Kautsky v. Lenin

[Victus Mortium]

What exactly is the history behind the split between the second and third internationals? What did Lenin not like about Kautsky, and Kautsky about Lenin? Wasn't Kautsky appointed by Engels to write the final pieces of the theory of capitalism (theories of surplus-value)? Wouldn't that imply that Engels would have supported Kautsky? etc.
What exactly happened, and why should I or anyone else pick a side between the two?

[Comrade Nadezhda]

Kautsky had fundamentally different view of communism than did Lenin. I would equate this to Kautsky having misunderstanding for Marxism, given his perspective on most issues, but that is for you to judge.

Kautsky was very critical of the bolshevik revolution (i.e. his argument regarding "unity" of the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and SRs).

Kautsky's arguments regarding the bolsheviks: here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1930s/demvscom/ch03.htm)

In regards to this, he was also very critical of Lenin and regarded him a merely a dictator. (you can even read about it here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1930s/demvscom/ch04.htm) and here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1930s/demvscom/ch06.htm) )

Kautsky argued that Russia was not developed enough on the economic level for proletarian revolution. Kautsky also argued that the revolution failed and the bureaucracy formed under Lenin.

As for the issue of the communist international, this is Kautsky's Argument (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1930s/demvscom/ch05.htm)

Now, here is a bit of Lenin.

The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/index.htm)

In regard to the Communist International:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/jun/12.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/jun/12.htm)
and
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/jul/x03.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/jul/x03.htm)

Some of these issues are also addressed in The State and Revolution (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/index.htm)

Most notably: here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch06.htm)

[Die Neue Zeit]

I remember awhile back a rather interesting post by either gilhyle or g.ram (can't remember the latter's current username :angry: ) regarding Lenin and Kautsky.

One has to remember that much of the negative stuff said by Lenin about Kautsky was polemical. Yes, there were/are key differences, but one cannot throw the baby out with the bath water. Kautsky had some really valid points regarding ultra-imperialism. Ideally, this would indeed be in the long-term interest of the bourgeoisie, but Lenin pointed out practical errors (prisoners' dilemma).

[Probably the only form of capitalism that's truly long-term in nature is that in which "Class #4" (managers/"coordinators") is tightly organized as its own political bloc such that it effects its own "revolution" to seize global control of the means of production for its own purposes (transcending bourgeois nationalism and prejudice). It wouldn't have much incentive to develop mass collective property, because it could easily settle for all-out state property trumping out even private property. It's not exactly Stalinism, since the Stalinist bureaucrats tend to be "pyramidically" tall / bureaucratic (in contrast to the flatter and flatter organizations of today), and since they rely too much on elements of "Class #5" (the petit-bourgeoisie).]

[Comrade Nadezhda]

Originally posted by Jacob [email protected] 10, 2007 10:00 pm
I remember awhile back a rather interesting post by either gilhyle or g.ram (can't remember the latter's current username :angry: ) regarding Lenin and Kautsky.

One has to remember that much of the negative stuff said by Lenin about Kautsky was polemical. Yes, there were/are key differences, but one cannot throw the baby out with the bath water. Kautsky had some really valid points regarding ultra-imperialism. Ideally, this would indeed be in the long-term interest of the bourgeoisie, but Lenin pointed out practical errors (prisoners' dilemma).

[Probably the only form of capitalism that's truly long-term in nature is that in which "Class #4" (managers/"coordinators") is tightly organized as its own political bloc such that it effects its own "revolution" to seize global control of the means of production for its own purposes (transcending bourgeois nationalism and prejudice). It's not exactly Stalinism, since the Stalinist bureaucrats tend to be "pyramidically" tall / bureaucratic (in contrast to the flatter and flatter organizations of today), and since they rely too much on elements of "Class #5" (the petit-bourgeoisie).]
From what I've read of Kautsky (and I have read quite a bit) he makes Marx sound like a reformist. If I was to refute his arguments on any basis, it would be in regards to his view of revolutionary practice- and the assumptions he made on several accounts.

i.e. the need for certain transitional "phases" /measures to be taken towards communist society. Kautsky often remarks that Lenin was merely "a dictator" - with simply arguments of how central planning inevitably leads to the formation of a bureaucractic state (he even went as far as claiming the bureaucracy took power immediately following the bolshevik revolution).

The instances which Kautsky makes these remarks are in the links I posted above.

I don't say it's all to be thrown out but I don't appreciate his view of Marxism and his numerous claims/quotations of Marx and Engels to make arguments against central planning. It seems fair to say (based on reading Marx) that such a conclusion (that central planning is "repressive" "bureaucratic" etc. or that opposition to central planning has anything to do with Marxism)- i.e. Marx never argued against central planning. It seems fair to say Kautsky was very eager to turn Marx and Engels into mere "idealists" (I use this term because it fits- just as Kautsky's arguments disregard the reasons why central planning was needed - (i.e. proletarian class consciousness?) Marx also never once argued that revolution didn't require violence, the elimination of oppositional forces, result in civil war, etc. history proves that it does- Marx never refuted that or attempted to- as why I don't see Kautsky's arguments as being valid- he makes claims of a very narrow perspective.

[Poum_1936]

Lenin did have a favorable opinion of Kautsky for sometime. But through the years of dealing with the Menesheviks and Second International Lenin became more wary of Kautsky. And come the first World War when Kautsky and the Second International openly supported the war and their own respective goverments, is when Lenin had enough with Kautsky and openly opposed him.

[Led Zeppelin]

The actual split occured when the Kautskyites voted for war credits and supported their own bourgeoisie in the first world war.

[nom de guerre]

Kautsky was unquestionably the major thinker of the Second International and his party, the German Social Democratic Party, the most powerful. Kautsky, the guardian of orthodoxy, was almost universally regarded as the most knowledgeable expert on the work of Marx and Engels and their privileged interpreter. Kautsky's positions therefore bear witness to a whole era of the working class movement and are worth knowing if only for this. We are concerned here with a central question for the proletarian movement: the relationship between the working class and revolutionary theory. Kautsky's reply to this question formed the theoretical foundation of the practice and organisation of all the parties which made up the Second International. This included the Russian Social Democratic Party, and its Bolshevik fraction, which was an orthodox member until 1914, that is until the collapse of the International in the face of the First World War.

However, the theory expounded by Kautsky in that text did not collapse at the same time as the Second International. Quite the contrary, it survived and equally formed the basis of the Third International through the medium of "Leninism" and its Stalinist and Trotskyist avatars.

Leninism: By-Product of Kautskyism!
Leninism, by-product of Kautskyism! This will startle those who only know Kautsky from the abuse hurled at him by Bolshevism, and in particular Lenin's pamphlet, "The Bankruptcy of the Second International and the Renegade Kautsky", and those who only know about Lenin what is considered good to know about him in the various churches and chapels they frequent.

Yet the very title of Lenin's pamphlet very precisely defines his relationship with Kautsky. If Lenin calls Kautsky a renegade it's clear that he thinks Kautsky was previously a follower of the true faith, of which he now considers himself the only qualified defender. Far from criticising Kautskyism, which he shows himself unable to identify, Lenin is in fact content to reproach his former master-thinker for having betrayed his own teachings. From any point of view Lenin's break was at once late and superficial. Late because Lenin had entertained the deepest illusions about German Social Democracy, and had only understood after the "betrayal" was accomplished. Superficial because Lenin was content to break on the problems of imperialism and the war without going into the underlying causes of the social democratic betrayal of August 1914. These causes were linked to the very nature of those parties and their relations, with capitalist society as much as with the proletariat. These relations must themselves be brought back to the very movement of capital and of the working class. They must be understood as a phase of the development of the proletariat, and not as something open to being changed by the will of a minority, not even of a revolutionary leadership, however aware it might be.

From this stems the present importance of the theory which Kautsky develops in a particularly coherent form in his pamphlet and which constituted the very fabric of his thought throughout his life. Lenin took up this theory and developed it as early as 1900 in "The Immediate Objectives of our Organisation" and then in "What Is To Be Done?" in 1902, in which moreover he quotes Kautsky at length and with great praise. In 1913 Lenin again took up these ideas in " The Three Sources and the Three Component Parts of Marxism" in which he develops the same themes and sometimes uses Kautsky's text word for word.

These ideas rest on a scanty and superficial historical analysis of the relationships of Marx and Engels, to the intellectuals of their time as much as to the working class movement. They can be summarised in a few words, and a couple of quotations will be enough to reveal their substance: "A working class movement that is spontaneous and bereft of any theory rising in the labouring classes against ascendant capitalism, is incapable of accomplishing revolutionary work."

It is also necessary to bring about what Kautsky calls the union of the working class movement and socialism. Now: "Socialist consciousness today (?!) can only arise on the basis of deep scientific knowledge (...) But the bearer of science is not the proletariat but the bourgeois intellectuals; (...) so then socialist consciousness is something brought into the class struggle of the proletariat from outside and not something that arises spontaneously within it." These words of Kautsky's are according to Lenin "profoundly true."

It is clear that this much desired union of the working class movement and socialism could not be brought about in the same way in Germany as in Russia as the conditions were different. But it is important to see that the deep divergence's of Bolshevism in the organisational field did not result from different basic conceptions, but rather solely from the application of the same principles in different social, economic and political situations.

In fact far from ending up in an ever greater union of the working class movement and socialism, social democracy would end up in an ever closer union with capital and the bourgeoisie. As for Bolshevism, after having been like a fish in water in the Russian Revolution ("revolutionaries are in the revolution like water in water") because of the revolution's defeat it would end in all but complete fusion with state capital, administered by a totalitarian bureaucracy.

However Leninism continues to haunt the minds of many revolutionaries of more or less good will who are searching for a recipe capable of success. Persuaded that they are "of the vanguard" because they possess "consciousness", whereas they only possess a false theory, they struggle militantly for a union of those two metaphysical monstrosities, "a spontaneous working class movement, bereft of any theory" and a disembodied "socialist consciousness."

This attitude is simply voluntarist. Now, if as Lenin said "irony and patience are the principal qualities of the revolutionary", "impatience is the principal source of opportunism" (Trotsky). The intellectual, the revolutionary theorist doesn't have to worry about linking up with the masses because if their theory is revolutionary they are already linked to the masses. They don't have to "chose the camp of the proletariat" (it is not Sartre using these terms, it is Lenin) because, properly speaking, they do not have the choice. The theoretical and practical criticism they bear is determined by the relationship they hold with society. They can only free themselves from this passion by surrendering to it (Marx). If they "have the choice" it's because they are no longer revolutionary, and their theoretical criticism is already rotten. The problem of the penetration of revolutionary ideas which they share in the working class milieu is entirely transformed through that milieu.... when the historical conditions, the balance of power between the warring classes, ( principally determined by the autonomised movement of capital) prevents any revolutionary eruption of the proletariat onto the scene of history the intellectual does the same as the worker: what they can. They study, write, make their works known as best as they can, usually quite badly. When he was studying at the British museum, Marx, a product of the historical movement of the proletariat, was linked, if not to the workers, at least to the historical movement of the proletariat. He was no more isolated from the workers than any worker is isolated from the rest. To an extent the conditions of the time limit such relationships to those which capitalism allows.

On the other hand when proletarians form themselves as a class and in one way or another declare war on capital they have no need whatsoever for anyone to bring them KNOWLEDGE before they can do this. Being themselves, in capitalist production relations, nothing but variable capital, it is enough that they want to change their situation in however small a way for them to be directly at the heart of the problem which the intellectual will have some difficulty in reaching. In the class struggle the revolutionary is neither more nor less linked to the proletariat than they were before. But theoretical critique then fuses with practical critique, not because it has been brought in from outside but because they are one and the same thing.

If in recent times the weakness of the intellectual has been to believe that proletarians remain passive because they lack "consciousness"; and if they have come to believe themselves to be "the vanguard" to the point of wanting to lead the proletariat, then they have some bitter disappointments in store.

Yet it is this idea which constitutes the essence of Leninism, as is shown by the ambiguous history of Bolshevism. These ideas were in the end only able to survive because the Russian revolution failed, that is to say because the balance of power, on the international scale, between capital and proletariat, did not allow the latter to carry through its practical and theoretical critique.

(continued in The "Renegade" Kautsky and his Disciple Lenin (http://libcom.org/library/renegade-kautsky-disciple-lenin-dauve))

[gilhyle]

Ive read a good bit of Kautsky, both early and late works and for the most part Lenin's analysis stands up - Kautsky did vary from the position he had had earlierunder the pressure of the crisis that was WW1.

Strangely, however, Kautsky's analysis of the prospects for the USSR also hold up (although often weak and indeed slight in the details).

they were talking past each other....Kautsky was taking a world historical perspective of what was likely over the long term, Lenin was arguing for the duty to seize the opportunity.

Lenin's success made Kautsky's strategy impossible, but Kautsky was the voice of Marx arguing against voluntarism and Blanqui-ism and for the historical process.

Between them is the empty space in Marxism where might be the tools to differenetiate the revolutionary moment from the mere wobble in capitalism.

[manic expression]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12, 2007 11:44 pm
Lenin's success made Kautsky's strategy impossible, but Kautsky was the voice of Marx arguing against voluntarism and Blanqui-ism and for the historical process.
Lenin addressed these claims here:

They all call themselves Marxists, but their conception of Marxism is impossibly pedantic. They have completely failed to understand what is decisive in Marxism, namely, its revolutionary dialectics. They have even absolutely failed to understand Marx's plain statements that in times of revolution the utmost flexibility is demanded, and have even failed to notice, for instance, the statements Marx made in his letters — I think it was in 1856 — expressing the hope of combining the peasant war in Germany, which might create a revolutionary situation, with the working-class movement — they avoid even this plain statement and walk around and about it like a cat around a bowl of hot porridge.

From Our Revolution, 1923

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/jan/16.htm

[gilhyle]

Your right of course - Lenin did answer him ...and did so persuasively. The problem is, the answer only applies to the moment it was written. It does not apply every day.....it does not apply this day as I write.

[KC]

That's because there aren't any pre-capitalist countries for us to worry over it about.

[Comrade Nadezhda]

Originally posted by Zampanò@December 13, 2007 11:30 pm
That's because there aren't any pre-capitalist countries for us to worry over it about.
Well, it certainly impacts revolutionary ideals. It also impacts in regard to the bolshevik revolution. (i.e. leftists claiming "the bureaucracy" formed immediately after the revolution, the revolution didn't "succeed", and other arguments that "centralization caused the formation of bureaucracy"). Kautsky's critical opposition to the bolsheviks remains influential to idealists.

[gilhyle]

Lenin proposed a strategy of breaking imperialism at its weakest link, notwithstanding underdevelopment. Kautsky argued that this could not work, that the revolution in the weakest link country would be too degenerate and woudl drag the socialist movement down. He argued instead (with an overly process-ist approach) the revolution must be led from within the most developed countries on the basis of the growth of the organisation of the working class.

Both strategies are in tatters. Kautsky was right that the revolution would be fiercely degenerate....it was and its degeneration corroded the whole working class movement internationally. But his alternative ignored the fact that what we now call globalisation would (and has) undermined the mass workers organisations in mperialist countres his strategy relied on.

Neiter strategy is very credible at this point in time.

[Led Zeppelin]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15, 2007 04:43 pm
Lenin proposed a strategy of breaking imperialism at its weakest link, notwithstanding underdevelopment. Kautsky argued that this could not work, that the revolution in the weakest link country would be too degenerate and woudl drag the socialist movement down. He argued instead (with an overly process-ist approach) the revolution must be led from within the most developed countries on the basis of the growth of the organisation of the working class.

Both strategies are in tatters. Kautsky was right that the revolution would be fiercely degenerate....it was and its degeneration corroded the whole working class movement internationally. But his alternative ignored the fact that what we now call globalisation would (and has) undermined the mass workers organisations in mperialist countres his strategy relied on.

Neiter strategy is very credible at this point in time.
Wrong.

Lenin always argued for a world revolution, and he was also of the opinion that socialism could not be built in the USSR alone. The Bolsheviks put all their hope in the success of the German revolution specifically, and here is the difference between Kautsky and Lenin; the latter supported a proletarian revolution for the liberation of humanity while the former preferred to save capitalism.

As Trotsky said; "The peoples of the world will pay for the historic crime of reformism with new wars and revolutions."

[Die Neue Zeit]

Originally posted by Led Zeppelin+December 15, 2007 10:05 am--> (Led Zeppelin @ December 15, 2007 10:05 am)
[email protected] 15, 2007 04:43 pm
Lenin proposed a strategy of breaking imperialism at its weakest link, notwithstanding underdevelopment. Kautsky argued that this could not work, that the revolution in the weakest link country would be too degenerate and woudl drag the socialist movement down. He argued instead (with an overly process-ist approach) the revolution must be led from within the most developed countries on the basis of the growth of the organisation of the working class.

Both strategies are in tatters. Kautsky was right that the revolution would be fiercely degenerate....it was and its degeneration corroded the whole working class movement internationally. But his alternative ignored the fact that what we now call globalisation would (and has) undermined the mass workers organisations in mperialist countres his strategy relied on.

Neiter strategy is very credible at this point in time.
Wrong.

Lenin always argued for a world revolution, and he was also of the opinion that socialism could not be built in the USSR alone. The Bolsheviks put all their hope in the success of the German revolution specifically, and here is the difference between Kautsky and Lenin; the latter supported a proletarian revolution for the liberation of humanity while the former preferred to save capitalism.

As Trotsky said; "The peoples of the world will pay for the historic crime of reformism with new wars and revolutions." [/b]
^^^ I think you're buying too much into the polemics of Lenin as opposed to the heart of the matter. :(

gilhyle, what about a "third way" strategy between Somalia and the US, like South America? :huh:

Anyhow, at any rate, any revolution must be coordinated globally in order for it to be rapid enough in occurring in so many countries. Only an international socialist party, free from national politics, can do that.

[Led Zeppelin]

Originally posted by Jacob [email protected] 15, 2007 05:27 pm
I think you're buying too much into the polemics of Lenin as opposed to the heart of the matter.
What kindof response is that? So you would prefer it if I ignore Lenin's actual position on the issue just because you consider it a "polemic and not the heart of the matter"?

Be serious.

[cary jebus]

basicly Kautsky was far more liberal and democratic.

[Comrade Nadezhda]

What kindof response is that? So you would prefer it if I ignore Lenin's actual position on the issue just because you consider it a "polemic and not the heart of the matter"?

Be serious.
I could write one hundred pages on how much more there is to it aside from what you mentioned, but I don't have the time for that.


Originally posted by cary [email protected] 15, 2007 05:47 pm
basicly Kautsky was far more liberal and democratic.
"democratic" ? :huh: I suppose the bourgeois definition of "democracy" <_<

[cary jebus]

Originally posted by Comrade Nadezhda+December 16, 2007 04:16 am--> (Comrade Nadezhda @ December 16, 2007 04:16 am)
What kindof response is that? So you would prefer it if I ignore Lenin&#39;s actual position on the issue just because you consider it a "polemic and not the heart of the matter"?

Be serious.
I could write one hundred pages on how much more there is to it aside from what you mentioned, but I don&#39;t have the time for that.


cary [email protected] 15, 2007 05:47 pm
basicly Kautsky was far more liberal and democratic.
"democratic" ? :huh: I suppose the bourgeois definition of "democracy" <_< [/b]
didnt he faver a democracy over dicitorship? :huh:

[Faux Real]

Originally posted by cary [email protected] 15, 2007 08:18 pm
didnt he faver a democracy over dicitorship? :huh:
Lenin did not favor nor support dictatorship, if that&#39;s what you&#39;re implying.

Well, unless you&#39;re talking about DotP.

[gilhyle]

Originally posted by Jacob [email protected] 15, 2007 05:27 pm
Anyhow, at any rate, any revolution must be coordinated globally in order for it to be rapid enough in occurring in so many countries. Only an international socialist party, free from national politics, can do that.
I think that is a legitimate third strategy, but we must be aware how ultimatist it is. Only an intensive further development of globalisation will so unify human society as to make a globally coordinated revolution reasonable. As a default, I agree with this strategy and I have argued before on this site for the building of international trade unions to create the kind of international labour moement necessary to ground this kind of revolution.


Lenin always argued for a world revolution, and he was also of the opinion that socialism could not be built in the USSR alone. The Bolsheviks put all their hope in the success of the German revolution specifically, and here is the difference between Kautsky and Lenin; the latter supported a proletarian revolution for the liberation of humanity while the former preferred to save capitalism.

Your description of what Lenin attempted is correct, in so far as it goes. Your descritpion of Kautsky&#39;s position is of course way off. Kautsky did not seek to save capitalism rather he believed that what Lenin was doing was doomed to fail and could destroy the whole socialist movement n the process. Lenin&#39;s gamble was reasonable, Kautsky proved correct.

Given what happened to the Russian Revolution, above all the destruction of the international socialist movement due to its hegemonization by the dengerated clique that came to rule the USSR - undoing the lifework of Marx and Engels - would a responsible revolutionary do again what Lenin did ? Knowing that if the equivalent of Germany did not work, the &#39;weakest link&#39; revolution would become a corrosive acid eating away at the revolutionary movement, it would be hard to take that gamble again.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16, 2007 03:22 pm
I think that is a legitimate third strategy, but we must be aware how ultimatist it is. Only an intensive further development of globalisation will so unify human society as to make a globally coordinated revolution reasonable. As a default, I agree with this strategy and I have argued before on this site for the building of international trade unions to create the kind of international labour moment necessary to ground this kind of revolution.
While I sit here arguing a rather left-communist opposition to trade unions (not being a left-communist myself), I am also aware that what you&#39;re saying is happening right now:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...7042502409.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/25/AR2007042502409.html)


The United Steelworkers -- that venerable, Depression-era creation of John L. Lewis and New Deal labor policy -- entered into merger negotiations with two of Britain&#39;s largest unions (which are merging with each other next month) to create not only the first transatlantic but the first genuinely multinational trade union.

...

The story here, however, isn&#39;t the number of members but the adaptation of labor to the globalization of capital. The Ottawa declaration broke new ground, but the transnational coordination of unions has been building for more than a decade.



In other words, while I take up the left-communist stance on national labor unions, the verdict is still out in regards to international labor unions.

[Led Zeppelin]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16, 2007 10:22 pm

Lenin always argued for a world revolution, and he was also of the opinion that socialism could not be built in the USSR alone. The Bolsheviks put all their hope in the success of the German revolution specifically, and here is the difference between Kautsky and Lenin; the latter supported a proletarian revolution for the liberation of humanity while the former preferred to save capitalism.

Your description of what Lenin attempted is correct, in so far as it goes. Your descritpion of Kautsky&#39;s position is of course way off. Kautsky did not seek to save capitalism rather he believed that what Lenin was doing was doomed to fail and could destroy the whole socialist movement n the process. Lenin&#39;s gamble was reasonable, Kautsky proved correct.

Given what happened to the Russian Revolution, above all the destruction of the international socialist movement due to its hegemonization by the dengerated clique that came to rule the USSR - undoing the lifework of Marx and Engels - would a responsible revolutionary do again what Lenin did ? Knowing that if the equivalent of Germany did not work, the &#39;weakest link&#39; revolution would become a corrosive acid eating away at the revolutionary movement, it would be hard to take that gamble again.
Your argument doesn&#39;t logically follow.

Kautsky wasn&#39;t proved correct because it was Kautsky and the Kautskyites who voted for war credits and opposed the revolution in Germany; if the SPD had supported revolution things would have turned out very differently.

What you are saying is that Kautsky was right, and Lenin took a gamble but turned out to be wrong. Sure, Lenin took a gamble, but it was because of Kautsky&#39;s errors that it went wrong.

You can&#39;t have it both ways. Kautsky was a reformist and he and his movement of anti-revolutionary reformism saved capitalism in Germany and as a consequence also in the world as a whole.

Once again I repeat this quote: "The peoples of the world will pay for the historic crime of reformism with new wars and revolutions."

[Guest1]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16, 2007 06:22 pm
Given what happened to the Russian Revolution, above all the destruction of the international socialist movement due to its hegemonization by the dengerated clique that came to rule the USSR - undoing the lifework of Marx and Engels - would a responsible revolutionary do again what Lenin did ? Knowing that if the equivalent of Germany did not work, the &#39;weakest link&#39; revolution would become a corrosive acid eating away at the revolutionary movement, it would be hard to take that gamble again.
This is an academic way of putting the question.

The reality is, Kautsky and Lenin&#39;s debates were not theoretical debates on a forum, they were debates on how to proceed as a movement of millions of workers worldwide.

Revolutionary crises were shaking Capitalism to its core. Rosa&#39;s axiom: "socialism or barbarism" ruled the day. There was no third way. It was, be a Kautsky and vote to kill millions of workers, or be a Lenin and lead a revolution that will shock the world.

There was no choice, for any revolutionary, except to support the workers who were rising up. Your answer is "tsk, tsk, the rabble know not that the time is not yet ripe, tell them to simmer down, will you Jeeves?". You choose to kill millions of workers because revolution is dangerous. That was Kautsky&#39;s path, that is what choosing not to support the workers&#39; revolution meant in real terms.

This debate sounds nice before you put the real facts on the ground into it, doesn&#39;t it?

Kautsky was a fucking traitor, pure and simple. Without him and everyone in the 2nd international who followed him, not a single fucking country could have gone to war in world war I. Every single one would have been paralyzed by revolutionary general strikes.

Especially Germany, where the biggest workers&#39; party existed.

As for the "world party" you guys talk about, and planning a world revolution, that&#39;s what an international is, and that&#39;s what the 2nd international was.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ To paint Kautsky with the same brush as Plekhanov, Zasulich (yes, the same woman to whom Marx wrote one of his last letters), and Martov is ridiculous, IMO. :(


As for the "world party" you guys talk about, and planning a world revolution, that&#39;s what an international is, and that&#39;s what the 2nd international was.

As I said months ago here (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=65355), internationals are antiquated by today&#39;s standards:


Second, the historical: why wasn&#39;t such a party founded in the first place instead of the Second International? After all, the so-called "First International" did not consist of various political parties, and was itself dedicated to the creation of an intercontinental communist party.

...

One vanguard party is enough, not a whole sectarian bunch and their associated "internationals."

...

Back then, those behind the Second International had the chance to form a "world vanguard" - even without advanced communications like the Internet - but did not take advantage of it because of the constraints of "orthodox Marxism" (the Kautskyites). The only excuse for the Comintern&#39;s existence - as opposed to an expanded vanguard party ("guided" by the Bolsheviks) - is its creation in REACTION to the social-democratic betrayal, and the Soviet republic&#39;s post-CW isolation.

With advanced communications technology today, and with the sectarian irrelevancies giving way to "revolution or reformism," there is a need for such a world party.

...

The reason I advocate this internationalization with national "cells" is because of the democratic centralism question, which stifles political opportunists claiming to "contribute" to socialist theory in their national circumstances. While left-communist Leo has good points, I advocate such not because I&#39;m flirting with left communism, but because of the democratic centralism question.

...

Globalization so far has been limited to corporations, labour unions, and NGOs - why not entire political parties? The tension between opportunistic spontaneity and centralized organization is there: let&#39;s take it to a global level.

[gilhyle]

Rosa&#39;s axiom: "socialism or barbarism" ruled the day.

Worth remembering that tha was Kautsky&#39;s &#39;axiom&#39; (and he got it, more or less, from Engels)


if the SPD had supported revolution things would have turned out very differently.

Of course this is true, but Kautsky played only a marginal part in this process. Obviously, his opposition to war credits would have been welcome, but he was not identical with the Party leadership at that point.



There was no choice, for any revolutionary, except to support the workers who were rising up.

I agree and THAT is the very point I am trying to make. Lenin was right...but hsi having been right THEN does not determine for us what we should don NOW one hundred years later &#33; We are required to think, not just copy. Lenin never did.

You correctly say


The reality is, Kautsky and Lenin&#39;s debates were not theoretical debates on a forum, they were debates on how to proceed as a movement of millions of workers worldwide.

but you fail to draw the conclusion from that correct observation that because Lenin was right as against Kautsky in a practical debate, does not mean that Kautsky is irrelevant in the theoretical debate.

[Guest1]

My point is that Kautsky&#39;s theoretical arguments lost their relevance because, faced with the ultimate test, a revolution, they failed. This is not to say that there is nothing salvageable in Kautsky (you&#39;re right about the quote, I forgot about that), but merely to say that it is Lenin whose ideas need studying far more urgently.

A revolutionary whose theories fail in a revolution is like an umbrella with holes in it: useless precisely when you most need it.

As for what happened then not determining what we do now, I&#39;m a historical materialist, I base my ideas on historical analysis, not just debate. If in Russia the revolution happened with or without the support of yellow reformists like Kautsky who told it to wait, the same will happen yet again.

We need to build our perspectives on the actual state of the movement on the ground, and build a party capable of leading that struggle and giving it focus, with the aim of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalist society. The building of workers&#39; democracy must be on our agenda, and we need to bury any thought that "the means of production aren&#39;t ready". If the movement has the power to put the economy under workers&#39; control and smash the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, it should do so, period.

[gilhyle]

I think the only bit of that I dont agree with is


period.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Given what happened to the Russian Revolution, above all the destruction of the international socialist movement due to its hegemonization by the dengerated clique that came to rule the USSR - undoing the lifework of Marx and Engels - would a responsible revolutionary do again what Lenin did? Knowing that if the equivalent of Germany did not work, the 'weakest link' revolution would become a corrosive acid eating away at the revolutionary movement, it would be hard to take that gamble again.

Given the various Learning threads on revolution in Third World vs. First World countries, I have moved away from my "third position" (South America) and have adopted a more diffusionist approach - back somewhat to the "Five Classics" of Marx, Engels, Bebel, Liebknecht, and Kautsky, and away from laziness on the part of First World "revolutionaries" who are not doing their part to "hasten the day when the working-class will be able to save itself" (Kautsky).

The international party proper (what Bordiga talked about) stays, but revolution must start in a major capitalist power (US, UK, France, Germany) or semi-power DIRECTLY adjacent to a major capitalist power (Canada, Ireland, Spain). [Although I suppose that countries like Mexico and Poland, given their proximity to major capitalist powers, would be suitable, as well.]

At the very least, this would make "social imperialism" on the part of the new proletocratic states' armed forces much more palatable (should revolution fail to spread to less developed countries), as I said in my "International socialist party" thread.

[Chapaev]

During the years preceding World War I, Kautsky departed from the revolutionary workers’ movement, following a line of reconciliation with the revisionists, supporting liquidators in the Russian Social Democratic movement, denying the party spirit of Marxist philosophy, and so forth. In supporting anti-Marxist theories of violence, such as Social Darwinism, Kautsky attempted to demonstrate the compatibility of scientific socialism with non-Marxist philosophical systems. Kautsky became the ideologist of centrism, which combined a verbal acknowledgement of Marxism with an adaptation to opportunistic elements. With the beginning of the war Kautsky made a final break with revolutionary Marxism and justified the alliance with the overt social chauvinists.

Kautsky’s denial of the connection between the rule of monopolies and the predatory policy of the imperialist states, as well as his attempt to reduce imperialism to a variant policy of modern capitalism, led to his obscuring the radical contradictions characteristic of the monopoly stage of the development of capitalism. Just as apologetic and reformist was Kautsky’s theory of ultraimperialism, which falsely predicted the onset of a new phase constituting the peaceful development of capitalism and the elimination of its contradictions. Kautsky sowed pacifist illusions and in essence denied the inevitability of proletarian revolution. Kautsky was hostile in his attitude toward the October Revolution. He opposed the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and defended bourgeois democracy.

During the period of the November Revolution of 1918 he actually supported the counterrevolutionary policy of the Scheidemann group and opposed the establishment of friendly relations with Russia. Kautsky heralded the merger of the right wing of the “Independents” with the Social Democratic Party. The evolution of Kautsky’s ideas in right-wing Social Democratic parties had led its leaders to a final break with Marxism and to positions of overt anticommunism. The concepts of Kautsky are directed at a defence of capitalism and a rejection of the class struggle and of socialist revolution.

[Comrade Vasilev]

didnt he faver a democracy over dicitorship? :huh:
According to Marxism-Leninism, in a society which contains classes which antagonistic interests -- the state can only be the machinery of rule of the dominant social class, and any claim that, in such circumstances, the state represents the interests of the "entire people", must be dismissed as mere demagogy:

"We cannot speak of 'pure democracy' so long as different classes exist; we can only speak of class democracy".
(V.I. Lenin: "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky", in: "Selected Works", Volume 7; London; 1946; p. 129).

"The bourgeoisie finds it advantageous and necessary to conceal the bourgeois character of modern democracy from the people and to depict it as democracy in general, or as 'pure democracy'...
The bourgeoisie is obliged to be hypocritical and to describe the (bourgeois) democratic government as 'popular government', or democracy in general or pure democracy, when as a matter of fact it is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the dictatorship of the exploiters over the mass of the toilers".
(V.I. Lenin: "Democracy' and Dictatorship", in: ibid.; p. 219, 220).

[Die Neue Zeit]

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/books/order.htm


The free-market triumphalism of the 1990s is over. Early 21st century capitalism looks like Karl Marx’s description: growing extremes of wealth and poverty, and irrepressible boom-bust cycles. But for the moment, the beneficiary of growing anti-capitalism is forms of right wing religious and nationalist nostalgia politics. The political left remains in the shadow of its disastrous failures in the 20th century.

The centre-left, insofar as it has not joined forces with the neoliberal right, clings to nationalist and bureaucratic-statist nostalgia for the social-democratic Cold War era. The far left clings to the coat-tails of the centre-left. It is barred from uniting itself - let alone anyone else - by its unwillingness to think critically about the ideas of the early Communist International, especially on the ‘revolutionary party’.

To get beyond these traps we need to re-examine critically the strategic ideas of socialists since Marx and Engels’ time and their development. In this book, Mike Macnair begins this task.



The "profoundly true and important" contents of this book are, in fact, edited renditions of past editions of various 2006 articles found in the Weekly Worker:

Floundering towards Eurocommunism (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/612/lcr.htm)
While Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire theorists flounder towards Eurocommunism, the SWP’s Alex Callinicos can only answer them with evasion. In the first of a number articles, Mike Macnair discusses revolutionary strategy

Revolutionary strategy and Marxist conclusions (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/613/economism.htm)
In the second in a series of articles, Mike Macnair continues his examination of right-moving Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire theorists and the response of the SWP’s Alex Callinicos

Reform coalition, or mass strike? (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/618/McNair%20-%20Strategy3.htm)
In the third article in this series, Mike Macnair examines the basis of two contending strategies for working class advance

The revolutionary strategy of centrists (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/620/macnair.htm)
In the fourth article in this series, Mike Macnair turns his attention to Kautsky’s perspective of patient organisation and party building in the years before World War I. There were undoubted strengths in this strategy. But fatal flaws too

"The difference between the conceptions 'Marxist centre' (= independent policy, independent ideas, independent theory) and 'Marsh' (= wavering, lack of principle, 'turn table' ('Drehscheibe'), weathercock)." (Vladimir Lenin) (http://www.marxfaq.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/ni-alpha/marsh.htm)


Down to 1914, Russian Bolshevism was a tendency within the centre, not a tendency opposed to it [...] Without the centre tendency’s international unity policy there would have been no RSDLP; without the lessons the Bolsheviks learned from the international centre tendency, there could have been no mass opening of the Bolshevik membership in 1905, no recovery of the party’s strength through trade union, electoral and other forms of low-level mass work in 1911-14, and no Bolshevik political struggle to win a majority between April and October 1917.

[...]

It is important to be clear that the movement that the centre tendency sought to build was not the gutted form of the modern social-democracy/Labourism, which is dependent on the support of the state and the capitalist media for its mass character. The idea was of a party which stood explicitly for the power of the working class and socialism. It was one which was built up on the basis of its own resources, its own organisation with local and national press, as well as its own welfare and educational institutions, etc.

[...]

The centre’s strategy of patience was more successful than the other strategies in actually building a mass party. Its insistence on the revolution as the act of the majority, and refusal of coalitionism, was equally relevant to conditions of revolutionary crisis: the Bolsheviks proved this positively in April-October 1917, and it has been proved negatively over and over again between the 1890s and the 2000s. However, because it addressed neither the state form, nor the international character of the capitalist state system and the tasks of the workers’ movement, the centre’s strategy proved to collapse into the policy of the right when matters came to the crunch.

War and revolutionary strategy (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/621/macnair.htm)
Mike Macnair puts the record straight on Lenin’s call for defeatism and insists on the necessity of the left taking the democratic question of arms seriously

Communist strategy and the party form (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/622/macnair.htm)
Mike Macnair examines the Leninist ‘party of a new type’ and disentangles its advantages and shortcomings from the necessity of splitting from the Second International

Unity in diversity (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/624/macnair.htm)
How does the concept of the united front fit into the struggle for a Communist Party? Mike Macnair continues his examination of strategy


The split between communists, loyal to the working class as an international class, and coalitionist socialists, loyal to the nation-state, will never be ‘healed’ as long as communists insist on organising to fight for their ideas. The policy of the united workers’ front is therefore an essential element of strategy in the fight for workers’ power.

But this policy can only make sense as part of a larger struggle for unity in diversity. And this struggle is a struggle against - among other things - the Trotskyists’ concept of the united front.

The minimum platform and extreme democracy (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/625/macnair.htm)
Under what conditions should communists participate in government? Mike Macnair revisits the strategic problem of authority


We saw in the fourth article in this series that the Kautskyan centre, which deliberately refused coalitions and government participation, was able to build up powerful independent workers’ parties (Weekly Worker April 13). In the sixth article we saw that the post-war communist parties could turn into Kautskyan parties, and as such could - even if they were small - play an important role in developing class consciousness and the mass workers’ movement (Weekly Worker April 27). This possibility was available to them precisely because, though they sought to participate in government coalitions, the bourgeoisie and the socialists did not trust their loyalty to the state and used every means possible to exclude them from national government.

The Kautskyans were right on a fundamental point. Communists can only take power when we have won majority support for working class rule through extreme democracy. ‘Revolutionary crisis’ may accelerate processes of changing political allegiance, but it does not alter this fundamental point or offer a way around it. There are no short cuts, whether by coalitionism or by the mass strike.

The present task of communists/socialists is therefore not to fight for an alternative government. It is to fight to build an alternative opposition: one which commits itself unambiguously to self-emancipation of the working class through extreme democracy, as opposed to all the loyalist parties.

Political consciousness and international unity (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/626/macnair.htm)
What is the link between national and international revolution? What is the role of the workers’ international? Mike Macnair continues his series on communist strategy

Comintern and the Trotskyists (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/628/macnair.htm)
What sort of international does the workers’ movement need? Mike Macnair looks at the negative lessons of previous attempts


Imitating the Russians was not utterly disastrous, as attempts to imitate the Maoists in more developed countries were in the 1960s and 1970s. This is attributable to the fact that most of what the Russians endeavoured to teach the Comintern in 1920-23 was in fact orthodox Kautskyism, which the Russians had learned from the German SPD. But there were exceptions. The worker-peasant alliance was utterly meaningless in the politics of the western communist parties before 1940, and after 1945 was a force for conservatism, as the European bourgeoisies turned to subsidising agriculture.

The ‘Bolshevisation’ of the communist parties, and the savage polemics against Kautsky and others over “classless democracy”, which became part of the common inheritance of ‘official communism’, Maoism and Trotskyism, deeply deformed these movements. In the end, the Bonapartist-centralised dictatorship of the party bureaucracy produced kleptocrats in the USSR and the countries that copied it. In the western communist parties and the trade unions associated with them, it produced ordinary labour bureaucrats with more power to quash dissent than the old socialist bureaucracy had had (a feature gratefully copied by the social democratic right). In the Trotskyist and Maoist groups, it produced petty patriarchs and tinpot dictators whose interests in holding onto their jobs and petty power were an effective obstacle to unity. It thus turned out to be in the interests of … the capitalist class.

Moreover, casting out “the renegade Kautsky” cut off the communists from the western European roots of their politics. Lenin and his co-thinkers’ transmission of the inheritance of the Second International into Russian politics became Lenin’s unique genius on the party question, feeding into the cult of the personality of Lenin (and its successors …). Perfectly ordinary western socialist political divisions, pre-existing the split in the Second International, had to be cast in Russian terms. Communists began to speak a language alien to their broader audiences, the language that has descended into today’s Trot-speak.

Republican democracy and revolutionary patience (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/629/macnair.htm)
Mike Macnair concludes his series on communist strategy by throwing down the challenge to the existing left


In this sense ‘Kautskyism’ means the struggle for an independent workers’ party, intimately linked to independent workers’ media, trade unions, cooperatives and so on, and for - at least symbolic - internationalism. On the other hand, it means the struggle against the ideas of short cuts to power that evade the problem of winning a majority, through coalitionism or ‘conning the working class into taking power’ via the mass strike. These are positive lessons for today’s left.

[...]

This strategic orientation demands patience. The fundamental present problem is that after the failures of the strategies of the 20th century, in the absence of a Marxist strategic understanding, most socialists are socialists by ethical and emotional commitment only. This leads to the adoption of ‘get-rich-quick’ solutions that enter into the capitalist politicians’ government games.

This is the trouble with the idea that the Ligue should join a new gauche plurielle project rather than addressing seriously the question of unity with Lutte Ouvrière; with Rifondazione’s decision to participate in the Olive Tree government; with the PDS’s participation in a coalition with the SDP in Berlin; with the SSP’s orientation to an SNP-led coalition for independence; with Respect. The result is not to lead towards an effective workers’ party, but towards another round of brief hope and long disillusionment.

A different sort of impatience is offered by those who split prematurely and refuse partial unity in the hope of building their own ‘Leninist party’: the decision of the far-left platforms (Progetto Comunista and Proposta) to split prematurely from Rifondazione; the SAV’s split orientation in the WASG-PDS fusion process; the splits of the Socialist Party and Workers Power from the Socialist Alliance; and the refusal of much of the left of the SA to work as a minority in Respect. We find that, although these sects sell themselves as ‘revolutionary’, when they stand for election either to parliaments or in unions their policies are broadly similar to the coalitionists. They are still playing within the capitalist rules of the game.

The left, in other words, needs to break with the endless series of failed ‘quick fixes’ that has characterised the 20th century. It needs a strategy of patience, like Kautsky’s: but one that is internationalist and radical-democratic, not one that accepts the existing order of nation-states.

[trivas7]

The theoretical issue here is that raised by Marx in his critique of mechanical materialism in the Theses on Feuerbach: who educates the educators, or where does Marxist theory come from? According to Kautsky and Lenin (in 1901) the educators educate themselves through the study of political economy and observation of social conditions independently of the class struggle. This is false both historically and analytically. Marxist theory was developed by Marx and Engels, and continued to be developed by others, including Lenin, through involvement in, and interaction with, the struggle of the working class, i.e. through revolutionary practice (8). Marxism is, first and foremost, the world historical generalization of the experience of the working class in struggle. The Kautsky formulation is symptomatic of the underlying positivist, mechanical materialist philosophical position dominant in the Second International, in which Lenin was trained, but from which he broke, at first instinctively and politically and then philosophically, through his re-study of Hegel after the betrayal of 1914.

-- John Molyneux, http://johnmolyneux.blogspot.com/2006/11/lihs-lenin-review-of-lars-t-lih-lenin.html

But wasn't Lenin the author of the entire "three components of Marxism" theory that reduced Marx to a mechanistic Engelsism? Wasn't this the ideology ("Marxism-Leninism") Stalin promulgated?

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Nope:

The Renegade Kautsky and his Disciple Lenin (http://libcom.org/library/renegade-kautsky-disciple-lenin-dauve)

Kautsky wrote a lesser-known work based on the Anti-Duhring, from which Lenin wrote his more famous "Three Components" work.

[trivas7]

^^Is this the nub of the issue, no?


At this stage Leninism, taken out of its original context, is no more than a technique for enclosing the masses and an ideology justifying bureaucracy and maintaining capitalism: its recuperation was a historical necessity for the development of those new social structures which themselves represent a historical necessity for the development of capital. As capitalism expands and dominates the entire planet, so the conditions which make revolution possible become ripe. Leninist ideology is beginning to have had its day.

-- Gilles Dauvé, The "Renegade" Kautsky and his Disciple Lenin

Or is -- as John Holloway suggests -- Revolution the question, and not the answer?


The great attraction of orthodox Marxism remains its simplicity. It provided an answer to the revolutionary dilemma: a wrong answer, but at least it was an answer. It guided the revolutionary movement to great conquests that, in the end of the day, were not conquests at all, but dreadful defeats. If, however, we abandon the comforting certainties of orthodoxy, what are we left with? Is our scream not then reduced to the childishly naïve and self-deceptive appeal to the idea of justice, do we not return, as Luxemburg mockingly warned, ‘to that lamentable Rosinante on which the Don Quixotes of history have galloped towards the great reform of the earth, always to come home with their eyes blackened'? No, we do not. We return, rather, to the concept of revolution as a question, not as an answer.

-- John Holloway, The Tradition of Scientific Marxism (http://marxmyths.org/john-holloway/article.htm)

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Considering my particular work, you should know by now that I am no "neo-orthodox Marxist." ;)

Question the comprehensive positions outlined in my work (more comprehensive than most "theorists" and activists can come up with), but at least they are based on MODERN conditions (also something than most "theorists" and activists cannot "boast"), not on conditions of the late 19th century or early 20th century.

The Chapter 2 material (in particular), while based on Marx's LATER class analysis, takes into account modern conditions, while "coquetting" a major Kautsky quote.

[chegitz guevara]

I know this thread is dead, but several comrades continue repeating that Kautsky voted for war credits. He did not. He was not a deputy and told the deputers in the Reichstag to abstain (which they did not do).

Kautsky initally claimed that Germany was fighting a war of self-defense against Russia, but opposed the war after about 10 months. He, along with Bernstein and others, led the split that later came to be known as the Second and a Half International. It later merged with the remnants of the Second International and became the Socialist International. That was about a deacde after WWI was over, however.

[Tower of Bebel]

I know this thread is dead, but several comrades continue repeating that Kautsky voted for war credits. He did not. He was not a deputy and told the deputers in the Reichstag to abstain (which they did not do).

Kautsky initally claimed that Germany was fighting a war of self-defense against Russia, but opposed the war after about 10 months. He, along with Bernstein and others, led the split that later came to be known as the Second and a Half International. It later merged with the remnants of the Second International and became the Socialist International. That was about a deacde after WWI was over, however.
Interesting, can you tell me where you got the information from?

[chegitz guevara]

Wikipedia, although I knew previously he was not a deputy, and thus could not have voted for war credits.

[gilhyle]

Just to add to the colour, there is somewhere from the early 1890s a letter from Engels explaining that in a war of self-defence against Russia the SPD should join in the fight...or vote credits....cant remember the details.

Its important to remember that the correctness of Lenin's position hangs critically on the transition to imperialism, a position neither he nor anyone else had explained in 1914. Rather there was a rather half-baked concept of 'militarism' which verged on the passivist and some International resolutions about General Strikes etc. that I suspect Marx and Engels would have considered dubious.

The traditional view of Marx and his followers was that Russian Tsarism represented the forces of reaction and must be kept out of Western Europe. Marx and Engels, for example, supported Turkey in a war against Russia in the 1870s.

Matters were more difficult to work out in 1914 than they appear in retrospect.

Furthermore, Kautsky worked tirelessly with the parliamentary group to try to stiffen their resolve during the days and hours when they were deciding what to do.

Remarks here about him being a reformist if applied to 1914 are quite wrong, he was a 'centrist' .....a quite different thing. None of that excuses his anti-revolutionary stance. He took the wrong side. But as Lenin clearly understood, that did not invalidate what he had represented....and, what Lenin did not consider....it should not lead us to ignore his analysis of the Russian Revolution, however glib that was in parts.

[OI OI OI]

Lenin pawned Kautsky's head for 250 gold lawl

Seriously how can someone argue for ideas that failed pitilesly?
When you put the ideas to the test then you find which ideas are right or not.
We can argue about theoretical trivialities for days without reaching a conclusion and being too blind to see what works and what not.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ I don't think you know much about the history of Marxist theory. :rolleyes:

1) The solution to the working-class nature of the modern far right lies in Kautsky's "profoundly true" (to quote his most well known disciple (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ii.htm#bkV05P383F03)) pro-worker material, not Trotsky's "they're petit-bourgeois" material.
2) Revisionist Trotskyism has failed to "merge" socialism and the working-class movement.

[OI OI OI]

1) The solution to the working-class nature of the modern far right lies in Kautsky's "profoundly true" (to quote his most well known disciple) pro-worker material, not Trotsky's "they're petit-bourgeois" material.
2) Revisionist Trotskyism has failed to "merge" socialism and the working-class movement.

Where do you base all that?

Sometimes I read the stuff your post and I feel it is a waste of time....
Really you should stop misunderstanding stuff.....

[chegitz guevara]

Lenin pawned Kautsky's head for 250 gold lawl

Seriously how can someone argue for ideas that failed pitilesly?
When you put the ideas to the test then you find which ideas are right or not.
We can argue about theoretical trivialities for days without reaching a conclusion and being too blind to see what works and what not.

If you study Lenin's writings, it becomes rather clear that he was the consummate Kautskyite. When Lenin and Kautsky were feuding later, Lenin was arguing against the new Kautsky by using the words of the old Kautsky. Lenin used Kautsky's ideas to build the Bolsheviks and overthrow Tsarism and capitalism in Russia. I'm not sure how you can say the ideas failed.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Comrade, I wouldn't use the word "Kautskyite" in reference to the pre-renegade founder of "Marxism," since it's just as insulting as "Trotskyite." I prefer "Kautskyist" or, better yet, "Kautskyan" (like the academic difference between a "Marxist" and a "Marxian").

["Kautskyite" is OK to describe followers of the renegade, however]

Also, be careful: most Maoists, when they hear of Kautsky, only think of two words - "renegade" and "ultra-imperialism."

[trivas7]

Comrade, I wouldn't use the word "Kautskyite" in reference to the pre-renegade founder of "Marxism," since it's just as insulting as "Trotskyite." I prefer "Kautskyist" or, better yet, "Kautskyan" (like the academic difference between a "Marxist" and a "Marxian").

Also, be careful: most Maoists, when they hear of Kautsky, only think of two words - "renegade" and "ultra-imperialism."
How does this kind of hair-splitting differ from the circle-ism you decry in your writing? I, too, often feel lost at sea when reading you. If you think Kautsky was the "real" founder of Marxism -- who was Marx?

[chegitz guevara]

Marx didn't build the movement.

[trivas7]

Marx didn't build the movement.
OTC, he founded the first Communist League, the Workers International, and another in the USA late in life after the split in the First International, no?

[chegitz guevara]

OTC, he founded the first Communist League, the Workers International, and another in the USA late in life after the split in the First International, no?

Kinda sort of. The League of the Just changed it's name to the Communist League when Marx's Committees of Correspondence joined it. The League of the Just was a split from the League of Outlaws.

As for the rest, Marx was asked to be the Chair of the First International, but he did not form it. Among its founders were some of his followers, and they pushed for his chairmanship. When it became clear that the International was going to be taken over by Bakunin's faction, Marx had the headquarters of the International moved to NYC, where it withered away.

Marx, himself, wasn't much of an organizer. The growth of Marxism largely belongs to the efforts of Lassalle and Liebknecht and the popularization of Marx's work by Engels. Kautsky, however, was considered the father of Marxism around the turn of the century, because he was the one who brought it all together and systematized Marx's writings.

[trivas7]

. Kautsky, however, was considered the father of Marxism around the turn of the century, because he was the one who brought it all together and systematized Marx's writings.
If you're speaking of Lenin's famed "three parts(?)" of Marxism IMO Kautsky did us all future Marxists a huge disservice IMO; this within a generation became the ideology of Stalinism.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Marx, himself, wasn't much of an organizer. The growth of Marxism largely belongs to the efforts of Lassalle and Liebknecht and the popularization of Marx's work by Engels.[/qutoe]

Lassalle was unintentional, comrade. Remember, this was the guy who started to cozy up to Bismarck and co (Gotha). I wonder why you didn't mention Bebel, that other Eisenacher (besides W. Liebknecht). :confused:

Kautsky, however, was considered the father of Marxism around the turn of the century, because he was the one who brought it all together and systematized Marx's writings.


If you're speaking of Lenin's famed "three parts(?)" of Marxism IMO Kautsky did us all future Marxists a huge disservice IMO; this within a generation became the ideology of Stalinism.

In regards to last statements from both of you, I don't think it was The Three Sources of Marxism that brought it all together; The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) (http://www.revleft.com/vb/class-struggle-t81525/index.html) did (hence my work, which both of you already read ;) ).



I would like to add that, replacing French socialism as a "source and component" of traditional "Marxism" are British Chartism (per CPGB comrade Mike Macnair (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/cu/2008/2008%20videos.htm)) and especially German Social Democracy (positioning itself, per Lih, between British tred iunionizm and both French anarchism and syndicalism).

[Tower of Bebel]

I think French socialism was a strong influence and an equal component of Marxism; because Marx started off as a revolutionary democrat on the European continent where French socialism, not charterism, influenced the most radical elements.
Although I studied jurisprudence, I pursued it as a subject subordinated to philosophy and history. In the year 1842-43, as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, I first found myself in the embarrassing position of having to discuss what is known as material interests. The deliberations of the Rhenish Landtag on forest thefts and the division of landed property; the officials polemic started by Herr von Schaper, then Oberprasident of the Rhine Province, against the Rheinische Zeitung about the condition of the Moselle peasantry, and finally the debates on free trade and protective tariffs caused me in the first instance to turn my attention to economic questions. On the other hand, at that time when good intentions "to push forward" often took the place of factual knowledge, an echo of French socialism and communism, slightly tinged by philosophy, was noticeable in the Rheinische Zeitung. I objected to this dilettantism, but at the same time frankly admitted in a controversy with the Allgemeine Augsburger Zeitung that my previous studies did not allow me to express any opinion on the content of the French theories. When the publishers of the Rheinische Zeitung conceived the illusion that by a more compliant policy on the part of the paper it might be possible to secure the abrogation of the death sentence passed upon it, I eagerly grasped the opportunity to withdraw from the public stage to my study.

[chegitz guevara]

Marx clearly acknowledges his debts to each of the 'three parts:' French socialism, British Chartism, and German philosophy. We should no more discredit this because of what it became in Stalin's hands than we should discredit genetics because of Lysenko.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Comrade, originally the "British" part referred to political economy, not Chartism. ;)

Comrade Rakunin:


I think French socialism was a strong influence and an equal component of Marxism

It was a strong influence and equal component of scientific socialism, not "Marxism" (i.e., scientific socialism plus other political movements and especially the contemporary political socialism of the day, German Social Democracy).

[chegitz guevara]

you're right.

[chegitz guevara]

Yeah, but if I found out that at the end Marx supported Bismarck, I would not call myself a Marxist, because it means that in the end Marx become a traitor to the working class. I have no such problem with Mao - you can't betray a class you never represented.

You're reject everything Marx ever did or wrote because at the end of his life he went wrong? Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This is a thoroughly mechanical and one sided view point of the world. Marxism is a dialectical philosophy. We see that all things have more than one simple aspect to them and that awful things can also have good aspects, and good things can be bad as well.

For example, it was under Nazism that nitrogen was finally extracted from the atmosphere and artificial fertilizers were developed. These artificial fertilizers resulted in a massive explosion of agricultural production, meaning that many, many more people can be feed than was previously possible. For all the horrors of the Nazi regime, some good did come of it. Taking your viewpoint, we would need to reject the ability to feed multiple billions of people, simply because the Nazis were evil.

By this viewpoint of yours, it would be necessary to completely dismiss the writings of Kautsky and Plekhanov, as well as Alexandra Kollentai. Instead we should be like Lenin, who rejected the latter day Kautsky and Plekhanov, and did so on the basis of their earlier writings.

[Yehuda Stern]

You both got it wrong. My view of Marx would have been, in such a case, as my view of Kautsky - that he made some important contributions but in the end became a traitor. I wouldn't call myself a Kautskyist - I wouldn't, in our hypothetical scenario, call myself a Marxist.

[chegitz guevara]

I have no problem calling myself a Kautskyist. His later views don't concern me, but his writing from the 1880s to 1910 are gold.

[Random Precision]

I have no problem calling myself a Kautskyist. His later views don't concern me, but his writing from the 1880s to 1910 are gold.

But it would be a mistake to think that his later views have nothing to do with his early views- it's not like he woke up one day and thought "I'm going to betray Marxism!". Kautsky from the beginning had a very mechanical and Darwinian understanding of Marxism. This led him straight into where he ended up- forgotten by both history and the proletarian movement he once helped to lead.

[chegitz guevara]

Well, Lenin certainly did not agree. When he attacked the "Renegade" Kautsky, he did so on the basis of Kautsky's earlier writings. Lenin drew a distinction between the two Kautsky's, and I see no reason why I should think I know better than Lenin.

[Random Precision]

Well, Lenin certainly did not agree. When he attacked the "Renegade" Kautsky, he did so on the basis of Kautsky's earlier writings. Lenin drew a distinction between the two Kautsky's, and I see no reason why I should think I know better than Lenin.

I know I tend to be pretty bad in terms of appeals to authority... but, Jesus. :lol:

Rather than to looking to Lenin's opinion you should be looking at Kautsky and coming to your own conclusions. Even if Lenin's opinion was exactly the way you describe it- about which I have my doubts, because Lenin completely broke with the mechanical materialism of the 2nd International, of which Kautsky was the main proponent during his "good years". Though to be sure I still need to study this a bit.

I mean, do you seriously believe that his early views had no relation at all to his later ones?

Now if you don't mind, I'm going to sleep. I will post some further observations on Kautsky tomorrow.

[Valeofruin]

I know I tend to be pretty bad in terms of appeals to authority... but, Jesus. :lol:

Rather than to looking to Lenin's opinion you should be looking at Kautsky and coming to your own conclusions. Even if Lenin's opinion was exactly the way you describe it- about which I have my doubts, because Lenin completely broke with the mechanical materialism of the 2nd International, of which Kautsky was the main proponent during his "good years". Though to be sure I still need to study this a bit.

I mean, do you seriously believe that his early views had no relation at all to his later ones?

Now if you don't mind, I'm going to sleep. I will post some further observations on Kautsky tomorrow.

The second International was infested with Opportunism and Liberalism.

Stalin says so.

{insert cool portrain of Stalin}

When im well rested ill actually post a serious, at least semi intelligent explanation, promise.

[Die Neue Zeit]

For example, it was under Nazism that nitrogen was finally extracted from the atmosphere and artificial fertilizers were developed. These artificial fertilizers resulted in a massive explosion of agricultural production, meaning that many, many more people can be feed than was previously possible. For all the horrors of the Nazi regime, some good did come of it. Taking your viewpoint, we would need to reject the ability to feed multiple billions of people, simply because the Nazis were evil.

By this viewpoint of yours, it would be necessary to completely dismiss the writings of Kautsky and Plekhanov, as well as Alexandra Kollontai. Instead we should be like Lenin, who rejected the latter day Kautsky and Plekhanov, and did so on the basis of their earlier writings.

There's something new for learning everyday, comrade! :ohmy:

BTW, since you're mentioning Plekhanov, I'm not sure that poor man's Kautsky is that valuable. For me, the only works that I find interesting are his first four works listed on MIA: Socialism and the Political Struggle, the two Social-Democratic programs, and Our Differences. Especially interesting are the programs, considering the small size of his group (five people), and the intentions behind my CSR work and my current programmatic WIP. On the other hand, Lenin's 1895 programmatic work in prison seems to be much better. :(

[Die Neue Zeit]

I've heard that, but I find it hard to reconcile with the fact that Stalin was in Russia and Lenin in Switzerland. I think it more likely that Stalin was the actual author of the book on nationalism, and that others wrote Foundations for him. But that's an hypothesis, not supported by any facts, other than the thousands of miles separating the comrades.

Well, I have read the Short Course (only because Lars Lih mentions this work). While most of it was utter garbage (yes, because others wrote most of the work), Stalin personally wrote a key section in the Short Course pertaining to the merger formula.

Someone here on RevLeft said that Stalin, in spite of his theoretical shortcomings, the crimes of the regime he represented, etc., was an intelligent person. That key section in the Short Course about the Marxist party being the "merger" of socialism and the worker movement, a clear repeat of "profoundly true and important" remarks made by Kautsky, was gold.

[Too bad Trotsky of all Marxists in that period NEVER wrote anything on the merger formula. Then again, he knew squat about party-building. :( ]

BTW, since you declared your "Kautskyism" in this thread, I invite you to my Study Groups thread on The Class Struggle (that whole forum is on life support). ;)




I have no problem calling myself a Kautskyist. His later views don't concern me, but his writing from the 1880s to 1910 are gold.


But it would be a mistake to think that his later views have nothing to do with his early views- it's not like he woke up one day and thought "I'm going to betray Marxism!". Kautsky from the beginning had a very mechanical and Darwinian understanding of Marxism. This led him straight into where he ended up- forgotten by both history and the proletarian movement he once helped to lead.


Well, Lenin certainly did not agree. When he attacked the "Renegade" Kautsky, he did so on the basis of Kautsky's earlier writings. Lenin drew a distinction between the two Kautsky's, and I see no reason why I should think I know better than Lenin.

RP doesn't understand that war changes people drastically. I think I tried to make this undogmatic point in History threads specifically on the post-WWII Stalin and Khrushchev's continuity with this particular Stalin (contrary to Trotskyist and "Marxist-Leninist" howlings).

Also, I would argue that, without the Kautskyan method, most of the left has been stuck in broad economism regarding its reduction of political "democracy" by itself to parliamentarism or leveraged parliamentarism (through referenda).

[Led Zeppelin]

Split some posts from the Maoists are socialists thread and merged with this one.