Karl Kautsky: Selected Political Writings

171 Pages·1983·17.375 MB·English

by  Patrick Goode (eds.)

KARL KAUTSKY: SELECTED POLITICAL WRITINGS
Also by Patrick Goode
KARL KORSCH: A Study in Western Marxism
Edited and translated by Patrick Goode, with T. B. Bottomore
AUSTRO-MARXISM
READINGS IN MARXIST SOCIOLOGY
KARL KAUTSKY:
SELECTED POLITICAL
WRITINGS
Edited and translated by
Patrick Goode
Selection, translation and editorial
matter © Patrick Goode 1983
Chapter I © J. H. W. Dietz 1899
Chapter 2 ©J. H. W. Dietz 1899
Chapter 3 © J. H. W. Dietz 1906
Chapter 4 © Buchhandlung Vorwarts 1914
Chapter 5 © Buchhandlung Vorwarts andj. H. W. Dietz 1909,
1914, 1915
Chapter 6 ©Wiener Volksbuchhandlung 1918
Chapter 7 © Wiener Volksbuchhandlung and Verlag Neues
Vaterland 1919, 1921
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
First published 1983 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-0-333-28384-4 ISBN 978-1-349-17269-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-17269-6
Typeset in Great Britain by
WESSEX TYPESETTERS LTD
Frome, Somerset
Contents
Acknowledgements VI
Introduction VII
I THE AGRARIAN QUESTION 15
2 THE REVISIONIST CONTROVERSY 15
3 MARXISM AND ETHICS 32
Ethics and the materialist conception of history 33
Life, science and ethics 46
4 THE MASS STRIKE 53
5 IMPERIALISM 74
The road to power 75
Accumulation and imperialism 82
The necessity of imperialism 89
The social democracy in wartime 93
6 DICTATORSHIP AND DEMOCRACY 97
The dictatorship of the proletariat 98
7 THE TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 126
Capitalism and socialism 127
Terrorism and communism 136
Bibliography !51
Index 160
v
Acknowledgements
I owe a profound debt of gratitude to Professor John H. Kautsky
for giving permission for the publication of Kautsky's work, and
for his invaluable advice on selection and translation. Without his
extremely generous assistance this book could not have appeared.
I would also like to thank William Geldart, Kathleen
Llanwarne and Vivien von Schelling for their assistance with
translations. The library staff at the London School ofEconomics
have also been particularly helpful.
Brighton Patrick Goode
VI
Introduction
At his death in 1938 Karl Kautsky had virtually no influence on
the working-class movement. Yet even at the height of their
disputes, as bitter an opponent as Trotsky had conceded that
'Kautsky was without doubt the most outstanding theoretician of
the Second International and over the major part ofhis conscious
life he represented and generalised the better sides of the Second
International. '1 In the twenty years before the outbreak of the first
imperialist war Kautsky was indeed recognised by all trends of
opinion within the socialist movement as the leading authority on
Marxism. He translated and edited Marx's works (such as The
Poverty of Philosophy and Theories of Surplus Value); he wrote
prolifically on all aspects of Marxism, not only on its analysis of
politics and economics; and from 1883 onwards he edited Die Neue
Zeit, the first major periodical aiming to establish Marxism as a
materialist science of society. During this period his writings were
translated into every major European language and were fre
quently published in the United States.
Kautsky himself seems to have been more interested in
establishing Marxism as a general scientific method, rather than
in its application to particular political questions. Although he
helped to write the Hainfeld programme ( 1888) of the Austrian
Social Democratic Party and wrote the theoretical section of the
German SPD's Erfurt Programme (1891), it was only with
considerable reluctance that he involved himself in political
polemics about the immediate questions facing the revolutionary
movement. Yet, paradoxically, he is chiefly remembered today,
not for his exposition ofMarxism as a science of society, but as the
protagonist in some of the most crucial political debates in
the history of Marxism - his opponents being, successively,
Bernstein, Otto Bauer, Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin and Trotsky.
While the writings ofhis opponents are for the most part readily
accessible- particularly those of Lenin- Kautsky's contribution
to these debates often remains untranslated or, if previously
translated, now out of print. Thus for every 100 readers of Lenin's
The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky it is doubtful ifo ne
Vll
Vlll Introduction
has read Kautsky's The Dictatorship of the Proletariat which Lenin
was attacking.
This selection from Kautsky's writings aims to make accessible
to English readers his side in these controversies so that the
controversies themselves may be more properly evaluated. About
half of the material presented here has not been translated into
English before; the greater part of the remainder has long been
unavailable. It is limited to Kautsky's political writings; the
reader interested in his more general theoretical works on the
scientific basis of Marxism should consult the definitive statement
of his views, Die materialistische Geschichtsauffassung. 2
For a detailed outline of Kautsky's life and work, I refer the
reader to Gary P. Steenson's Karl Kautsky 1854-1938: Marxism
in the Classical Years (Pittsburgh, 1979). Instead of duplicating
Steenson's work in a lengthy introduction, I have decided to
preface each chapter, which deals with a specific controversy
involving Kautsky, with a brief analysis of its political context.
The bibliography contains a selection of Kautsky's work; for
background reading on the period, I recommend Carl E.
Schorske's classic work, German Social Democracy 1905-1917: The
Development of the Great Schism (Harvard, 1955).
Notes to Introduction
I. Trotsky, L., 'Karl Kautsky', in Political Prrifiles, trans. R. Chappell (London,
1972) pp. 65-9 (here p. 69), first published 1919. See also 'Karl Kautsky', in
Writings of Leon Trotsky 1938-39 (New York, 1974) pp. 98, 99, written 8
November 1938.
2. Berlin, 1927, 2 vols. My translation of the section 'Class, Occupation and
Status', vol. 2, pp. 3&-42 will appear in Bottomore and Goode (eds), Readings
in Marxist Sociology (Oxford, 1983). See also Goode, P., 'The Materialist
Conception of History', ch. 6, pp. 114--35 of Karl Korsch: A Study in Western
Marxism (London, 1979).
CHAPTER ONE
The Agrarian Question
The Erfurt Congress (14-20 October 1891) of the German Social
Democratic Party (SPD) accepted a programme which combined a
theoretical section largely written by Kautsky and a section on tactics written
by Kautsky and Rebel. The unity of the SPD around a specific programme
was to prove illusory - within three years the opening skirmishes of the
revisionist controversy had begun.
Initially it centred round the agrarian question. Georg von Vollmar1
advocated that the SP D modify its programme so as to appeal to the
numerically large peasantry and so win for the party the large numbers if
votes which the industrial proletariat was still too small to provide.
Theoretically he argued that the laws ifc apitalist development formulated by
Marx in relation to industrial capitalism -the rapid concentration ifs maller
enterprises and the progressive disappearance if the middle classes -did not
apply to agriculture. Vollmar put forward this position at the Frankfurt
Congress (1894). Kautsky replied in a series of articles, 2 and his resolution
at the Breslau Congress ( 1895), more than half cif which was devoted to the
agrarian programme, was accepted by a large majority ( 158 to 63 votes).
The results of the 1895 census seemed to give a decisive refutation if
Kautslry 's standpoint: between 1882 and 1895 the number if middle-sized
agrarian holdings had increased, both relatively and absolutely. Kautslry
wrote Die Agrarfrage ( 1899) to reaffirm the Marxist argument that the
critical question was not the physical size of the agrarian holding, but the
intensity if capitalist exploitation - the concentration of capital did not
necessarily mean the concentration ifl and holdings. The class polarisation if
those involved in agriculture into wealthy capitalist farmers and
impoverished rural proletarians was an inexorable law of the progress if
capitalist agriculture: the middle layers inevitably joined one class or the
other-there was no basis for the continuation ift heir independent existence.
The excerpts in this chapter are taken from Die Agrarfrage (Stuttgart,
1899) pp. v-vii, 290-5, 306-13.
2