Kautsky's theory of revolution

  1. Noa Rodman
    Noa Rodman
    https://libcom.org/library/kautskys-...on-isaak-alter

    Some footnotes appear partly in the text, but whatever.

    I didn't accompany it with my opinion on it.
  2. Zoroaster
    Zoroaster
    Thanks. Looks interesting.
  3. Tower of Bebel
    Tower of Bebel
    Yes, thank you very much. Very few new insights indeed, but it contains a nice summary of the 'old Bebel as a centrist' view, as far as I'm concerned. It's a topic I should definitely pick up again once I've concluded my little inquiry into the history of the underground years.
  4. Noa Rodman
    Noa Rodman
    Alter writes that Kautsky's "realism allows [him] not only to predict the events of August 4, but also accordingly to "be prepared" to them. Already anticipating in 1912 the possibility of mass chauvinism in the beginning of war, Kautsky believes that it is impossible to do anything. With an impending war one cannot fight."

    But Kautsky already in 1907 held this position (stated in the preface here http://www.marxists.org/deutsch/arch...triotismus.htm)

    Which doesn't fit with Alter's view of 1900-1909 as Kautsky's left phase.

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    Also, Kautsky in 1916 still expected the Russian revolution to have a positive international effect:

    We cannot yet know which forms the impending collapse of Czarism will take.
    ...
    It is only certain that it will look different than the one of 1905. And it is to be expected that it will move the whole of Europe even deeper than the latter. Back then it sufficed to make all national differences and oppositions vanish. These, which today are so profound, so self-evident, so inextinguishable, were in 1905 completely done away with; the whole of Europe was divided into two international camps, one conservative and one revolutionary. The effects on Russia’s neighbouring countries, namely Austria and the Balkan states, were enormous.

    ...

    Russia is today no longer merely the country of despotism against which Marx and Engels in the past demanded war, but the country of revolution.


    If we cannot yet know which forms the coming revolt of the Russian people will take, it cannot be doubted that it will provoke powerful repercussions in Western Europe. And that it must be far more potent than it was one decade ago.
    http://spiritofcontradiction.eu/bron...eleuropas-1916

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    Alter says Kautsky uses arguments of the reactionary Gustave Le Bon against the mass movement, but I remember that Kautsky criticized Le Bon's negative (as well as Kropotkin's idealizing) position on the mass.

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    Alter writes that Kautsky's "pre-election article in "Vorwärts" in 1912, as well as both economic and political works printed in those years in the "Neue Zeit," [..]wants to theoretically substantiate his turn to the right. He tries to give a socio-economic rationale of centrism."

    It's possible about the Vorwärts article. But I remember reading in DNZ in that period Kautsky saying that he didn't not at all reject his analysis of Road to Power, but on the contrary believed it was so obviously true that everyone now recognized it, so that he can criticize other positions (since his case in Road to Power was fully established). And since in Kautsky's view the lefts were just repeating previous left views of an earlier history (1890s), so Kautsky didn't feel he "moved to the right", but just restating his critique of the 1890s.

    Alter acknowledges this:

    "True, also here he leaves himself a loophole to retreat. Also now he is ready to talk about the strike in general, talk about the growth of class contradictions and about the growth of the mass movement, mutual support of the organized and unorganized and lavishes noncommittal compliments at the address of revolutionary Russia."

    ------

    Alter also seems to give a selective quote of Kautsky's Die Aktion der Masse (a full English translation of this text will appear online in the next months): "The present-day situation is such, - he writes in 1910, - that a great election victory could turn in a catastrophe for the ruling government system."

    Just on the same page though, I see that Kautsky cites Luxemburg giving the same estimation as he does.
  5. Noa Rodman
    Noa Rodman
    On underground years there's a bit on Austria (from p.135) and on Germany (from p. 152) in Kautsky's autobiography (Erinnerungen und Erörterungen), partly online in this pdf-file:
    hdl.handle.net/10622/ARCH00712%2EA%20235?locatt=viewdf

    I'm just reading a part where Kautsky describes the cowardly protest by the socialist newspaper editors, journalists etc. against the upcoming anti-socialist law (they feared losing their jobs if the press got banned).
  6. Tower of Bebel
    Tower of Bebel
    Thanks Noa!