They weren't, in my mind, disconnected. And this is what I think Parvus was saying. A point that I didn't mention above was that the SPD really wasn't, despite Engel's hopes, a very Marxist party even from its birth. From the beginning it was split between the Lassalle faction of the party, and the Eisenach party which combined to form it. To an extent, the anti-socialist laws radicalised its views against the government (and, perhaps more importantly, kept it isolated), but those laws "ended" in 1890. If we recognise that the working class consciously reacts to the changes in material conditions, why not also its so-called class party?

However, if I was to stress one element it would indeed be the party's practices. I think Nettl addressed these elements quite well in his biography of Luxemburg:
·‘Ideology, the same old outward-going ideology of revolution, served more and more exclusively as a means of internal cohesion. With the continuation of ‘practical’ politics at all levels – participation in elections, trade-union activity, attempts to form blocs with bourgeoisie parties in the Reichstag – the gulf between theory and practice inevitably widened; hence increased ideological assertion became all the more necessary to sublimate the uselessness of practical politics – the uselessness which was all that was permitted. In turn, the lower echelons of party work became a desert in which one served to obtain one’s promotion – instead of the grass roots of a vital struggle; the party congresses ceased to be the law-making and policy-making sovereign assembly and became an annual ritual where ideology was enthroned and from which participants dispersed full of moral satisfaction – to illuminate their comrades accordingly. The structure remained unaltered, except for the growth of the executive and its bureaucracy, but its functions, and with them the foci of power, underwent a considerable change.’
J.P Nettl, Rosa Luxemburg, (Oxford 1969) p. 151.

I think we can contrast the revisionist tendencies of Kautsky, Bernstein & Co with Luxemburg, because in my mind she represented the radical and truly Marxist element within the party. To Luxemburg, the trade union struggle of enlarging the social wealth of workers would be frustrated by proletarisation of the middle class which increased unemployment, and the growth of the productivity of labour, which also increased employment. This is where her (in)famous analogy of the trade union struggle being a 'sort of labour of Sisyphus.' Yet, ‘through them the awareness, the consciousness of the proletariat becomes socialist, and it is organised as a class.’

Just to address your point on the role of trade unions which is closely connected to the role of the mass strike. Babel's resolution of mass strikes as only defensive weapons was accepted at the Jena Congress of 1905, as you noted. In this, the trade union leaders agreed, since they favoured a 'gradualistic approach' and not tactics which could potentially harm their financial positions and their centralized leadership. This was the view expressed at the Cologne Congress of 1905. The Party's Secretary Auer reportedly saying that 'general strikes are general nonsense.' Another problem was that at the 1906 Mannheim Congress it was reiterated that the trade unions were equal and not subordinate to the party, and that no mass strike could be launched without their, very very unlikely, consent. In fact, from what I understand, Kautsky actually opposed this equality and independence of the trade unions, but I may be wrong.

The fact of the matter is that the trade unions were plain reformist. I think Shorske puts it best when he stated:
‘The unionists, with their anti-revolutionary attitude, may be presumed to have represented more accurately than the Social Democratic Party the mass of German workers in our period. By organising these masses where the party could not, the union leaders were able to transmit the subjective attitudes of the politically passive workers into the Social Democratic Party itself, with the party executive as their agent. In this sense, the trade-union conquest made the party more representative of German labor than it had been before 1906. Yet herein lay a fatal difficulty: the trade-union bureaucracy was anti-revolutionary in Permanenz, by virtue of its corporate interest in the existing order. The working class was not similarly committed, and the party had heretofore represented the proletariat’s revolutionary potential as well as its reformist actuality. By capitulating before the trade unions in our period, the party surrendered its political flexibility, and this prepared the ground for its subsequent dissolution.’

(I cannot post the link, but google 'German Social Democracy, 1905-1917 by Carl E. Schorske' where relevant extracts of the book are available).Bourgeoisie democracy, according to Luxemburg, had 'largely played out their role as aids in bourgeoisie development.' Yet she still considered the very ineffectiveness of such actions as fruitful in showing that the conquest of political power was essential. She also made an interesting point on the ineffectiveness of trying to 'legislate socialism.' ‘The structure of capitalist property and the capitalist state develop in entirely different directions.’ Capitalist society is characterised by the fact that wage labour was not a juridical but an economic relation: ‘in our whole juridicial system, there is not a single legal formula for the present class domination.’

I won't get into the arguments for/against the mass strike, but I think Luxemburg made a couple of interesting comments, which I though I would share anyway:


‘The economic struggle is that which leads the political struggle from one nodal point to another; the political struggle is that which periodically fertilizes the soil for the economic struggle. Cause and effect here continually change places. Thus, far from being completely separated or even mutually exclusive, as the pedantic schema sees it, the economic and political moments in the mass strike period form only two interlacing sides of the proletarian class struggle in Russia. And their unity is precisely the mass strike.’

‘If the mass strike does not signify a single act but a whole period of class struggles, and if this period is identical with a period of revolution, then it is clear that the mass strike cannot be called at will, even if the decision to call it comes from the highest committee of the strongest Social Democratic party. As long as Social Democracy is not capable of staging and countermanding revolutions according to its own estimation of the situation, then even the greatest enthusiasm and impatience of the Social Democratic troops will not suffice to call into being a true period of mass strikes as a living, powerful movement of the people.’

The role of electioneering probably cannot be underestimated; the party's actions being wholly devoted to gaining mass support. This was to come at a cost of betrayal to the working class. It wasn't 1914 when the revisionists had their final victory, but in 1912 when the party cooperated with bourgeoisie parties. But the party's capitulation to national chauvinism wasn't really unexpected. At the Stuggart Congress of the Inteternational in 1907, the SPD delegation took a conservative attitude on militarism and, from what I have read, even advocated a positive attitude towards colonialism. The SPD's fear of the reintroduction of anti-socialist laws, fear of defeat by Tsarist Russia, the prior decision of the Trade Unions to cooperate with the government and the fear of loss of working-class support contributed to the 4 August vote.

A few peripherally related notes: the party was overrepresented by rural members and rural factions which had an undue influence. I can present statistics which support this if you wish. Typically such factions represented either petty bourgeoisie interests or progressive views on the land system. In urban centres, it remained quite a working class party, yet leadership positions generally held by lawyers, journalists, bureaucrats or other professionals. Likewise, as alluded to above, the trade unions outnumbered the party members 4 to 1.

I do think something is telling - from both Kautsky and Bernstein were to split from the SPD into the USPD. Clearly both were dissatisfied with the actions of the SPD, and Bernstein, from memory, was a pacifist. Yet as Engels once wrote:
People who boast that they made a revolution always see the day after that they had no idea what they were doing, that the revolution made does not in the least resemble the one they would like to make. This is what Hegel calls the irony of history, an irony which few historical personalities escape.
Ultimately, perhaps, it made a little difference the theories of Kautsky to the party's capitulation. Indeed, from memory, the only party not to split over the war was the Austrian party (and the Bolsheviks?) - but let's not forget Karl Renner. In other words, historical conditions and its practices probably had more to do with the party's and Kautsky's reformism. The problem of how the SPD (or indeed, any Marxist party today which has similar practices) could have avoided this, and the implications from that (i.e. not being a mass party), are a whole different topic.

I hope you have understood some of my disconnected thoughts on what is quite a difficult topic.

Vinnie

[Tower of Bebel]

That first quote, when was it written?

[Invariance]

The first quote wasn't by Luxemburg, it was by a historian J.P Nettl (I'm not certain if he is a Marxist, but I suspect he is, as he is sympathetic to her) who wrote a somewhat decent biography on Luxemburg (there are two versions floating around, an unabridged and an abridged version). That is if I am referring to the quotation which you are questioning.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Kautsky’s Views:

That first post mentions only ultra-imperialism. I view the academic unity-rivalry debate as something like plate tectonics, with supercontinents forming and breaking up.

On to your second post:


This fatalistic view of the inevitability of proletarian victory became an argument for inaction as the conditions were not ‘mature’ enough for intervention.

I invite you to thoroughly read these posts:

USPD vs. KPD: lessons for organizing today (http://www.revleft.com/vb/uspd-vs-kpd-t103415/index.html)

Revolutionary Strategy: Marxism and the Challenge of Left Unity (http://www.revleft.com/vb/kautsky-v-lenin-t67203/index.html?p=1203523) by Mike Macnair (with a video here (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8682919597603842499))

Mike Macnair: CPGB: Rehabilitating the Kautskyite centre (http://www.revleft.com/vb/debating-kautskys-legacy-t103122/index.html) by Dave Esterson (with a reply from Mike Macnair)

Luxemburg vs. Kautsky on revolutionary periods (http://www.revleft.com/vb/luxemburg-vs-kautsky-t105061/index.html)


I don't know whether or not the conclusion also includes the idea that Kautsky has always been the politician we know as "the renegade Kautsky"? Your third post mentions some changes while the others more-or-less stress some sort of continuity between his earlier ideas (before 1910) and his centrist policy (after 1910). You also mentioned The Road to Power (1909) and the response from the party's central committee (to which he eventually gave in). This makes me think of a second question very much related to the first one: do you think Kautsky's centrism* was a consequence of his marxist fallacies or the rise of a bourgeois tendency within the party (the trade union leadership of which bloody Noske and Ebert were part of)?

* Kautsky's centrism but of course also that of Bebel noticing that on the one hand it was essentially Bebel who pushed Kautsky to attack Bernstein's revisionism, while on the other hand the old man, years later, was also the one who developed the centrist compromise with the right on the question of the mass strike ("the mass strike was only ever a defensive measure to be used as the last resort if the democratic rights of the working class were threatened").

That's an idea that was propagated by Gramsci, Korsch, and Lukacs, and since then accepted by the Trotskyist tradition and by many of those to its left (perhaps not so much so if one goes ultra-left enough, like the ICC and its musings on Kautsky and "ascending capitalism"). :(

[Invariance]

That first post mentions only ultra-imperialism. I view the academic unity-rivalry debate as something like plate tectonics, with supercontinents forming and breaking up. I don't understand what you mean. Could you explain it further?


Luxemburg vs. Kautsky on revolutionary periods (http://www.revleft.com/vb/luxemburg-vs-kautsky-t105061/index.html) Many of the supposed stances attributed to Luxemburg in this thread are ones which she did not hold, particularly her views regarding the mass strike. See here. (http://www.revleft.com/vb/forgive-me-am-t107465/index.html?p=1427456#post1427456)

[Die Neue Zeit]

Re. supercontinents:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supercontinents

The "ultra-imperialism" argument by a degenerated Kautsky actually had validity during the Cold War (all imperialist countries rallying around the United States to protect the collective "cartel" via NATO) and the immediate "globalisation" period of the 1990s. Even Lenin himself acknowledged this in his pamphlet. However, it was said there that such unity wouldn't last.

The list of prehistoric supercontinents is analogous to what I've just said.