domingo, 26 de noviembre de 2017

Karl Kautsky:

Karl Kautsky



Karl Kautsky was born in Prague, on 16th October, 1850. He became active in socialist politics while at the University of Vienna.

In 1880 Kautsky moved to Zurich where he met and was influenced by the Marxist writer, Eduard Bernstein. Later, when living in London, he maintained a close relationship with Frederick Engels.
Kautsky founded the Marxist journal Neue Zeit in 1883. The journal was published in Zurich, London, Berlin and Vienna.

He joined the Social Democrat Party (SDP) and was responsible for drafting the Erfurt Program which committed the SDP to an evolutionary form of Marxism. He also wrote and published The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx (1887) and Thomas Moore and His Utopia (1888).
Kautsky broke with Eduard Bernstein after he published Evolutionary Socialism (1899).

In the book Bernstein argued that the predictions made by Karl Marx about the development of capitalism had not come true. He pointed out that the real wages of workers had risen and the polarization of classes between an oppressed proletariat and capitalist, had not materialized. Nor had capital become concentrated in fewer hands.

Kautsky, like Eduard Bernstein, sided with the left-wing over Germany's participation in the First World War and in 1915 voted against war credits.

In April 1917 left-wing members of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) formed the Independent Socialist Party. Members included Kautsky, Kurt Eisner, Eduard Bernstein, Julius Leber, Rudolf Breitscheild and Rudolf Hilferding. However, he continued to oppose the idea of a violent revolution.
Kautsky returned to the Social Democrat Party after the war. He moved to Vienna and continued to write but was forced to flee the country after the German Army occupied Austria in 1938. Karl 
Kautsky died in Amsterdam on 17th October, 1938.

http://spartacus-educational.com/GERkautsky.htm
By John Simkin (john@spartacus-educational.com) © September 1997 (updated August 2014).
Kautsky, Karl
International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences
COPYRIGHT 2008 Thomson Gale

Kautsky, Karl





Karl Kautsky (1854–1938), socialist theoretician and social scientist, was born October 16, 1854, in Prague, the son of a Czech painter and an Austrian actress and novelist. Kautsky was throughout his life, by temperament and interests, above all a social scientist. His social science was not the politician’s tool in his drive for power; rather, he became influential in politics only to the extent that his approach and findings met needs existing in the socialist movement.

While attending the University of Vienna and working as a journalist for the small Austrian Social Democratic party, Kautsky, influenced by the works of J. S. Mill, H. T. Buckle, and especially Darwin, groped for a theory of history along natural science lines. In 1880 he joined some German socialists, in exile in Zurich, as a writer and as a student of the writings of such anthropologists as Herbert Bancroft, J. J. Bachofen, and Lewis Henry Morgan. He became a Marxist under Eduard Bernstein’s guidance, and in 1881 he visited Marx and Engels.

In 1883, Kautsky founded the monthly (weekly from 1890)Die Neue Zeit in Stuttgart, an event that marks the beginning of Marxism as a school of thought. As its editor until 1917, he published contributions from socialist thinkers all over the world as well as hundreds of his own articles. From 1885 to 1890, he worked in London in close con-tact with Engels. HisEconomic Doctrines of Karl Marx (1887), in numerous German and foreign editions, made Kautsky largely responsible for Marxism’s early spread. He also applied the Marxian method in some original historical studies— Thomas More and His Utopia (1888), Foundations of Christianity (1908), and a study of the precursors of modern socialism (1895). A book on class conflicts during the French Revolution (1889) stressed the complexity of social conflicts and modified the concept of the class struggle by emphasis on divisions within classes, a recurring theme in Kautsky’s thought, somewhat akin to the interest-group approach of modern political science.

In 1891, Kautsky drafted the “theoretical part” of the German Social Democratic party’s (SPD) Erfurt program. This first major Marxist party program and his widely translated commentary, Das Erfurter Programm (1892), established him, after Engels, as the leading Marxist theoretician in the Socialist International. He moved to Berlin in 1897.

Kautsky was one of the first Marxists to formu-late theories of imperialism (beginning in Die Neue Zeit in 1898) and agricultural development (Die Agrarfrage 1899a; see also 1919a). Unlike Rudolf Hilferding and Lenin, but more like Schumpeter, Kautsky saw imperialism as the product not of industrial capitalism but of preindustrial, especially aristocratic, elements that remained strong in modern society. He traced these elements back to pre-historic times when nomadic conquerors of peasant societies sought unlimited territorial expansion. In agriculture, Kautsky could, at the turn of the century, find no general tendency for large enterprise to replace small enterprise, but he considered large enterprise to be potentially more productive. He therefore favored a socialist program that advocated conversion of large estates into communal or cooperative enterprises, and he expected that individual peasant enterprises would eventually voluntarily join such cooperatives.

When Bernstein attacked the SPD’s “revolutionary” doctrine, Kautsky became the chief defender of “orthodox” Marxism (see his Bernstein und das sozialdemokratische Programm 1899b;The Social Revolution 1902). He advocated reformist practice and revolutionary, but not insurrectionary, goals. Such a program served to integrate those German and other Continental socialist parties which, de-spite their sharp conflict with their militarist-bureaucratic regimes, appealed to the working classes by demanding reforms. With the Revisionists, Kautsky believed that socialism could be realized only through parliamentary democracy (see his earlier Parlamentarismus und Demokratie 1893), but unlike them he did not expect democracy to grow peacefully in the German empire (The Road to Power 1909). He insisted on a “revolutionary,” i.e., oppositional, strategy, because compromises with the so-called bourgeois parties sup-porting the imperial regime would endanger labor’s political unity. In the same period, Kautsky edited Marx’s manuscript notes for a fourth volume of Capital, entitling the volume Theorien tiber den Mehrwert (1905–1910)



In 1910, Kautsky, in the “Marxist center” of the SPD, attacked as impatient and reckless the radical advocates of revolutionary mass strikes, led by Rosa Luxemburg. Their polemics (reviewed in Kautsky 1914a) foreshadowed the clash between the social-democrats and the communists. The former saw the party as an instrument to prepare the workers for their inevitable rise to power, while the latter saw it as a revolution-making “shock troop.”

During World War i, Kautsky opposed both the SPD majority’s support of the German government and the Spartacists’ call for revolution against all “bourgeois” governments. Although resisting a party split as long as possible, he did join the new In-dependent Social Democratic party (USPD), to oppose the SPD’s war policy. Between 1915 and 1918, in studies of the problem of nationalities, he advocated national self-determination and rejected the inevitability of imperialist expansionism under capitalism. After the German revolution at the end of the war, he served as a secretary of state for foreign affairs in the SPD-USPD coalition of November-December 1918. He collected the German documents on the outbreak of the war (1919b; see also his book on the origins of World War I, 1919c) and was chairman of the government’s socialization commission. Kautsky’s views of the political and economic transition to socialism (The Labour Revolution 1922) became the basis of the reunited SPD’s Heidelberg program.

Soon after the Bolshevik Revolution, Kautsky denounced all attempts to introduce socialism in a backward society by violent minority action as a betrayal of Marxism and democracy that would lead to dictatorship and eventual collapse (The Dictatorship of the Proletariat 1918). Called a renegade by Lenin and Trotsky, he replied inTerrorism and Communism (1919d) and in a book on democracy, dictatorship, and forced labor (1921a; see also 1925; 1930). In late 1920, Kautsky visited Menshevik-governed Georgia to study an underdeveloped country with a strong intelligentsia and a substantial urban working class (1921 b).

At 70, Kautsky returned to Vienna to engage in research. He had always been interested in anthropology, ecology, and demography, fields straddling the social and natural sciences; and he aimed at developing a conceptual framework encompassing both these areas of science. He attempted this in his first, as yet non-Marxian book on the influence of population growth on the progress of society (1880), in his later work on reproduction and development in nature and society (1910), inAre the Jews a Race? (1914 b), and also in his natural science explanation of ethics as a response of man and certain animals to the requirements of life in society (1906). Later Kautsky systematized and elaborated his ideas about social and natural science in his monumental work on the materialist conception of history (1927). He regarded the Marxian theory of history as the application, in principle value-free, of the methods of science to the study of society. He rejected the Hegelian dialectic with its teleological overtones and substituted for it, as the basis for the law of development for which he had searched all his life, the process of adaptation to a changing environment. In organic nature, species change to adjust to a slowly changing natural environment; in human society, man adjusts by changing his environment himself, which in turn requires further adjustment by further changes, including both technical and social ones, in an unending process that is history.

With the rise of fascism in Germany and Austria, Kautsky critically analyzed various proposed socialist counterstrategies (1933; 1934). His last major publications were two of four projected historical works on war (Krieg und Demokratie 1932;Sozialisten und Krieg 1937) and an edition of his correspondence with Engels (1935). Of a large-scale autobiography (1960) only the part covering his life until 1883 was completed by March 1938, when Kautsky fled from the Nazis to Amsterdam. He died there on October 17, 1938.

John H. Kautsky

[For the historical context of Kautsky’s work, see the biographies ofBachofen; Bernstein; Darwin; Engels; Lenin; Luxemburg; Marx; Mill; Trotsky.]
http://www.encyclopedia.com/people/social-sciences-and-law/political-science-biographies/karl-johann-kautsky
‎26 ‎de ‎noviembre ‎de ‎2017: 21:40:06

Marx and Engels on Karl Kautsky



That Vladi­mir Len­in and his fel­low re­volu­tion­ar­ies of 1917 con­sidered the So­cial-Demo­crat­ic lead­er Karl Kaut­sky a ped­ant and a phil­istine is well known. Len­in pin­pointed the reas­on for Kaut­sky’s post-1914 reneg­acy in his di­lu­tion of Marxi­an dia­lectics. “How is this mon­strous dis­tor­tion of Marx­ism by the ped­ant Kaut­sky to be ex­plained…??” the Bolshev­ik asked rhet­or­ic­ally in a sec­tion of his 1918 po­lem­ic, The Pro­let­ari­an Re­volu­tion and the Reneg­ade Kaut­sky, “How Kaut­sky Turned Marx in­to a Com­mon Lib­er­al.” “As far as the philo­soph­ic­al roots of this phe­nomen­on are con­cerned,” he answered, “it amounts to the sub­sti­tu­tion of ec­lecticism and soph­istry for dia­lectics.” In an­oth­er chapter, Len­in ac­cused Kaut­sky of “pur­su­ing a char­ac­ter­ist­ic­ally petty-bour­geois, phil­istine policy [ти­пич­но ме­щан­скую, фи­лис­тер­скую по­ли­ти­ку]” by back­ing the Men­shev­iks. Need­less to say, Len­in’s im­mense re­spect for the so-called “Pope of Marx­ism” be­fore the war had all but evap­or­ated.

What is less well known, however, is that Karl Marx and Friedrich En­gels shared this ap­prais­al of Kaut­sky. But this would only be re­vealed in 1932, sev­er­al years after Len­in’s death, in ex­tracts pub­lished from their cor­res­pond­ence. En­gels con­fided to Eduard Bern­stein in Au­gust 1881 that “Kaut­sky is an ex­cep­tion­ally good chap, but a born ped­ant and hair­split­ter in whose hands com­plex ques­tions are not made simple, but simple ones com­plex.” Marx, for his part, sus­pec­ted that En­gels’ fond­ness of Kaut­sky was due to his ca­pa­city to con­sume al­co­hol, as he re­cor­ded in a note to his daugh­ter Jenny Longuet from April that same year:



[Jo­hann Most, grand­fath­er of le­gendary Bo­ston Celt­ics an­noun­cer Johnny Most,] has found a kindred spir­it in Kaut­sky, on whom he had frowned so grimly; even En­gels takes a much more tol­er­ant view of this joker [Kautz, pun­ning on Kautz-ky] since the lat­ter gave proof of his con­sid­er­able drink­ing abil­ity. When the charm­er — the little joker [Kautz], I mean — first came to see me, the first ques­tion that rose to my lips was: Are you like your moth­er? “Not in the least!” he ex­claimed, and si­lently I con­grat­u­lated his moth­er. He’s a me­diocrity, nar­row in his out­look, over-wise (only 26 years old), and a know-it-all, al­though hard-work­ing after a fash­ion, much con­cerned with stat­ist­ics out of which, however, he makes little sense. By nature he’s a mem­ber of the phil­istine tribe. For the rest, a de­cent fel­low in his own way; I un­load him onto amigo En­gels as much as I can.

Le­on Trot­sky was caught off-guard by the ca­su­istry Kaut­sky dis­played after 1914, re­mem­ber­ing the praise he had showered on the Rus­si­an work­ers’ move­ment a dec­ade or so earli­er. “Kaut­sky’s re­ac­tion­ary-pedant­ic cri­ti­cism [пе­дант­ски-ре­ак­ци­он­ная кри­ти­ка Ка­ут­ско­го] must have come the more un­ex­pec­tedly to those com­rades who’d gone through the peri­od of the first Rus­si­an re­volu­tion with their eyes open and read Kaut­sky’s art­icles of 1905-1906,” de­clared Trot­sky in his pre­face to the 1919 re­is­sue of Res­ults and Pro­spects (1906). “At that time Kaut­sky (true, not without the be­ne­fi­cial in­flu­ence of Rosa Lux­em­burg) fully un­der­stood and ac­know­ledged that the Rus­si­an re­volu­tion could not ter­min­ate in a bour­geois-demo­crat­ic re­pub­lic but must in­ev­it­ably lead to pro­let­ari­an dic­tat­or­ship, be­cause of the level at­tained by the class struggle in the coun­try it­self and be­cause of the en­tire in­ter­na­tion­al situ­ation of cap­it­al­ism… For dec­ades Kaut­sky de­veloped and up­held the ideas of so­cial re­volu­tion. Now that it has be­come real­ity, Kaut­sky re­treats be­fore it in ter­ror. He is hor­ri­fied at Rus­si­an So­viet power and thus takes up a hos­tile at­ti­tude to­wards the mighty move­ment of the Ger­man com­mun­ist pro­let­ari­at.”

Trot­sky un­der­scored this point again thir­teen years later in de­fend­ing Lux­em­burg against the calum­nies heaped upon her by Stal­in. “Len­in con­sidered Kaut­sky his teach­er [when he wrote What is to be Done?] and stressed this every­where he could. In Len­in’s work of that peri­od and for a num­ber of years fol­low­ing, one doesn’t find even a hit of cri­ti­cism dir­ec­ted against the Bebel-Kaut­sky tend­ency. One rather finds a series of de­clar­a­tions to the ef­fect that Bolshev­ism is not an in­de­pend­ent tend­ency, merely a trans­la­tion of the Bebel-Kaut­sky tend­ency in­to the lan­guage of Rus­si­an con­di­tions. Here is what Len­in wrote in his fam­ous pamph­let, Two Tac­tics, in the middle of 1905: ‘When and where have there been brought to light dif­fer­ences between me on the one hand and Bebel and Kaut­sky on the oth­er? Com­plete un­an­im­ity of in­ter­na­tion­al re­volu­tion­ary So­cial Demo­cracy on all ma­jor ques­tions of pro­gram and tac­tics is an in­con­tro­vert­ible fact.’ …But between Oc­to­ber 1916, when Len­in wrote about the Ju­ni­us pamph­let, and 1903, when Bolshev­ism had its in­cep­tion, there was a lapse of thir­teen years, dur­ing which Lux­em­burg was to be found in op­pos­i­tion to the Kaut­sky and Bebel Cent­ral Com­mit­tee, and her fight against the form­al, pedant­ic, and rot­ten-at-the-core ‘rad­ic­al­ism’ of Kaut­sky took on an ever in­creas­ingly sharp char­ac­ter.”

Just a dec­ade or so after Trot­sky penned these lines, Ad­orno wrote con­temp­tu­ously in Min­ima Mor­alia of “the so-called her­it­age of so­cial­ism and the phil­istin­ism [Ba­naus­ie] of the Bebels.” Franz Borkenau, a left com­mun­ist also as­so­ci­ated with the Frank­furt In­sti­tute of So­cial Re­search in ex­ile, re­marked upon the un­due re­spect ac­cor­ded to Kaut­sky and his ilk. Borkenau men­tioned in this con­nec­tion the dis­par­aging state­ments made by Marx and En­gels in private about their dis­ciple. In Borkenau’s 1939 over­view of World Com­mun­ism, he wrote:

Ad­mir­a­tion for West­ern Marx­ists played more than one trick on Len­in, which is re­mark­able giv­en that his rev­er­ence was spent on men who, without ex­cep­tion, were his in­feri­ors in every re­spect. Two cases are par­tic­u­larly in­ter­est­ing. One con­cerns Geor­gii Valentinovich Plekhan­ov, the man who in­tro­duced Marx­ism in its ori­gin­al form to Rus­sia. Plekhan­ov had pub­lished a num­ber of stud­ies on philo­sophy which, though one-sided, are prob­ably su­per­i­or to Len­in’s work [Borkenau is likely re­fer­ring here to Ma­ter­i­al­ism and Em­piri­ocriti­cism, since the note­books on Hegel were not widely known in the West]; as a politi­cian, though, Plekhan­ov was of no ac­count. He ended as an ex­treme par­tis­an of Men­shev­ism, openly fight­ing Len­in. Nev­er­the­less Len­in re­tained a par­tic­u­lar ad­mir­a­tion for this man the rest of his life; after all, he had brought Marx­ism to Rus­sia! But the case of Karl Kaut­sky, the of­fi­cial the­or­et­ic­al mouth­piece of Ger­man Marx­ism, is far more note­worthy.



Any­one who takes the trouble to col­lect the quo­ta­tions con­cern­ing Kaut­sky in Len­in’s pre­war writ­ings will soon be con­vinced that Len­in re­garded this man as no less than an or­acle. Kaut­sky, it is true, was the de­light of that Ger­man Marx­ist left wing that so miser­ably col­lapsed in Au­gust 1914 and after. This was no reas­on for Len­in to ad­mire him, yet he did. For Len­in be­lieved as firmly in the Ger­man so­cial­ists as in Kaut­sky. The lat­ter was a man tim­id and slow in polit­ics, wooden and un­ori­gin­al in the­ory, true to the type of phil­istine who would ap­pear a the­or­eti­cian. A few mock­ing re­marks about him sur­vive in the cor­res­pond­ence of Marx and En­gels. As to the Ger­man So­cial­ist Party which Kaut­sky rep­res­en­ted, Len­in trus­ted it so firmly that when, in 1914, he learned of their vot­ing for the war cred­its he first be­lieved it to be a for­gery of the Ger­man For­eign Of­fice.

Un­for­tu­nately, the let­ters Borkenau al­ludes to here (fully ex­cerp­ted above) may have been the un­do­ing of the great schol­ar Dav­id Riazan­ov. Riazan­ov was ar­res­ted on March 6, 1931, ac­cused of con­spir­ing with the Men­shev­iks against the dic­tat­or­ship of the pro­let­ari­at. His bril­liant as­sist­ant at the Marx-En­gels In­sti­tute, Isaak Ru­bin, a first-rate eco­nom­ic the­or­ist, gave him up after en­dur­ing sev­er­al weeks of tor­ture. Mean­while, in Mex­ico, Trot­sky wrote in­cred­u­lously about the charges leveled at Riazan­ov. On May Day, he pub­lished an art­icle, “A New Slander against Dav­id Riazan­ov.” You can read it be­low.

https://thecharnelhouse.org/2017/03/16/marx-and-engels-on-karl-kautsky/
‎26 ‎de ‎noviembre ‎de ‎2017: 21:44:07

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