Kautsky and the worker's movement.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Who was Kautsky? So far I've only found that he was some sort of social democrat who turned opportunist (?) during the later days of his life, and that his earlier works are in-depth and revolve around a so called "worker's movement".

Would anyone be able to send me in the direction of Kautsky's more important works, along with explaining what exactly the 'worker's movement' was?

[Q]

Kautsky was the editor of Die Neue Zeit, a journal that he maintained from its inception in 1883 until he was removed by the SPD leadership in 1917 (for his later-day opposition to the war). In this role he proved to be far influential in establishing Marxism as a theoretical system.

He was obviously a productive writer, but if you want to gain an insight in his basic strategic thinking, The Class struggle (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1892/erfurt/index.htm) (a commentary on the 1891 Erfurt Programme) is highly useful reading. This programme inspired a huge mass movement throughout Europe, that included the RSDLP (of which the Bolsheviks were a part).

Lenin called him a "renegade" because he reneged on his Marxism he always professed, in 1914 when the war broke out and Kautsky switched to defend the German war effort because the alternative (a Russian Tsarist invasion) would be catastrophic for the German workers movement (at the time the largest and most advanced Marxist movement in the world). Consequently the revolutionary center of the Second Intenational largely collapsed, leaving the Bolsheviks isolated.

So yeah, in a nutshell. Kautsky's work is one that shouldn't be discarded as "heretic" though, but one where can (re)learn a lot from and, crucially, understand the context Lenin and the Bolsheviks were coming from.

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

Who was Kautsky? So far I've only found that he was some sort of social democrat who turned opportunist (?) during the later days of his life, and that his earlier works are in-depth and revolve around a so called "worker's movement".

Would anyone be able to send me in the direction of Kautsky's more important works, along with explaining what exactly the 'worker's movement' was?

He didn't agree with the Bolsheviks vanguard ie 'leading' workers to socialism he thought it should be a more democratic process, as in, as mass movement. He thought (and rightly so) workers needed to be in a proper state of both economic and social conditions before socialism could be attained so he didn't agree with the Russian path to "socialism" (and did Russia ever achieve socialism? He predicted it wouldn't). For that he was targeted by Lenin and came away with the name "renegade".

He's no saint or "perfect Marxist" either but I think most of his choices centered around the FACT capitalism was too young, still growing/expanding for communism to replace it. If Marx were alive in Lenin's time, Kautsky argued, Marx would have agreed and would have worked to educate workers via struggle in the more advanced capitalist nations rather than push for revolutions in backwards nations. Most Leninists will say Kautsky was a sell out, a reformist and anti- revolutionary. In Kautsky's own words he thought only advanced capitalist nations with workers who have had some semblance of democratic rights under enlightenment values could create workers ready to create communism. This obviously pissed Lenin off because as we know Russia was not at the stage in 1917. Some of Kautsky's actions are way off base but much of Lenin/Soviet/Bolshevik criticism of him is also way off base. He at times supported the spread of bourgeois capitalism with the idea that the more the system is global, the more total and complete capitalism becomes, the more capitalism creates a 'proper proletariat' the bigger the chance that workers will destroy capitalism. This has also been at the center of many insults thrown at Kautsky but he argued Marx thought the same way.

Start here to gain a more objective look at Kautsky:

http://www.socialisteducation.org/KKautsky.html

Then read this, one of his late works the Soviet Union "banned": http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1934/bolshevism/ch04.htm

All of his works are here:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/index.htm

He supported revolution, was aware communism couldn't be voted in but the revolution he envisioned was facilitated by a mass movement of working class in the most advanced capitalist nations not a vanguard leading people to communism in less advanced nations. This is at the core of the Lenin/Kautsky conflict. If it were entirely up to Kautsky, I think, humanity wouldn't have attempted a communist revolution until capitalism had pretty well spread out across the globe, until capitalism had reached it's "highest stage" with a proper global work force NOT a third world slave force lead by Bolsheviks. What was that book Lenin wrote about imperialism? He took the opposite view of Kautsky. He thought third world workers in colonial nations were they true revolutionary class and that capitalism had reached it's highest stage by creating this class. This was the basis for Maoism. I prefer Kautsky's view myself :)

*braces self for massive negative reputation*

[l'Enfermé]

^^^

"He didn't agree with the Bolsheviks vanguard ie 'leading' workers to socialism he thought it should be a more democratic process, as in, as mass movement."

Yes he did. The original "vanguard party" was the pre-war SPD, of which Kautsky was the leading theorist. The "vanguard" party is by definition a mass-party. Lenin and the rest of the Bolsheviks consider Kautsky's SPD the flagship of international Social-Democracy and Marxism, and tried to emulate the SPD model, as appropriate in Russia.

Until the end of his days, Lenin pretty much remained a Kautskyist. The polemics of the Bolsheviks weren't aimed at Karl Kautsky the "Pope of Marxism" of the 1900s, but Karl Kautsky the Renegade, who become a turncloak and a renegade in the 1910s.

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

^^^


Yes he did. The original "vanguard party" was the pre-war SPD, of which Kautsky was the leading theorist. The "vanguard" party is by definition a mass-party. Lenin and the rest of the Bolsheviks consider Kautsky's SPD the flagship of international Social-Democracy and Marxism, and tried to emulate the SPD model, as appropriate in Russia.

Until the end of his days, Lenin pretty much remained a Kautskyist. The polemics of the Bolsheviks weren't aimed at Karl Kautsky the "Pope of Marxism" of the 1900s, but Karl Kautsky the Renegade, who become a turncloak and a renegade in the 1910s.

Ugh, no. He was the biggest critic of Lenin and the Russian Bolsheviks. You wouldn't happen to be a Leninist? Stupid question. My links don't work so I'll repost my prior post later when I can post links that pretty much make your post look like some strange Leninist propaganda.

[Questionable]

Ugh, no. He was the biggest critic of Lenin and the Russian Bolsheviks. You wouldn't happen to be a Leninist? Stupid question. My links don't work so I'll repost my prior post later when I can post links that pretty much make your post look like some strange Leninist propaganda.

From the pages of Neue Ziet:


“Many of our revisionist critics believe that Marx asserted that economic development and the class struggle create, not only the conditions for socialist production, but also, and directly, the consciousness [K. K.’s italics] of its necessity. And these critics assert that England, the country most highly developed capitalistically, is more remote than any other from this consciousness Judging by the draft, one might assume that this allegedly orthodox Marxist view, which is thus refuted, was shared by the committee that drafted the Austrian programme. In the draft programme it is stated: ‘The more capitalist development increases the numbers of the proletariat, the more the proletariat is compelled and becomes fit to fight against capitalism. The proletariat becomes conscious of the possibility and of the necessity for socialism.’ In this connection socialist consciousness appears to be a necessary and direct result of the proletarian class struggle. But this is absolutely untrue. Of course, socialism, as a doctrine, has its roots in modern economic relationships just as the class struggle of the proletariat has, and, like the latter, emerges from the struggle against the capitalist-created poverty and misery of the masses. But socialism and the class struggle arise side by side and not one out of the other; each arises under different conditions. Modern socialist consciousness can arise only on the basis of profound scientific knowledge. Indeed, modern economic science is as much a condition for socialist production as, say, modern technology, and the proletariat can create neither the one nor the other, no matter how much it may desire to do so; both arise out of the modern social process. The vehicle of science is not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia [K. K.’s italics]: it was in the minds of individual members of this stratum that modern socialism originated, and it was they who communicated it to the more intellectually developed proletarians who, in their turn, introduce it into the proletarian class struggle where conditions allow that to be done. Thus, socialist consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian class struggle from without [von Aussen Hineingetragenes] and not something that arose within it spontaneously [urwüchsig]. Accordingly, the old Hainfeld programme quite rightly stated that the task of Social-Democracy is to imbue the proletariat (literally: saturate the proletariat) with the consciousness of its position and the consciousness of its task. There would be no need for this if consciousness arose of itself from the class struggle. The new draft copied this proposition from the old programme, and attached it to the proposition mentioned above. But this completely broke the line of thought...”

[l'Enfermé]

Ugh, no. He was the biggest critic of Lenin and the Russian Bolsheviks. You wouldn't happen to be a Leninist? Stupid question. My links don't work so I'll repost my prior post later when I can post links that pretty much make your post look like some strange Leninist propaganda.
Yes, he became a critic of Lenin and the Bolsheviks when he went renegade, abandoned his former Marxist positions, and joined the camp of the social-imperialists and the counter-revolution in the 1910s. Perhaps you should freshen up your history of the German Social-Democracy.

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

From the pages of Neue Ziet:

Yes he thought workers WOULD NOT just all of the suden become socialists via class struggle. Yes his idea of a vangaurd was to educate workers in the most advanced capitalist nations not lead workers in pre mature revoloutions or force populations to socialism in backwards nations as Lenin did in Russia. Kautsky's idea of a vangaurd was much more democratic. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make? I never said Kautsky thought workers didn't need a sort of educated class to guide them to proper class consciousness, I said he thought Marx would have not been with Lenin in forcing socialism in Russia but would have agreed with him (Kautsky) that socialists should focus their efforts on workers in the more advanced capitaist nations. I'll chalk that post up as some stange attaempt to prove me wrong on some point. What point was that specifically?

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

Yes, he became a critic of Lenin and the Bolsheviks when he went renegade, abandoned his former Marxist positions, and joined the camp of the social-imperialists and the counter-revolution in the 1910s. Perhaps you should freshen up your history of the German Social-Democracy.
My post without the links will just be framed as my "opinion". Read the information I posted. Copy and paste the links if you must. Anyone who says Kautsky "went renegade" is simply regurgitating Leninist propighanda. I guess this subject requires a great deal of time from me, time and the ability to post links to information that can't be framed as my opinion. When I have those two things, time and the ability to post links to imformation, I'll get back to this thread. Hey mods, why don't my links work?

[Questionable]

Yes he thought workers WOULD NOT just all of the suden become socialists via class struggle. Yes his idea of a vangaurd was to educate workers in the most advanced capitalist nations not lead workers in pre mature revoloutions or force populations to socialism in backwards nations as Lenin did in Russia. Kautsky's idea of a vangaurd was much more democratic. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make?

So the basis of your way of thinking is where the errors come from. Where is this opinion about Kautsky's theory being more democratic coming from? I'd also like to ask about how you think Lenin failed to live up to this, but since you've proven yourself to be an exceptionally unpleasant person already you're probably just going to kick and scream about "premature revolutions" rather than engage in any real discourse. I'll still put the question out there though.

[Questionable]

My post without the links will just be framed as my "opinion". Read the information I posted. Copy and paste the links if you must. Anyone who says Kautsky "went renegade" is simply regurgitating Leninist propighanda. I guess this subject requires a great deal of time from me, time and the ability to post links to information that can't be framed as my opinion. When I have those two things, time and the ability to post links to imformation, I'll get back to this thread. Hey mods, why don't my links work?

So you're okay with Kautsky siding with the German imperialists to "protect the workers' movement"? Why is this Leninist propaganda? Are you saying it's untrue? Please back your statements up with facts, don't just call people Leninists and then leave.

Your links probably don't work because your karma is in the negative. I suggest you just copy and paste what you want us to see.

[l'Enfermé]

My post without the links will just be framed as my "opinion". Read the information I posted. Copy and paste the links if you must. Anyone who says Kautsky "went renegade" is simply regurgitating Leninist propighanda. I guess this subject requires a great deal of time from me, time and the ability to post links to information that can't be framed as my opinion. When I have those two things, time and the ability to post links to imformation, I'll get back to this thread. Hey mods, why don't my links work?
Hmm so Rosa Luxemburg is a Leninist because she wrote that in 1914, Kautsky revised the Communist Manifesto to say "proletarians of all countries, unite in peace-time and cut each other’s throats in war!"? instead of "proletarians of all countries, unite!"? Kautsky going renegade is not a view held exclusively by Lenin and the Bolsheviks but one held by the German Communists also. Was the entire KPD and the left-wing of the USPD composed of Leninists?

[Q]

Yes he thought workers WOULD NOT just all of the suden become socialists via class struggle. Yes his idea of a vangaurd was to educate workers in the most advanced capitalist nations not lead workers in pre mature revoloutions or force populations to socialism in backwards nations as Lenin did in Russia.
Since you've evidently never heard of the "wager thesis", it might be best to bring you up to speed:
- VI Lenin and the influence of Kautsky (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/783/vi-lenin-and-the-influence-of-kautsky)
- Lenin, Kautsky, and 1914 (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/784/lenin-kautsky-and-1914)
- The four wagers of Lenin in 1917 (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/785/the-four-wagers-of-lenin-in-1917)

The Lenin-Kautsky relationship is more complicated than you may think. You seem to make the opposite error that all "Leninists" are making in throwing away Lenin.


So you're okay with Kautsky siding with the German imperialists to "protect the workers' movement"?
To be fair, Kautsky had a big fucking point there. If Tsarist Russia had won the war, it would have meant devastation for the German workers movement and potentially losing decades of work.

The irony is just that his collapse to the right lead to exactly what he feared, a collapse of institutional Marxism, be it that the result was - at least partially - of his own making instead of the Tsarist bulwark of reaction.

And I'm siding with Lenin on this divide, as the true heir of what Kautsky stood for pre-1914 (actually, pre-1909). But then the double irony is that most of the "Leninists" understand nothing of what Lenin was on about.

[Die Neue Zeit]

To be fair, Kautsky had a big fucking point there. If Tsarist Russia had won the war, it would have meant devastation for the German workers movement and potentially losing decades of work.

The irony is just that his collapse to the right lead to exactly what he feared, a collapse of institutional Marxism, be it that the result was - at least partially - of his own making instead of the Tsarist bulwark of reaction.

And I'm siding with Lenin on this divide, as the true heir of what Kautsky stood for pre-1914 (actually, pre-1909). But then the double irony is that most of the "Leninists" understand nothing of what Lenin was on about.

I think we have a Menshevik sympathizer in this thread.

The OP would be wise to look up what Kautsky the Marxist wrote about what constitutes an actual revolutionary period. When Engels sided with a hypothetical German side in a conflict against Russia, it was because the German situation was not yet a revolutionary period.

[Grenzer]

My post without the links will just be framed as my "opinion". Read the information I posted. Copy and paste the links if you must. Anyone who says Kautsky "went renegade" is simply regurgitating Leninist propighanda.

lol, this is a joke. Actually the standard Leninist view of Kautsky is a revisionist one. Generally Leninists(though not all of them) see Kautsky as being worthless from beginning to end. In fact it's fairly common for them to portray Lenin as being on the left-wing of the Second International along with Luxemburg, which is ridiculous and has no basis in fact.

There is nothing ridiculous about the idea that at one point, a person can have sound politics, and years later renege on them entirely. Case in point is Stalin. Very few Marxists should have much issue with his work, Anarchism or Socialism, despite it not being particularly well written. However, it is undeniable that years later Stalin became one of the biggest renegades from Marxism history has ever seen pioneering the grossest violations of Marxist norms since Bernstein.

Q is also quite right. Leninism has little to do with the pre-October politics of Lenin, but is instead a political doctrine composed by the bureaucrats in Moscow during the 1920's.

[Art Vandelay]

Sorry just to pop in to say this, cause I'm not really adding much (and haven't been to any topic lately) but we got some great posters in this thread (some of the best on the entire boards) and I hope that NSM reads up before he regurgitates anymore rhetoric.

[l'Enfermé]

I feel really stupid for this, but I must admit that until this thread, I thought the proper verb form of "renegade" is "renegade", not "renege", as in, Kautsky renegaded and not Kautsky reneged. I blame spellcheck, it didn't find any faults with my posts in the past when I wrote "renegaded".

[newdayrising]

There's this classic text criticizing Kautsky by Paul Mattick.
I still can't post links, but go to Marxists.org and search for "Kautsky, from Marx To Hitler".
I don't agree necessarily with much of what Mattick wrote otherwise but this text is very interesting and illustrates Kautsky's betrayal of the revolutionary movement.

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

Who was Kautsky? So far I've only found that he was some sort of social democrat who turned opportunist (?) during the later days of his life, and that his earlier works are in-depth and revolve around a so called "worker's movement".

Would anyone be able to send me in the direction of Kautsky's more important works, along with explaining what exactly the 'worker's movement' was?

OP, start here, read all of it.

http://www.socialisteducation.org/KKautsky.html#success

As I said Kautsky wasn't perfect but all too many Marxists throw the baby out with the bath water. The thing that attracts me to his works was his ability to predict the failure of Russian "socialism", his ability to predict the shiftyness in store - the authoritarian nature of the Russian Bolsheviks. His works can be as sort of mine field with a few very large land mines but also some very large diamonds of wisdom, if people would have listened to his warnings concerning Russia I think there would have been a better chance of actual socialism taking hold in Europe (Leninists aren't going to like this opinion).

Basically with Kautsky you need to start out by sifting through his "debate" or split with Lenin. This wasn't necessarily a split with Marxist theory proper but there are some inexcusable positions he had, as I said in my first post, he was no "perfect' Marxist and much of his dislike for the Russian experiment led him to even more questionable positions but taken in context, something most Leninists refuse to do, his positions have a sort of explanation.

Most important, in my opinion, are his works surrounding historical materialism and democracy. Those are the two things that attract me to Kautsky's works NOT his war time political positions.

All too many people in the Marxist tradition 'people worship'. Kautsky isnt to be worshiped, no statues of him should be made, no dead embalmed body on display, no cities should be named after him. Nothing. What should be done with Kautsky? An objective look at his whole body of works without the taint of Lenin's attacks or a magnifier glass on Kautsky's mistakes.

Leninists on this forum will pretty much tote the Leninist line and throw the baby out with the bath water which, in my opinion, cost humanity a lot of grief in the Russian "arena" of so called socialism.

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

Sorry just to pop in to say this, cause I'm not really adding much (and haven't been to any topic lately) but we got some great posters in this thread (some of the best on the entire boards) and I hope that NSM reads up before he regurgitates anymore rhetoric.

Ya, Leninists. I think I'm the only person in this thread who's actually read Kautsky's entire body of works so the Leninist line of "renegade" sounds kinda silly to me. I agree with Kautsky in his harsh critique of Russian Bolshevism and his views on democracy and historical materialism. Nothing more nothing less.

Minus reputation for this post. Trolling. Wow.

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

Can you say "crystal ball"? LOL. I enjoyed reading "The Outlook for the Soviet Republic" and "The Outlook for the World Revolution". Written in 1919.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1919/terrcomm/ch08b.htm#s6

[Zeus the Moose]

Can you say "crystal ball"? LOL. I enjoyed reading "The Outlook for the Soviet Republic" and "The Outlook for the World Revolution". Written in 1919.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1919/terrcomm/ch08b.htm#s6

Kautsky's writings on the Russian Civil War and the early Soviet state, whatever apparent clarity they might seem to have after the fact, strike me as someone criticising another for failing at something that they themselves refuse to attempt, despite formally believing in the same things. Had Kautsky and his wing of the USPD/SPD not been promoting constitutionalist illusions in 1918-1919, maybe things wouldn't have been so terrible in Russia. Of course this would have meant a different political trajectory for Kautsky from about 1902 or so (definitely by 1909), so perhaps it's too much to ask, even in the realm of historical hypotheticals.

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

Kautsky's writings on the Russian Civil War and the early Soviet state, whatever apparent clarity they might seem to have after the fact, strike me as someone criticising another for failing at something that they themselves refuse to attempt, despite formally believing in the same things.

That's the thing, he never advocated Lenins path to socialism. It was actually Lenin who changed his ideas to fit the conditions in Russia. Yes, Kautsky also changed many of his ideas as well as a result of the conflict with Lenin. Basically, in short, the attempt at "communism" in Russia never should have taken place. Kautsky knew this all along and history has shown us he was correct.

Leninists will place the blame on workers in Europe not being radical enough to spark a global revolution - so as a result Russia "had" to isolate and the rest is history. They blame the authoritarian Russian state on this, the cold war, everything. The silly attempts at "spreading communism" nation to nation with the goal of overtaking the advanced capitalist nations. Pfft. It was all predicted to fail just as Maoism did (another offshoot of Lenin's ideology).

Pretty much at this point Leninism and Maoism should be discarded as what NOT to do. We've seen the results. Communism can't be forced on workers or nations from without by a minority vanguard or peasant "third world" class. If it's to happen, proper, it will be in regions where certain social and economic pre conditions have been met. This wasn't the case in Russia OR China. Everything thats been attempted in the name of Leninist communism has been bunkum. I say no thanks. No more excuses. This isnt to say Kautsky had all the right ideas but the process should happen in regions which have experienced enlightenment values and a certain amount of democracy so the working class will already have a good idea on how to run society. Leninists will call this "vulgar historical materialism' or eurocentric but wherever.

History is history and the history of Leninism is failure.


I'm loving it. For saying the history of Leninism is failure I get -10 reputation! This made me laugh. OK, the history of Leninism is success? in lieu of attacking my "reputation" try proving me wrong. Have at it.

[Q]

Since he does make the valid occasional point or two (but also being evidently uneducated on many other things), it is kinda sad NSM is pressing so hard to make his "point", alienating any possible allies he could have so far. This attitude will probably get him banned before the end of the month.

Oh well, c'est la vie. Let's carry on.

[Zeus the Moose]

History may be history, but merely inverting latter-day Leninism and changing around the plus and minus signs isn't doing us any favours either.

I agree that the result of the Soviet Union and its offshoots was ultimately one of failure, or rather, a long detour back to capitalism through a period that wasn't capitalism, but wasn't socialism either. So, okay, this means we can't treat everything said or done by the Bolsheviks are presumptively true; likewise, people who wrote in opposition to the Bolsheviks (particularly from within the Marxist trend of the socialist movement, such as Kautsky, Luxemburg, Martov, and others) cannot be treated as presumptively false. Indeed, the latter-day Leninist conception of Kautsky, which stems from the false reading of the Comintern split as an attempt to "purify" the workers movement of opportunism, results in the obscuring of the positive influence that Kautsky had over the Russian workers movement (including the Bolsheviks), making it harder to get the history of our own movement right.

But that doesn't mean that Lenin was simply wrong, and Kautsky was simply right. Again, that just seems like an inversion of the Leninist view of Kautsky, with similarly mirrored problems of perspective. What is necessary to do instead is to try to understand the components that make up these broad political trends, and attempt to judge them on both their historical merits and possible modern applications.

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

History may be history, but merely inverting latter-day Leninism and changing around the plus and minus signs isn't doing us any favours either.

I agree that the result of the Soviet Union and its offshoots was ultimately one of failure, or rather, a long detour back to capitalism through a period that wasn't capitalism, but wasn't socialism either. So, okay, this means we can't treat everything said or done by the Bolsheviks are presumptively true; likewise, people who wrote in opposition to the Bolsheviks (particularly from within the Marxist trend of the socialist movement, such as Kautsky, Luxemburg, Martov, and others) cannot be treated as presumptively false. Indeed, the latter-day Leninist conception of Kautsky, which stems from the false reading of the Comintern split as an attempt to "purify" the workers movement of opportunism, results in the obscuring of the positive influence that Kautsky had over the Russian workers movement (including the Bolsheviks), making it harder to get the history of our own movement right.

But that doesn't mean that Lenin was simply wrong, and Kautsky was simply right. Again, that just seems like an inversion of the Leninist view of Kautsky, with similarly mirrored problems of perspective. What is necessary to do instead is to try to understand the components that make up these broad political trends, and attempt to judge them on both their historical merits and possible modern applications.

I'm of the opinion Lenin was wrong from day one to push, no force, a "socialist" revolution in Russia. If he had been shot pre 1917 the chances of actual socialism taking hold around the globe would have increased. This doesn't mean everything Kautsky said or did was right- it means his views surrounding historical materialism were spot on. his views on democracy and the prediction of Russian failure all come from his historical materialism which was as close as to what Marx thought as we're going to get. Something the Russian Bolsheviks completely threw out of the window. Many modern day Marxists do the same thing in vein attempts to build "socialism" in isolated pockets within a sea of capitalism in backwards regions with an undeveloped or underdeveloped working class. The end result is authoritarian bunkum having nothing to do with socialism and is used as some of the best propaganda the capitalists have in their arsenal. Capitalists LOVE Leninism. It's great for war profits and to show western workers how fucked up "communism" is.

What's needed is a complete flush of past ideas, especially ones that failed (Leninism). A new synthesis (lol @ Bob Avakian) that takes historical materialism as it's foundation as Marx intended. But hey, if Marxists want to spend their time "spreading" communism in small nations like Venezuela, Cuba and other "second world" nations go right ahead. It won't work nor will the Leninist vanguard socialism from above tactics work in western advanced capitalist nations. Pretty much, Leninism/Maoism should be brushed into the dustbin of history as Marx would say.

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

(but also being evidently uneducated on many other things) This attitude will probably get him banned before the end of the month.

.

Which many other things would that be? And ya, I asked to be banned my second day here in this thread:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/pundits-chiming-romney-t175374/index.html

It's all been downhill from there.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I'm of the opinion Lenin was wrong from day one to push, no force, a "socialist" revolution in Russia.

You really should read Kautsky's Driving Forces and Prospects of the Russian Revolution and also the later Prospects of the Russian Revolution.

[Questionable]

It is impossible to "force" a socialist revolution. It can be mishandled, maybe, but implying that Lenin somehow single-handedly created the conditions for a revolution is subscribing to Great Man Theory.



I'm loving it. For saying the history of Leninism is failure I get -10 reputation! This made me laugh. OK, the history of Leninism is success? in lieu of attacking my "reputation" try proving me wrong. Have at it.

In case you haven't noticed, this forum has more than it's share of anti-Leninists. You're just so bad at arguing your point that even they disown you.

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

You really should read Kautsky's Driving Forces and Prospects of the Russian Revolution and also the later Prospects of the Russian Revolution.

This from the Leninist line on Kautsky's position (which is actually spot on what he was saying at the time) The question is, was he right? why do you think Russia failed so miserably?

http://www.weisbord.org/conquest23.htm




Kautsky denied, indeed, that the revolution in Russia was even a working class one. The proletarian revolution could not come in a backward agrarian country; if it did come, then, like the boy who first saw a giraffe, one had to affirm "there ain't no such animal." More than a decade before, Daniel DeLeon had expressed the problem in an orthodox manner: "The theory hitherto has been that the Social Revolution would break out first in the most capitalistically developed nations, and then pull up the others. Was there a flaw in this theory? Are facts about to be produced to reverse the theory and show that the impulse is to come from the opposite direction?" (*6) Kautsky answered his problem dogmatically: "The more a State is capitalistic on the one side and democratic on the other, the nearer it is to Socialism. . . . In a number of industrial States the material and moral prerequisites for Socialism appear already to exist in sufficient measure.... But Russia is not one of these leading industrial States. What is being enacted there now is, in fact, the last of middle class, and not the first of Socialist revolutions." (*7)

Thus Kautsky believed that the only working class policy possible in Russia was to overthrow the Czar and to establish capitalism in Russia. (Which is exactly what Lenin did all in the name of communism) The Socialists should then attempt to prepare the Russian workers, through long years of education, for the taking over of power. The revolutionary workers were to act as coolies for the impotent capitalists and to hand over the power to their exploiters on a silver platter. All this in the name of Marxism! When the workers insisted on retaining the power they had won, Kautsky scolded them, forecasting that this premature action could lead only to a tremendous blood-bath similar to the Paris Commune. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat in Russia being abortive, the workers would be forced into the petty bourgeois methods of violent revolution rather than to solid peaceful methods which workers in every civilized country, of which Germany was the model, were expected to use.

To the old turncoat, Kautsky, the Bolshevik theory was the inevitable counterpart of the Blanquist adventurism which the Russians were repeating on a far wider scale. He bemoaned the brutality of Lenin and contrasted it with his own humanity. "As we have only the two alternatives --- democracy or civil war --- I myself draw the conclusion that wherever Socialism does not appear to be possible on a democratic basis, and where the majority of the population rejects it, its time has not fully come." (*8)


Him implying the Pre conditions were not met? Check. Lenin forcing socialism? Check. Most of this is said in his main works surrounding democracy and historical materialism.

[Questionable]

Him implying the Pre conditions were not met? Check. Lenin forcing socialism? Check. Most of this is said in his main works surrounding democracy and historical materialism.

How can you force a societal change? And how can you call Lenin a Blanquist when history clearly shows the Bolsheviks had the majority of Russia's young working class on its side? It's interesting that you chose this article to defend your views on Kautsky because the article is clearly scolding him.

Do you also believe that socialism can be reached through peaceful, democratic means like Kautsky?

[Art Vandelay]

This from the Leninist line on Kautsky's position (which is actually spot on what he was saying at the time) The question is, was he right? why do you think Russia failed so miserably?

http://www.weisbord.org/conquest23.htm




Him implying the Pre conditions were not met? Check. Lenin forcing socialism? Check. Most of this is said in his main works surrounding democracy and historical materialism.

You would have sided with the mensheviks; traitors to the proletarian cause. When the workers are in the streets, Communists are in the streets with them; you don't sit there waving your newspaper and shout at them that the pre-conditions for revolution haven't been met yet, but maybe we could try in 50 years.

Your analysis wreaks of the "Great Man theory." I didn't realize one man could be responsible for a revolution, let alone "force" one. :rolleyes:

[Ostrinski]

We need nuance. Seemingly something so hard to achieve when interpreting our history.

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

You would have sided with the mensheviks; traitors to the proletarian cause. When the workers are in the streets, Communists are in the streets with them; you don't sit there waving your newspaper and shout at them that the pre-conditions for revolution haven't been met yet, but maybe we could try in 50 years.

Your analysis wreaks of the "Great Man theory." I didn't realize one man could be responsible for a revolution, let alone "force" one. :rolleyes:

There was a revolution happening in Russia with or without Lenin. He, in great opportunistic fashion, forced it into a socialist revolution which was pre mature because Russia was not socially or economically prepared for socialism. Why the hell do you think Russia was "state capitalist" starting with Lenin's economic reforms? Also, to imply the majority of Russians were proletariat is historically false. No. A majority proletariat class was NOT in Russia overthrowing the old order in favor of socialism. They were mostly farmers. Russia was a backwards nation with a population, economy and social conditions not ready for socialism which is why Lenin and Stalin who took over the beast first and foremost had to force socialism on the population and in the process implement some strange form of state capitalism. If they weren't forcing it why no democracy?

Anyway Marx somewhat addressed this by saying a backwards nation could, maybe, attain socialism then backtracked and said only if the more advanced capitalist nations go socialist first but Engels was more explicit in stating "the orthodox" line. This is where Lenin started to separate from Marx/Engels original theory. I would actually call it REVISIONISM. LOL

Trying to turn farmers and peasants into a liberated working class running society without masters or rulers was doomed to fail from the start. Kinda like Maoism.

[Questionable]

There was a revolution happening in Russia with or without Lenin. He, in great opportunistic fashion, forced it into a socialist revolution which was pre mature because Russia was not socially or economically prepared for socialism.

Again, you can't force a socialist revolution. Please explain how it is even possible from your viewpoint.


Why the hell do you think Russia was "state capitalist" starting with Lenin's economic reforms? Also, to imply the majority of Russians were proletariat is historically false. No. A majority proletariat class was NOT in Russia overthrowing the old order in favor of socialism.Creating the foundations for socialism was part of the NEP state-capitalist phase, but there were also many other factors, such as building relations between the workers and peasants, preventing a famine, repairing the destruction after a civil war...

Yes, there existed a proletarian class in Russia, and they were in favor of overthrowing the old order for socialism. It is historically documented.


They were mostly farmers. Russia was a backwards nation with a population, economy and social conditions not ready for socialism which is why Lenin and Stalin who took over the beast first and foremost had to force socialism on the population and in the process implement some strange form of state capitalism.Peasants outnumbered proletarians but the proletarian class still supported the Bolsheviks. So did a large portion of the peasants for that matter.


Anyway Marx somewhat addressed this by saying a backwards nation could, maybe attain socialism then backtracked and said only if the more advanced capitalist nations go socialist first but Engels was more explicit in stating "the orthodox" line. This is where Lenin started to separate from Marx/Engels original theory.Marx was not alive during the days of the interconnected web of imperialist economies like Lenin was.


Trying to turn farmers and peasants into a liberated working class running society without masters or rulers was doomed to fail from the start. Kinda like Maoism.Considering that it turned Russia into an economic powerhouse while also elevating the standard of living and other social factors up to rival the United States, I'd say it was pretty successful in many regards.

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

Where did Mao get all his silly ideas? Oh thats right, Lenin.

[Questionable]

Where did Mao get all his silly ideas? Oh thats right, Lenin.

Wow, I guess you showed us Maoists where to stick it.

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

Again, you can't force a socialist revolution. Please explain how it is even possible from your viewpoint.



Lets hear your version of how Lenin took power.

[Ostrinski]

He didn't.

[Questionable]

Lets hear your version of how Lenin took power.

I could give you that, but I'd rather share my version of how the proletariat-peasant alliance took power with guidance from the Bolsheviks.

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

I could give you that, but I'd rather share my version of how the proletariat-peasant alliance took power with guidance from the Bolsheviks.

LOL. Guidance. Yes, the dictatorship of the proletariat. Pfft. Where do I start with that?

[Questionable]

LOL. Guidance. Yes, the dictatorship of the proletariat. Pfft. Where do I start with that?

You could start by offering an intelligent rebuttal. That's where I would, anyway.

[Questionable]

I need sleep. I'll respond to your posts sometime tomorrow afternoon, if someone else hasn't already.

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

I have two kids, a wife and a life - work at 6 am. Why would I waste time pointing out the differences between Marx's conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat and what Lenin did in Russia? We all know Lenin was authoritarian. There should be no argument. He knew the Russian population wasn't ready for socialism which is why he warped Marx's dictatorship of the proletariat to fit his needs in Russia. He did the same thing with historical materialism as I've already shown Kautsky pointed out which was the crux of my criticism in this thread.

I don't have time to spider web all over the place pointing out, in detail, all of Lenin's fuck ups. His first major one was even attempting socialism in Russia. I don't think I'm done driving that point home.

[Questionable]

I have two kids, a wife and a life - work at 6 am. Why would I waste time pointing out the differences between Marx's conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat and what Lenin did in Russia? We all know Lenin was authoritarian. There should be no argument. He knew the Russian population wasn't ready for socialism which is why he warped Marx's dictatorship of the proletariat to fit his needs in Russia. He did the same thing with historical materialism as I've already shown Kautsky pointed out which was the crux of my criticism in this thread.

I don't have time to spider web all over the place pointing out, in detail, all of Lenin's fuck ups. His first major one was even attempting socialism in Russia. I don't think I'm done driving that point home.

lol.

[l'Enfermé]

1 - What's a "Leninist"? There's Trotsky's "Bolshevik-Leninism" and there's Zinoviev's, Stalin's and Bukharin's "Marxism-Leninism". Both were invented after Lenin himself died and both were revisionist. Lenin himself was Kautskyist, and remained one even after Kautsky became a turncloak and joined the camp of the counter-revolution.

2 - It's really funny that you claim you are the only person in this thread to have read Kautsky's entire body of work, while both DNZ and Q have posted in this thread, who are 2 of the most prominent Kautsky Revivalist on RevLeft. Personally I make no claims to having read his entire body of work, simply because only a portion of it available, most of it is untranslated from German, but of that which is available, I have read practically everything from Kautsky the Marxist, including his most important works: The Class Struggle, The Social Revolution and on the Day After the Revolution, The Road to Power, Ethics and Materialist Philosophy, Foundations of Christianity, and Socialism and Colonial Policy. If you have read and understood Kautsky, then you would have been able to compare the writings of Kautsky the Pope of Marxism and Kautsky the Turncloak, and understood that there's clearly a point when Kautsky abandons revolutionary Marxism and jumps into the camp of the reformers and counter-revolutionaries.

"The future alone can show us success. Our obligation is to prepare as much as possible by energetically activating the work of our organization, and in tirelessly carrying out propaganda against war and its ultimate cause: capitalist thirst for profit."

So writes Kautsky as late as 1912. Kautsky who 2 years later would jump into the camp of the imperialists and defenders of the fatherland.

Kautsky, who in the 1900s, was the world's foremost expounder of proletarian revolution, in the 1910s, abhorred and feared it as much as the capitalists. And this you don't accept as a complete 180 turn in his politics.

3 - You insist on making yourself look like an idiot every time you say that it's "Leninist" to call Kautsky after 1914 a "renegade". This is not the "Leninist" position, in fact, the "Leninist" position is the exact opposite: according to the various versions of "Leninism", Karl Kautsky was never a Marxist, no, he was a reformist and a vulgarizer of Marxism from the start, so he had nothing to renege on. "Leninism", in both it's Trotskyist and it's Stalinist variations, completely disregards the legacy of the entire German Social-Democracy, sweeps under the table the fact that Kautsky the Marxist was more of a theoretical leader of October than Lenin. Lenin becomes the heir of Marx's legacy, not Kautsky's. The entire tradition of the Russian Erfurtrianists is just ignored.

Nothing is further from the truth. The "Leninist" position is as wrong as yours.

Lenin's pamphlet "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky" isn't where the notion of Kautsky abandoning Marxism comes from anyway. It's peculiar you ignore that. Lenin wrote it in October-November of 1918. The polemics against Kautsky for his betrayal were began by German Marxists in 1914. I've never saw Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht called "Leninists", no, but to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if you award them with that appellation.

4 - "Leninist vanguard socialism from above tactics" what? What the hell is that? Lenin's supposed "vanguardism" was an invention of the Soviet Thermidor in the 1920s. Lenin's notions on the "vanguard party", on the other hand, came directly from Kautsky's interpretation and improvement of Marx. The first Marxist vanguard party, anyways, was the pre-war SPD, whose leading theoretician was Kautsky the Marxist, and on which Lenin and the other Russian Erfurtrianists tried to model the RSDLP on.

I'll finish this post later.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

"Leninist vanguard socialism from above tactics" what? What the hell is that?

A Left-anticommunist Liberal term used to divide the revolutionary left. Persistent Left-Anticommunism is an important necessary task to fulfill for Opportunists who feel the need to appear objective to the bourgeoisie and score points by criticising nefarious "totalitarian" aspects of revolution. The Opportunists will support all worker revolutions, but never ones that succeed.

[Noa Rodman]

..he reneged on his Marxism he always professed, in 1914 when the war broke out and Kautsky switched to defend the German war effort because the alternative (a Russian Tsarist invasion) would be catastrophic for the German workers movement (at the time the largest and most advanced Marxist movement in the world).



How and where did Kautsky defend the German war effort in 1914? I don't think even Lenin made such accusation.

[Q]

How and where did Kautsky defend the German war effort in 1914? I don't think even Lenin made such accusation.

It was, as I understand it, a position based on the view that Germany was defending itself against Tsarist Russia. Later on, from 1915 onwards, he became opposed to the war effort as it became clear to him that Germany had not merely defensive interests.

Where is my understanding lacking?

[Noa Rodman]

I think if even Bernstein didn't buy into that argument, it is hard to believe Kautsky would (and furthermore publicly make the case for it). He opposed war credits like the rest of the future USDP.

[Noa Rodman]

Today is 74 years ago that Kautsky died.

I'm not against Lenin by the way, he just should be regarded in his own right (and not for being anti-Kautsky or true-Kautsky).

Also about 1914, this was the feeling:
A despatch from Berlin states that following the publication; in the 'Socialist paper, '[Vorwarts,' of an article in which the Kaiser was blamed for causing the war, a mob wrecked the office and the plant. http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/59741619

[l'Enfermé]

He didn't oppose war credits while German victory seemed imminent, until the catastrophe on the Marne in September 1914. Kautsky insisted that the SPD vote for war credits on the condition that the German government doesn't annex new territories or extort reperations from it's defeated enemies, at a meeting of the SPD Reichstag faction in early August. As if he was under the illusion that the propertied classes of Germany went to war but did not expect any rewards for their troubles.

[Noa Rodman]

He says (http://books.google.com/books?hl=nl&id=aykXfUDE5qcC&q=krieg+credits+Kautsky#v=snippet&q=krieg%20credits%20Kautsky&f=false)that he did that because he knew the Government would not make such promise and then it would permit SPD delegates to vote against or at least abstain.

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

1 - What's a "Leninist"?

Now you're starting to sound like Jacques Derrida. Jesus Christ. . We're discussing Lenin's positions when he shifted from Marxism proper (in order to justify Russian "socialism") and ALL the various Russian and Asian factions that split from it. Way to completely ignore my point I'll re-post my point after I'm done with this post, which is, was Kautsky right in his criticisms of Russian "socialism".





2 - It's really funny that you claim you are the only person in this thread to have read Kautsky's entire body of work, while both DNZ and Q have posted in this thread, who are 2 of the most prominent Kautsky Revivalist on RevLeft.


I replied to DNZ's post and highlighted the main question I'm asking in this thread. No reply has been given thus far other than, well, personal attacks by the Bolshevik thought police. See, I can do it too.




If you have read and understood Kautsky, then you would have been able to compare the writings of Kautsky the Pope of Marxism and Kautsky the Turncloak, and understood that there's clearly a point when Kautsky abandons revolutionary Marxism and jumps into the camp of the reformers and counter-revolutionaries.

The first post I made was a link to a brief look at that story line. As I also said I'm not in this thread championing Kautsky as some sort of Marxist king. I said we should all take an objective look at the situation and yes I have read most all of his works available online, most of the Leninist criticisms of Kautsky
and much of the modern defense of Kautsky. This isnt even my point (whether or not Kautsky was correct 100% of the time) the point is was he right in his criticisms of the Russian attempt at socialism. In my opinion the answer is a resounding yes.



"The future alone can show us success. Our obligation is to prepare as much as possible by energetically activating the work of our organization, and in tirelessly carrying out propaganda against war and its ultimate cause: capitalist thirst for profit."

So writes Kautsky as late as 1912. Kautsky who 2 years later would jump into the camp of the imperialists and defenders of the fatherland. I'm not here to defend his nationalist positions.




3 - You insist on making yourself look like an idiot every time you say that it's "Leninist" to call Kautsky after 1914 a "renegade". This is not the "Leninist" position, in fact, the "Leninist" position is the exact opposite: according to the various versions of "Leninism", Karl Kautsky was never a Marxist, no, he was a reformist and a vulgarizer of Marxism from the start, so he had nothing to renege on.

After Lenin branded Kautsky a "renegade", anyone using that term, renegade, to describe Kautsky is indeed regurgitating Leninist propaganda. No idiocy there my friend.





"Leninism", in both it's Trotskyist and it's Stalinist variations, completely disregards the legacy of the entire German Social-Democracy, sweeps under the table the fact that Kautsky the Marxist was more of a theoretical leader of October than Lenin.

If that were true, if only that were true then humanity probably wouldn't have been cursed with the fuck ups that was "socialist" Russia, China, Cambodia, Vietnam etc and so on. I only bring PolPot into the mix because of his silly idea that agrarian peasants were the revolutionary class. Where did he get that idea. Oh yes I went there.


Nothing is further from the truth. The "Leninist" position is as wrong as yours.
Prove it.


Lenin's pamphlet "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky" isn't where the notion of Kautsky abandoning Marxism comes from anyway.

Again, the term RENEGADE is what I refereed to as being Leninist propaganda not the time line in which he used to 'prove' Kautsky's 'betrayal' of Marxism.



4 - "Leninist vanguard socialism from above tactics" what? What the hell is that? Lenin's supposed "vanguardism" was an invention of the Soviet Thermidor in the 1920s. Lenin's notions on the "vanguard party", on the other hand, came directly from Kautsky's interpretation and improvement of Marx.


This is absurd. You haven't read a word of Kautsky's criticism of Lenin's conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat which is also linked to Lenin's conception of a vangaurd mostly warped because as I said the Russian population wasnt ready for socialism so the vangaurd and the dictatorship of the proletariat was warped into totalitarian rule - as in FORCING socialism (it was really capitalism). Sure, early 1917 Lenin did in fact stay true to some aspects of the classical vanguard but my oh my did that change. It morphed into an entirety new ruling class. why deny this? It's obvious. The fact your post got "thanks" astounds me.


(edited for typos)

[l'Enfermé]

So writes Kautsky the Renegade in 1937, not Kautsky the Marxist. It sounds like a very lousy excuse for his betrayal. Did he ever mention that before the 30s? Or the 20s? Or is it something he claimed in the last few years of his life?

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

So writes Kautsky the Renegade in 1937, not Kautsky the Marxist. It sounds like a very lousy excuse for his betrayal. Did he ever mention that before the 30s? Or the 20s? Or is it something he claimed in the last few years of his life?

He started criticizing the way things were going in Russia around 1918 and please at least read ALL of this (rather brief) look into the question of Kautsky being a "renegade". Written from a Marxist-Leninist.

http://www.socialisteducation.org/KKautsky.html#trk

It's rather short and easy to read. There's plenty more out there addressing the question. The real question here is WAS HE RIGHT in his criticisms of Russia?

[Noa Rodman]

Scud, L'Enfermé was responding to my post. I don't know if Kautsky explained his thinking on that faithful day back during the war, because not much is available online. You can't dismiss his explanation later for the reason that he supposedly then was a renegade (because that's in fact the point of contention). I think if he was silent about it, it was not as a proof of his guilt, but because there were more important things going on. His "social-pacifist" writings during the war were quite good, e.g. in 1916 there's Die Vereinigten Staaten Mitteleuropas (in which he predicts the Russian revolution) and later there's his polemic against Kriegsmarxismus for instance.

[Q]

His "social-pacifist" writings during the war were quite good, e.g. in 1916 there's Die Vereinigten Staaten Mitteleuropas (in which he predicts the Russian revolution) and later there's his polemic against Kriegsmarxismus for instance.

Are these pieces available in English? I'm afraid that my German is hardly optimal, despite living about 3 km from the German border :D

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

"He didn't agree with the Bolsheviks vanguard ie 'leading' workers to socialism he thought it should be a more democratic process, as in, as mass movement."


^^^


Yes he did. The original "vanguard party" was the pre-war SPD, of which Kautsky was the leading theorist. The "vanguard" party is by definition a mass-party. Lenin and the rest of the Bolsheviks consider Kautsky's SPD the flagship of international Social-Democracy and Marxism, and tried to emulate the SPD model, as appropriate in Russia.

Until the end of his days, Lenin pretty much remained a Kautskyist. The polemics of the Bolsheviks weren't aimed at Karl Kautsky the "Pope of Marxism" of the 1900s, but Karl Kautsky the Renegade, who become a turncloak and a renegade in the 1910s.


(edited out garbage links)

The fact your post gets "thanks" is astounding. ^ READ

EDIT. The links above are garbage. Go here (below) and read Under "communists at work" "THE DICTATORSHIP" - "CORRUPTION" - "THE CHANGE IN BOLSHEVISM"- "THE TERROR"

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1919/terrcomm/index.htm

[Questionable]

I just want to point out that regardless of what Kautsky said, he (Scud Missile) still has dodged the question of HOW a societal change can be forced Blanquist-style. Instead he basically said "Prove me wrong," like some sort of Christian logic. He also ignored me when I brought up evidence that the proletarians and peasants were on the side of the Bolsheviks.

Nihilist Scud Missile will probably still ignore these two questions and instead insult me for being a Leninist, because that's what he's been doing so far.


The links above are garbage. Go here (below) and read Under "communists at work" "THE DICTATORSHIP" - "CORRUPTION" - "THE CHANGE IN BOLSHEVISM"- "THE TERROR"If you go around calling other people's opinions "garbage" without giving an explanation why, don't expect us to sit down and read the links you're posting while ignoring ours.

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

I just want to point out that regardless of what Kautsky said, he (Scud Missile) still has dodged the question of HOW a societal change can be forced Blanquist-style. Instead he basically said "Prove me wrong," like some sort of Christian logic. He also ignored me when I brought up evidence that the proletarians and peasants were on the side of the Bolsheviks.

Nihilist Scud Missile will probably still ignore these two questions and instead insult me for being a Leninist, because that's what he's been doing so far.

If you go around calling other people's opinions "garbage" without giving an explanation why, don't expect us to sit down and read the links you're posting while ignoring ours.

The links I posted were garbage, they didn't work so I edited my post with a link that worked. I wasn't calling anyone else's links garbage . The entire point of the post was to get you to read Kautsky's criticisms of Lenin/Russian Bolsheviks attempt TO FORCE COMMUNISM. You wan't to know how Lenin forced an unattainable situation (due to the material/social conditions in Russia), how he tried to force socialism/communism click the link below, scroll down and click on the titles I asked you to read then you can say you have actually read some Kautsky :)

Sure the small proletariat class and some peasants were on the side of Bolsheviks when the Bolsheviks were selling them lies but when actually in power that changed rather quickly. Lenin did't really give the chance for anyone to support anything but his line of thinking anyhow which is why he opposed any other opinion other than the Bolshevik line. Killed quite a few people (socialists), slandered them etc. (Stalin learned well from Lenin). Anyhow, there's only so much "spiderwebbing' I can put up with "arguing" with about 6 different people.

Kautsky's criticisms of the Russian Bolsheviks, in the link I gave you, under the titles I told you to click on, explain how Lenin forced socialism on the Russian population.


Go here (below) and read Under "communists at work" "THE DICTATORSHIP" - "CORRUPTION" - "THE CHANGE IN BOLSHEVISM"- "THE TERROR"

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1919/terrcomm/index.htm


Don't be lazy or I won't respond to you.

[Questionable]

The links I posted were garbage, they didn't work so I edited my post with a link that worked. I wasn't calling anyone else's links garbage . The entire point of the post was to get you to read Kautsky's criticisms of Lenin/Russian Bolsheviks attempt TO FORCE COMMUNISM. You wan't to know how Lenin forced an unattainable situation (due to the material/social conditions in Russia), how he tried to force socialism/communism click the link below, scroll down and click on the titles I asked you to read then you can say you have actually read some Kautsky:)

I have read Kautsky, I just want you to explain how Lenin forced socialism, which you still are not doing, you're just going back to smug insults.


Sure the small proletariat class and some peasants were on the side of Bolsheviks when the Bolsheviks were selling them lies but when actually in power that changed rather quickly.How so? The Russian Civil War got kind of rough but the measures they implemented were not core to the Bolshevik ideology. It's not like Lenin was some mustache-twirling villain who wanted to see Russia ruined.


Lenin did't really give the chance for anyone to support anything but his line of thinking anyhow which is why he opposed any other opinion other than the Bolshevik line. Killed quite a few people (socialists), slandered them etc. (Stalin learned well from Lenin). Anyhow, there's only so much "spiderwebbing' I can put up with "arguing" with about 6 different people.What are you, a liberal? This sounds like something I would read out of a high school textbook. Be more specific in your claims. If you have time from your busy schedule, of course.


Kautsky's criticisms of the Russian Bolsheviks, in the link I gave you, under the titles I told you to click on, explain how Lenin forced socialism on the Russian population.Two things:

1. If you understand these concepts, you can take the time to explain them to me, or you can copy+paste the important parts. I'm not going to take time out of my day to read something because you're too lazy to support your own arguments.

2. If Kautsky believed that Lenin could force socialism on the Russian population, then Kautsky was being an idiot.


Don't be lazy or I won't respond to you.Why should I? You're the one that said went off about how busy his life was with two kids and a job and all sorts of bullshit. I also have obligations to my career and don't want to waste my limited free time. You brushed off my arguments because you were admittedly too lazy to respond to them, and now you expect me to put forth the effort to read your book. No deal. If you expect people to give time and consideration to what you're saying, you must return the favor.

Let me quote what you said in case you've forgotten:


I don't have time to spider web all over the place pointing out, in detail, all of Lenin's fuck ups. His first major one was even attempting socialism in Russia. I don't think I'm done driving that point home.You started this. If you don't have time for me, I don't have time for you.

But the more likely conclusion is that you're either too cowardly or too stupid to argue your own points, so you just throw books at people without explaining anything.

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

I have read Kautsky, I just want you to explain how Lenin forced socialism, which you still are not doing, you're just going back to smug insults.

.

One thing at a time. Lets start with you reading the link I posted above which explains how Lenin forced "socialism" on Russia. Thats the very thing I'm trying to do here - what don't you understand about this? Go to the link above, click it, scroll down and read the sections entitled - "THE DICTATORSHIP" - "CORRUPTION" - "THE CHANGE IN BOLSHEVISM"- "THE TERROR".

I'm NOT going to spend 45 minutes giving you a history lesson. Stop being lazy, read it in full and get back to this thread. When and if you do I'll respond to the rest of your spiderwebs.

[Questionable]

One thing at a time. Lets start with you reading the link I posted above which explains how Lenin forced "socialism" on Russia. Thats the very thing I'm trying to do here - what don't you understand about this? Go to the link above, click it, scroll down and read the sections entitled - "THE DICTATORSHIP" - "CORRUPTION" - "THE CHANGE IN BOLSHEVISM"- "THE TERROR".

I'm NOT going to spend 45 minutes giving you a history lesson. Stop being lazy, read it in full and get back to this thread. When and if you do I'll respond to the rest of your spiderwebs.

I understand you very well, I'm just not going to do what you want me to. If it takes you 45 minutes to explain what went wrong with Russia then you probably don't understand yourself.

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

I understand you very well, I'm just not going to do what you want me to. If it takes you 45 minutes to explain what went wrong with Russia then you probably don't understand yourself.

Russia had no majority proletariat class and not enough industry for socialism. It was also socially backwards, socially undeveloped. The small amount of working class in Russia would have had no idea how to run society themselves hence the Russian attempt at "socialism" was pre-mature and because of this fact Lenin warped, no mangled, Marx's original conception of a vangaurd and "dictatorship of the proletariat" and the Russian Bolsheviks also threw Marx's historical materialism aside. On that path they murdered and slandered any socialist who opposed them, fellow Marxists and anarchists alike - the peasants in the countryside were brutalized as well as industrial workers. This was an oppressive process and doomed to fail because it is capitalism's job to industrialize. Kautsky predicted the failure of Russian "socialism and rightly criticized the Russian Bolsheviks brutality.

Now go read it. He ( Kautsky) and Marx/Engels works surrounding historical materialism may help paint the picture as well, I'll hold my breath while you read.

Go here (below) and read Under "communists at work" "THE DICTATORSHIP" - "CORRUPTION" - "THE CHANGE IN BOLSHEVISM"- "THE TERROR"

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1919/terrcomm/index.htm

[Questionable]

Russia had no majority proletariat class and not enough industry for socialism.

Yet it happened anyway. Again, you cling to outdated and disproven concepts of proletarian revolutions in the most advanced countries only, when the imperialist world market has changed all of that.


It was also socially backwards, socially undeveloped. The small amount of working class in Russia would have had no idea how to run society themselves hence the Russian attempt at "socialism" was pre-mature and because of this fact Lenin warped, no mangled, Marx's original conception of a vangaurd and "dictatorship of the proletariat" and the Russian Bolsheviks also threw Marx's historical materialism aside.What do you suggest the workers have done as an alternative? Also, how did Lenin "warp" Marx's vanguard and DotP concept, and how did they throw historical materialism aside?


On that path they murdered and slandered any socialist who opposed them, fellow Marxists and anarchists alike - the peasants in the countryside were brutalized as well as industrial workers.Be specific. Many of the instances you probably have in mind (Kronstadt, I'm guessing?) had good reasoning behind them, but this abstract idea of the Bolsheviks killing everyone is useless and makes you sound like a liberal.


This was an oppressive process and doomed to fail because it is capitalism's job to industrialize. Kautsky predicted the failure of Russian "socialism and rightly criticized the Russian Bolsheviks brutality.Capitalism wasn't industrializing Russia, and Russian socialism continued to persevere for many decades, becoming a superpower that rivaled the United States in about 50 years.


Now go read it. He ( Kautsky) and Marx/Engels works surrounding historical materialism may help paint the picture as well, I'll hold my breath while you read.I wouldn't do that. You'll suffocate.

You know, just for boredom's sake, I went ahead skimmed through that Kautsky book, and found this little gem:


We of the present day have no “ready-made Utopias to introduce by popular decision.” What is now happening is the liberating of those elements that mark the beginning of Socialist development. If we care to call that the world-revolution, because this is happening throughout the world, then we are certainly confronted with a world-revolution. It will not proceed on the lines of a dictatorship, nor by means of cannons and guns, nor through the destruction, of one’s political and social adversaries, but only through democracy and humanity. In this way alone can we hope to arrive at those higher forms of life, the working out of which belongs to the future task of the proletariat.

Wow, Kautsky renouncing the dictatorship of the proletariat in favor of "democracy and humanity"! It doesn't get much more liberal than this, folks.

[Q]

You know, just for boredom's sake, I went ahead skimmed through that Kautsky book, and found this little gem:



Wow, Kautsky renouncing the dictatorship of the proletariat in favor of "democracy and humanity"! It doesn't get much more liberal than this, folks.

Just to nitpick: This quote in itself says little. For example, he doesn't renounce a dictatorship of the proletariat, but just mentions "dictatorship", which remains unexplained. Is he meaning military dictatorship? Dictatorship in name of the proletariat? Something else? We cannot discern this from this quote.

Second: "The battle for democracy" is central to Marxism since Marx and Engels. Again, this is left unexplained. What democracy is meant? Bourgeois democracy? Proletarian democracy? We don't know from this quote.

So yeah, you have your homework cut out for you ;)

[l'Enfermé]

Doesn't look like we'll have to suffer Scuddy's idiocity any longer, he is banned after all.

[Q]

Doesn't look like we'll have to suffer Scuddy's idiocity any longer, he is banned after all.

Took them long enough.

So, Yoseph Bananas, is your question answered after all? :p

[Zederbaum]

Generally, it is not very productive to label political opponents as “turn-cloaks” or “renegades”. Why not confine the argument as to whether they are simply wrong? If we consider socialist unity to be very important to fulfilling our goals it will be necessary to co-operate with people we not only think are wrong, but profoundly so. And they with us. Such co-operation is made extremely difficult when the polemical debate elides the distinction between the arguer and the argument. It is much easier to take one’s argument being described as incorrect, rubbish, etc than it is to be personally labelled as traitor or turncloak.

In this regard, the Lenin-Kautsky polemic is notable for the litany of invective dripping from Lenin’s pen, to the extent that it makes it hard to read. Kautsky’s writings is much more focussed, reasoned and far less given to personal abuse.


Kautsky insisted that the SPD vote for war credits on the condition that the German government doesn't annex new territories or extort reperations from it's defeated enemies, at a meeting of the SPD Reichstag faction in early August.
This is pushing it too far. As far as I know, he didn’t support, let alone insist, on voting for the credits. He first advocated abstention to the Reichstag fraktion. Why would he do that if he was insisting that they vote for them? His advice was rejected and he then proposed that the vote for war credits be made conditional on declarations from the state rejecting annexations etc. A very different context. [

Since the state was extremely likely to refuse this would leave the SPD capable of abstaining in the vote while escaping from being cornered by its domestic enemies.

This seems to me to have been a reasonable proposal in the circumstances. Kautsky was under no illusions that the SPD could stop the Kaiser’s war machine. If that had been possible, they would have toppled the regime long before. The question is what to do in the circumstances which were not at all of their choosing.

Lenin’s position of calling for an immediate break with nationalist socialists has the aura of moral certainty, which always sounds well to our ears. But that didn’t necessarily make it a good strategy. Kautsky’s view that the *end* of the war - rather than its *start* - would see the weakening of the state apparatus coupled with mass dissent leading to the downfall of the regime led him to value remaining in a unified organisation that would be capable of taking advantage of such a revolutionary situation. Hence, also, his and Hilferding’s favourable disposition to reuniting with the Majority SPD in 1919.

They were, in other words, playing for high stakes. If the left could dislodge the nationalist leadership from the SPD then the potential victory was very high. Splitting and having a more radical, but smaller party had the virtue of moral purity but the downside of being incapable of winning anything. Of course, Kautsky may have been wrong, but this has to be argued on its merits, and not simply described as jumping into bed with reformists and counter-revolutionaries any more than Lenin's attitude towards the soviet elections of 1918 autocratically makes him a counter-revolutionary.

Kautsky’s criticisms of the Bolsheviks after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly are extremely useful in assessing the viability of the Bolshevik strategy, such that it was. Even if one thinks that Kautsky’s choice in 1914 was wrong, it does not bear upon his analysis of Russia in 1918 and after, which was broadly similar to die-hard anti-war Marxists such as Martov.

And he has plenty of interesting things to say about the social conditions necessary for overthrowing capitalism well after 1914: the role of soviets, parliament, the state in both the developing and advanced countries. Labelling him as a ‘renegade’ tends to prevent modern socialists from being familiar with these arguments, which even if one disagrees with all of them are extremely useful for framing questions, even for our time. [

For example:
1. What area the historical conditions appropriate for socialist revolutions? Can they occur in the less developed countries? Or is a capitalist stage necessary?

2. In the democratic (sic) advanced capitalist countries, what are the possible exit routes from capitalism? How should socialists come to power? By a revolutionary coup d’etat? Street insurrection? General strike? Parliamentary victory?

3. How should a country or countries govern itself in the immediate aftermath - not in some ideal communist utopia a millennium from now - of a socialist accession to power? Workers’ Councils? Parliamentary Republic?

4. What are, in the aftermath of a socialist victory, the social conditions necessary for effecting a transition to socialism? How necessary are civil liberties and democratic contests in the face of probable international capitalist reaction?

5. In the event of such reaction, how can degeneration such as affected Russia in the 1920s be avoided?

6. Why did a Bolshevik type of revolutionary assumption of power never occur in the advanced capitalist countries? Why did such genuinely mass organisations such as the PCF and PCI pursue, in effect, a pre-war SPDesque strategy of attrition?

7. Why did that strategy of attrition ultimately fail, leaving the main party to become integrated with the capitalist state?

8. What sort of socialist/communist party, if any, is appropriate in the advanced countries? A cadre party? A mass party? How to deal with ultra-lefts on the one hand and with those who will throw overboard the socialist goal on the other?

[Die Neue Zeit]

In this regard, the Lenin-Kautsky polemic is notable for the litany of invective dripping from Lenin’s pen, to the extent that it makes it hard to read. Kautsky’s writings is much more focussed, reasoned and far less given to personal abuse.

Only to a point. His later writings after Lenin's death dripped of similar invectives.

[Noa Rodman]

Here are his (undeciphered) notes (made before NEP) on the organization of the Cheka: I (http://postimage.org/image/t6kvsgrdb/),II (http://postimage.org/image/i89maa2rz/),III (http://postimage.org/image/jol4sf5ov/),IV (http://postimage.org/image/qt2y1gcy7/). I could read that he remarks mostly 18-22 year old people joined.
Also there are a few lines on the opposition inside Bolshevism. Interesting that he seems very well informed about it, he mentions Ukraine (where the Decists were strong, people like Dashkovskij (http://libcom.org/forums/theory/forgotten-great-theoreticians-02042010?page=1#comment-396669)).

[Questionable]

Only to a point. His later writings after Lenin's death dripped of similar invectives.

Even if Lenin was pissed when he wrote, does that make his points any less valid? I'd still take what Lenin wrote over achieving socialism through the vagueness of "democracy and humanity."

[Die Neue Zeit]

I wasn't defending the renegade Kautsky, though. :confused:

After Lenin's death, his later works mentioned "Bolshevism" as a negative sound-off a lot.

[Questionable]

I wasn't defending the renegade Kautsky, though. :confused:

After Lenin's death, his later works mentioned "Bolshevism" as a negative sound-off a lot.

I wasn't trying to argue with you. It was a legitimate question, although now that I look at it it should have been directed at the other gentleman. My bad.

[Rowan Duffy]

Even if Lenin was pissed when he wrote, does that make his points any less valid? I'd still take what Lenin wrote over achieving socialism through the vagueness of "democracy and humanity."

How is Kautsky vague? He's one of the clearest and most explicit of the historical socialists regarding transition to socialism. Read the Labour Revolution (1924) (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1924/labour/index.htm) for instance.

As per DNZs charge that Kautsky was dripping with invective an a scale similar to Lenin, that's just false. It would be pretty straight forward to do a textual sentiment analysis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentiment_analysis) of Kautsky and Lenin and I'll bet a mint that the results will demonstrate Lenin is the bigger user of invective. I'm literally willing to bet you money so either put up or stop saying it because it's obviously untrue.

I find it irritating that socialists seem to think making aspersions about Kautsky is a mark of their own revolutionary vigour. The posturing is juvenile and not helpful to advancing understanding.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Um, OK:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1930s/demvscom/ch04.htm


Against any such democratic procedure the Bolsheviks struggled with all their might, and they utilized a favorable situation to dissolve the Constituent Assembly. This blow they struck not against a czarist, aristocratic, bourgeois or “white guardist” counter revolution but against the other Socialist parties, who had been more successful than the Bolsheviks in the struggle for the soul of the workers and peasants.

Hence, the abolition of all democratic rights of masses, ergo the terror. It was the necessary consequence of the rule of a minority over the great majority of the people. Hence, the fact that the terror has been indispensable for the Bolsheviks not only in the civil war but throughout the years after its conclusion. They resort to terror not only as a means of repelling counter-revolution but as an instrument of holding down and destroying all revolutionists among the workers and peasants who refuse to submit without protest to the whip of the new Red czar and his Communist Cossacks.

So above, the renegade still never mentioned the violation of equal (not universal) suffrage or the Bolshevik coups d'etat of 1918 against the soviets themselves. Instead, he repeated old bourgeois truisms.

"Whip of the new Red czar and his Communist Cossacks"? If that's not an invective, I don't know what is.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1930s/demvscom/ch07.htm


The entire Five-Year Plan was conceived in the expectation that the capitalists of the entire world would vie with one another, in supplying Soviet Russia with improved means of production, and in this the Communists were not deceived. And the capitalists fear Soviet Russia as little politically as they do economically. Mussolini owes his success in no small measure to the Communists. They made possible the triumph of Hitler in Germany. In many countries the reactionaries owed a number of their seats in Parliament to the Communists.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1930s/demvscom/ch10.htm

TIME Magazine said something similar about Lenin in the 1990s in a 20th century figures special!


The reestablishment of a united Socialist and Labor movement is impossible so long as Russia is ruled by a dictatorship seeking to subordinate to itself the working class of the whole world.

A united front will come of itself as soon as this dictatorship has vanished, for without it the Communist parties will be deprived of their life-force. They will speedily disintegrate as soon as slogans and money cease to come from Russia and the iron and golden ring that is holding them together has been removed.

Not the collapse of the dictatorship in Russia but its further continuance in power constitutes the gravest menace and causes the greatest damage to the struggle of the modern working class for liberation.

This is self-explanatory.

[Rowan Duffy]

^^^ Um, OK:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1930s/demvscom/ch04.htm



So above, the renegade still never mentioned the violation of equal (not universal) suffrage or the Bolshevik coups d'etat of 1918 against the soviets themselves. Instead, he repeated old bourgeois truisms.

"Whip of the new Red czar and his Communist Cossacks"? If that's not an invective, I don't know what is.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1930s/demvscom/ch07.htm



http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1930s/demvscom/ch10.htm

TIME Magazine said something similar about Lenin in the 1990s in a 20th century figures special!



This is self-explanatory.


Generally, when I try to prove someone wrong DNZ, I refrain from providing overwhelming evidence that my opponent is 100% correct. Kautsky is neither sectarian, abusive or substantially incorrect in any of those statements. The correctness of his interpretation is born out by the history of the Bolsheviks and his complete lack of abusive language, instead taking a sober appraisal of the circumstances and their possibilities. It makes me seriously wonder what you hoped to gain by reiterating Kautsky's genius in being right on every single point. In what way was he wrong on any of those positions?

[Questionable]

I want to ask a few questions.


Against any such democratic procedure the Bolsheviks struggled with all their might, and they utilized a favorable situation to dissolve the Constituent Assembly. This blow they struck not against a czarist, aristocratic, bourgeois or “white guardist” counter revolution but against the other Socialist parties, who had been more successful than the Bolsheviks in the struggle for the soul of the workers and peasants.Isn't this totally ignoring what the other "socialist" parties stood for? Many of them wanted a bourgeois revolution first and thus stood in defense of private property. I'm also not sure where Kautsky gets the idea that they were more successful than the Bolsheviks because the Bolsheviks were very popular amongst workers and soldiers while other groups found their base in students and the propertied classes.


The entire Five-Year Plan was conceived in the expectation that the capitalists of the entire world would vie with one another, in supplying Soviet Russia with improved means of production, and in this the Communists were not deceived. And the capitalists fear Soviet Russia as little politically as they do economically. Mussolini owes his success in no small measure to the Communists. They made possible the triumph of Hitler in Germany. In many countries the reactionaries owed a number of their seats in Parliament to the Communists.This whole thing seems rather silly. The capitalists didn't fear the Soviet Union? And why is he blaming the triumph of Hitler on them? The Nazis triumphed because of the damage caused by social-democratic reformists. The Soviet Union made some tactical errors but it's not like they just allowed the whole thing to happen.


The reestablishment of a united Socialist and Labor movement is impossible so long as Russia is ruled by a dictatorship seeking to subordinate to itself the working class of the whole world.

A united front will come of itself as soon as this dictatorship has vanished, for without it the Communist parties will be deprived of their life-force. They will speedily disintegrate as soon as slogans and money cease to come from Russia and the iron and golden ring that is holding them together has been removed.

Not the collapse of the dictatorship in Russia but its further continuance in power constitutes the gravest menace and causes the greatest damage to the struggle of the modern working class for liberation.Why does Kautsky hate Soviet Russia more than he does the actual bourgeoisie? If he were alive today he'd find a receptive audience with some of Revleft's users.

I mean yeah, it happened, the Left got sent into a tailspin when the USSR collapsed, but is that really such a good thing? Was progress not made?

But it's possible that I've misinterpreted some of these things so I'm open to discussion, although Rowan Duffy is probably going to chew me out but oh well.



I find it irritating that socialists seem to think making aspersions about Kautsky is a mark of their own revolutionary vigour. The posturing is juvenile and not helpful to advancing understanding.Kautskyist Comrades, is this kind of attitude really necessary? Whether or not Kautsky himself was snide in his remarks, every single Kautskyist in this thread so far has been rude beyond necessity. Can we not discuss this topic without getting juvenile?

[Die Neue Zeit]

I want to ask a few questions.

Isn't this totally ignoring what the other "socialist" parties stood for? Many of them wanted a bourgeois revolution first and thus stood in defense of private property. I'm also not sure where Kautsky gets the idea that they were more successful than the Bolsheviks because the Bolsheviks were very popular amongst workers and soldiers while other groups found their base in students and the propertied classes.

Yes, the non-left Socialist Revolutionaries and Menshevik-Defencists were the worst of the lot.


This whole thing seems rather silly. The capitalists didn't fear the Soviet Union? And why is he blaming the triumph of Hitler on them? The Nazis triumphed because of the damage caused by social-democratic reformists. The Soviet Union made some tactical errors but it's not like they just allowed the whole thing to happen.

True.


Why does Kautsky hate Soviet Russia more than he does the actual bourgeoisie? If he were alive today he'd find a receptive audience with some of Revleft's users.

Yeah, but even before then. Maybe even the neo-cons would give an ear.


I mean yeah, it happened, the Left got sent into a tailspin when the USSR collapsed, but is that really such a good thing? Was progress not made?

Only now there are small recovery steps, but more splinters occurred in the 90s than during the Cold War period.

[Zederbaum]

I want to ask a few questions.

Isn't this totally ignoring what the other "socialist" parties stood for? Many of them wanted a bourgeois revolution first and thus stood in defense of private property. I'm also not sure where Kautsky gets the idea that they were more successful than the Bolsheviks because the Bolsheviks were very popular amongst workers and soldiers while other groups found their base in students and the propertied classes.
The Bolsheviks had at their peak 25% of the population behind them. The SRs were by far the most popular. That is a simple fact of history. And whatever about Russia's monumental problems at that time, it wasn't troubled by a surfeit of annoying student radicals :D

The Bolsheviks were indeed popular amongst soldiers and workers - in late 1917. But here the details matter. Their popularity fell dramatically in early 1918 as is seen in the soviet election results. They then proceeded to shut down free elections to the soviets.

Ultimately their power rested on the soldiers rather than workers. Nothing particularly socialist about that. And there is no point in attempting a socialist revolution in conditions in which there is no hope of it succeeding, especially if you have to engage in a massive civil war, suppress your allies, and restrict civil liberties for decades in order to fail anyway.


And why is he blaming the triumph of Hitler on them? The Nazis triumphed because of the damage caused by social-democratic reformists.Because Lenin had a mania for splitting the western labour movement which Kautsky saw as weakening socialism, ensuring that far left would be impotent while the main party remained under the control of Ebert etc. The Bolsheviks encouraged coup d'etats that had no prospect of succeeding and which only created instability in very young democratic republics. This opened possibilities for reaction that just wasn't there before. Kautsky's support for democracy is not a vague enthusiasm for NICE THINGZ, but because democracy is essential for socialism. To shut down democracy is to shut down the possibility of socialism itself.


I mean yeah, it happened, the Left got sent into a tailspin when the USSR collapsed, but is that really such a good thing? Was progress not made?Sure, and there is a lot to learn from the Soviet experiments in running the economy. But that in no way means the strategic choices of 1917-1918 were correct.


Kautskyist Comrades, is this kind of attitude really necessary? Whether or not Kautsky himself was snide in his remarks, every single Kautskyist in this thread so far has been rude beyond necessity. Can we not discuss this topic without getting juvenile?To be fair, that's just not true. Read my previous comment (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2522755&postcount=70) in this thread for example.

More generally, Kautsky's strategic analyses were vastly more accurate and useful than Lenin's. Imperialism was not the last stage of capitalism; Soviet rule would not lead to a higher form of democracy; a backward country can not just jump to socialism; political repression in Russia would lead to a Bonaparte emerging. etc.


Whip of the new Red czar and his Communist CossackNothing a proponent of Third World Czarism wouldn't approve of surely :D

[Questionable]

The Bolsheviks had at their peak 25% of the population behind them. The SRs were by far the most popular. That is a simple fact of history. And whatever about Russia's monumental problems at that time, it wasn't troubled by a surfeit of annoying student radicals :D

This is contrary to much of I've read, and one studious comrades like DNZ are saying. Do you have any information regarding this that I can read?

Furthermore, even if they did not popular support, what does this mean for the success of their programme? We are not workerists, are we?


The Bolsheviks were indeed popular amongst soldiers and workers - in late 1917. But here the details matter. Their popularity fell dramatically in early 1918 as is seen in the soviet election results. They then proceeded to shut down free elections to the soviets.Well when things got rough during the civil war their popularity began to fall, yes. We must examine things in historical context. It's not like the Bolsheviks just closed down elections because they were mean bastards.


Ultimately their power rested on the soldiers rather than workers. Nothing particularly socialist about that. And there is no point in attempting a socialist revolution in conditions in which there is no hope of it succeeding, especially if you have to engage in a massive civil war, suppress your allies, and restrict civil liberties for decades in order to fail anyway.But it did succeed. There were massive improvements in life in Russia and progress was made towards the elimination of class antagonisms (I have Paul Cockshott's examinations of the Soviet Union in mind when I say this). Is the main critique of this the suppression of "civil liberties"? What do you mean about the Bolsheviks suppressing their allies? Furthermore, the civil war was forced upon them by imperialist intervention, they sought peace as soon as they achieved power.


Because Lenin had a mania for splitting the western labour movement which Kautsky saw as weakening socialism, ensuring that far left would be impotent while the main party remained under the control of Ebert etc.Can you give an example of this? If you're referring to something like the labor movement in Germany, like I said, social-democrats were more to blame for this even if the Soviet Union made its share of mistakes.


The Bolsheviks encouraged coup d'etats that had no prospect of succeeding and which only created instability in very young democratic republics. This opened possibilities for reaction that just wasn't there before.Again, can you give another example of this? The statements you're giving me seem very generalized and I would like specific examples with what you're saying and I can respond to them.


Kautsky's support for democracy is not a vague enthusiasm for NICE THINGZ, but because democracy is essential for socialism. To shut down democracy is to shut down the possibility of socialism itself.Democracy is indeed a core component to socialism that was responsible for much of the Soviet Union's later failings, but I think large progress was still made in favor of the proletariat, and I do think that Lenin and Stalin had democracy in mind but certain historical conditions often kept them away from this goal. For instance, Stalin was making a huge push for democratic reforms which was interrupted by the Nazi invasion. There were also democratic institutions in place.


Sure, and there is a lot to learn from the Soviet experiments in running the economy. But that in no way means the strategic choices of 1917-1918 were correct.Well, they succeeded. What would the preferred situation have been?


To be fair, that's just not true. Read my previous comment (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2522755&postcount=70) in this thread for example.You're right, my apologies. But you cannot deny that there were some rude Kautskyists in this thread.


More generally, Kautsky's strategic analyses were vastly more accurate and useful than Lenin's.How so? Leninism has had more success than any other political doctrine and is the basis for most real movements historically and today.


Imperialism was not the last stage of capitalism;Could you elaborate on this? Imperialism didn't collapse as quickly as Lenin and the Comintern had hoped but we are still in the imperialist stage of capitalism.


Soviet rule would not lead to a higher form of democracy;Comparative to what most socialist countries faced prior to their revolutions, it did indeed lead to a higher form of democracy, and I think in many cases they were more democratic than Western bourgeois nations, unless you and Kautsky disagree.


a backward country can not just jump to socialism;It was limited by the material conditions but I believe it achieved a kind of socialism. No nation has ever been the realization of a pure ideal, they are always limited to the reality of their situation. And once again, what is the alternative? Was the working class supposed to wait?


political repression in Russia would lead to a Bonaparte emerging. etc.I disagree that Stalin was a Bonaparte, but that's an entirely different issue.


Nothing a proponent of Third World Czarism wouldn't approve of surely :DI'm pretty sure Comrade DNZ is a proponent of Third World "Csaesarism," not Czarism.

[Noa Rodman]

The Sozialisten und Krieg (1937) is used as reference for Kautsky's position with regard to the vote for war credits, but it's also true that during the war he wrote about it. The Kautsky Papers lists these articles:


Eine Richtigstellung. ("Schwäbische Tagwacht"; über den 3. Aug.). (1915). Hschr. 2 S.
A 64 Noch eine Richtigstellung. (1916). 2 Fahnen, korr.
A 64a Die Motive der Abstimmung vom 4. Aug. (1914). Hschr. 20 S.
A 65 Richtigstellung. (1916). Hschr. 2 S.
A 66 Noch einmal die mahnende Erinnerung. (1916). Mschr. 9 s.
A 67 Die Wahrheit über den 3. August. (1916). Mschr. 2 S.

Of course I don't have them, so I can't say what he wrote then, but probably it's the same as he apparently did in Sozialisten und Krieg. This is a big volume which I would like to read completely.

Lenin's stamina facing almost complete isolation in arguing for Brest-Litovsk, earns him Kautsky's praise of reaching or equalling Marx's greatness and of being Lenin's high point. Why can't we have someone make a good review of such books so the rest of us can learn about it? This was the final volume of what was meant to be a 4 volume work. Krieg und Demokratie, 1932; 470 p. was the first part. It deals with the attitudes to wars from the Hussites to the revolution of 1848. The second volume deals with national wars in the 1850-1880 era. It was not published because the nazi take-over, but the manuscript exists. The third volume was to deal with wars in the era of finance capital from 1880 to the present (1935). The Kautsky Papers list big manuscripts (over thousand of pages), so hopefully Kautsky summarized this material in the final 1937 book, otherwise there remain 1 or 2 unpublished big volumes of Kautsky.

I already posted here his notes on the Cheka (I have also about other subjects), but the handwriting is difficult to decipher. The Kautsky Papers are stored at the social history institute in Amsterdam. His articles could be found in other libraries holding archives of the journals/newspapers in which they were published. Such articles as


Vanderveldes Feldpredigten in Vorwärts 1914, Berlin, nr. 333-6, XII


Der sozialistische Ministerialismus im Kriege. (1917)


seem relevant to me to determine if or how he tried to justify the socialist participation in war.


But beside the problem of accessing articles (or deciphering manuscripts and notes), the issue of translation would take most energy (hence reliable reviews should be done).

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ "I was for the war before I was against it." The difference is he didn't have Karl Liebknecht's spine or even Rudolf Hilferding's after the Nazis took power.


The Bolsheviks were indeed popular amongst soldiers and workers - in late 1917. But here the details matter. Their popularity fell dramatically in early 1918 as is seen in the soviet election results. They then proceeded to shut down free elections to the soviets.

Ultimately their power rested on the soldiers rather than workers. Nothing particularly socialist about that. And there is no point in attempting a socialist revolution in conditions in which there is no hope of it succeeding, especially if you have to engage in a massive civil war, suppress your allies, and restrict civil liberties for decades in order to fail anyway.

So why did Kautsky encourage revolution even in 1917? Why did he gloss over the late SR split that didn't allow the Left SRs to stand separately? More importantly, why did he never point to the real coups d'etat in 1918?


Because Lenin had a mania for splitting the western labour movement which Kautsky saw as weakening socialism, ensuring that far left would be impotent while the main party remained under the control of Ebert etc. The Bolsheviks encouraged coup d'etats that had no prospect of succeeding and which only created instability in very young democratic republics. This opened possibilities for reaction that just wasn't there before. Kautsky's support for democracy is not a vague enthusiasm for NICE THINGZ, but because democracy is essential for socialism. To shut down democracy is to shut down the possibility of socialism itself.

Excuse me, comrade, but you forgot to note earlier and subsequent unity efforts "on the basis of self-censorship of the communists in order to fudge the political differences between them" or "[fudging] differences by diplomatic agreement to windy generalities." (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/624/unity-in-diversity)

You also forgot to note the right wing expelling anti-war groups, so to kiss their collective ass isn't exactly the right course of action.

There is such a thing as the right split and the wrong split. The right split exhibited itself in the formation of the USPD and of pro-USPD elements who wanted to keep the party-movement together.


Imperialism was not the last stage of capitalism

Who said anything about it being the last stage? Lenin said that it was the highest stage, which can mean reaching the peak of something before going downhill slowly or more rapidly.


Nothing a proponent of Third World Czarism wouldn't approve of surely :D

Well, it's called respecting peasant politics, even if means putting up with a TWCS "czar" and his "socialist" (not Communist) Cossacks.

[Die Neue Zeit]

You're right, my apologies. But you cannot deny that there were some rude Kautskyists in this thread.

How so? Leninism has had more success than any other political doctrine and is the basis for most real movements historically and today.

Neither Kautsky himself nor Lenin wrote enough about the organizational underpinnings of whatever successes they had. That's why comrades on this board reiterate the key role of party-organized solidarity networks, mutual aid, alternative culture, etc.


Comparative to what most socialist countries faced prior to their revolutions, it did indeed lead to a higher form of democracy, and I think in many cases they were more democratic than Western bourgeois nations, unless you and Kautsky disagree.

For those who have become hardcore Kauts for some reason, I'd like to suggest doing some research on the sans culottes of revolutionary France. Before they were repressed by the Jacobins, they expressed having no fetish for universal suffrage.


I'm pretty sure Comrade DNZ is a proponent of Third World "Caesarism," not Czarism.

Third World Caesarean Socialism, to be more precise.

[Noa Rodman]

^^^ "I was for the war before I was against it."


I mean to find articles in order to determine Kautsky's attitude towards those socialists who did participate in the war, which was I think Lenin's main reproach to the Center; of still actually trying to talk sense into the chauvinists, of giving a token critique, of platonic internationalism, of just speaking against war, but not acting against it, etc.

I believe Lenin never addressed himself to the chauvinists (I know Trotsky did write a letter to Guesde).

It's apparently impossible to find a smoking gun of Kautsky arguing for war credits, or it would long ago have been found by communist historians. I think the accusation is created because of a shorthand of Lenin's reasoning, that since Kautsky/the Center is not really fighting against the chauvinists, the Center are covering the chauvinists, the Center is on the side of the chauvinists, and moreover the Center is even worse because they can better sow confusion: hence (with some exaggeration) the Center is the main advocate for war.

I'm sure that not all SPD workers in Germany were suddenly turned in patriotic frenzy, but in Germany it was said (by Kautsky I believe) to be worse than in France and Russia. In France Jaures was shot of course. I mentioned the news point of an attack in August by militarists on the Vorwärts building (I can't verify it, but still). It would have been that kind of mood which gave SPD majority free course. And it would be in their interest to portray the decision as unanimous (Liebknecht protested against this falsehood). I don't want to give Kautsky to the chauvinists, at least not without evidence (like testimony of other people present and minutes if they are available).

[Die Neue Zeit]

I mean to find articles in order to determine Kautsky's attitude towards those socialists who did participate in the war, which was I think Lenin's main reproach to the Center; of still actually trying to talk sense into the chauvinists, of giving a token critique, of platonic internationalism, of just speaking against war, but not acting against it, etc.

I believe Lenin never addressed himself to the chauvinists (I know Trotsky did write a letter to Guesde).

It's apparently impossible to find a smoking gun of Kautsky arguing for war credits, or it would long ago have been found by communist historians. I think the accusation is created because of a shorthand of Lenin's reasoning, that since Kautsky/the Center is not really fighting against the chauvinists, the Center are covering the chauvinists, the Center is on the side of the chauvinists, and moreover the Center is even worse because they can better sow confusion: hence (with some exaggeration) the Center is the main advocate for war.

I'm sure that not all SPD workers in Germany were suddenly turned in patriotic frenzy, but in Germany it was said (by Kautsky I believe) to be worse than in France and Russia. In France Jaures was shot of course. I mentioned the news point of an attack in August by militarists on the Vorwärts building (I can't verify it, but still). It would have been that kind of mood which gave SPD majority free course. And it would be in their interest to portray the decision as unanimous (Liebknecht protested against this falsehood). I don't want to give Kautsky to the chauvinists, at least not without evidence (like testimony of other people present and minutes if they are available).

Perhaps, but it is quite telling that the actual reformist socialists (Bernstein and the further-from-Marxism Jaures) were the first opponents of the war and consistently opposed it. Guesde and Plekhanov became pro-war.

The very least Kautsky could have done was to argue against a USPD coalition with the MSPD, and argued that the MSPD leadership were war criminals.

[Zederbaum]

You also forgot to note the right wing expelling anti-war groups, so to kiss their collective ass isn't exactly the right course of action. Happily, my memory is still in working order so I forgot none of the cases you consider important; I simply consider them to be either lesser issues or irrelevant. For example, your point in the above quote is simply irrelevant when discussing Kautsky, because Kautsky was also anti-war and also expelled. You are treating the question as one of taste and morality, not one of strategy.

The question of the late split of the SRs and subsequent confusion in the Constituent Assembly elections is a minor one, and hardly merits a mention. And why should he focus on the Bolsheviks' anti-soviet coups of 1918 since he was never a proponent of government by soviets anyway? Hard to be a renegade from what you never advocated surely?


Who said anything about it being the last stage? Lenin said that it was the highest stage, which can mean reaching the peak of something before going downhill slowly or more rapidly. Sure, if you want to nitpick and effectively render Lenin's entire writings on imperialism utterly worthless you can emphasise that line. His analysis of imperialism is important because it has implications for political strategy, i.e. the urgency of revolution and the transition to socialism. Neutering his theory might preserve its logical integrity but does so at the expense of it being incapable of telling us anything about the world.


Perhaps, but it is quite telling that the actual reformist socialists (Bernstein and the further-from-Marxism Jaures) were the first opponents of the war and consistently opposed it. Guesde and Plekhanov became pro-war It's not at all telling. Bernstein actually did support the war but changed his position later. All the actual evidence suggests that Kautsky and the Centre (Haase, Hilferding, and related parties, e.g. Menshevik Internationslists) remained consistently opposed to the war.


The very least Kautsky could have done was to argue against a USPD coalition with the MSPD, and argued that the MSPD leadership were war criminals.Why bother? That simply treats the party as the private property of the leadership rather than as body with a spectrum of opinion that often varied with the leadership's but which stuck with it for reasons of organisational loyalty. This stance sees the party base as capable of being won over. And if that is the case, why not try to win it? The rewards are going to be a hell of a lot greater than being an ideologically pure, but vastly smaller party.

Kautsky thought that a reunited SPD would be a much stronger party than either the MSPD or the USPD would be alone. And being stronger would be in a position to more effectively pursue socialist policies.

The USPD had to have a coalition since there was no prospect of it being able to govern alone. When the KPD captured the USPD (or half of it), they swiftly proved that and kept on doing so right up to 1933. I see no reason why Kautsky should have supported a policy he thought was likely to fail abjectly and which in fact did fail abjectly.

So, to summarise, the Centrists calculated:


that they needed a mass party capable of mobilising majority support for socialism in order to achieve their aims.
that a socialist movement split into antagonistic parties prevented any one of them from being large enough to achieve that degree of mass support.
that it therefore follows that supporting a united Socialist Party, even with those who persecuted the oppositionists (including Kautsky) during the war was a policy worth supporting.
that those who actively opposed socialist unity were to be criticised.

[Noa Rodman]

The book Sozialisten und Krieg (1937) is cited by Mises (here (http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=2399&chapter=226551&layout=html&Itemid=27)). In the same chapter Mises writes:


The very small groups of zealous Marxians—probably never more than a few hundred persons in the whole Reich—were completely segregated from the rest of the party membership. They communicated with their foreign friends, especially with the Austrian Marxians (the “Austro-Marxian doctrinaires”), the exiled Russian revolutionaries, and with some Italian groups. In the Anglo-Saxon countries Marxism in those days was practically unknown. With the daily political activities of the party these orthodox Marxians had little in common. Their points of view and their feelings were strange, even disgusting, not only to the masses but also to many party bureaucrats. The millions voting the Social Democratic ticket paid no attention to these endless theoretical discussions concerning the concentration of capital, the collapse of capitalism, finance capital and imperialism, and the relations between Marxian materialism and Kantian criticism. They tolerated this pedantic clan because they saw that they impressed and frightened the “bourgeois” world of statesmen, entrepreneurs, and clergymen, and that the government-appointed university professors, that German Brahmin caste, took them seriously and wrote voluminous works about Marxism. But they went their own way and let the learned doctors go theirs.

I just post this to remind ourselves what the rest of world thinks ;)

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Mises had no clue about the components of political education, political agitation, and political organization, especially about those Marxists involved in daily political organization.


Happily, my memory is still in working order so I forgot none of the cases you consider important; I simply consider them to be either lesser issues or irrelevant. For example, your point in the above quote is simply irrelevant when discussing Kautsky, because Kautsky was also anti-war and also expelled. You are treating the question as one of taste and morality, not one of strategy.

Whatever political activity was done in the USPD, comrade, apart from "taste and morality" defines my judgment of the relevant individuals. In Kautsky's case, he became a pro-MSPD liquidationist, just the right-wing flip to the leftist, pro-KPD ones.


The question of the late split of the SRs and subsequent confusion in the Constituent Assembly elections is a minor one, and hardly merits a mention.

Why is it minor? It would have been fundamentally different if the Left SRs gained a majority and then the Bolsheviks disbanded the CA.


And why should he focus on the Bolsheviks' anti-soviet coups of 1918 since he was never a proponent of government by soviets anyway? Hard to be a renegade from what you never advocated surely?

Um, by liberal bourgeois thinking, it's called "freedom of association." At the very least, soviets were associations.


Sure, if you want to nitpick and effectively render Lenin's entire writings on imperialism utterly worthless you can emphasise that line. His analysis of imperialism is important because it has implications for political strategy, i.e. the urgency of revolution and the transition to socialism. Neutering his theory might preserve its logical integrity but does so at the expense of it being incapable of telling us anything about the world.

The implications for political strategy were correct, though. It was a revolutionary period, and even the renegade earlier wrote of "steps toward socialism" or something to that effect even in Russia that were possible (Prospects of the Russian Revolution). Political strategy neutered Kautsky's anti-war line of "peace without annexations or indemnifications." Revolutionary defeatism was the order of the day.

Now, today is much different, of course, since I do think that "peace without annexations or indemnifications" is far more appropriate than siding with tinpot thugs claiming to be "anti-imperialist" and claiming to resist "imperialist aggression."

Kautsky's failure was his inability to grasp correct tactics for a revolutionary period, not his posing actual revolutionary strategy before a revolutionary period.


It's not at all telling. Bernstein actually did support the war but changed his position later. All the actual evidence suggests that Kautsky and the Centre (Haase, Hilferding, and related parties, e.g. Menshevik Internationslists) remained consistently opposed to the war.

In a revolutionary period for the working class, opposition to inter-state war does not entail organizing generic anti-war activity or sloganeering "peace without annexations or indemnifications."


Why bother? That simply treats the party as the private property of the leadership rather than as body with a spectrum of opinion that often varied with the leadership's but which stuck with it for reasons of organisational loyalty. This stance sees the party base as capable of being won over. And if that is the case, why not try to win it? The rewards are going to be a hell of a lot greater than being an ideologically pure, but vastly smaller party.

Um, the USPD at its peak had more members than the MSPD. That's hardly an "ideologically pure, but vastly smaller party."


Kautsky thought that a reunited SPD would be a much stronger party than either the MSPD or the USPD would be alone. And being stronger would be in a position to more effectively pursue socialist policies.

Time proved his right-liquidationism wrong. The German worker-class movement would have been much strong had the USPD been maintained, at the expense of both the rightist MSPD and the ultra-left KPD.

Besides, on a more vulgar level "talking left" and "left turns" have been done time and again by reformist parties once out of office, only to be discarded when entering government.


The USPD had to have a coalition since there was no prospect of it being able to govern alone.

Except that the USPD did have all the logistics and political support needed to govern unilaterally on a consistent peace-and-bread platform.


When the KPD captured the USPD (or half of it), they swiftly proved that and kept on doing so right up to 1933. I see no reason why Kautsky should have supported a policy he thought was likely to fail abjectly and which in fact did fail abjectly.

What does the KPD have to do with this coalition/anti-coalition argument again? This is the German Revolution here, not the Third Period.


So, to summarise, the Centrists calculated:

that they needed a mass party capable of mobilising majority support for socialism in order to achieve their aims.

Agree 110%.


that a socialist movement split into antagonistic parties prevented any one of them from being large enough to achieve that degree of mass support.

Disagree. As I said above, before left and right liquidationist pressures the USPD had more members than even the MSPD.

By your logic today, Die Linke might as well not exist. German voters should simply vote for the "time-honoured" SPD.


that it therefore follows that supporting a united Socialist Party, even with those who persecuted the oppositionists (including Kautsky) during the war was a policy worth supporting.

And what has happened time and again when workers and radicals "turn the other cheek"?


that those who actively opposed socialist unity were to be criticised.

Unity on what basis? As noted by comrade Q above and in the ECP thread, nationalism, non-transparent internal organization, and political dependency on the capitalist state or on non-worker classes directly are not exactly good unity points. You even "thanked" this point, I should note. The MSPD failed on all three counts (pro-war, persecuting anti-war oppositionists, and both receiving support from the Reich during the war and forming a bourgeois republic afterwards).

[Noa Rodman]

I don't know if Macnair defends Lenin on revolutionary defeatism, he just says it was important to establish the split, which probably Draper would not deny either. For Kautsky the USDP's reason to exist disappeared after the war, so it would not be enough to keep it together based just on a negative.

His later work, including his magnum opus Die Materialistische Geschichtsauffassung (http://archive.org/details/DieMaterialistischeGeschichtsauffassung), from which DNZ's pic is taken (you should change it to him reading a newspaper at the Amsterdam congress 1904, see if you can spot him here (http://rosaluxemburgblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/amsterdam-1904-hall-paint.jpg)), could still engage the
"bourgeois" world of statesmen, entrepreneurs, and clergymen, etc., as Mises puts it (of which he was himself a part I guess, he read Kautsky's Labour revolution), e.g. Weber. Kautsky also critiqued the "bourgeois" intellectuals in Die fable von der naturnotwendigkeit des Krieges, 1932, 19 p., which is a polemic against the theories of Sigmund Freud (Unbehagen in der Kultur), Oswald Spengler and the Dutch sociologist Steinmetz. I think Mises's point that such Marxism is just empty cover for practical opportunism is not the key, but that it was regarded as such by the majority of the people (and this attitude in the workers movement against 'pedantic passive Marxism' was taken up also by the Nazis, who at least "put into reality" their "anti-capitalism").

[Die Neue Zeit]

I don't know if Macnair defends Lenin on revolutionary defeatism

He does, comrade. Recall Revolutionary Strategy's Chapter 4, titled "War and Revolutionary Strategy": http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?do=discuss&group=&discussionid=2554


His later work, including his magnum opus Die Materialistische Geschichtsauffassung (http://archive.org/details/DieMaterialistischeGeschichtsauffassung), from which DNZ's pic is taken (you should change it to him reading a newspaper at the Amsterdam congress 1904, see if you can spot him here (http://rosaluxemburgblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/amsterdam-1904-hall-paint.jpg))

I'll give that a look. ;)

Yes, I did spot him in the Deutschland table (duh), but his face is too sideways for a good avatar capture.

[Noa Rodman]

The archives from Neuer Vorwärts are no longer online (copy right fear), but I have saved several articles from Kautsky, one very relevant called Sozialdemokratie und Krieg (6. October 1935). It's an abbreviated chapter likely from one of his unpublished volumes on war. Btw, Mengele had lengthy conversations with his wife Luise in Auschwitz (he might even have read "Sozialisten und Krieg"). [edit: I figured a way to put his articles in one file: here (http://archive.org/details/KautskyinNeuerVorwarts)]. Also, since we were on about Keynes on the other thread, Kautsky, as other orthodox marxists e.g. Dan (who explictly mentioned Keynes as bourgeois apologist) didn't rally behind Roosevelt and criticized the plan-advocates in SD ranks.

It's a shame NV isn't online anymore, I remember reading an article by Hilferding (pseud. Richard Kern), something about how effective struggle against the Nazi-regime was made impossible because of the Stalinist show trials which the German communists had to defend.

[Zederbaum]

I shall respond to Comrade DNZ's reply in the nearish future. For those of you waiting with baited breath, the reply won't be conceding much ground :D



The Sozialisten und Krieg (1937) is used as reference for Kautsky's position with regard to the vote for war credits, but it's also true that during the war he wrote about it. The Kautsky Papers lists these articles:


Eine Richtigstellung. ("Schwäbische Tagwacht"; über den 3. Aug.). (1915). Hschr. 2 S.
A 64 Noch eine Richtigstellung. (1916). 2 Fahnen, korr.
A 64a Die Motive der Abstimmung vom 4. Aug. (1914). Hschr. 20 S.
A 65 Richtigstellung. (1916). Hschr. 2 S.
A 66 Noch einmal die mahnende Erinnerung. (1916). Mschr. 9 s.
A 67 Die Wahrheit über den 3. August. (1916). Mschr. 2 S.

Of course I don't have them, so I can't say what he wrote then, but probably it's the same as he apparently did in Sozialisten und Krieg. This is a big volume which I would like to read completely.

I already posted here his notes on the Cheka (I have also about other subjects), but the handwriting is difficult to decipher. The Kautsky Papers are stored at the social history institute in Amsterdam. His articles could be found in other libraries holding archives of the journals/newspapers in which they were published. Such articles as

Vanderveldes Feldpredigten in Vorwärts 1914, Berlin, nr. 333-6, XII
Der sozialistische Ministerialismus im Kriege. (1917)

seem relevant to me to determine if or how he tried to justify the socialist participation in war.

But beside the problem of accessing articles (or deciphering manuscripts and notes), the issue of translation would take most energy (hence reliable reviews should be done).

I wonder if there would be sufficient interest in translating Kautsky's hitherto forgotten works such that we could put a fund together to finance it? Obviously some will be done on a volunteer basis, but comrades must eat too.

As a feeble monoglot - Irish doesn't count - I can't help with the heavy lifting, but I would be willing to chip in a few bob and assist with the proofing and idiomatic expression.

Perhaps Comrade Rodman would put together a proposal comprising


works to be translated
cost
timeframe
requirements for editorial process

The works to translated section should comprise two sections:



Works of interest that could be translated over the next, say, three years. That is, it can include substantial writings. Better to include more than less in order to give the funders a choice.
Immediate articles for translation. A first-time project needs to prove itself before the second tranche of funding is drawn down so these should be relatively short and simple.

We could also approach potentially sympathetic organisations for support.

[Noa Rodman]

The Kautsky Papers (http://www.iisg.nl/archives/en/files/k/ARCH00712full.php#N100EF) show a number of articles already appeared in The New Leader, including the one I mentioned, which is the last chapter from his book Sozialisten und Krieg. The problem of costs lies in accessing archives such as those from The New Leader, but hopefully there are people who could help through their universitymembership or such.

For the old publications (before DNZ), which are particularly interesting, I imagine it will be even difficult to track down a library which has them. But indeed let's begin with a list first. - The article in DNZ (which is online until the war and contains more than 500 pieces from him alone) from which Lenin cites in WITBD ("carry consciousness from outside").

- Marx's historical accomplishment (1908 (http://www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/kautsky/1908/marx/index.htm)), which it is claimed was the basis for Lenin's encyc. entry on Marx.

These are already freely available. I think though they should be translated by existing publishers (like Historical Materialism series work of Day and Gaido).

[Noa Rodman]

- and his 1893 work on parliamentarism and direct democracy (also cited by Lenin in WITBD)

These are classics which should be translated by professionals. Like I said there are already some translations of his later articles in The New Leader (http://search.opinionarchives.com/TNL_Web/DigitalArchive.aspx?panes=2), but difficult to access (and copy right issues).

(btw here's a file of his articles in Arbeiter-Zeitung (http://archive.org/details/KautskyInArbeiter-zeitung))

Personally I like to read his early publications (in the time of Marx) and when Engels had to moderate Kautsky's revolutionary attitude. I fear they would be more difficult to get than Under the Banner of Marxism. Pretty depressing.

[Noa Rodman]

So before Marx died Kautsky at age 28 has a bibliography of 250 pieces (based on the numbering in Werner Blumenberg's compilation). Therein is not include a couple of writings on the International (no publication info, if possible check archive of the Times):

Zur Geschichte der Internationale. ("Times"-Artikel: Lincoln; Johnson). Hschr. 16 S. A 16 Die Londoner Konferenz 1865. Hschr. 7 S. A 17 Kongress Genf 1866. Hschr. 18 S. A 18 Kongress Lausanne 1867. Hschr. 39 S. A 19 Kongress Brüssel 1868. Hschr. 55 S. A 20 Kongress Basel 1869. Hschr. 27 S. These are stored at the Kautsky Papers in handwriting, so not sure if even published.

He doesn't list an article on the Olympic games either: Über die Olympischen Spiele. (ca. 1880). Hschr. 38 S (listed in the The Kautsky Papers). The Kautsky Papers in turn do not render the entire list given by Blumenberg, e.g. they lack a series of 3 articles on Ludwig Börne from 1879 (series btw he counts as one piece).

The Kautsky Papers have a few interesting pieces, e.g. on preconditions for women emancipation, luxury in the socialist state, distribution of the national income in the future-state, peasants and socialism, on Ireland, etc.:
1876

H 1/1-3 Gleichheit (Wiener-Neustadt) H 1/1 Die Vorbedingungen der Frauenemanzipation. Nr. 7, 8, 9, 10 - 12., 19., 26. II., 4. III. (Blumenberg 17). H 1/2 Die Kulturarbeit der herrschenden Klassen. (Der Schluss konfisziert). Nr. 18 - 29. IV. (Blumenberg 18). H 1/3 Der Luxus im sozialistischen Staate. Nr. 28, 29, 30 - 8., 15., 22. VII. (Blumenberg 19).
1878.

H 1/4-5 Der Sozialist (Wien) H 1/4 Die Verteilung des Volkseinkommens im Zukunftstaate. Nr. 47, 48 - 27., 31. X. (Blumenberg 59). H 1/5 Die Bauern und der Sozialismus. Nr. 50, 51, 52, 54, 55, 56 - 7., 10., 14., 21., 24., 28. XI. (Blumenberg 60).

1880

H 1/9 Volksfreund (Reichenberg)
Irland. Kulturhistorische Skizze. Nr. 5, 7, 8 - 5. III., 5., 20. IV. (Blumenberg 118).

You see they just have a fraction of the pieces listed by Blumenberg, but it is possible to order them online (0.35 euro a page + standard 6 euro, so articles in total of a 100 pages would be about £33).

[Noa Rodman]

Kautsky in 1878
http://disseminate.objectrepository.org/file/level2/10622/30051000082484

many more photos at http://search.socialhistory.org/

The good news is that the Kautsky papers (http://www.iisg.nl/archives/en/files/k/ARCH00712.php) will be digitized in 2012 (part of their 2012-15 Digitization project of the papers of Marx, Bakunin, Bebel, Trotsky, etc.). I already started to learn Kautsky's handwriting.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Too bad that all of this effort to rehabilitate a renegade isn't directed toward upholding a revolutionary such as Rosa Luxemburg.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Too bad that all of this effort to rehabilitate a renegade isn't directed toward upholding a revolutionary such as Rosa Luxemburg.
Who is making said effort? I've learnt a lot since I made this thread, and these people have done nothing more than clarify the position of Mr. Karl as a highly regarded Marxist theorist, by Lenin and others, before he reneged (This means 'betrayed', if you do not understand. To 'renege' is to become something you were not originally. Calling Kautsky a renegade before he supported the war is ludicrous and abhorrent puritan politics) on his Marxism. Lars Lih, a 'neutral' (I don't know whether you can label one politically neutral) historian, has written two major books about how Lenin's political framework was by-and-large taken straight from Kautsky, and that the modern-day "Trotskyisms", "Stalinisms" and "Leninisms" are weird caricatures of the man himself.

I have seen you post this multiple times on several threads, of which you misconstrue and lie about the positions of this forums' Kautsky revivalists. I honestly have to wonder whether or not you are just trolling.

[GoddessCleoLover]

I am not trolling, but I came of political age in the 70s, and in the circles in which I was active Karl Kautsky was held in low regard. Benedict Arnold was a talented general who demonstrated great personal courage under fire prior to betraying the American Revolution, but the latter conduct is what is remembered by history. Perhaps there is an analogy to be drawn with regard to Mr. Karl.

[Ostrinski]

Thing is, there is no Rosa, no Lenin, no Trotsky, not even a Bordiga without a Kautsky. Luxemburg and Lenin merely continued the revolutionary legacy of pre-Renegade Kautsky. I don't exactly understand what you mean when you say that more effort should be put into upholding Rosa (for all her flaws) when we already do this. Yes, equally as much as you.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Karl Kautsky was a fairly reliable Marxian theorist once upon a time. Benedict Arnold was a brilliant field commander who led the revolutionary army to a great victory at Saratoga. Too bad they each ruined their reputations by their subsequent conduct.

I am sure that you have an excellent attitude toward Rosa Luxemburg, but those who are fixated upon upholding Stalin or Trotsky often are too focused upon their idols to appreciate comrade Rosa.

[Grenzer]

Luxemburg is cool for political economy and reading on the national question, but I don't think her views are really too relevant for political organization today.

For understanding of Marxian economics, she is critical, but politically, not so much(again, aside from the national question). Nothing against her really, because how many people who have been dead for so long really are relevant on the political questions of today.

[GoddessCleoLover]

IMO Rosa Luxemburg was also extremely prescient with regard to certain dictatorial tendencies inherent in the single-party dictatorship post-revolutionary model adopted by Lenin and Trotsky.

[Ostrinski]

Well the point would hold some water if Kautsky was merely "a fairly reliable Marxian theorist" in which case there would be no need to defend him pre-renegade because there would be no utility in doing so. But what you are neglecting is that he is the founder of political Marxism. That is more than just fairly reliable theory, that is groundbreaking political development and as such his contributions to revolutionary theory are more important than Luxemburg's and Lenin's for that matter.

That is why I said what I did in my other post: to be anti-Kautsky is to be anti-Luxemburg and anti-Lenin.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Didn't Friedrich Engels, Wilhelm Liebknecht, and August Bebel also contribute, along with Karl Kautsky of course, and wasn't political Marxism a product to which each of them contributed?

[Grenzer]

IMO Rosa Luxemburg was also extremely prescient with regard to certain dictatorial tendencies inherent in the single-party dictatorship post-revolutionary model adopted by Lenin and Trotsky.

I forgot about that, thanks for bringing that up.

About Bebel: I heard that his politics actually started sucking a bit before he died. He probably would have sided with the pro-war faction in reality.

[Ostrinski]

Yes indeed. The founding of the SPD constituted the first advanced Marxist political movement.

[Ostrinski]

Bebel probably would have reneged, as perhaps would have Engels.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Bebel might well have reneged. With respect to Engels it is harder to say. I don't believe that we ought to treat human beings as deities, so IMO it is an open and legitimate question.

[Drosophila]

I doubt Engels would have reneged. He had something like 50 years of political experience and was a damn genius.

[Q]

I doubt Engels would have reneged. He had something like 50 years of political experience and was a damn genius.

Well, that doesn't necessarily mean a lot. Kautsky also had something like 40 years of experience (he joined the SPÖ in 1875) before he reneged.

[l'Enfermé]

Too bad that all of this effort to rehabilitate a renegade isn't directed toward upholding a revolutionary such as Rosa Luxemburg.
Rosa Luxemburg was indeed a model revolutionary and the leader of the SPD left-wing(the only one which wasn't infected with the spinelessness, cowardice and only half-hearted dedication to the proletarian revolution so typical of post-anti-socialist law German Social-Democracy), but as far as her politics and theory go, she was very much infected by anarchist silliness, to the point that the modern "left" has very few valuable lessons to learn from her, comrade.

And no, we don't seek to rehabilitate a renegade. We seek to rehabilitate Kautsky-the-Marxist. Kautky-the-renegade, for us, is even a filthier creature than for you and other anti-Kautsky people, precisely because we appreciate how much of a valuable theorist he was before he reneged.

[Noa Rodman]

I don't think Kautsky reneged, as he writes in a series of articles in Die Neue Zeit January 1916;
That the outbreaking war would bring revolution, I nor Bebel have ever expected, and both of us were always thinking, to keep away any obligation of our party to revolutionary action at outbreak of war, because of the conviction that such an obligation could not be held after all.
Already in June 1907, before the Stuttgart International congress, I developed this thought in a preface to my brochure "Patriotismus und Sozialdemokratie", where I showed, that we, as long as we lack the might, to grab political power during peace, also would not be able to prevent war. The attempts thereto were certain defeat. This viewpoint does not have to discourage us, if we only stay loyal to our oppositional fundamentals. Then in the course of the war the confidence of the masses must rise to us:
"The longer the war lasts, the more the masses will listen to us, the more our political standing and our political might will increase. Then, at the end of the war, we can count on great success."
Never are governments stronger as at the outbreak of war, and I can't recall any example in history, where a declaration of war was responded to by an insurrection in the own country. Even the bankrupt French Empire 1870 and likewise the Czar 1904 met no resistance at the opening of war. In contrast there is since a century in Europe no great war, whose end did not one way or another had a deep change of the political system in its wake. In as much, not due to direct results, that consituted the price of battle, but due to further consequences one can mark every European war since a hundred years as the locomotive of world history. Indeed, this locomotive travels fastest when the direct results of war are smallest and stand out of all proportion to the sacrifices.
When the danger is adjured, which threatens the country from outside, the peace situation recovered, the pressure of the outside enemy gone, then the internal battle lights up with all the more energy, the more any critical impulse during the war was limited, the narrower the oppositional might locked in, the higher it pents up.
The soonest this is to be expected in Russia, whose government already before the war found itself in unstable equilibrium and which in the war suffered the greatest defeats, at the same time has constricted most closely any critique.
We cannot yet know, which forms the impending collapse of Czarism will take. The only thing which one can reveal with certainty about the forms of a coming revolution, is, that it will look different then its predecessor. That must be so, since every revolution removes social and political conditions, through which it was generated, and makes it thereby impossible, that the next one resembles it, as this one is engendered from changed conditions. Even so revolutionaries and reactionaries portray a coming revolution still on the model of the past one and set accordingly their tactics, not to the benefit of development. Admittedly one can learn only from experience, but the experiences of past revolutions are only one part of the complex of facts of experience, from which we have to learn. We must always then try, to lay the experience of the whole previous social development and the present situation of society at the basis of our action. As no mortal is given to create this "universal cohesion", it is impossible, to speak with definiteness about the coming forms of a political system change.
It is accordingly today impossible, to know, which forms the coming collapse of Czarism will take. Certain is only that it will look different as the one of 1905. And it is to be expected that it will move the whole of Europe even deeper then the latter. Back then it sufficed to make all national differences and oppositions vanish. These, which today are so profoud, so self-evident, so inextinguishable, were 1905 completly extinguished, the whole of Europe divided in two international camps, one conservative and one revolutionary. On the neighbour-countries of Russia, namely on Austria and the Balkan states the effects were enormous.
The comrades Pernerstorser and Leuthner not only declare war on the Russian government, but also on the Russian people and want to cut if off from Europe and ban it to Asia, since it only brings harm to Western culture. And yet Austria's biggest advance, the last election reform, was won through the pressure of the Russian revolution. Without the uprising of the Russian people the grim denouncers of Russian "Volksimperialismus" would hardly have arrived at their present Reichsrat mandates.
Russia is today no longer merely the country of despotism, against which Marx and Engels in the past demanded war, but the country of revolution.
If we cannot yet know, which forms the coming revolt of the Russian people will take, it cannot be doubted that it will find powerful repercussion in Western Europe. And this must practically be far more potent than one decade ago.
However the war may crop out, that it will leave Europe in the deepest misery, is certain. The production process will be in deepest disruption, it will lack capital just as the for the run of production irreplacable proportionality of individual sectors of productions. Inflation and unemployment will besiege the proletarian masses, which greatly swell through the destruction of countless small businesses in commerce and industry. At the same time the emergency takes political expression in new taxes, which equal double or treble of the last ones. Their jolting political effect is increased hugely further, when the peace brings a new era of arms race, whose fundamentals and costs by the results and experiences of this war must soar infinitely above the situation before the war.
The tendencies of capitalism to immiseration of the proletariat, which in the last decades seemed temporarly overcome, will then assert themselves with the same terrible vehemence, which they attained a century ago after the close of the world war in England.
But how completely different the proletariat stands today as back then! From irregular outbreaks of despair against individual objects, which consituted the property of capitalists, from wild machine destruction and arsons has come a powerful, firmly ordered movement, on whose agreement to war policy the governments now everywhere put the highest value. One can think as one wants about cooperation of government and workers movement, as symptom of the power of the latter it is an extraordinary occurrence. The cooperation will nowhere be able to outlast the war, the consciousness of power will stay with the masses, also the most intimidated parts of them. And at the same time the ruin of the middle class must bring them a powerful influx, which will not leave it without animosity. The layers who were until now the most firm dam of the establishment, will most decisevely long for its overcoming, which has become unbearable to them.
When the subjective, that is the in the minds of people operating conditions, which push towards socialism grow, then not less the objective, in the things and relations, that make possible its realization, to which Eckstein already pointed in his article on war and socialism.
The large business in industry will predominate more as ever and at the same time the control of banks over industry will become absolute. The disarray of the production process though will at the same time be so high, that its regulation by goverments, banks and communities will be indispensable.
That cannot happen without application of large means, which the public has to bring, which however are used for saving capital profit.
Then powerful struggles will light up about, whether these means secure capitalism and will transform into an industry-feudalism or whether state regulation of production instead of capital serves the proletariat, thus will be a socialist one.
These struggles will culminate in the struggle for political power. If therein the proletariat wins, then socialism is moved within tangible reach.
Such are the perspectives which we today have to reveal to the proletariat. As bold as they are, they are far less illusionary as the bourgeois state of the future of a mitteleuropean trench community, for which now a row of socialist try to convince the working classes.
The idea of Mitteleuropa is carried by a convinction, that the coming peace can only be truce, in which it holds to arm oneself for the next war.
This idea we oppose with the idea of a peace, which allows friendship and free intercourse with all peoples. We oppose to it the idea of the struggle for socialism, which warrants us eternal peace.

[Grenzer]

That the outbreaking war would bring revolution, I nor Bebel have ever expected, and both of us were always thinking, to keep away any obligation of our party to revolutionary action at outbreak of war, because of the conviction that such an obligation could not be held after all.

Sounds like a pretty reactionary asshole to me. How, exactly, does this not constitute an entire lack of revolutionary sentiment?

[Die Neue Zeit]

That's definitely a flip-flop from The Road to Power and even the Basel Manifesto.

[Noa Rodman]

"But what action should the party have taken to give to our opposition to the war and to our war demands weight and emphasis? Should it have proclaimed a general strike? Should it have called upon the soldiers to refuse military service? Thus the question is generally asked. To answer with a simple yes or no were just as ridiculous as to decide: “When war breaks out we will start a revolution.” Revolutions are not “made” and great movements of the people are not produced according to technical recipes that repose in the pockets of the party leaders. Small circles of conspirators may organise a riot for a certain day and a certain hour, can give their small group of supporters the signal to begin. Mass movements in great historical crises cannot be initiated by such primitive measures."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1915/junius/ch07.htm

[GoddessCleoLover]

Rosa L > Karl K. Word.

[Noa Rodman]

They make the same point :D

[GoddessCleoLover]

They make the same point :D


Actions speak louder than words. Rosa Luxemburg organized a revolutionary movement, albeit one crushed by the military and Freikorps. Karl Kautsky sat on the fence and failed to lend his power and prestige at a time in which he might have redeemed his revolutionary reputation. Instead he reneged and quibbled IIRC accepted some minor post in some German provincial government.

[l'Enfermé]

It's absurd to claim that Kautsky didn't renege his Marxism before 1910, when after the war, after the SPD willingly supported WWI which absolutely needlessly killed 15 million workers and peasants, Kautsky actually claimed that the aim of the SPD, in 1932, was the "emancipation of the proletariat by establishment of a socialist society". Yes, I guess when the SPD was employing far-right militias to beat Luxemburg into unconsciousness and then shoot her in the temple and to shoot Liebknecht in the back, they were doing it to speed up the emancipation of the proletariat. When the SPD was dirtying its hands with the blood of millions of proletarians, it was obviously trying to establish a socialist society.

The only possible narrative in which Kautsky is not a renegade is the one in which Kautsky was never a real Marxist, and by extension, that means his disciple Lenin was not a Marxist either. This first part, of course, is a Stalinist myth(funnily enough Stalin was really fond of Kautsky in his articles from the 1900s and loved to quote Kautsky's "social-democracy is the merger of the worker's movement with socialism" summary).

[Noa Rodman]

It would be nice to hear some thoughts about Kautsky's views e.g. on workers' wages as ministers' salaries, recall of deputies, executive and legislative power (as articulated in ch.2 section III (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1924/labour/index.htm)). Also on coalition policy (ch.2 secton II). I wonder what Kautsky said about the latter issue concretely with regard to the Spanish civil war. I read that he was for defense of the republic, but have serious doubts. Julian Besteiro, who stayed loyal to the Road To Power Kautsky, was against coalitions (favored by Caballero (http://libcom.org/library/correction-friederich-engels-karl-kautsky)).

[Noa Rodman]

Most of section III makes sense you will find I think. It is not his wait-and-see attitude towards Soviet Russia in the Rate der Volksbeauftragten; Jürgen Zarusky (p.70) has it that Emil Barth said that also the leftwing circles (Luxemburg and Liebknecht) reconciled to such attitude. And it is not alleged white-wash of MSPD terror (he obviously condemned it).
It is his position on coalition policy (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2457824&postcount=85) that is the most definite change and smoking gun of renegacy if you will.

But when speaking about division of executive and legislative power, Kautsky returns to the question of coalition:


A corporation of several hundred members is in the nature of the case too cumbrous an apparatus for the functions of an executive power.
For the functioning of the latter unanimity and determination are required. We have already referred to the fact that we have entered upon an era of coalition Governments. We do not regard this fact with satisfaction, but as an evil, which is only tolerable because the alternative, an anti-proletarian government, would be a greater evil. But a Government that is to do great things must be homogeneous. We may not, therefore, expect any substantial progress until we have passed out of the phase of coalition Governments and entered that of purely socialist governments. To shorten the first phase as far as possible is our most urgent task. But how would it be possible to have a purely socialist executive, if the functions of the executive were combined with those of the legislature in one assembly, which contained a strong anti-socialist opposition?


One can argue this is just continuity with the Bebel-Kautsky resolution of 1900 (and 1903,1904), but I think there is definite change here in fact (as Kautsky says himself); the question then is whether Kautsky is right that in the new situation coalition policy should not be rejected on principle and why so (the reasons he gives are not clear). On the other hand in Road to power he wrote it would be moral, political suicide, but I don't think he believed that danger now was gone (he just seems to claim it is an unavoidable risk).




Back to his article from January 1916. Isn't it remarkable that he predicts the Russian revolution and the effects it will have on Western Europe? I mean, it was clear with the military defeats and increasing strikes of 1915 in Russia, but Lenin did not write so adamant as Kautsky does (in fact Lenin does not put this idea in print, only in some letters and a draft for an article).

[Noa Rodman]

Also, Lenin doesn't refer to that 1916 Kautsky article (in my post #115); perhaps if he had read it, he would have found himself in agreement with it (basically the announcement of European civil war, i.e. socialist revolution).

On the coalition policy issue, in his June 1920 article (here (http://archive.org/stream/KautskyInArbeiter-zeitung/ArbeiterZeitungKau#page/n5/mode/2up)in German) his position (shared by Martov apparently) against principled rejection, does not make him a renegade I would posit. For Kautsky writes that one can find no principled rejection of it in Marx and the communist radicals don't bother to argue against coalition policy (as for them it is so obvious).

I think the narrative that Kautsky wasn't a renegade (No true Marxist fallacy) was also put forth by Korsch. Perhaps Stalinists started to say it in the third period.

But it's not convincing either to charge down on Kautsky "with the dash and abandon of a veritable cavalier" and assure your belief that he became a renegade (in 1900, 1909, 1912, 1914 or 1917).

[Noa Rodman]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/04b.htm



On the question of combating the danger of war, in connection with the Conference at The Hague, I think that the greatest difficulty lies in overcoming the prejudice that this is a simple, clear and comparatively easy question.
“We shall retaliate to war by a strike or a revolution” that is what all the prominent reformist leaders usually say to the working class. And very often the seeming radicalness of the measures proposed satisfies and appeases the workers, co-operators and peasants.
Perhaps the most correct method would be to start with the sharpest refutation of this opinion; to declare that particularly now, after the recent war, only the most foolish or utterly dishonest people can assert that such an answer to the question of combating war is of any use; to declare that it is impossible to “retaliate” to war by a strike, just as it is impossible to “retaliate” to war by revolution in the simple and literal sense of these terms.
We must explain the real situation to the people, show them that war is hatched in the greatest secrecy, and that the ordinary workers’ organisations, even if they call themselves revolutionary organisations, are utterly helpless in face of a really impending war.
We must explain to the people again and again in the most concrete manner possible how matters stood in the last war, and why they could not have been otherwise.
We must take special pains to explain that the question of “defence of the fatherland” will inevitably arise, and that the overwhelming majority of the working people will inevitably decide it in favour of their bourgeoisie.
Therefore, first, it is necessary to explain what “defence of the fatherland” means. Second, in connection with this, it is necessary to explain what “defeatism” means. Lastly, we must explain that the only possible method of combating war is to preserve existing, and to form new, illegal organisations in which all revolutionaries taking part in a war carry on prolonged anti-war activities—all this must be brought into the forefront.
Boycott war—that is a silly catch-phrase. Communists must take part in every war, even the most reactionary.
Examples from, say, pre-war German literature, and in particular, the example of the Basle Congress of 1912, should be used as especially concrete proof that the theoretical admission that war is criminal, that socialists cannot condone war, etc., turn out to be empty phrases, because there is nothing concrete in them. The masses are not given a really vivid idea of how war may and will creep up on them. On the contrary, every day the dominant press, in an infinite number of copies, obscures this question and weaves such lies around it that the feeble socialist press is absolutely impotent against it, the more so that even in time of peace it propounds fundamentally erroneous views on this point. In all probability, the communist press in most countries will also disgrace itself.


What a reactionary asshole!

[l'Enfermé]

That coalition thing is definitely an example of his reneging of Marxism. In the Road To Power Kautsky compares joining coalitions to prostituting yourself and political and moral suicide and says that proletarians have nothing to gain from it, that for a socialist party to join a coalition before a proletarian revolution is to sell its political strength and only the parliamentarians themselves will gain anything from this prostitution.

You say that he condemned MSPD terror but how did he condemn MSPD terror if he just went ahead and rejoined the SPD? You can condemn any group you want, but if you condemn them and then join their camp, your word is worth nothing.

[GoddessCleoLover]

That coalition thing is definitely an example of his reneging of Marxism. In the Road To Power Kautsky compares joining coalitions to prostituting yourself and political and moral suicide and says that proletarians have nothing to gain from it, that for a socialist party to join a coalition before a proletarian revolution is to sell its political strength and only the parliamentarians themselves will gain anything from this prostitution.

You say that he condemned MSPD terror but how did he condemn MSPD terror if he just went ahead and rejoined the SPD? You can condemn any group you want, but if you condemn them and then join their camp, your word is worth nothing.

Word.

[Noa Rodman]

It is not a question of sincerity of one's condemnation. Didn't the USDP's withdrawal in 1918 partly make possible the terror in the first place, and with June 1920 election wouldn't refusal to form a front with the SPD (after it had barred Noske from running in parliament and expelled people like Lensch, who btw before the war was castigating Kautsky for his alleged break in 1909) not be the better option as opposed to letting a purely bourgeois reactionary government implement white terror while we can sincerely condemn it?

[l'Enfermé]

The SPD leadership collaborated and facilitated the murder of 15 million workers and peasants. A proletarian party could consider forming a front with the SPD only if the SPD leaders were executed for their hideous and treacherous crimes. To form a front with them while they are still under the leadership of such scum and filth is a betrayal of every socialist principle and a crime in itself.

[Rafiq]

I agree but I presume you are referring to the first world war?

[l'Enfermé]

^Yes, Rafiq. 2 million German soldiers died alone, a million Austro-Hungarian. Total military deaths for WWI: 9.7 million. Civilian deaths: 6.8 million. Total: 16.5 million.

[Noa Rodman]

The key leader in support of war credits was Eduard David, the others were not sure until the last moment (hence the shock about their betrayal). But David likely had the support of most of the party membership (should they also be shot?). Not so with the leaders. Ludwig Frank as pro-war parliamentary representative counted on the possibility of abstention of credits by the fraction. Hence he prepared with others for breaking discipline and was ready to split the party, like David. And they probably had most of the party membership behind them (unions certainly).

I think it's very easy to dismiss Kautsky's fight against them. It's a bit like calling the Left opposition a bunch of criminals for trying to fight the degeneration of Soviet Russia and the Comintern.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Speaking for myself, what i dismiss about Kautsky are his vacillations. He ought to have stood firm with Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.

[hetz]

Sorry, I really don't know anything about the subject, but was Kautsky in the end a "renegade" or not?

[GoddessCleoLover]

I vote renegade.

[Noa Rodman]

But he didn't defend his views and actions with the argument that he was loyal to Marxism, whatever that is supposed to mean. Luxemburg and Liebknecht rejected Marx's Capital and yet they are considered solid marxists.

[GoddessCleoLover]

But he didn't defend his views and actions with the argument that he was loyal to Marxism, whatever that is supposed to mean. Luxemburg and Liebknecht rejected Marx's Capital and yet they are considered solid marxists.

Would you care to explain how Liebknecht and Luxemburg rejected Marx's Capital. please?

[Thirsty Crow]

But David likely had the support of most of the party membership (should they also be shot?).
If this is true, than a good and hard look at the causes of such a disastrous situation is more than needed. Or in other words, focus should be shifted from historical figures and their alleged allegiance to a Marxism (construed in whatever way) and drawn to class politics (or in other words, its dismemberment through the development of the party resulting in what you claim here).

[Noa Rodman]

Luxemburg's critique of Marx is more known than Liebknecht (http://www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/liebknechtk/1922/studien/marxkritik.htm)'s, but my point is not that.

My problem is that the counter-position of an actionism of communists vs. Kautsky's "passivity" can and was also lauded by conservatives (e.g. by Carl Schmitt); it lead some radicals before the war (Hervé, Mussolini or Luxemburgists like Cunow, Lensch) to become nationalists, because they were against passive marxists; and it is said (by Korsch, Mattick and also Mises (http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=2399&chapter=226545&layout=html&Itemid=27)) that the Nazis had the guts to implement measures which the socialists only talked about, which is repeating what the Nazis themselves said against alleged utopian abstract marxism. But apart from that, it is simply not an argument to appeal to action. As if the problem with social-democrats is a lack of political passion and militancy, or failure to translate theory into practice.

[Noa Rodman]

Kautsky in 1867:

http://disseminate.objectrepository.org/file/level2/10622/30051000082526

http://search.socialhistory.org/Record/628069

This one is nice for 3d mapping, or how is that called. Is anyone able to do that? I want it for as a gif for my profile :)

http://disseminate.objectrepository.org/file/level2/10622/30051000083011

http://search.socialhistory.org/Record/628240

And a painting by Jehudo Epstein (the gold frame is a bit too much):

http://search.socialhistory.org/Record/1263902

[Geiseric]

It's absurd to claim that Kautsky didn't renege his Marxism before 1910, when after the war, after the SPD willingly supported WWI which absolutely needlessly killed 15 million workers and peasants, Kautsky actually claimed that the aim of the SPD, in 1932, was the "emancipation of the proletariat by establishment of a socialist society". Yes, I guess when the SPD was employing far-right militias to beat Luxemburg into unconsciousness and then shoot her in the temple and to shoot Liebknecht in the back, they were doing it to speed up the emancipation of the proletariat. When the SPD was dirtying its hands with the blood of millions of proletarians, it was obviously trying to establish a socialist society.

The only possible narrative in which Kautsky is not a renegade is the one in which Kautsky was never a real Marxist, and by extension, that means his disciple Lenin was not a Marxist either. This first part, of course, is a Stalinist myth(funnily enough Stalin was really fond of Kautsky in his articles from the 1900s and loved to quote Kautsky's "social-democracy is the merger of the worker's movement with socialism" summary).

I'm not sure the SPD quite employed the militias, they were organized by the bourgeois parties, but I do agree that the SPD bureaucracy was instrumental in allowing the militias to do what they willed, and even helping them. But the SPD like the Mensheviks weren't quite the instigators of the counter revolution, they were opportunist supporters of it, that's at least how I always saw it.

[Die Neue Zeit]

It would be nice to hear some thoughts about Kautsky's views e.g. on workers' wages as ministers' salaries, recall of deputies, executive and legislative power (as articulated in ch.2 section III (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1924/labour/index.htm)). Also on coalition policy (ch.2 secton II). I wonder what Kautsky said about the latter issue concretely with regard to the Spanish civil war. I read that he was for defense of the republic, but have serious doubts. Julian Besteiro, who stayed loyal to the Road To Power Kautsky, was against coalitions (favored by Caballero (http://libcom.org/library/correction-friederich-engels-karl-kautsky)).

We'll wait until Republic and Social Democracy in France comes out, then we can compare and contrast between the REAL "State and Revolution" and the renegacy work.

[Die Neue Zeit]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/04b.htm

What a reactionary asshole!

Huh? Who?

A distinction must be made between certain types of wars fought during revolutionary periods for the working class, and certain types of wars fought outside them. I've got a Revolutionary Marxists discussion on this.

[Noa Rodman]

In Republic and Social Democracy in France he just quotes Marx (Labour Revolution directly engages State and revolution).

What is happening in Macedonia is relevant:


Macedonia decided Jan. 3 to cut by two-thirds the salaries of opposition deputies who have been boycotting assembly sessions since a brawl broke out last month during a budget debate.

“Deputies who boycott the Parliament will get a third of their salary as long as they abstain,” said the decree adopted by the majority of the deputies present at the 123-seat assembly.

A deputy salary is around 1,000 euros per month, almost three times the average monthly income of 350 euros in this former Yugoslav republic. The leftist opposition, led by the SDSM party, said a “pay cut is a small price for democracy and freedom.” The move came after Dec. 24 scuffles in the Parliament between the SDSM deputies and ruling conservative MPs over the state budget. After fighting between rival lawmakers inside and outside the parliament which left two lawmakers and 11 policemen injured, the SDSM said its deputies would boycott Parliament’s activities.

On Dec. 29, the SDSM called for the government to resign amid a dire economic crisis in the country, where unemployment has reached 31 percent. http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/macedonia-cut-mps-salaries-over-boycott.aspx?pageID=238&nID=38355&NewsCatID=354

In regard to the response to war I gave Lenin's reasoning in 1922 to show how it is identical (except where Lenin says communists must take part in every war!?) with Kautsky's article (which you called flip-flop while Grenzer thought it was a reactionary attitude) in my post 115 (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2543040&postcount=115).

[Die Neue Zeit]

So isn't the leftist opposition's statement on the pay cut a good thing? :confused:

[Grenzer]

There is no reason to go back to social-democracy to inform contemporary politics as anything other than an example of what not to do. The foundations of Social-Democratic political strategy is based less in Marxism, and more in the utopian socialism of Ferdinand Lassalle.

With the inner rot of the Kautskyan model of politics having revealed itself in 1914, Lenin endeavored to reevaluate Kautsky's politics, and identified several key points of anti-Marxist opportunism and idealism present in Kautsky's politics dating as far back as 1899.


A gulf separates Marx and Kautsky over their attitude towards the proletarian party’ s task of training the working class for revolution.

Let us take the next, more mature, work by Kautsky, which was also largely devoted to a refutation of opportunist errors. It is his pamphlet, The Social Revolution. In this pamphlet, the author chose as his special theme the question of “the proletarian revolution” and “the proletarian regime". He gave much that was exceedingly valuable, but he avoided the question of the state. Throughout the pamphlet the author speaks of the winning of state power—and no more; that is, he has chosen a formula which makes a concession to the opportunists, inasmuch as it admits the possibility of seizing power without destroying the state machine. The very thing which Marx in 1872 declared to be “obsolete” in the programme of the Communist Manifesto, is revived by Kautsky in 1902.

A special section in the pamphlet is devoted to the “forms and weapons of the social revolution". Here Kautsky speaks of the mass political strike, of civil war, and of the “instruments of the might of the modern large state, its bureaucracy and the army"; but he does not say a word about what the Commune has already taught the workers. Evidently, it was not without reason that Engels issued a warning, particularly to the German socialists. against “superstitious reverence” for the state.

By "superstitious reverence", he is of course referring to the utopian school of socialism, Lassalleanism, which viewed the state as a class neutral vehicle that could simply be taken over by the proletariat. This view was also shared to an extent by Kautsky, which informed and provided the basis for his political strategy and that of broader Social-Democracy. The Kautskyite attitude towards reform and electoralism is the result of its Lassallean conception of the state.

For someone whose politics are supposedly wholly derived from Kautsky, Lenin seemed to spend quite a bit of time attacking the Kautsky of ~1900, the Kautsky at the height of his prestige and influence.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ That's just rehashing what Gramsci, Korsch, and Lukacs said of "re-evaluating" Second International political strategy. There is no reason to popularize left-com strategy for informing contemporary politics as anything other than an example of what not to do (utopianism, literally, as in going nowhere). Then again, didn't you just say a month ago that politics is "bourgeois"? That naturally flows from what a KAPD activist said about the "party" label being a temporary vestige. :glare:


The foundations of Social-Democratic political strategy is based less in Marxism, and more in the utopian socialism of Ferdinand Lassalle.

Please. Ferdinand Lassalle's "permanent campaign" that was the ADAV was extremely slanted towards political agitation. The small Communist League had cultural networks, something which the ADAV rejected and the original Socialist International popularized.

[For those who didn't read between my lines just now, that was criticism.]

[Ottoraptor]

I'm not sure the SPD quite employed the militias, they were organized by the bourgeois parties, but I do agree that the SPD bureaucracy was instrumental in allowing the militias to do what they willed, and even helping them. But the SPD like the Mensheviks weren't quite the instigators of the counter revolution, they were opportunist supporters of it, that's at least how I always saw it.

Noske, who was an SPD member and the Defense Minister at the time of the german revolution, organized the Freikorps and the suppression of the German Revolution. So yes the SPD were the instigators of the counterrevolution. It seems like you are trying to diminish their massive role in the counterrevolution in order to make your position that the KPD should have formed a united front with them. Also the SPD was a bourgeois party at that time.

[Noa Rodman]

I'm guessing the SDSM tactic is to play against government corruption, for budget cuts (on the state apparatus), etc. much like is common among lower middle class (Kautsky (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1924/labour/ch02_c.htm#sc)brings up the example of Switzerland). Usually the demand for cuts in representatives' pay (by the right) is in order to follow with cuts for everyone else.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I'm guessing the SDSM tactic is to play against government corruption, for budget cuts (on the state apparatus), etc. much like is common among lower middle class (Kautsky (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1924/labour/ch02_c.htm#sc)brings up the example of Switzerland). Usually the demand for cuts in representatives' pay (by the right) is in order to follow with cuts for everyone else.

However, what's happened now is all those cuts but with no cuts in political officials' pay. Unless you suggesting, of course, that such would be followed by even more cuts for everyone else?

[Noa Rodman]

I'm sure he is for abolition of privileges for parliamentary deputies, like the decists (http://libcom.org/library/letter-sapronov-isaak-dashkovskij), or even like in a proposed 40-point program of Syriza (I don't think they have an official program yet btw). It's just that during the transition phase, wage differences will not be all abolished at once between mental and physical work. Also, nowadays it is normal for parties already to hold back a part of their parliamentarians' salaries. I guess my problem is I would feel like any other dirty reformist demagogue to make this point a distinguishing element of proletarian democracy. FWIW Kautsky didn't accept payment for his research work on the German war guilt.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I'm sure he is for abolition of privileges for parliamentary deputies, like the decists (http://libcom.org/library/letter-sapronov-isaak-dashkovskij), or even like in a proposed 40-point program of Syriza (I don't think they have an official program yet btw). It's just that during the transition phase, wage differences will not be all abolished at once between mental and physical work. Also, nowadays it is normal for parties already to hold back a part of their parliamentarians' salaries. I guess my problem is I would feel like any other dirty reformist demagogue to make this point a distinguishing element of proletarian democracy. FWIW Kautsky didn't accept payment for his research work on the German war guilt.

That wasn't the point. The first point is to have a median standard of living equivalent to that of the averaged skilled worker (and I phrased this in my work explicitly in reference to this end-goal and not the "wage" part). The second is to tie the interests of these public officials with those of society at large. In my career parlance, it's an application of agency theory.

BTW, that holding back is an exception and not the rule. Case in point: the Swedish Left Party.

[Noa Rodman]

By "superstitious reverence", he is of course referring to the utopian school of socialism, Lassalleanism, which viewed the state as a class neutral vehicle that could simply be taken over by the proletariat. This view was also shared to an extent by Kautsky, which informed and provided the basis for his political strategy and that of broader Social-Democracy. The Kautskyite attitude towards reform and electoralism is the result of its Lassallean conception of the state.

In a 1936 article (http://archive.org/stream/KautskyinNeuerVorwarts/KautskyNeuVor#page/n9/mode/2up) ("Our relation to the state") Kautsky explicitly opposes the Lassallean conception of the state, defended by Fritz Tejessy who claimed W. Liebknecht (or the SPD) was Lassallean. Kautsky had to combat this rightwing distortion of history and the reinforcement of this distortion from an allegedly leftwing angle actually only cedes ground to the right.

And as Kautsky put in his critique of the executive draft Erfurt program, the problem with Bebel (and Liebknecht) is not so much that they overlooked the fact that the state is not "a class neutral vehicle that could simply be taken over by the proletariat", but almost their overemphasis of the class nature of the present state;


Scientific socialism has recognised that the state is nothing but an organ of class-authority. "Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another" (Communist Manifesto). The expression "class-state" for the designation of the real state seems to us thus a hapless choice. Is there then another state? One points me to the "people's state". With this one understands no doubt the state conquered by the proletariat. But it also will be a "class-state". The proletariat will rule the other classes. There will be one big difference to the previous state: the class-interest of the proletariat demands the abolition of all class-distinctions. The proletariat can use its sway only for abolishing the bases of class-division, as quick as the conditions allow, meaning, that the proletariat will conquer the state, not to make it into a "true" state, but to abolish it; not to fulfill the "true" purpose of the state, but to render the state pointless.

*)footnote;
The discussion on whether the socialist commonwealth (Gemeinwesen) will be a state or not, has been called an idle disputation. If this were true, then one ought to declare every attempt, to place instead of unclear, defined concepts, an idle battle of words. One could e.g. name also the battle on whether a whale is a fish or not, an irrelevant disputation for the knowledge of nature. The socialist commonwealth of the future will be as little a state, as a gens, a Mark-association, a family is a state.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Fundamentally, there is the class nature of the state, but the left-coms here have this knee-jerk idea that no possible state policy could benefit the working class, whether bread crumbs or substantive policy from mass pressure.