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| Born | Karl Johann Kautsky (1854-10-16)16 October 1854 |
| Died | 17 October 1938(1938-10-17) (aged 84) |
| Alma mater | University of Vienna |
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Karl Johann Kautsky (/ˈkaʊtski/;German:[ˈkaʊtski]; 16 October 1854 – 17 October 1938) was an Austrian-born GermanMarxist theorist. One of the most authoritative promulgators oforthodox Marxism after the death ofFriedrich Engels in 1895, he was for decades the leading theorist of theSocial Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and theSecond International. His influence was so pervasive that he was often called the "Pope of Marxism", with his views remaining dominant until the outbreak ofWorld War I in 1914. His influence extended beyond Germany, shaping the development of Marxism in theRussian Empire, where he was seen by figures likeVladimir Lenin as the leading authority on Marxist theory.
Born inPrague and educated inVienna, Kautsky became a Marxist in the early 1880s while in exile inZurich. He founded the influential journalDie Neue Zeit in 1883 and was its editor for 35 years. From 1885 to 1890, he lived inLondon, where he became a close friend of Engels. Following the repeal of Germany'sAnti-Socialist Laws, he authored the theoretical section of the SPD's 1891Erfurt Program. His commentary on the program,The Class Struggle, became a popular and widely circulated summary of Marxism. Kautsky's theoretical framework reinterpretedKarl Marx'scritique of political economy into a doctrine of historical-empirical laws predicting the inevitable concentration of capital, polarisation of society, and immiseration of the working class.
Kautsky's orthodox Marxism advocated a gradualist, evolutionary approach to socialism. He argued that asocialist revolution was inevitable but could not be forced prematurely. The role of a socialist party was to organise the working class, win political reforms, and improve workers' lives through the institutions ofbourgeois parliamentary democracy, until material conditions were ripe for the transition to socialism. This "centrist" position, positioned between reformism and revolutionary radicalism, drew him into major conflicts. He defended Marxist orthodoxy against therevisionism ofEduard Bernstein, and opposed the revolutionary spontaneity advocated byRosa Luxemburg.
Kautsky's pre-war influence collapsed after 1914. He opposed the SPD's decision to support the German war effort, which led him to break with the party and co-found the anti-warIndependent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) in 1917. After the war, he became a prominent critic of theOctober Revolution, denouncing it as a premature coup that had established a new form of dictatorship. He argued that theBolsheviks' methods had betrayed the democratic principles he saw as essential to socialism. He rejoined the SPD in 1922 but his influence steadily declined. He fled toAmsterdam after the 1938Anschluss of Austria, where he died the same year. Vilified byLeninists as a "renegade", Kautsky is seen by others as a consistent proponent ofdemocratic socialism whose work continues to influence modern currents.
Karl Kautsky was born inPrague on 16 October 1854, then part of theAustrian Empire.[1][2][3] His parents wereJohann Kautsky, a Czechtheatrical scene designer, andMinna Jaich, an Austrian actress and writer of Czech descent.[4] The family moved toVienna when Kautsky was seven years old in 1863.[1][5][6] Despite Kautsky's later efforts in his memoirs to suggest a vagueproletarian background, his immediate family was not working class. Though his parents faced some financial difficulties in their early married years, they had family connections to rely on. By the time Karl was six, his father provided a comfortable income, allowing for at least two servants.[7] Karl was the eldest of four children, followed by Minna (b. 1856), Fritz (b. 1857), and Johann (b. 1864).[7]
Kautsky maintained a particularly close intellectual relationship with his mother, Minna. She came from a family of actors and theatrical artists and, freed from household duties by the family's improved finances after 1860, turned to intellectual pursuits. She and Karl developed a shared interest in contemporary philosophy andnatural science. When Karl receivedErnst Haeckel'sThe History of Creation in 1874, they studied it together. Later, when Kautsky began writing his first socialist pieces, he would show them to his mother for advice. Minna Kautsky herself became a socialist writer, gaining a minor reputation for her romantic socialist fiction even before her son's work was known, and was admired byFriedrich Engels.[2][8]
A common misconception, noted by Steenson, is that Kautsky was Jewish; he was not. His second wife,Luise Ronsperger, was Jewish, and their sons faced persecution under the Nazis, which may have contributed to this confusion.[9]
Kautsky was an avid reader from a young age. He was tutored at home until he was nine. In 1864, he began attending theMelk seminary, run byBenedictine monks, which he found oppressive.[10][6] From 1866 to 1874, he attended the more progressiveAcademic Gymnasium in Vienna, where he studied religion, Latin, Greek, German, geography, history, mathematics, natural history, and philosophy.[10][6] He was a mediocre student, partly due to chronic illness, poor eyesight, and a distrust of his teachers. His studies were also affected by his growing interest in extracurricular matters, such as theParis Commune in 1871.[10] He performed best in history and philosophy.[10]
In the autumn of 1874, Kautsky entered theUniversity of Vienna, intending to study "historical philosophy" to become a university lecturer or a middle-school teacher.[10][6] He took courses in psychology, history, physical geography, and literature. A brief attempt to study law was abandoned due to illness and a self-professed lack of oratorical skill.[11] He ultimately attended nine semesters but never took a degree, his growing socialist activities turning him away from academia.[11] Kautsky himself felt he learned little at university due to conflicts with professors, believing that socialists were largely self-taught.[11]Friedrich Engels later criticized Kautsky's university training for instilling a "frightful mass of nonsense" and a tendency towards hasty judgment, though he acknowledged Kautsky's efforts to unlearn these habits.[12] However, Steenson argues that Kautsky's broad and somewhat unstructured university studies fostered his eclectic intellectual tastes, which suited him for his later role in popularizing Marxism.[13]
During his university years, Kautsky briefly considered careers in art, like his father, and playwriting. He had written creatively from his seminary years.[2] Inspired by his father's successful stage adaptation ofJules Verne'sAround the World in Eighty Days, Karl wrote a scientific fantasy play,The Atlantic-Pacific Company, about the construction of a Panama-Nicaragua canal. It had limited success in Vienna,Graz, andBerlin in 1877–1878. Its failure, coupled with his increasing involvement in the socialist movement, led him to abandon playwriting.[14]
Kautsky's immediate family was largely apolitical, though there was a sporadicCzech nationalism, a sympathy Karl initially shared.[1] His political consciousness began to emerge in the summer of 1868 after a visit to ruralBohemia, where he was impressed by Czech nationalist sentiments and peasant agitation. For the next two years, he considered himself an "outspoken Czech nationalist", influenced by figures likeFrantišek Palacký, who combinedromantic nationalism with political liberalism.[15] This Czech nationalism, however, did not last long in the predominantly German environment of Vienna.[16]
Two events in early 1871 profoundly shaped Kautsky's radicalization: theParis Commune and his reading ofGeorge Sand's romantic socialist novel,The Sin of M. Antoine. The Commune fired his imagination, stirred his sympathies for the working class, and pushed his political radicalism towards socialism.[1][17][3] Sand's novel, which he reread many times, provided crucial emotional support during a period of isolation and family disapproval of his socialist leanings. It reinforced his ethical commitment to the oppressed and suggested that the coming of socialism would require a long process of study and development.[18] Other early socialist influences included the historical works ofLouis Blanc.[3] By late 1871, Kautsky's Czech nationalism had evolved into a vaguely socialist, democratic radicalism. In 1873–1874, he wrote unpublished articles and stories seeking to reconcile capital and labor through education, equality, and worker cooperatives, advocating for afederal republic with extensive freedoms.[19]
Around this time, Kautsky came under the influence ofpositivism,materialism, and the scientific thought of the era, particularly the works ofCharles Darwin,Ernst Haeckel,Ludwig Büchner, andHenry Thomas Buckle.[1][20][21][6][3] Darwin's work, especially its elimination of a deity from explanations of origins, was crucial in shaping Kautsky's natural-scientific and anti-Christian worldview.[22] Darwin'sDescent of Man was particularly significant, as its explanation for the non-supernatural origin of human ethics was, in Kautsky's words, a "revelation" that removed one of the last hindrances to his adoption of materialism.[23] He was impressed by Haeckel's attempts to apply natural science to human society, though he rejected Haeckel's racism and cruder forms ofSocial Darwinism.[24] Büchner'smonistic view of the world and near-socialist positions also appealed to him.[25] Buckle'sHistory of Civilization in England initially suggested a materialist outlook but ultimately emphasized the role of intellectual factors, a contradiction Kautsky would later address more consistently.[26] Steenson notes that by 1885, Kautsky had clearly broken with the idea that natural laws could be directly applied to human society, emphasizing instead the historical specificity of social laws.[27]
At around the age of twenty, Kautsky became active in the Austrian socialist movement and began writing for its journals.[2] He joined the smallAustrian Social Democratic Workers' Party (SPÖ) in January 1875.[28][29][30] The party, founded in 1874, was weak due to Austria's limited industrialization, economic depression, and internal divisions along national and tactical lines.[31] Kautsky aligned himself with the radical faction led byAndreas Scheu and became a propagandist and lecturer, primarily on historical topics.[28][32] His frustration with the party's impotence and state repression led to a brief flirtation withanarchist ideas.[33]
His earliest published works appeared primarily in German socialist journals likeDer Volksstaat (laterVorwärts) and Austrian socialist papers.[2][29] These articles focused on natural science and its relation to socialism, and on Austrian political developments.[34] A key early work was "Socialism and the Struggle for Existence" (1876), in which he critiqued anti-socialist interpretations of Darwinism, arguing that solidarity, not just individual struggle, was a factor in evolution and human society.[35] His first book,Der Einfluss der Volksvermehrung auf den Fortschritt der Gesellschaft (The Influence of Population Increase on the Progress of Society, 1880), was a critique of theMalthusian view of overpopulation.[3] In this pre-Marxist phase, Kautsky's theory of history was, by his own account, "nothing other than the application of Darwinism to social development", focused on the struggle for existence between different tribes, peoples, and races.[36] Steenson notes that these early writings still showed strong romantic and idealist influences, with Kautsky's commitment to socialism being primarily moral.[37]
Kautsky first readKarl Marx'sCapital in 1875, but its influence was not immediately apparent in his writings.[37] A more significant turning point was his encounter withFriedrich Engels'sAnti-Dühring, serialized inVorwärts from 1877 to 1878.[38] Though Kautsky did not thoroughly study it until 1880 withEduard Bernstein, its ideas began to appear in his work by spring 1878, marking a shift towards a greater awareness of economic factors and Marxian analysis.[39][40] In 1879, through the wealthy German socialistKarl Höchberg, Kautsky was offered a subsidized position among exiled German socialists inZurich, Switzerland. This offer, contingent on abandoning his quasi-anarchist sympathies, provided a market for his socialist writings and removed him from the increasingly anarchist-dominated Austrian socialist environment. He arrived in Zurich in January 1880.[39][2][41][30]
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The decade of the 1880s was pivotal for Kautsky, both personally and intellectually. During theAnti-Socialist Laws in Germany, he moved frequently between Zurich (1880–1882, 1884), Vienna (1882–1883, 1888–1889),Stuttgart (1883), and London (1885–1888, 1889–1890), before settling in Stuttgart in late 1890.[42][43] In this period, he developed a radical outlook, denouncing the bureaucratic-military state, viewing parliament as a tool for agitation, and promoting a "mystique" of the party as a newecclesia militans (church militant).[44]
In Zurich, Kautsky lived independently for the first time, supported by Höchberg. He became part of the German socialist émigré circle and earned the nickname "Baron Juchzer" for his somewhat fastidious dress and ebullient optimism.[45] Höchberg acted as his first serious editor and introduced him to the work ofHerbert Spencer and practical economics.[46] Most importantly, Kautsky formed a close friendship and intellectual partnership withEduard Bernstein.[2][3] Together, they undertook an intense study of Engels'sAnti-Dühring, which cemented their conversion toMarxism.[39][47][48] Bernstein, with his party experience, also tutored Kautsky in the practicalities of the German movement.[47]
In February 1881, writing inDer Sozialdemokrat, the official newspaper of theSocial Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) published in exile, he affirmed the necessity of a violent revolution in which violence would act as the "midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one". He argued that while a party could not create a revolution, it must organize itselffor the revolution and "take advantage of it".[49][50] He saw the SPD's role as guiding the masses and giving the revolution direction.[51] In a December 1881 article, he argued that the first step of the revolution would be to "demolish the bourgeois state" and create a new one. The victorious proletariat, he wrote, would need a government to "curb the ruled with all the means at its command. All this may sound very undemocratic, but necessity will compel us to act in this way".[52]
Kautsky first visited Marx and Engels in London from March to June 1881.[2][53][30] While Marx was unimpressed, viewing Kautsky as a "mediocrity", Engels recognized his eagerness and potential.[39][53] He spent a further five years in London between 1885 and 1890, remaining in close touch with Engels, with whom he got on better than with Marx.[54][3] Kautsky was briefly considered as editor forDer Sozialdemokrat, butAugust Bebel and Engels ultimately found Bernstein more suitable for the political demands of the role, deeming Kautsky better suited for theoretical work.[55]
In 1883, Kautsky founded and became the primary editor ofDie Neue Zeit (The New Age), a Marxist theoretical journal published by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Dietz in Stuttgart.[49][54][56][57][58] This provided Kautsky with a regular income and a crucial platform for developing and promoting his brand of Marxism.[56] The journal was intended as an organ ofscientific socialism, with Marx and Darwin as its "twin pillars".[59] In a letter to Engels asking him to contribute to the first issue, Kautsky wrote: "I cannot think of a better introductory article ... than one about Darwin. The name alone is already a program."[60] According to its first editorial, its objectives were the "democratization of science as an instrument for the socialist elevation of the proletariat", party commitment, and devotion to truth.[61]Wilhelm Liebknecht was a designated permanent contributor, and the editorial board initially comprised Dietz, Liebknecht, and Kautsky.[62] Kautsky remained its editor until 1917. Under his editorship, it became the most prestigious of all international Marxist journals, creating his national and international reputation as an expounder of Marx. The journal's influence extended to theRussian Empire, where it was the most popular Marxist publication, seen as a crucial source of theory for Russian Social Democrats.[49][54][3][63]
The early years ofDie Neue Zeit were marked by Kautsky's financial struggles and conflicts over editorial control, particularly withWilhelm Blos and Bruno Geiser who were installed by Dietz during Kautsky's brief return to Zurich in 1884. Kautsky, with crucial support from Bebel, successfully resisted attempts by the moderate wing of the SPD to dilute the journal's Marxist orientation.[64] From 1885 to 1888, Kautsky editedDie Neue Zeit from London, benefiting from close collaboration with Engels and the resources of theBritish Museum. This was a highly productive period for him.[65] A key early theoretical debate published in the journal was Kautsky's (Engels-guided) critique of thestate socialist ideas ofKarl Rodbertus in 1884–1885, aimed at countering its appeal within the German socialist movement.[66]
Kautsky played a central role in drafting the new party program for the SPD after the lapse of theAnti-Socialist Laws in 1890. The previousGotha Program of 1875 was considered outdated.[67] In January 1891, Engels sent Kautsky Marx's previously unpublishedCritique of the Gotha Program, which Kautsky then published inDie Neue Zeit. This created considerable controversy within the SPD leadership, particularly with Wilhelm Liebknecht, due to its harsh criticism of the 1875 program and ofFerdinand Lassalle.[68][57] Despite the storm, Kautsky's draft for the new program, which emphasizedorthodox Marxist principles, was largely adopted by the party commission at the Erfurt Congress in October 1891.[57] He was entrusted with writing the theoretical section, which outlined the long-term goals of social polarization and the socialization of the means of production, while Bernstein wrote the "minimum programme" of short-term demands.[38][69] TheErfurt Program was the first party platform based strictly on Marxist principles.[3] The program served as a compromise, reconciling the revolutionary sentiment engendered by the years of persecution with the need for a reformist tactic in a fundamentally non-revolutionary period.[70]
Following the congress, Kautsky was commissioned by the party's central committee to write a pamphlet explaining and amplifying the program. This resulted inDas Erfurter Programm (1892, translated asThe Class Struggle), which became his most famous and widely translated work, establishing him as a leading interpreter of Marxism.[71] In it, Kautsky outlined the origins of modern capitalism, the role of human action in history, the nature of the future socialist state (though he was reluctant to offer detailed plans), and the tactics of the working-class movement, emphasizing organization, education, reform, and parliamentary participation as leading to an "irresistible and inevitable"social revolution.[72][73] He argued that modern parliamentarism was indispensable for governing a large modern state and that a genuine parliamentary republic could serve as an instrument for the "dictatorship of the proletariat" as much as for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.[74][75] He attacked concepts likedirect legislation as unworkable and expressions of political sterility rooted inpetty-bourgeois individualism.[76] His commentary was seen by a generation of Marxists, includingVladimir Lenin, as the authoritative definition of social democracy.[77] Lenin, who translated it into Russian in 1894, saw Kautsky's program as the "New Testament" of Marxism, a confirmation of the predictions made in the "Old Testament" of theCommunist Manifesto.[78]
A major tactical and theoretical issue for the SPD in the 1890s was its approach to the peasantry. While some, particularly in South Germany led byGeorg von Vollmar, advocated for anagrarian program to win peasant votes, Kautsky was consistently skeptical.[79] He had argued since the 1870s that peasants' attachment to private property and their individualism made them unlikely allies for a socialist party.[80] He saw an inevitable conflict between the urban worker and the peasant; for instance, protecting peasant smallholdings meant higher food prices for urban consumers. For Kautsky, the best the party could do was to "neutralise" the peasantry, as it could never be a reliable socialist ally.[81]
At the SPD's Frankfurt Congress in 1894, a resolution was passed calling for an agrarian program.[82] Kautsky opposed this, arguing that specific appeals to peasants would dilute the party's proletarian character and contradict itsclass-struggle basis. He maintained that most of the rural population was, or was becoming, a rural proletariat. He believed land, as a primary means of production, must ultimately be socialized.[83] At the Breslau Congress in 1895, Kautsky's resolution rejecting the proposed agrarian program was passed, despite opposition from Bebel on this specific issue. Kautsky argued that while the party should agitate among the peasantry, it should not make promises it could not keep, such as the preservation of small peasant holdings.[84][85][86] He further developed these ideas in his major workDie Agrarfrage (The Agrarian Question, 1899).[87] This work, praised by Lenin as the most significant contribution to economic literature sinceCapital, systematically argued for the superiority of large-scale agriculture and posited that the party's task was to win over the agricultural proletariat and neutralize the small peasants, not to preserve their doomed form of production.[88][89]
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The most significant challenge to Kautsky's orthodox Marxism in this period came from his former close friend,Eduard Bernstein. Starting in 1896, Bernstein published a series of articles inDie Neue Zeit titled "Problems of Socialism", which questioned fundamental tenets of Marxism, including thetheory of value, the inevitability of capitalist collapse, the intensification of class struggle, and the need for a purely proletarian revolutionary party. Bernstein advocated for an evolutionary, ethical socialism, famously stating, "the goal is nothing, the movement everything".[90][91]
Kautsky was initially reluctant to publicly criticize Bernstein, due to their long friendship and Bernstein's exile.[92][93][94] He first defended Bernstein against attacks by figures likeErnest Belfort Bax.[95] However, as Bernstein's views became more explicit, particularly with the publication ofEvolutionary Socialism (Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie) in 1899, Kautsky, urged by Bebel, felt compelled to respond.[85][96] He was pushed into assuming the role of "defender of the faith" partly by Russian orthodox Marxists likeGeorgi Plekhanov, for whom Bernstein's theories were a particularly sensitive issue.[97] The debate was centred on the empirical validity of Marx's prognosis of increasing capital centralisation and proletarianisation. Both agreed that if Marx's prognosis was invalid, the revolutionary perspective would lose its scientific basis.[98]
In his classic defence of Marxist theory,Bernstein and the Social Democratic Programme (1899), Kautsky argued that Bernstein's analysis, based on observations of England, was not applicable to Germany, where no significant democratic forces existed outside the working class.[99][100] For Kautsky, theory (orthodox Marxism) served a practical function: it provided the German workers with self-confidence and the certainty of victory.[99] He contended that while capitalism was not mechanically collapsing, its contradictions were sharpening, particularly with the rise offinance capital andcartels, which increased social misery even if absolute poverty did not.[101][102] He also developed his concept ofVerelendung (immiserization), arguing that even if workers' material conditions improved, their share of the national wealth declined and social and political assaults by the ruling class would intensify class struggle.[103][104][105] His objective was to keep the party "armed for every eventuality", maintaining a flexible tactic that could reckon "with crisis as with prosperity, with reaction as with revolution, with catastrophes as with slow peaceful development."[105] The SPD officially condemnedrevisionism at its Hanover (1899) and Dresden (1903) congresses.[106][107] The debate permanently damaged Kautsky's friendship with Bernstein.[108]
Kautsky also engaged in tactical debates concerning cooperation withbourgeois parties. He opposed participation in thePrussian Landtag elections under the restrictivethree-class franchise in 1893 but argued in favor of it by 1897 to weaken theJunkers and fight for democratic reforms.[109] He supportedJean Jaurès's engagement in theDreyfus Affair but condemnedAlexandre Millerand's entry into a bourgeois French government, seeing it as an unnecessary compromise. At theSecond International's Paris Congress in 1900, Kautsky's resolution, which opposed electoral alliances but allowed for socialist entry into bourgeois governments under extraordinary circumstances with party approval, was adopted.[110][111][112][113]
TheRussian Revolution of 1905 significantly impacted European socialists, particularly in Germany, by highlighting the potential of themass strike. Kautsky had paid some attention to Russia before, viewing it as backward but ripe for abourgeois revolution. He had close ties with Russian Marxists likePavel Axelrod,Georgi Plekhanov, andRosa Luxemburg, and was seen as an arbiter in their factional disputes.[114][115][116] When the revolution broke out, Kautsky was one of the first Western Marxists to analyze its significance, arguing that Russia was now the "torch-bearer of revolution" for the world, and that the East was opening the revolutionary road for the West at the "beginning of the era of proletarian revolutions".[117] He saw the revolution as a democratic, not socialist, process, driven by the proletariat. Kautsky supported the revolutionaries and argued that the Russian peasantry, unlike Germany's, had revolutionary potential. He believed a worker-peasant coalition could achieve a liberal, capitalist Russia, which would then eventually lead to socialism.[118][119][120][121]
The 1905 revolution, coupled with a surge in strike activity in Germany, fueled a major debate within the SPD on the mass strike.[122] Trade union leaders, concerned about costs and employer retaliation, were cautious. The SPD leadership, increasingly conservative, also resisted adopting the mass strike. However, the party's radical intellectual wing, including Luxemburg andKarl Liebknecht, saw it as a way to vitalize the party and achieve democratic reforms.[123][124] Kautsky's position was nuanced. He had long considered the general strike a potentially useful, if dangerous, weapon.[125] He argued that the growing interest in the mass strike was a response to the "growing disdain for parliamentarism" following the SPD's1903 electoral victory, which had not translated into significant political change.[126] He drew radical conclusions from the 1905 Ruhr coal strike, arguing that the employers' power was so great that "it can no longer be assailed by pure trade-union means" and that a political orientation was now necessary.[127] He urged discussion of the mass strike not because he was eager to use it, but to ensure it was understood and not misused. He believed that in Germany, a successful mass strike was "only conceivable in a revolutionary situation".[128][129]
The SPD's Jena Congress in 1905 passed a Bebel-sponsored resolution that ambiguously accepted the mass strike as a defensive tactic and affirmed party superiority over trade unions.[130] However, a secret agreement in February 1906 between party and trade union leaders effectively curtailed any organized mass action by the SPD, as the party accepted fiscal responsibility for political strikes it could not afford.[131][132] At the Mannheim Congress in 1906, this agreement was essentially ratified, despite Kautsky's and Luxemburg's opposition. In a failed attempt to subordinate the unions to the party, Kautsky proposed an amendment declaring it the "duty of every party comrade ... to feel bound by the decisions of the party congresses in his trade-union activity." The defeat of his amendment represented a major victory for the trade-union leadership and a reversal of the radicals' gains from the previous year.[133][134][135]
After the defeat of the 1905 revolution, Kautsky's relationship with the Russian Marxists became increasingly strained by their constant factionalism. In 1910, he reluctantly agreed to act as a trustee, alongsideClara Zetkin andFranz Mehring, for the finances of theRussian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in an attempt to enforce unity between theBolshevik andMenshevik factions. The effort failed, entangling Kautsky in years of disputes over party funds and accusations from all sides. The experience deepened his disillusionment with the Russian émigré leadership, whom he chided for their "organisational particularism" and inability to put the interests of the movement above factional and personal quarrels.[136]
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In 1909, Kautsky publishedThe Road to Power (Der Weg zur Macht), which he conceived of as a "complement" to his 1902 workThe Social Revolution. In this book, Kautsky argued that a new "era of revolutions" was approaching due to the sharpening of class and international conflicts. He predicted "significant shifts in the relationship of forces in favour of the proletariat" and reiterated that thedictatorship of the proletariat was the "only form" of political power for the working class. The book's radical tone caused a stir within the SPD; the party leadership refused to publish it under the party's imprint, and revisionists threatened a split over its publication, viewing it as dangerously revolutionary.[137][138][139][140] In the book, Kautsky presented the revolution as an inevitable product of capitalist development which could not be artificially stimulated, assigning a passive role to the party: it must maintain its oppositional integrity while waiting for the ruling class to destroy itself through its inner contradictions. The work represented a return to the "Erfurt synthesis" and a theoretical proposal for a truce between the party's factions.[141]
The mass strike debate and its outcome led Kautsky to develop what became known as his "centrist" position, attempting to find a "true" course between reformism on the right and radicalism on the left.[125] He opposed both the reformist idea that socialism could be achieved by gradual reforms and the revolutionary theory that the party's main task was to prepare for a single violent upheaval.[142] He believed that theory (Marxism) generated the necessary motivation for socialist action and that the party's main task was to prepare the workers for an inevitable, though not necessarily imminent, revolution by raising their consciousness and organizing them.[143] He argued for a "strategy of attrition" (Ermattungsstrategie), where the party would win not by shock tactics but by outlasting the opposition through persistent aggressive political positioning.[144][145] In this strategy, the party would use parliamentary struggles, street demonstrations, and strikes to gradually weaken its opponents and strengthen the proletariat, only engaging in a decisive battle when the enemy had been sufficiently worn down.[146]
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This period saw a definitive break withRosa Luxemburg. A debate in 1910 over franchise reform in Prussia, where Luxemburg supported mass action and Kautsky urged caution, escalated into a bitter personal and theoretical split after Kautsky refused to publish an article by Luxemburg advocating for a republic.[144][147][148] Kautsky articulated his centrist stance in an article titled "BetweenBaden and Luxemburg" (August 1910), arguing that the party must navigate between the reformist compromises of the South German SPD (who had voted for the Baden state budget) and the putschist tendencies of Luxemburg.[149][150][151] He criticized Luxemburg for failing to grasp the specific conditions of Germany, where the state was far stronger than in Russia, making a "strategy of annihilation" (Niederwerfungsstrategie) suicidal.[152][153]
Asimperialism and militarism intensified in Europe, Kautsky devoted considerable attention to these issues. He initially associated colonial expansion with commercial-capitalist and agrarian-aristocratic interests.[154] Under the influence ofJ. A. Hobson and particularlyRudolf Hilferding'sFinance Capital (1910), his views evolved. He saw imperialism and nationalism primarily as bourgeois capitalist phenomena used by the German government to strengthen itself against the workers.[155]
Kautsky opposed any form of socialist colonial policy, viewing it as a contradiction in terms and inherently exploitative, brutalizing, and racist. This was a consistent theme from his 1907 pamphletSocialism and Colonial Policy.[156][157][158] While he initially believed mature capitalism did not necessarily imply imperialism and militarism, by 1912 he accepted this connection. However, as the threat of war grew, his humanitarian aversion to war led him to seek ways to avoid it, arguing that the "armaments race is based on economic causes, but not on economic necessity".[159][160] He theorized that imperialism was a specificpolicy of finance capital, not an inevitable economicstage of capitalism. According to this view, imperialism was one of several possible political responses to chronic overproduction, which Kautsky attributed to the faster rate of accumulation in industrial versus agrarian sectors.[161][162] He conjectured that a future phase of "ultra-imperialism" was possible, in which international capitalist cartels would cooperate to exploit the world peacefully, superseding the violent competition of the imperialist phase.[163][164][160][165] He believed that if war came, socialists should take an unpopular oppositional stance, which would ultimately position them to lead the revolution that would follow the war's inevitable collapse of capitalist society.[166]
WhenWorld War I broke out in August 1914, Kautsky, though not a member of the SPDFraktion (parliamentary group), was invited to its decisive meeting onwar credits. He andHugo Haase initially drafted a statement for refusing war credits. When it became clear that the majority would vote for credits, Kautsky urged abstention. Finally, when theFraktion voted 78 to 14 for credit approval, he joined Gustav Hoch in an unsuccessful attempt to include a clause in the party's declaration demanding no annexations or violations of neutrality. Kautsky had lost, and the SPD accepted theBurgfrieden (civic truce).[167][106][168][169]
Throughout the war, Kautsky's main concern was to maintain as much theoretical integrity as possible and to prevent the SPD from completely succumbing to nationalist war fever. He distinguished between the legitimate defense of a "national state" and the aggressive "nationalistic state", arguing that workers had a right to national self-defense but must reject chauvinism and imperialism.[170] He strongly opposed theBurgfrieden and the imperialistic war aims increasingly adopted by the SPD majority.[171]
Kautsky believed the Second International had not been destroyed by the war but that its true nature and limitations had been revealed. He argued that it was an instrument for peacetime, not for war, and that its task was now to "reconquer peace".[163][172] He engaged in extensive polemics, primarily against the right-wing socialists (theUmlerner or "re-learners") who argued the party must change its theories to fit the new realities of war.[173] Wartime censorship made it easier to criticize the right than the left.[174] During the war, Kautsky re-established a close working relationship with Eduard Bernstein, who had also moved to an anti-war position. Conversely, his relationship with former collaborators likeHeinrich Cunow, who became a leading proponent of war Marxism, deteriorated.[175]
As the war continued and the SPD majority increasingly suppressed dissent, Kautsky laid the theoretical groundwork for a party split. He argued that the majority's intolerance and violation of party custom by denying minority voices justified separation.[176] In a series of articles in late 1915, he defended the right to dissent and warned that suppression bred extremism.[177]
In April 1917, Kautsky, along with Bernstein, Haase, and other oppositionists, founded theIndependent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) at a congress inGotha.[178][179] He had initially headed a small group, which also included Bernstein and Emanuel Wurm, that vigorously opposed the establishment of a separate party, fearing it would strengthen theSpartacists.[180] Kautsky wrote the party's manifesto, which called for an international, democratic peace with self-determination and blamed the SPD majority for the split.[181][182] The new party was born divided, its common denominator being only opposition to the war.[182] The split led to Kautsky's loss of the editorship ofDie Neue Zeit.[106] He continued to develop his views on nationalism and democracy, arguing inThe Liberation of Nations (1917) that self-determination was essential for both international democracy and the proletarian struggle. He also refined his distinction between political andsocial revolution.[183]
TheGerman Revolution of 1918–1919 brought Kautsky into government service. He served as chairman of the Socialization Commission and as an advisor in the Foreign Office, tasked with publishing documents on war guilt.[184][185] His work resulted inThe Guilt of William Hohenzollern (1919).[186] Kautsky advocated for a democratic republic and opposed the attempts by the extreme left (Spartacists) to establish a council-based (Räte) system, which he viewed as undemocratic and likely to lead to civil war.[187][188] He believed the workers' councils had an important economic role in gradual socialization but were unsuitable as permanent political bodies.[189] For Kautsky, only a National Assembly elected by universal suffrage could provide the legitimate foundation for a democratic state; councils, as class-based institutions, could not represent the whole nation and would lead to a minority dictatorship.[190] His moderate stance and insistence on democratic processes put him at odds with the increasingly radicalized USPD, and he effectively broke with the party by mid-1919 when it endorsed the concept of a council dictatorship.[191]
Kautsky's plan for socialization was gradualist, emphasizing orderly transition, compensation for expropriated property to maintain production, and adaptation to the technical development of different industries. He saw the state's role as facilitative rather than directly administrative in a socialized economy.[192] His proposals included the dissolution of the standing army, the submission of the bureaucracy to a national assembly, and the devolution of police powers to municipalities.[193]
Kautsky was an early and persistent critic of theBolshevik Revolution. While he had seen Russia as ripe for a political (bourgeois-democratic) revolution, he argued that the conditions for a socialist revolution were absent. His critique stemmed from a lifelong commitment to democratic principles, which he saw as a precondition for socialism.[194][195][196] His most comprehensive critique came inThe Dictatorship of the Proletariat (1918). He argued that socialism's goal was the abolition of all exploitation and oppression, which required democracy, not a dictatorship of one faction of the proletariat over others and the peasantry.[197] He contended that the Bolshevik reliance on will over objective conditions, their suppression of democratic forms like theConstituent Assembly in favor ofsoviets, and their violent methods would lead to an oppressive regime and ultimately fail.[198][199][200] He argued that the Bolsheviks had perverted the Marxist concept of thedictatorship of the proletariat, which for Marx and Engels was a "state of fact" based on the democratic rule of a proletarian majority—as exemplified by theParis Commune—not a "form of government" based on the suppression of democracy.[201][202][196] Kautsky predicted that this "original sin ofBolshevism"—the abolition of elections and denial of freedom of speech and assembly—would give rise to a "new class of bureaucratic exploiters, no better than the Tsaristchinovniks".[203]
This sparked a famous polemic with Lenin, whoseThe Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky (1918) fiercely attacked Kautsky as a betrayer of Marxism.[204] The theoretical disagreement extended to their views on democracy. Lenin accused Kautsky of a "formal" conception of democracy, arguing that bourgeois democracy was merely a façade for the class rule of the bourgeoisie. Kautsky, in turn, saw democracy as a principle that was alien to capitalism and could only be genuinely realised by the proletariat.[205] Kautsky continued to criticize the Soviet regime throughout his life, developing a theory that Bolshevism was a new form of class society, a "state capitalism" ruled by a bureaucratic "new class", and thatStalinism was a form of "counter-revolution" worse thanBonapartism.[206][207][208]
After the USPD split in 1920, with the majority joining theCommunist Party (KPD), Kautsky advocated for reunification of the remaining USPD members with the SPD, which occurred in 1922.[209][210][211] He drafted the SPD'sHeidelberg Program in 1925 but never felt at home in the increasingly reformist party of theWeimar Republic.[209][210][142] In 1924, Kautsky moved to Vienna on the invitation of the Austrian Socialists, effectively retiring from active party politics.[212][210][213] His concerns shifted to more abstract theorizing and continued criticism of Bolshevism.[213] He urged Russian émigré opponents of Bolshevism, particularlyMensheviks, to unite and prepare for the communists' inevitable collapse.[214] While he had little direct involvement in theLabour and Socialist International (LSI), he was an honored figure within it. He remained a highly respected figure among the exiled Mensheviks, and maintained a close correspondence with figures likePavel Axelrod andFyodor Dan, who saw him as their "only loyal and stout support in the international arena during the first two decades of Communist rule in Russia". Kautsky, in turn, felt a deep affection for the Russian socialists, telling Axelrod in 1924: "I have nowhere found such wonderful people as amongst the Russians, with so much warmth, so much theoretical interest, so much simple affection."[215][216]
His magnum opus of this period was the two-volumeDie materialistische Geschichtsauffassung (The Materialist Conception of History, 1927). In this work, Kautsky aimed to provide a systematic presentation ofhistorical materialism, grounding it in the natural sciences but emphasizing the unique dialectical development of human society, driven by the interaction of human intellect (especially technology) and the environment. He reiterated his long-held view that the laws of nature and society were not directly interchangeable.[212][217][218]
Kautsky struggled to understand the rise offascism andNazism, generally viewing them as counter-revolutionary phenomena born of post-revolutionary despair and the economic crisis, appealing to insecurepetit bourgeois and peasant masses. He maintained an often-criticized "optimistic fatalism", believing in the ultimate triumph of reason and socialism.[212][210][219] He argued that fascism was an "interlude" that could not last in developed industrial countries and that its violent methods were ultimately incompatible with the rational needs of modern capitalism.[220] In Vienna, he witnessed the defeat of German socialism at the hands ofAdolf Hitler and the annihilation of Austrian Social Democracy inthe civil war of 1934.[210]
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Following theAnschluss in March 1938, Kautsky and his wifeLuise, aided by the Czech embassy, fled Vienna by aeroplane forAmsterdam.[221][210][222][223][142] Karl Kautsky died in Amsterdam on 17 October 1938, from complications ofpancreatic cancer, one day after his 84th birthday.[221][222] Several family members, including his wife Luise (who died inAuschwitz) and son Benedikt (who survivedBuchenwald), suffered severely under Nazi persecution.[222][224]
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Kautsky was a pivotal figure in the history ofMarxism, primarily as its leading popularizer and systematizer during the era of theSecond International.[225] Described byLeszek Kołakowski as the "chief architect and, so to speak, the embodiment of Marxist orthodoxy", he translated Marx's complex theories into a coherent doctrine for a mass party, most notably through his editorship ofDie Neue Zeit and his work on theErfurt Program.[226][227] He was known in his time as the "Pope of Marxism".[225][228] According to the scholar Jukka Gronow, Kautsky was the central figure in the "formation of Marxism" as a distinct doctrine after Marx, creating a theoretical system that became the "common core" for the various theorists of the Second International, including his critics.[229] Kołakowski notes that Kautsky played the main part in creating a "stereotype" of Marxism as an "evolutionist, determinist, and scientific form" that dominated for decades.[3]
Gronow argues that Kautsky's core contribution was his reinterpretation of Marx'sCapital not as a logical critique ofpolitical economy's categories, but as an empirical and historical work that laid out the developmental laws of capitalism.[230] This interpretation, influenced by Engels, presented "simple commodity production" as a real historical stage preceding capitalism. Consequently, Kautsky's critique of capitalism was based on the idea that it violated the original "natural right" of a producer to the product of their own labor. Capitalism, in this view, was characterized by the appropriation of products created collectively by workers, in contrast to the individual appropriation of an earlier, idealized era.[231]
Kautsky's interpretation of Marxism emphasized historical evolution and the inevitability of socialism, but also stressed the need for conscious political action by an organized working class. He sought a balance betweendeterminism andvoluntarism, arguing that while objective conditions shaped history, human will, particularly in the political realm, was crucial.[232] His central political idea was what the historian Lars T. Lih calls the "merger formula": the conviction that "Social Democracy is the merger of socialism and the worker movement".[233] According to this narrative, the socialist party's mission was to bring socialist consciousness—the "good news" of theproletariat's world-historical mission to create socialism—to the hitherto separate and spontaneously resistant working-class movement.[234] His concept of socialist consciousness being "carried into theclass struggle of the proletariat from outside" was famously adopted byVladimir Lenin.[235][236] Kautsky consistently distinguished between political revolution (the seizure of state power) andsocial revolution (the longer-term transformation of economic structures), a distinction that became central to his critique ofBolshevism.[237]
Kautsky's Marxism was characterized by a strong rationalist and humanist bent. He abhorred violence and believed socialism could only be achieved through democratic means by a conscious majority.[238][239] This put him at odds with theLeninist model of avanguard party and revolutionary dictatorship, leading to his denunciation by communists as a "renegade".[240] According to his biographerMassimo Salvadori, the "renegade" charge was a polemical caricature; Kautsky's post-1917 opposition to Bolshevism was a consistent application of the democratic and parliamentary conception of the state that he had developed as early as the 1890s.[241] Non-communist critics often faulted him for revolutionary rhetoric that was not matched by practical action, or for an overly deterministic, "fatalistic" view of history that underestimated the need for pragmatic reform.[242] According toDick Geary, Kautsky's theoretical ambiguity and "optimistic fatalism" made practical sense in the repressive but non-revolutionary political stalemate of Imperial Germany, but left his theory ill-prepared for the revolutionary upheavals after 1914.[243] The philosopherWalter Benjamin later observed that Kautsky'sDarwinian view of history was a "double-edged sword" that served to "maintain the party's faith and determination in its struggle" during periods of persecution, but later "burdened the concept of 'development' more and more as the party became less willing to risk what it had gained".[244]
Kautsky's legacy is contested. While influential, he was "certainly not an outstanding philosopher"; Kołakowski notes his "complete lack of understanding of philosophical problems", stating that the "key problems ofmetaphysics andepistemology ... are unknown to him". He was, however, "pedantically orthodox" in regarding Marxism as a self-sufficient system that should not be supplemented by other philosophies, with the notable exception of Darwinism.[245] Steenson concludes that Kautsky's greatest weakness was his "failure to see his theoretical positions translated into effective action" and to perceive that "practice tended to be self-perpetuating quite independently of theory".[246] Some scholars, such as Moira Donald, argue that Kautsky's influence, particularly on Lenin, has been underestimated. Donald contends that much of what became Bolshevik ideology before 1917 was formulated by Kautsky, and that Lenin was more of a "tactician rather than a thinker", adapting Kautsky's orthodox Marxism to Russian conditions.[247] With the retreat of communism in the late 20th century, Steenson, in his 1991 preface, suggests that Kautsky's moderate, humanist interpretation of Marx might find renewed relevance as a counterpoint to the discredited Leninist tradition.[248]
Kautsky's lifelong engagement with evolutionary theory was central to his thought. He sawDarwinism as a crucial factor in his conversion to materialism and a key scientific basis for a modern, secular worldview.[36] In his pre-Marxist years, his conception of history was a form ofsocial Darwinism, viewing social development as the result of a struggle for existence between races and tribes.[36] After converting to Marxism, he sought to integrate the two theories, though he often insisted on separating the laws of nature from those of society, especially when refuting social Darwinist arguments against socialism.[249]
A core element of Kautsky's synthesis was his theory of "social instincts". Adopting Darwin's idea that morality evolved from the instincts of social animals, Kautsky argued that humanity had inherited "communist instincts" of solidarity, self-sacrifice, and loyalty from its animal ancestors.[250] For him, "the instinct for co-operation within the species is what, in the human race, we call the moral law or the voice of conscience."[251] He contended that these instincts were a selective advantage in the early human struggle for existence but had been suppressed under capitalism, which fostered individualism.[250] Socialism, for Kautsky, was thus not a utopian ideal but was "grounded as much in the essence of the human as in the course of historical development", representing the revival of these innate social instincts.[252]
The greatest tension between Darwinism and Marxism was theMalthusian concept of the struggle for existence driven by population pressure. While initially accepting a modified version under the influence ofFriedrich Albert Lange, Kautsky later rejected its applicability to human society.[253] Around 1900, he resolved this contradiction by abandoning orthodox Darwinian natural selection in favour ofneo-Lamarckism. This theory, which emphasized the inheritance of acquired characteristics and the direct influence of the environment on evolution, was more compatible with his Marxism. It allowed him to explain biological and social evolution without recourse to an intraspecific struggle for existence, which he came to see as playing a minimal role in nature and none in future human society.[254]
Kautsky's writings on population and evolution had a significant, if indirect, influence on the early Germaneugenics movement. His 1880 book,The Influence of Population Increase, which accepted a modified Malthusianism, was a decisive stimulus for the racial hygienistAlfred Ploetz, who sought to reconcile socialism with Darwinian selection.[255] Kautsky himself became a proponent of socialist eugenics. He agreed with eugenicists that modern society, by eliminating the struggle for existence and providing medicine and hygiene, was promoting the degeneration of the human species by allowing the "weak and sick to reproduce".[256] His solution was not the reintroduction of a struggle for existence, which he considered "absurd and hypocritical", but rational social planning. In a socialist society, he argued, the miserable conditions that caused degeneration would be eliminated. The remaining issue of the "detrimental effects of reduced competition" would be countered by replacing natural selection with artificial selection. Kautsky expressed "tremendous faith" that in a rational socialist society, the "weak, sick, and inferior" would voluntarily choose not to have children, guided by public opinion rather than compulsion.[257] These views contained internal contradictions, as his concern for degeneration caused by thelack of struggle for existence reflected a Darwinian logic that clashed with his adopted neo-Lamarckian theory, which emphasized the environment as the primary driver of evolution.[258]
Leftist critics likeKarl Korsch later argued that Kautsky's "Darwino-Marxism" replaced the revolutionarydialectic ofGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Marx with a passive, fatalistic theory of gradual evolution.[259] Kautsky, however, insisted he adhered to Engels's formulation of the dialectic and emphatically denied that biological evolution was incompatible with social revolution, viewing revolution as a "special phase" of evolution under specific conditions.[260]
Kautsky married Louise Strasser in March 1883.[261][58] They lived together in Stuttgart and London. The marriage was often strained by financial difficulties and Kautsky's intense focus on his work. They divorced in 1889 after a lengthy process following their separation in 1888; the split caused considerable distress among their socialist friends, particularly Friedrich Engels.[262][263] Louise Strasser later remarried.[264]
In April 1890, Kautsky marriedLuise Ronsperger, a friend of his mother's.[265][263] This second marriage lasted until Karl's death and was by all accounts a close intellectual and personal partnership. Luise Kautsky was herself a socialist author and translator and acted as Karl's closest critic and collaborator.[266] They had three sons: Felix (b. 1891), Karl Jr. (b. 1892), and Benedikt (b. 1894).[267][268] Kautsky's family life was orderly; he devoted his mornings to writing, took afternoon walks (often with his sons), and evenings were for visiting or light reading. The Kautsky household hosted regular Sunday afternoon gatherings for socialist comrades and international visitors.[269]
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