Introduction

Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) was a leading theoretician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Salvadori 1979; Steenson 1978; Lewis 2019). Kautsky published tens of books and hundreds of articles on economic theory as well and on social history and actual politics. For 34 years, he was the editor-in-chief of Die Neue Zeit, the theoretical organ of the German Social Democratic Party SDP, the most influential Party of the Second International.

In 1890, Kautsky was commissioned to draft the party program of the Party, known as the Erfurt Program. The program acted as a model for many Social Democratic parties. Kautsky’s extensive commentary on the program (1906a (1892)), known in English as the Class Struggle (1910), became the Catechism of Socialism together with his work Karl Marx’s oekonomische Lehren (1906b (1887), The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx (1936). To many, Kautsky represented genuine Marxism. He edited and published Marx’s posthumous works, including the first published version of Theories of the Surplus Value (1904, 1905, 1910).

Kautsky’s Theory of Capitalism and Imperialism

Kautsky understood Marx’s Capital to present the historical laws of capitalism, from the simple commodity production in which producers owned their own means of production and exchanged their products according to the law of equal exchange, to capitalism in which the capitalist class exploited the wage workers by appropriating the surplus product of their labor. The accumulation of capital led to the concentration of capital in the hands of capitalists. The immiseration of the working class led to the polarization of the bourgeois society into two antagonistic social classes making the coming socialist revolution inevitable (Kautsky 1907–08).

From Engels’ Anti-Dühring, Kautsky (1936, 244) adopted the idea of the contradiction between the social character of capitalist production and its private mode of appropriation. In capitalism, the products of labor were no longer the products of any individual laborer but of the collective work of thousands of workers. Capitalist profits could not be justified as originating from the labor of the private owners of the means of production. Marx had revealed the principles of capitalist exploitation, which violated the right of the worker to the products of his own labor (Gronow 2015, 22–26). Since the production process is socially organized in capitalism, all one has to do to establish socialism was to “appropriate the capitalist appropriators.” Kautsky did not pay attention Marx’ analyses of the value form of a commodity and labor power and the reification of the social relations in capitalism following from it. Kautsky’s Marxism was during his lifetime the target of many critics. The so-called revisionism dispute, put forward by his close friend and collaborator, Eduard Bernstein (1909 (1899)), at the very end of the nineteenth century was the starting point of the reformist Social Democracy. Bernstein agreed that if the capitalist mode of production would, Kautsky claimed, lead to the increasing concentration and centralization of capital accompanied by the growing immiseration of the working class, then socialist revolution would be inevitable. The question of the fate of the small-scale independent producers, merchants, and artisans, as well as peasants in capitalism was decisive. If their numbers diminished, the only alternative open to the laboring masses would be to become wage workers exploited by the big capitalists. If, as Bernstein on the contrary argued, increasing polarization was not unavoidable, socialist revolution would not be their only alternative. More principally Bernstein accused Kautsky of historical determinism or fatalism but even he admitted that if capitalism developed as Kautsky predicted, capitalism would soon come to its end. Kautsky (1899a, see also 1899b) claimed that Bernstein lacked empirical evidence and his critique was based on misunderstandings.

The question of imperialism occupied the minds of Kautsky’s contemporaries. Kautsky’s own position with regard to its driving forces and basic nature (Kautsky 1907a, b, 1908–9, 1911) changed over time. He was, arguably, the first one to develop a theory of the historical stages of the development of imperialism in 1897–1898. Marxist theorists of imperialism were inclined to look for the increasing economic contradictions of capital as the main causes of Imperialism. Kautsky looked for other political alternatives to colonial policy, such as the democratic union of states, presumably more favorable both to the working class at home and in the colonies. His concept of Ultra-imperialism (2011a, b (1913–14 and 1915)) has become famous as the target of Lenin’s critique in Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1967a (1917)). What caused Lenin’s anger was that Kautsky did not recognize the inevitable aggressive and reactionary nature of imperialism but believed in the prospect of a peaceful coalition of democratic nations as an antidote to Imperialism. According to Kautsky, the concentration of capital and annexations of colonies by the great colonial powers could lead to a worldwide organized capitalism when the big cartels would divide the whole world among themselves. Ultra-imperialism was only a hypothetical thought-construction because capitalism would, long before reaching the stage of Ultra-imperialism, collapse into its internal conflicts and contradictions.

Parliamentary Democracy and the Socialist Revolution

Kautsky was convinced that since the working class would become the overwhelming majority in the capitalist societies, it could accomplish its historical task, the socialist revolution through parliamentary elections if only the Social Democratic Party could freely mobilize and organize the working masses. Under the conditions of universal suffrage, freedom of assembly and organization as well as the free press, the Party and its “intellectuals” could effectively propagate Marx’s and Engels’ teachings among the workers, a task to which Kautsky committed himself for the best part of his life. Even if the coming social transformation could be realized through parliamentary politics, Kautsky (1909, 1911) understood it to be a genuine social revolution, leading to a radical social and economic restructuring of the society vehemently opposed by reactionary political forces.

Kautsky’s position has been characterized as “revolutionary attentisme” and “tiring-out” strategy. He was warning for any kind of adventurousness which would only endanger the power base of the Social Democrats, its Party Organization with millions of members. Kautsky’s thinking combined revolutionary vigor with practical cautiousness (Lichtheim 1964, 259–264; Groh 1973). All the working class had seemingly to do was to wait and see until its organizations had grown in size and strength to take over the state power (Bonner 1982, 597–598). Kautsky’s opponents ridiculed his tactic as ballot box revolutions. Recent scholarship has pointed out (Gaido 2008; Lewis 2019) that Kautsky throughout his career understood that a genuinely socialist parliamentary regime necessitates, in addition to universal suffrage, the election of judges and other state officials as well as a people’s army.

Lenin was a most ardent admirer and pupil of Kautsky’s until World War I. Their views were closest during the first Russian Revolution in 1905 (Kautsky 1906c). They both welcomed it as the first, democratic stage of the expected two-stage revolutionary process, the second stage of which would be the final socialist revolution which could take place first after a long period of bourgeois rule during which both the economic and social conditions as well as the working class organizations matured to accomplish the socialist revolution. Both Kautsky and Lenin thought also that since the bourgeoisie had become reactionary, it could not anymore be relied to accomplish the historical task. Only the working class and its political organization, the Social Democratic Party stood for a genuinely democratic constitution. Once in power, they could speed up the historical process of the maturing of the conditions of socialism within capitalism, thus shortening the period between the two revolutions. Kautsky condemned vehemently Lenin’s Bolshevik rule after the October Revolution as a dictatorship of a small minority, which he thought to be an inevitable consequence of the premature takeover of the state power in an undeveloped country like Russia (Kautsky 1918b, 1919). As he argued, Lenin had abandoned the Marxist two-stage revolutionary formula and defended the Russian Bolshevik dictatorship of the proletariat as socialism. Lenin answered by labeling Kautsky a Renegade of Marxism (1967b (1918)).

Conclusion

Karl Kautsky lived 20 years after the First World War and the great social and political upheavals that followed it. He lost his position as the main ideologist of the party and of the Second International already during the war. The decline in his status was a dramatic one. It was partly due to the inability of the Workers’ International to prevent the outbreak of the war. Many radical Social Democrats thought that Kautsky had personally betrayed their course. In 1918, Kautsky left his old Party and joined the new Independent Social Democratic Party, USPD, losing also his position as the editor-in-chief of Die Neue Zeit. Kautsky’s theoretical – centrist – position did not fit into the divided labor movement. He was too far to the right for the Communists, too far to the left for the Social Democrats. He did, however, contribute to the unification of the two Social Democratic parties in Germany and some of his ideas found resonance in the new party program of 1925 (Morgan 1989, 61). Kautsky continued his literary activity until the end of his life. His Materialist Conception of History (1927) was a comprehensive general outline of human history influenced by evolutionist thinking. In the 1930s, Kautsky (1932, 1937) addressed the question of socialism, democracy, and the war.

Kautsky died in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in 1938, shortly after Hitler had annexed Austria. Reflecting on his life, Kautsky (2017, 40 (1924) wrote: “So I will die as I have lived, an incorrigible Marxist.”

Cross-References