Orthodox Marxism?

[Professional Revolution]

Hello again everyone. So many questions, I know! The left is a very fascinating subject; there are so many different, and interesting tendencies that it's sometimes hard to keep up.

Anyway, I was looking around here a bit and came across a few "Orthodox Marxists." What does this mean? I thought "orthodox Marxism" eventually degenerated into reformism as Karl Kautsky began to accept the line of Bernstein. However, according to the reading I have done, it seems that this term was not used by Kautsky for much longer, and only served as a way for him to distinguish himself from the others in the Second International. But I could be wrong.

Of course there is also Georg Lukacs's definition, which does not seem to take into account the line of Kautsky at all.


Thank you in advance for any help you could give me.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

To be honest, I'm not sure if an 'orthodox marxism' can every truly exist.

I mean, yes, there are definitely a few key points that any Marxist bases their beliefs on, but alot of Marx's work on the subject of socialism was left unfinished when he died. Engels certainly helped clarify a few things after the fact, but that's about as far as his abilities could go (he wasn't a clairvoyant, after all).

In fact, if you think about it, that's why Marxism gave rise to so many spin-offs and continuations, and why everyone from Luxembourg to Lenin to Mao to DeLeon could all start from Marx and all end in such wildly different conclusions.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Every sect probably sees themselves as Orthodox.
When people call themselves that on here, they mean they're fans of Second International style Marxism (Kautsy, Lenin, Plekhanov).

[Professional Revolution]

Every sect probably sees themselves as Orthodox.
When people call themselves that on here, they mean they're fans of Second International style Marxism (Kautsy, Lenin, Plekhanov).

I see. The Second International was reformist, no? Strange that supporters of revolution would support this. The International Communist League has a document about this subject. It argues that Lenin changed several of his positions quite radically after denouncing the line of the Second International and rejecting so-called orthodox Marxism. I believe there is an organization in Britain which follows the line of Kautsky as well.

[Old Bolshie]

This recent wave of kautskysm (or orthodox-marxism) comes from the miserably attempt by Lars Lih to revive Kautsky in the communist movement today by linking him to Lenin. Kautsky was a social-democrat from the beginning and one of the major supporters of Bernstein reformism. It's true that Lenin was influenced by him in a earlier stage of his life but he clearly broke with it in the beginning of the century when he split with the Mensheviks who were the true followers of the SPD model. It's worth to mention that Kautsky supported and visited the Menshevik stronghold of Georgia while denouncing the Bolsheviks at the same time.

[Marxaveli]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodox_Marxism#Description

orthodox Marxism is NOT reformist, and in fact Impossiblism has its origins in orthodox Marxism. I thought it was made clear a long time ago on here by those who have "Revolutionary Marxists" as their primary tendency that orthodox Marxists support early Kautsky, and NOT Kautsky the renegade? Seems this misconception that we do still exists though. Leave it to Leninists to engage in slanderous sectarianism I guess.

[Q]

Anyway, I was looking around here a bit and came across a few "Orthodox Marxists." What does this mean? I thought "orthodox Marxism" eventually degenerated into reformism as Karl Kautsky began to accept the line of Bernstein. However, according to the reading I have done, it seems that this term was not used by Kautsky for much longer, and only served as a way for him to distinguish himself from the others in the Second International. But I could be wrong.
Like Old Bolshie mentioned, the Orthodox Marxists on this site stem from a "Kautsky revival" that was initiated by a scholarly re-translation of What is to be done? by Lars Lih, published in 2006 (http://books.google.nl/books/about/Lenin_Rediscovered.html?id=8AVUvEUsdCgC&redir_esc=y). This new translation, from the Russian original texts, also explains a lot of the context in which it was written and makes the case that the Bolsheviks stood in the SPD tradition and could be called Erfurtians (after the Erfurt programme (http://www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/1891/erfurt-program.htm)).

Kautsky was a central figure in this movement and was instrumental in the formation of Marxism-as-a-coherent-system via his work in the journal Die Neue Zeit, which had a huge impact on the Marxists all over Europe, including the Russian RSDLP and Lenin. And no, Kautsky strongly polemicised against the "arch-revisionist Bernstein", as he called him.

Of course, Lenin broke with Kautsky after he remained silent when the SPD Reichstag faction voted for the war credits in August 1914. After this point Lenin consistently calls Kautsky a renegade because be reneged on his former Marxism. In other words, Lenin saw his Bolshevik current as a continuation of the "Marxist center" policies before the war. And this is something the OM's here also uphold: Lenin remained an Orthodox Marxist long after Kautsky reneged, possibly to the day he died.

So what is Orthodox Marxism? Put simply we argue that the working class needs to wage a political struggle towards democracy and actual freedoms, fight for a Democratic Republic (see my blogpost here to see what is meant with that (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=18887)). For that to happen our class needs to organise itself into a mass party-movement: Become a "society within society" which carries within it the germs of the future communist society. A mass movement consisting not just of "the party" in the strict sense but also of trade unions, workers coops, community centers, alternative culture, educational collectives, workers sports societies and much more.

Kautsky's current, in which the Bolsheviks also stood, was known as the "Marxist center" because it argued both against the rightwing of the movement that argued for coalitionism and against the leftwing of the movement that argued for mass strikes. In between these it argued for "revolutionary patience" in building these mass structures that could, once strong enough, seize power as a class.


Of course there is also Georg Lukacs's definition, which does not seem to take into account the line of Kautsky at all.
The OM's on Revleft have no particular views on Lukacs.


I mean, yes, there are definitely a few key points that any Marxist bases their beliefs on, but alot of Marx's work on the subject of socialism was left unfinished when he died. Engels certainly helped clarify a few things after the fact, but that's about as far as his abilities could go (he wasn't a clairvoyant, after all).

This is why we make a difference between classical Marxism (the works of Marx and Engels strictly) and orthodox Marxism (Marxism-as-a-system).


I see. The Second International was reformist, no? Strange that supporters of revolution would support this. The International Communist League has a document about this subject. It argues that Lenin changed several of his positions quite radically after denouncing the line of the Second International and rejecting so-called orthodox Marxism. I believe there is an organization in Britain which follows the line of Kautsky as well.
Note that the International Communist League is a Trotskyist group that upholds much of the mythical "common sense" that recent scholarly work has undermined and keeps undermining.

But no, the Second International was not simply "reformist". It was, to use Kautsky's words (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1909/power/ch05.htm):

The Socialist party is a revolutionary party, but not a revolution-making party. We know that our goal can be attained only through a revolution. We also know that it is just as little in our power to create this revolution as it is in the power of our opponents to prevent it. It is no part of our work to instigate a revolution or to prepare the way for it. And since the revolution cannot be arbitrarily created by us, we cannot say anything whatever about when, under what conditions, or what forms it will come. We know that the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat cannot end until the latter is in full possession of the political powers and has used them to introduce the Socialist society. We know that this class struggle must grow both extensively and intensively. We know that the proletariat must continue to grow in numbers and to gain in moral and economic strength, and that therefore its victory and the overthrow of capitalism is inevitable. But we can have only the vaguest conjectures as to when and how the last decisive blows in the social war will be struck. All this is nothing new ...


This recent wave of kautskysm (or orthodox-marxism) comes from the miserably attempt by Lars Lih to revive Kautsky in the communist movement today by linking him to Lenin. Kautsky was a social-democrat from the beginning and one of the major supporters of Bernstein reformism. It's true that Lenin was influenced by him in a earlier stage of his life but he clearly broke with it in the beginning of the century when he split with the Mensheviks who were the true followers of the SPD model. It's worth to mention that Kautsky supported and visited the Menshevik stronghold of Georgia while denouncing the Bolsheviks at the same time.
It is only "miserable" because it doesn't conform with your mythical view on history. There is so much wrong in this little piece of text that I'm unsure where to start. So I'll just leave it alone and remark that you ought to learn your history.

[Professional Revolution]

Thanks Q, excellent explanation. Sometimes the comrades from the ICL can say some questionable things, although they are true Trotskyists, to the bone. Is Lars Lih a professional historian?

[Tower of Bebel]

From my point of view I'm unable to see a "wave of Kautskysm". Neither here, nor anywhere else. There is however, as Q wrote, a revived interest in the contribution of Karl Kautsky and other orthodoxists (those who attempted to synthesize the revolutionary yet unfinished ideas of Marx and the still immature but rapidly growing workers' movement) to pre-1914 Social Democracy, Marxism and post-1914 Bolshevism in particular. Although Lars T Lih's Lenin Rediscovered has played an important role in it, it remains a fact that some so called Kautskyists were already Kautskyist before the publication of that book or other books such as Witnesses to Permanent Revolution (http://books.google.be/books/about/Witnesses_to_Permanent_Revolution.html?id=pV5k-TvbSwQC&redir_esc=y), etc.

Over time, though, many who had a keen interest in at least one aspect of orthodox Marxism (be it the legacy of Kautsky, the attitude of Lenin towards German social democracy, the later works of Engels, etc.) started to contact each other in one way or another. They have diverging backgrounds (Trotskyism, independent, Marxist-Leninists, Left-Communists), which makes this current, if you could call it a current, very heterogenous. My involvement with orthodox Marxism grew out of an interest for Luxemburg, Lenin and Bebel. Though much of my attention also goes to the works of Trotsky, Marx and Engels.


We also know that it is just as little in our power to create this revolution as it is in the power of our opponents to prevent it. It is no part of our work to instigate a revolution or to prepare the way for it. And since the revolution cannot be arbitrarily created by us, we cannot say anything whatever about when, under what conditions, or what forms it will come.
Although the English translation is probably poor, this guy was a real ass back then writing how "little power" they had. A few years after the revolution of 1905, he knew that, just like the bourgeoisie would throw all of its forces including military state power - a very heavy burden on any revolution against capital - in the fight, the social democrats had to do the same with their "state in a state". And if the bourgeois state would be conquered, it was the duty of the revolutionary social democrats to turn this state against the bourgeoisie and itself. The least Kautsky could do was to write that down and make sure it would not be edited out. Yet he already feared reformist censorship, which made Rosa Luxemburg, his co-editor for the Neue Zeit, very angry. She claimed he had become spineless.

[Comrade #138672]

About "revolutionary patience":

* Maybe the renegade Kautsky was just being "patient"?
* How do you prevent "revolutionary patience" from leading to pacifism and apathy?

[Tower of Bebel]

About "revolutionary patience":

* Maybe the renegade Kautsky was just being "patient"?
* How do you prevent "revolutionary patience" from leading to pacifism and apathy?
Revolutionary patience is a relative concept. Lenin, generally speaking, was patient compared to his Marxist opponents from the left and the right. Over time Kautsky's view succumbed to the temptation to treat a socialist society as a mere goal instead of an outcome of struggle. For the German workers' movement, if it had a goal, it really was all about surviving the degenerating tendencies of capitalist war. The workers simply had to live, and they did so a struggle that inevitably started to reach beyond the limits of the militarised bourgeois state and even capitalist property relations. It tempted the German generals to fix their bayonets. However Kautsky's more scematic overthrow of capitalism remained an abstraction relative to this struggle for survival. When the war ended, the struggle for survival was already fierce and chaotic. It was a revolution combined with the elements of civil war. This was not to the liking of the reformist and rightwing syndicalists who pulled their weight behind the constitutional monarchy and the early Weimar republic. It too was not to the liking of Kautsky who feared the defeat of the party-movement and a chaotic transition to socialism just like the one in Russia. Urging for an orderly transition he became some kind of pacifist with an endless intellectual patience.

[evermilion]

Leave it to Leninists to engage in slanderous sectarianism I guess.

Oh the irony!

[Old Bolshie]

Like Old Bolshie mentioned, the Orthodox Marxists on this site stem from a "Kautsky revival" that was initiated by a scholarly re-translation of What is to be done? by Lars Lih, published in 2006 (http://books.google.nl/books/about/Lenin_Rediscovered.html?id=8AVUvEUsdCgC&redir_esc=y). This new translation, from the Russian original texts, also explains a lot of the context in which it was written and makes the case that the Bolsheviks stood in the SPD tradition and could be called Erfurtians (after the Erfurt programme (http://www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/1891/erfurt-program.htm)).

Good that you mentioned the Erfurt programme. I couldn't find better issue to show Lenin's differences and incompatibility with reformists like Kautsky. But first lets see how Engels criticized the program and its opportunistic nature:


These are attempts to convince oneself and the party that “present-day society is developing towards socialism” without asking oneself whether it does not thereby just as necessarily outgrow the old social order and whether it will not have to burst this old shell by force, as a crab breaks its shell, and also whether in Germany, in addition, it will not have to smash the fetters of the still semi-absolutist, and moreover indescribably confused political order… In the long run such a policy can only lead one’s own party astray. They push general, abstract political questions into the foreground, thereby concealing the immediate concrete questions, which at the moment of the first great events, the first political crisis, automatically pose themselves. What can result from this except that at the decisive moment the party suddenly proves helpless and that uncertainty and discord on the most decisive issues reign in it because these issues have never been discussed? … This forgetting of the great, the principal considerations for the momentary interests of the day, this struggling and striving for the success of the moment regardless of later consequences, this sacrifice of the future of the movement for its present may be ‘honestly’ meant, but it is and remains opportunism, and ‘honest’ opportunism is perhaps the most dangerous of all…In "The State and Revolution" Lenin backs Engels critic of the reformist Erfurt Programme and the opportunism of the whole II International:


In regard to the republic, Engels made this the focal point of this criticism of the draft of the Erfurt Programme. And when we recall the importance which the Erfurt Programme acquired for all the Social- Democrats of the world, and that it became the model for the whole Second International, we may say without exaggeration that Engels thereby criticizes the opportunism of the whole Second International.

And no, Kautsky strongly polemicised against the "arch-revisionist Bernstein", as he called him.

Karl Kautsky himself said that his divergence with Bernstein was "only an episode" and that both "always adopted the same point of view". His polemic with Bernstein had to do with "form" (Kautsky argued for the autonomy of the proletariat against "ministerialism" to reject any coalition or conciliatory attitude with bourgeois political forces) and not with "substance". Both Bernstein and Kautsky always remained committed to achieve socialism through reforms which is the base of the Erfurt Programme.
.

After this point Lenin consistently calls Kautsky a renegade because be reneged on his former Marxism. In other words, Lenin saw his Bolshevik current as a continuation of the "Marxist center" policies before the war. And this is something the OM's here also uphold: Lenin remained an Orthodox Marxist long after Kautsky reneged, possibly to the day he died.

According to Lenin himself Kautsky reneged his former Marxism long time before 1914 as you can see again in "The State and Revolution":

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch06.htm



It is only "miserable" because it doesn't conform with your mythical view on history. There is so much wrong in this little piece of text that I'm unsure where to start. So I'll just leave it alone and remark that you ought to learn your history.

What is wrong about it? Unless you consider that Engels and Lenin were living in a mythical world when they voiced their disapproval of Kautsky and SPD's opportunism...

[Die Neue Zeit]

Kautsky's current, in which the Bolsheviks also stood, was known as the "Marxist center" because it argued both against the rightwing of the movement that argued for coalitionism and against the leftwing of the movement that argued for mass strikes. In between these it argued for "revolutionary patience" in building these mass structures that could, once strong enough, seize power as a class.

The OM's on Revleft have no particular views on Lukacs.

Actually, Lukacs was a hack other than his terms "class in itself" and "class for itself." His definition of "OM" was based on mass strike approaches.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Although the English translation is probably poor, this guy was a real ass back then writing how "little power" they had. A few years after the revolution of 1905, he knew that, just like the bourgeoisie would throw all of its forces including military state power - a very heavy burden on any revolution against capital - in the fight, the social democrats had to do the same with their "state in a state". And if the bourgeois state would be conquered, it was the duty of the revolutionary social democrats to turn this state against the bourgeoisie and itself. The least Kautsky could do was to write that down and make sure it would not be edited out. Yet he already feared reformist censorship, which made Rosa Luxemburg, his co-editor for the Neue Zeit, very angry. She claimed he had become spineless.

Comrade, two things to consider:

1) Correct me if I'm mistaken, but the SPD didn't have militias until the Weimar Republic, when they clashed with KPD militias. Tim Cornelis's contemporary Middle East thread was about an example with militias. Heck, I don't know how much if any of the Alternative Culture had hunting clubs or other recreational clubs where workers had guns.
2) Luxemburg didn't write separately about the need to have workers' militias in order to substantiate the revolutionary gambit position, so she's not politically clean here, either.

Note to the OP: Complementing comrade Q's revolutionary patience term is the term revolutionary gambit. Revolutionary patience is crucial before revolutionary periods, while revolutionary gambits are crucial for revolutionary periods. The notion of being spineless comes from not switching to revolutionary gambits upon changes in periods. However, revolutionary gambits can be nothing but sheer lunacy if there is no majority class support before revolutionary periods, like May 1968.

[Q]

Good that you mentioned the Erfurt programme. I couldn't find better issue to show Lenin's differences and incompatibility with reformists like Kautsky. But first lets see how Engels criticized the program and its opportunistic nature:
If you're trying to drag Engels into this, please be mindful of at least trying to give the whole picture please. You know what Trotsky thought about such things (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/ssf/).

First of all, you forgot to provide a link, perhaps so we might miss that Engels was criticising a draft version of the programme (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1891/06/29.htm) (which is no longer with us). Most criticisms were actually incorporated in the final version. Most points besides a very important one, perhaps the most important one, remained unmentioned: The fight for a Democratic Republic:


First. If one thing is certain it is that our party and the working class can only come to power under the form of a democratic republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the Great French Revolution has already shown. It would be inconceivable for our best people to become ministers under an emperor, as Miquel. It would seem that from a legal point of view it is inadvisable to include the demand for a republic directly in the programme, although this was possible even under Louis Phillippe in France, and is now in Italy. But the fact that in Germany it is not permitted to advance even a republican party programme openly, proves how totally mistaken is the belief that a republic, and not only a republic, but also communist society, can be established in a cosy, peaceful way.

However, the question of the republic could possibly be passed by. What, however, in my opinion should and could be included is the demand for the concentration of all political power in the hands of the people’s representatives. That would suffice for the time being if it is impossible to go any further.

Second. The reconstitution of Germany. On the one hand, the system of small states must be abolished — just try to revolutionise society while there are the Bavarian-Württemberg reservation rights — and the map of present-day Thuringia, for example, is such a sorry sight. On the other hand, Prussia must cease to exist and must be broken up into self-governing provinces for the specific Prussianism to stop weighing on Germany. The system of small states and Prussianism are the two sides of the antithesis now gripping Germany in a vice, in which one side must always serve as the excuse and justification for the existence of the other.

What should take its place? In my view, the proletariat can only use the form of the one and indivisible republic. In the gigantic territory of the United States, the federal republic is still, on the whole, a necessity, although in the Eastern states it is already becoming a hindrance. It would be a step forward in Britain where the two islands are peopled by four nations and in spite of a single Parliament three different systems of legislation already exist side by side. In little Switzerland, it has long been a hindrance, tolerable only because Switzerland is content to be a purely passive member of the European state system. For Germany, federalisation on the Swiss model would be an enormous step backward. Two points distinguish a union state from a completely unified state: first, that each member state, each canton, has its own civil and criminal legislative and judicial system, and, second, that alongside a popular chamber there is also a federal chamber in which each canton, whether large or small, votes as such. The first we have luckily overcome and we shall not be so childish as to reintroduce it, the second we have in the Bundesrat and we could do very well without it, since our “federal state” generally constitutes a transition to a unified state. The revolution of 1866 and 1870 must not be reversed from above but supplemented and improved by a movement from below.
(Emphasis in the original)

Indeed, the whole question of the state remained a lingering weak point throughout the SPD, when it was still Marxist.

However Engels starts that piece with remarking that


The present draft differs very favourably from the former programme [at Gotha].The strong survivals of outmoded traditions — both the specific Lassallean and vulgar socialistic — have in the main been removed, and as regards its theoretical aspect the draft is, on the whole, based on present-day science and can be discussed on this basis.

In fact, to underline the point, Engels wrote in a letter to Adolph Sorge in the US:


We have had the satisfaction of seeing Marx’s critique win all along the line. Even the last traces of Lassalleanism have been eliminated. With the exception of a few poorly written bits (though it’s only the way they’re put that is feeble and commonplace), there is nothing to complain of in the programme - or not, at any rate, at first reading.
Source: K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 49, New York 2001, p266. (I have found no online source for this).

Or are you now perhaps going to argue how Engels didn't put on his glasses at his first reading?


In "The State and Revolution" Lenin backs Engels critic of the reformist Erfurt Programme and the opportunism of the whole II International:
Note: The Bolshevik programme was modeled after Erfurt, although it was certainly a lot stronger about the question of the Tsarist state. Still, the Bolsheviks used its minimum-maximum division - where the minimum represented the "dictatorship of the proletariat", as Engels put it, and the maximum the growth into communism - as their own basis. And this remained so, with the occasional updating and amending, until at least 1921, after the seizure of power (and all the troubles that gave).


Karl Kautsky himself said that his divergence with Bernstein was "only an episode" and that both "always adopted the same point of view". His polemic with Bernstein had to do with "form" (Kautsky argued for the autonomy of the proletariat against "ministerialism" to reject any coalition or conciliatory attitude with bourgeois political forces) and not with "substance".
Yeah, I call bullshit on that. If you ever read only a few of his polemics, then it's pretty obvious how it goes much further than "form". Kautsky's attacks on Bernstein's "evolutionary socialism" had indeed everything to do with the direction of the movement, in which Kautsky defended the Marxist position!

But yes, in a sense Kautsky is right to call it "only an episode", given his renegacy later in life. On the scale of a lifetime I suppose much can be put away as "merely an episode".


Both Bernstein and Kautsky always remained committed to achieve socialism through reforms which is the base of the Erfurt Programme.
So, the Bolsheviks, basing themselves on Erfurt, were in reality reformists? Aha.

This is part of the often recited myth that the minimum-programme is about "reforms" and only the maximum is about "socialism and the taking of power". Nothing could be more wrong.

The original minimum-maximum divisions could be found in the Communist Manifesto or in the Programme of the Parti Ouvrier (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/parti-ouvrier.htm) where the minimum programme, when completely implemented, results in the "dictatorship of the proletariat" or the Democratic Republic. That is, working class political power. Only after this seizure could the maximum programme, towards communism, be implemented in full.

It is true though that, under the growing influence of the rightwing, the minimum programme eventually got watered down. More and more minimum demands were made maximum demands until the whole goal of the minimum - proletarian political hegemony, was put safely beyond the horizon. This is opportunism though, not inherent to the minimum programme. A proper response to this is to have open debates, let ideas clash, have a democratic movement, eschew bureaucratism. Not pursue a "more pure" programme, which leads to sectism.


According to Lenin himself Kautsky reneged his former Marxism long time before 1914 as you can see again in "The State and Revolution":

According to the polemical master himself, "bending a few sticks" along the way.


What is wrong about it? Unless you consider that Engels and Lenin were living in a mythical world when they voiced their disapproval of Kautsky and SPD's opportunism...
No comrade, Engels and Lenin stood firmly on solid ground. It is the "Leninist" left after Lenin that rewrote history and, as such, lives in this myth.

[Old Bolshie]

If you're trying to drag Engels into this,

I quoted Engels because Lenin's criticism of the Erfurt Programme that you tried to associate with him is based on Engels criticism of the Programme. Engels is not the issue here but Lenin.


please be mindful of at least trying to give the whole picture please.

Why so? It invalidates the criticism of Engels that I quoted? I don't think so. I quoted the point that is important to highlight in Engels criticism of the Erfurt Programme which is the criticism of reformism and opportunism which Lenin stressed in "The State and Revolution".


You know what Trotsky thought about such things (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/ssf/).

I'm not a trotskyst so this kind of tricks is irrelevant to me.



First of all, you forgot to provide a link, perhaps so we might miss that Engels was criticising a draft version of the programme (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1891/06/29.htm) (which is no longer with us). Most criticisms were actually incorporated in the final version.

The criticism of opportunism and reformism (which are the most important ones) weren't.


Indeed, the whole question of the state remained a lingering weak point throughout the SPD, when it was still Marxist.

Which is nothing but the most important question. As Lenin put it Kautsky and the SPD went back to 1851 and forgot all the teaching of Marx and Engels from 1852-1890.


However Engels starts that piece with remarking that



In fact, to underline the point, Engels wrote in a letter to Adolph Sorge in the US:


Source: K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 49, New York 2001, p266. (I have found no online source for this).

Or are you now perhaps going to argue how Engels didn't put on his glasses at his first reading?

Again, how all of this invalidates his criticism of the program which I quoted?



Note: The Bolshevik programme was modeled after Erfurt, although it was certainly a lot stronger about the question of the Tsarist state. Still, the Bolsheviks used its minimum-maximum division - where the minimum represented the "dictatorship of the proletariat", as Engels put it, and the maximum the growth into communism - as their own basis. And this remained so, with the occasional updating and amending, until at least 1921, after the seizure of power (and all the troubles that gave).

While the Erfurt programme was silent about the question of the state the Bolsheviks were committed to smash the Tzarist state through a revolution and not through reforms.

That is the difference between a reformist program and a revolutionary one. If you read Lenin's critique of Kautsky in the "The State and Revolution" you will see that is on this point that Lenin focus his criticism of Kautsky.



Yeah, I call bullshit on that. If you ever read only a few of his polemics, then it's pretty obvious how it goes much further than "form". Kautsky's attacks on Bernstein's "evolutionary socialism" had indeed everything to do with the direction of the movement, in which Kautsky defended the Marxist position!

Lenin himself points out that Kautsky's criticism of Bernstein leaves aside the most important point of Bernstein revisionism: the question of the revolution and the state. That's because Kautsky was already in harmony with Bernstein regarding that crucial point as the Erfurt Programme proves it.


So, the Bolsheviks, basing themselves on Erfurt, were in reality reformists? Aha.

No because the Bolsheviks were committed to revolution and aimed to destroy the Tzarist state unlike the Erfurt Programme.



This is part of the often recited myth that the minimum-programme is about "reforms" and only the maximum is about "socialism and the taking of power". Nothing could be more wrong.

The original minimum-maximum divisions could be found in the Communist Manifesto or in the Programme of the Parti Ouvrier (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/parti-ouvrier.htm) where the minimum programme, when completely implemented, results in the "dictatorship of the proletariat" or the Democratic Republic. That is, working class political power. Only after this seizure could the maximum programme, towards communism, be implemented in full.


The main issue here is the question of the state and revolution which the Erfurt Programme fully ignores. Marx amended the Communist Manifesto and even regard it as outdated. Kautsky and the social-democrats ignored all the evolution of Marx thought after the Communist Manifesto.


No comrade, Engels and Lenin stood firmly on solid ground. It is the "Leninist" left after Lenin that rewrote history and, as such, lives in this myth.

Specially when they called the Erfurt Programme, the SPD and the whole II International of opportunists. The one who is trying to rewrite history here is certainly you and not me.

[Tower of Bebel]

(EDIT) Engels on the state and the agitational purpose of the German demand for a people's state (Anti-Dühring):

When at last it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a state, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the state really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The state is not "abolished". It dies out. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase "a free people's state" , both as to its justifiable use at times by agitators [in German: its temporary agitational soundness], and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the state out of hand. On the correction of the Erfurt Programme proposed by Engels (thanks to Noa Rodman): http://libcom.org/library/correction-friederich-engels-karl-kautsky

I think State and Revolution offers a great example of Lenin's views.
Undoubtedly, an immeasurably larger number of Kautsky’ s works have been translated into Russian than into any other language. It is not without reason that some German Social-Democrats say in jest that Kautsky is read more in Russia than in Germany (let us say, in parenthesis, that this jest has a far deeper historical meaning than those who first made it suspect. The Russian workers, by making in 1905 an unusually great and unprecedented demand for the best works of the best Social- Democratic literature and editions of these works in quantities unheard of in other countries, rapidly transplanted, so to speak, the enormous experience of a neighboring, more advanced country to the young soil of our proletarian movement). Besides his popularization of Marxism, Kautsky is particularly known in our country for his controversy with the opportunists, with Bernstein at their head. One fact, however, is almost unknown, one which cannot be ignored if we set out to investigate how Kautsky drifted into the morass of unbelievably disgraceful confusion and defence of social-chauvinism during the supreme crisis of 1914-15. This fact is as follows: shortly before he came out against the most prominent representatives of opportunism in France (Millerand and Jaures) and in Germany (Bernstein), Kautsky betrayed very considerable vacillation. The Marxist [I]Zarya,[2] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch06.htm#fw02) which was published in Stuttgart in 1901-02, and advocated revolutionary proletarian views, was forced to enter into controversy with Kautsky and describe as “elastic” the half-hearted, evasive resolution, conciliatory towards the opportunists, that he proposed at the International Socialist Congress in Paris in 1900.[3] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch06.htm#fw03) Kautsky’ s letters published in Germany reveal no less hesitancy on his part before he took the field against Bernstein.
Of immeasurably greater significance, however, is the fact that, in his very controversy with the opportunists, in his formulation of the question and his manner of treating it, we can now see, as we study the history of Kautsky’ s latest betrayal of Marxism, his systematic deviation towards opportunism precisely on the question of the state.Related to this question of the state, according to J.P. Nettle it was "opposition to the irresponsible propagation of that tactic [of using the mass strike against the war] which then and until his death governed" the thinking of German party leader August Bebel. A German GDR biographer, Fricke, believed the German leadership did not a have a clue about the relationship between war, the state and imperialism. They continuously misinterpreted the balance of power between various capitalist states, which resulted in an overemphasis on an eventually devastating war with reactionary Tsarist Russia. Bebel, according to Fricke, would have thought a compromise with the British was possible. Such a compromise with "liberal" Great Britain would strenghten both the liberal parties and the workers' movement in Germany against Prussian militarism... and Tsarist and European militarism in the long rung. Bebel feared European militarism as an almost unstopable reactionary power which was able to surpress many of the advances made by the workers' movement.

It doesn't say much about how the German leadership viewed the bourgeois state, it gives you more an idea of what they thought of militarism, but it shows how fearful the leadership was, according to both authors, and how it acted as a break on the movement of left-wing Marxism in German social democracy.