About the "fatalism" of Kautsky and Plechanov...

... or the alleged fatalism of Kautskyist (c.f. Lars Lih's research) and Plechanovist Marxism. It's commonly defined like this:

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]The Marxism of the Second International was heavily influenced by the conceptions of Kautsky, Plekhanov and others, a kind of fatalistic Marxism which considered that the victory of socialism would come about inevitably as the result of objective processes, through the development of capitalism. Their parties were not built to struggle for power but to wait for it to fall into their lap. This comes out very clearly in what is usually considered to be Kautsky’s most radical work, The Road to Power, published in 1909.[/FONT]

Is this fatalism really true or is it the product of a certain reading of Kautsky? Is it possible to counter this argument? And how?

I remember saying in my CSR pamphlet that Kautsky was an "apocalyptic predestinationist." I do think there was a sharp contradiction between emphasizing organization on the one hand and, on the other, combining fatalism with the "perception that a politically aggressive programmatic approach was not needed" (Chapter 1) - and thereby the "dubious position towards working-class independence by reducing immediate economic struggles to those spontaneously raised by the labour movement and by reducing immediate political struggles to politically liberal struggles'" (Chapter 4).

As for The Road to Power, I think his critics are just irked at what he wrote about the self-confidence of the state apparatus being a necessary component, and have misinterpreted the part about Social Democracy being a "revolutionary party, but not a revolution-making party." I too quoted this in Chapter 6 to highlight that a sufficiently mass party can be "revolution-making."

Such mass party should ideally be as massive as the aim of the post-Maoist Progressive Labor Party in the US - "be composed of, by, and for the whole working class, where everyone has full knowledge and appreciation of communist principles and action so that they do not allow the party leadership structure to become corrupt" (wiki). Ideally, such citizenship or at least membership would be the primary expression of "political support" rather than DeLeonist / World Socialist Movement election votes (since some Russian liberals protest-vote for the KPRF for the sake of "democracy" and "opposition"), spoiled votes, or the proliferation of spontaneous worker organizations with no direction whatsoever ("soviets").

So you think it is true. What does this fatalism mean to you regarding the commonly expressed idea that this was a crucial mistake? Does this fatalism contain the roots of Kautsky's renegacy or the victory of reformism?

It would have been a crucial mistake in the common interpretation, had Kautsky not emphasized organization (again, for me it was a crucial mistake for entirely different reasons, since obviously Lenin didn't alter the Kautskyan minimum program). Take a look at RS2K, "Comrade Red" (the physicist who used to post on this board), "Comrade Martin" over in the Strategy forum, and spontaneist nutters like the otherwise ortho-Marxist economist Andrew Kliman (what I said on Zeus the Moose's visitor profile).

No, I don't think apocalyptic predestinationism contained the roots of his future renegacy, since it usually leads to another route:

Capitalist decline and putsch fetishes on the left (I renamed Macnair's article in #799 for posting in the Politics forum)

However, I also emphasise both the level of uncertainty in all predictions, and that it is not the business of Marxists to hope for crashes and slumps to make our politics attractive; and that much of the left which does predict a severe crisis does so precisely in the hope that a slump will make their rather unattractive alternative to capitalism attractive. In reality, such a slump is more likely to benefit the far right.

[...]

Because the strategic conceptions of the far left stake everything on slump, there actually develops a desire for it. Crisis is transparently irrational - because of overproduction and overinvestment, people are laid off, reduced to poverty and starved. Too much wealth produces poverty. But actually wanting to experience slump conditions is an irrationality of its own sort, certainly if our aim is the self-emancipation of the working class majority, rather than a coup d’etat by the central committee of your choice.

P.S. - I should also add that the "poor man's Kautsky" was a different story altogether. That was a rare case wherein apocalyptic predestinationism (European revolution "spontaneously" spilling over into Russia) did lead to reformist practice, and one so soon. Contemporarily speaking, my CSR Chapter 6 suggestion re. a proletarian US regime using cruise missiles and airstrikes should *not* be seen as feeding reformist tendencies in the Third World, since I'm against a proletarian US army stepping in on the ground. The organized movements in the Third World have to "finish the job" against weakened state apparatuses by themselves (preferrably through vertical, horizonal, and diagonal coordination within Social Proletocracy).

"We do not wish to say that the abolition of private property or the expropriation of the means of production will occur by itself, that the Irresistible development through natural necessity will take place without human action. Nor do we wish to say that all social reforms are useless or that those who suffer the consequences of the contradiction between productive forces and the existing relations of production have nothing to do other than stand idly by with their hands in their pockets waiting for this contradiction to be overcome." - The Erfurt Programme

Stephen Eric Bronner writes of Kautsky and the SPD:

"In revolution, as in birth, obstacles can appear. The Social Democrats, who had so vociferously fought for their legalization, now had to garner votes in hostile surroundings and retain the belief that the potential for garnering more would be assured. These hopes were supported by the theory of the "inevitable" collapse of capitalism and the ever-expanding proletariat. Thus, from the Kautskyan standpoint, the working masses were placed on the side of historical progress--the future belonged to them. Consequently, rather than breed passivity, the doctrine actually drew the masses to the party that was to incarnate their future and further the downfall of capitalism." "Karl Kautsky and the Twilight of Orthodoxy," Political Theory, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Nov., 1982).

Jacob, after more than two years you still manage (by ways of language) to leave me puzzling .

I do think there was a sharp contradiction between emphasizing organization on the one hand and, on the other, combining fatalism with the "perception that a politically aggressive programmatic approach was not needed" (Chapter 1) - and thereby the "dubious position towards working-class independence by reducing immediate economic struggles to those spontaneously raised by the labour movement and by reducing immediate political struggles to politically liberal struggles'" (Chapter 4).

It would have been a crucial mistake in the common interpretation, had Kautsky not emphasized organization (again, for me it was a crucial mistake for entirely different reasons, since obviously Lenin didn't alter the Kautskyan minimum program).

Let me (try to) get this straight. You agree with Mike macnair (?): Kautsky was in a way 'fatalist', even though he combined his 'fatalism' with the Marxist minimum program of (vaguely formulated) the working class taking over the running of society. According to Kautsky "the working class [parties] will be objectively driven to make their struggle with capital more effective - for example, in the form of general laws, like limits on the working day - and, in the end, to take political power away from the capitalist class and into their own hands [to the extent that working class people choose to organise to defend their common interests]" (Macnair). Yet kautsky interpretation was too defensive, i.e. he gutted out the programme because he underestimated the question of the state.

Jacob, after more than two years you still manage (by ways of language) to leave me puzzling .

Let me (try to) get this straight. You agree with Mike macnair (?): Kautsky was in a way 'fatalist', even though he combined his 'fatalism' with the Marxist minimum program of (vaguely formulated) the working class taking over the running of society.

I guess that's how you could put his peculiar fatalism (again, peculiar relative to the more typical fatalism on the left).

According to Kautsky "the working class [parties] will be objectively driven to make their struggle with capital more effective - for example, in the form of general laws, like limits on the working day - and, in the end, to take political power away from the capitalist class and into their own hands [to the extent that working class people choose to organise to defend their common interests]" (Macnair).

I don't like the way the quote is worded. It implies that the political struggle "grows" out of the economic struggle, which is at the heart of economistic thinking.

"The working class [party-movements] will be objectively driven to make their political struggle with capital more effective" - followed by an outline of more aggressive political measures would sound better.

Yet Kautsky interpretation was too defensive, i.e. he gutted out the programme because he underestimated the question of the state.

Comrade, I think this is one question where I myself am a tad lost, but I'll try to answer as best as I can in the various areas where I'll venture into below.

I don't think my quotation of CSR in my immediate reply to your OP deals with Kautsky's weakness on the state. Even the best formulation of a Kautskyan minimum program isn't supposed to address the bourgeois state.

If you didn't notice already, Chapter 6 of my PCSSR work and the related section in the Draft Program is for all intents and purposes a Kautskyan minimum program (Chapter 5 being the core of Marxist minimum program). What it does not do, hopefully, is repeat Kautsky's mistake of, to quote myself again, "reducing immediate economic struggles to those spontaneously raised by the labour movement and by reducing immediate political struggles to politically liberal struggles."

This is why a few demands in the revamped Kautskyan program are "advance payments" or "down payments" on the Marxist minimum program, so to speak. Where the state is addressed, it is intentionally not addressed fully.

The weakness on the state led Kautsky to gut out the "Kautskyan maximum program," however. Why he didn't change his thinking for the better when writing the genuine "state and revolution" commentary (i.e., by calling for a revision to the maximum section of the Erfurt Program to specifically mention some if not necessarily all Paris Commune measures), who knows?