Letters on publication of Road to power

  1. Noa Rodman
    Noa Rodman
    http://socialhistory.org/en/news/irs...essible-online

    "All articles in IISH's renowned journal International Review of Social History (since 1956) and its predecessors (since 1936) are now accessible online through the IISH catalogue."

    This article has several letters to and from Kautsky on the problem with publishing his Road to power:

    BRIEFE ZUM ERSCHEINEN VON KARL KAUTSKYS ,,WEG
    ZUR MACHT"


    Quick couple of notes;
    Kautsky expresses worry about the reformist turn of Bebel and after Bebel the reformist lid will come off, so Kautsky tries to convince Haase to move to Berlin to take leadership. In the last letter Zetkin writes to Kautsky that he sold out (not using the issue to wage a general fight against the revisionism in the party).
  2. Tower of Bebel
    Tower of Bebel
    Many thanks Noa!

    The most depressing in this case is the weakness of August [Bebel], which can be explained by his illness. He had confronted me over the article about Cünow's book in Vorwärts, because it was to revolutionary! The word revolution seems to give him immediat fysical discomfort. In his obituary of Natalie Liebknecht he writes about the "years of movement" instead of years of revolution.

    Currently the situation is this: the most powerful social democratic party in the world has the most subordinate bureau. August [Bebel] has lost all his force, while he was, among all politicians, the only one with a borad [great] vision over the last years. Singer has good instincts and worked mainly with Bebel, but without him or against him he cannot move the slow mass.

    [...] Tell me, who else can take the place of Bebel in the leadership?
    I wrote Bebel today. Gladly I would have vented my gall on him, but concidering him [his illness] I held back. He damages his past self and certainly the best of his performance with his [recent] arguments. I have left him no doubt about this.
    Regarding your note. I don't think Kautsky feared Bebel becoming reformist. I think the situation is more complex. Zetkin's opinion for example is, in contrast with Kautsky's proposals, very illuminating. It shows how "the leaders of the swamp" (Luxemburg) chose to deal with the advance of revisionism in the party. Adler f.e. wrote Kautsky that he didn't have a reason to make such a fuss. The Vorstand (bureau) had the right not to publish Kautsky's work, and if Kautsky wanted to he could always go to Vienna to publish his book over there.

    Bebel, in a letter to Kautsky from 1910, explains how a split could emerge if the revisionists don't want to abide by the resolutions of the party. It was no use to keep on debating with the revisionists. They had to be disciplined. However, he writes that this split wont emerge because the minority (revisionists) have no intension to break from the party. And Bebel himself does not want to provoque such a split either.

    That same year, Bebel advices Kautsky to stop the polemic with Rosa Luxemburg over the mass strike, because of he feared Kautsky would suffer from a nervous breakdown (due to the anxiety), and because it's no use for the party to hatch out eggs that wont be laid. (I.e. there will be no mass strike and the polemic had no effect on the balance of forces within the party. Even worse, if it had an effect, I think he wrote, it would probably strengthen the right.)

    Later on he seems to complain about how Zetkin and Luxemburg, when push comes to shove, always turn to old Bebel [he himself wrote: "senile Bebel"] for help in their struggle with the revisionists.

    He also mentioned the possibility that the Vorstand (bureau) would (soon?) find itself in a process of becoming revisionist, if, for one reason or another, he and Singer would be cut of from "the big army" (?) (grossen Armee). Bebel was responding to a letter from Kautsky about the nomination of the SPD Reichstag member Molkenbuhr as member of the Vorstand. Both objected to this nomination (it seems), because Molkenbuhr was no obstacle for the growth of revisionism in the party. Also, Bebel seems to have chosen Ebert (!) instead.

    (Remind you that Ebert was once concidered a pupil of Luxemburg!)
    (edited)
  3. bad ideas actualised by alcohol
    bad ideas actualised by alcohol
    Aren't these letters also included in the Raymond Meyer translation of Road to Power?
  4. Workers-Control-Over-Prod
    Workers-Control-Over-Prod
    Yes, they are Judas. I have a copy and in the end found the exchange to not be that insightful.
  5. Noa Rodman
    Noa Rodman
    Yes perhaps not so insightful correspondence (from a quick look). Do search for 'IRSH' in the catalogue (there are many English articles). This is hopeful that they will also put online Kautsky's entire works.
    But IRSH online now is a rich resource, eg Der interne Juni-Entwurf zum Erfurter Programm

    (agree Rakunin)
  6. bad ideas actualised by alcohol
    bad ideas actualised by alcohol
    Yeah I've found some pretty interesting stuff so far.
    http://hdl.handle.net/10622/S0020859...tt=view:master
    http://hdl.handle.net/10622/S0020859...tt=view:master
    http://hdl.handle.net/10622/S0020859...tt=view:master

    Seem interesting enough. Shame I don't understand much German.
  7. Noa Rodman
    Noa Rodman
  8. Tower of Bebel
    Tower of Bebel
    Indeed.
    One thing is clear, the split that was formalized at the USPD's Halle congress in October 1920 owed nothing to the four days of rethorical jousting that took place during this wake, Comintern chairman Zinoviev's claim to the contrary notwithstanding. During these four days three delegates modified their positions, adding up to a net gain of one-half a vote for Moscou. In each case it would appear that fear of rank-and-file retaliation back home caused the switch.
    I didn't know this when I read "Head to head in Halle" (Lewis and Lih), but I've always found parts of Ben Lewis's introduction from the book ("The four-hour speech and the significance of Halle") a tad bit over the top.
  9. Die Neue Zeit
    Die Neue Zeit
    Quick couple of notes;
    Kautsky expresses worry about the reformist turn of Bebel and after Bebel the reformist lid will come off, so Kautsky tries to convince Haase to move to Berlin to take leadership. In the last letter Zetkin writes to Kautsky that he sold out (not using the issue to wage a general fight against the revisionism in the party).
    What German drama! And here I thought my "Lenin-esque" use of a Hugo Haase portrait in the Die Linke usergroup served no Marxist purpose other than an anti-war stance outside a revolutionary period!

    Kautsky did try, but given his limited organizing capacity I think the bigger "blame," so to speak, should fall to Hugo Haase for not being organizationally decisive.

    Bebel, in a letter to Kautsky from 1910, explains how a split could emerge if the revisionists don't want to abide by the resolutions of the party. It was no use to keep on debating with the revisionists. They had to be disciplined. However, he writes that this split wont emerge because the minority (revisionists) have no intension to break from the party. And Bebel himself does not want to provoque such a split either.
    It's too bad Bebel didn't see the clear divide to his right into at least two camps. Bernstein and co. were the least of the class movement's worries.

    Both objected to this nomination (it seems), because Molkenbuhr was no obstacle for the growth of revisionism in the party. Also, Bebel seems to have chosen Ebert (!) instead.

    (Remind you that Ebert was once considered a pupil of Luxemburg!)
    Well, comrade, that was quite a twist to the political differences vs. patronage angle! In essence, Ebert was chosen instead of Haase because Ebert had a past political relationship with Rosa Luxemburg, while Haase didn't.
  10. Tower of Bebel
    Tower of Bebel
    Well, comrade, that was quite a twist to the political differences vs. patronage angle! In essence, Ebert was chosen instead of Haase because Ebert had a past political relationship with Rosa Luxemburg, while Haase didn't.
    I'm not sure about that. By pupil I meant above all that he went to the party school (1907 - ...). There was some political contact, but in the end Friederich Ebert claimed to support Bernstein's ideas. Haase was, together with Bebel, chairman of the SPD in 1911 and remained vice-president until 1916.

    I think that problem with the Center was it's insistance on avoiding any campaign of confrontation with the right. Though Bebel declaired in 1910 that he was ready for a war within the party (Parteikrieg), he also claimed to only launch the assault if the right would provoque it. Which it evidently did not. For Kautsky it's much the same, which can be read in the letters provided by Noa and the reaction of Rosa Luxemburg on the same subject. This was a totally different situation from the one in the years between 1898 and 1905, when the hounds of the left were let loose by the Center.

    This time, instead, the right and centerwing (is that a wing?) of the party kept puzzling (Just like Kautsky did: puzzle your way out) until they reached some kind of stalemate. (Someone really needs to delve into the organisational and political development of the SPD's right wing!) The war posed some serious questions (underground work, revolution, rebellion), but the Center was unable to move. Even the left (Liebknecht) was baffled. Which caused the demise of much of the Bebel-Kautsky tendency. Old age, isolation, censorship and even death did the rest.

    All of this, of course, is linked to the question of the marxist analysis of the State (Kautsky on colonialism, Kautsky on parliaments (1912), Bebel being afraid of militarism, ...).
  11. Noa Rodman
    Noa Rodman
  12. Noa Rodman
    Noa Rodman
  13. Die Neue Zeit
    Die Neue Zeit
    I'm not sure about that. By pupil I meant above all that he went to the party school (1907 - ...). There was some political contact, but in the end Friederich Ebert claimed to support Bernstein's ideas.
    Ah, so Ebert was only pupil in the party school sense and not the one I had in mind.

    Haase was, together with Bebel, chairman of the SPD in 1911 and remained vice-president until 1916.
    So, at the very top, the "personality" problem was replacing Bebel as co-chair with Ebert, not so much that Haase already moved to Berlin?

    I think that problem with the Center was it's insistance on avoiding any campaign of confrontation with the right. Though Bebel declaired in 1910 that he was ready for a war within the party (Parteikrieg), he also claimed to only launch the assault if the right would provoque it. Which it evidently did not. For Kautsky it's much the same, which can be read in the letters provided by Noa and the reaction of Rosa Luxemburg on the same subject. This was a totally different situation from the one in the years between 1898 and 1905, when the hounds of the left were let loose by the Center.
    I'm not sure of the extent those "hounds" were let loose, otherwise we'd go back to the traditional account of the SPD left failing to organize.
  14. Tower of Bebel
    Tower of Bebel
    JR, my point is this: puzzling together leadership positions among the leaders of the Center could not solve the problem. It was a remedy. It only aided the development of what's now known as centrism.

    The extend to which the Left was let loose, it is indeed so, says much about the failing of the SPD left to organize: Bebel let them loose and, afterward, when revisionism was supposedly defeated, he send them back in the cage.

    Of course Luxemburg remained on the polemical front, but in general the Left had lost the initiative. I think that's what Bebel maint when he complained about how, when push came to shove, "Rosa and Clara" turned to "senile Bebel".

    However, what if we look at it from a different angle: maybe it was the Center that failed to organize the Left? Why didn't Kautsky use his support on the Left to criticize the Vorstand and the Right?

    PS: Ebert was considered a pupil in this sense: He supposedly had learned a thing or two from Rosa Luxemburg. Evidently he did not.
  15. Die Neue Zeit
    Die Neue Zeit
    JR, my point is this: puzzling together leadership positions among the leaders of the Center could not solve the problem. It was a remedy. It only aided the development of what's now known as centrism.

    The extend to which the Left was let loose, it is indeed so, says much about the failing of the SPD left to organize: Bebel let them loose and, afterward, when revisionism was supposedly defeated, he send them back in the cage.
    Well, the Left certainly didn't understand the intricacies of bureaucracy-as-process, but I'm still puzzled.

    My understanding is that, outside a revolutionary situation, a consistent (not wavering) Center actually cages the Left, only to let it loose in a "revolutionary gambit" (Lars Lih) during a revolutionary period. We wouldn't want the Left to get loose agitating *against* things like Alternative Culture / solidarity networks, against bureaucracy-as-process, etc. before then.

    That's been a point of mine repeatedly stated in Mai 1968 discussions, about a hypothetical non-reformist, worker-class movement frankly telling workers to get back to work while not falling for electoral opportunism baits.

    However, what if we look at it from a different angle: maybe it was the Center that failed to organize the Left? Why didn't Kautsky use his support on the Left to criticize the Vorstand and the Right?
    I'll answer with a rhetorical question of my own: who, on a tendency vs. tendency basis, was running the cultural societies, the recreational clubs, and all that?
  16. Tower of Bebel
    Tower of Bebel
    My understanding is that, outside a revolutionary situation...
    Well, the period from 1898 until 1905 (1914) was at least pre-revolutionary (general strikes, Russian Revolution, Balkan wars, Maroccan crises, ...)
    I'll answer with a rhetorical question of my own: who, on a tendency vs. tendency basis, was running the cultural societies, the recreational clubs, and all that?
    I wouldn't know exactly. However, Legin seems to have had a lot of influence in both the trade unions ánd the cooperative movement.
  17. Die Neue Zeit
    Die Neue Zeit
    I take it that Legin was a right-syndicalist and not a Bernsteinite? It would make sense for greater right-wing influence in the trade unions and coops, specifically.
  18. Noa Rodman
    Noa Rodman
  19. Die Neue Zeit
    Die Neue Zeit
    Hopefully this will make things easier if someone wants to make a second, complete attempt to translate Republic and Social Democracy in France.
  20. Noa Rodman
    Noa Rodman
    Zinoviev's review (also check Lih's intro in the same issue of WW): http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/108...-to-socialism/

    Kautsky's preface to the Third Edition (1920) can be largely read on amazon preview (in it he spoke now about coalition policy): http://www.amazon.com/The-Road-Power.../dp/0916695123