Karl Johann Kautsky Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Karl Johann Kautsky (1854–1938) was one of the leading figures in socialist theory in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the immediate aftermath of Friedrich Engels’s death, Kautsky arguably became the most influential proponent and defender of orthodox Marxism. His works were translated into several languages in his lifetime, and he played a crucial role in the networking of Marxian movements and thinkers across the globe.

Kautsky was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on October 16, 1854. He studied history and philosophy at the University of Vienna between 1874 and 1879 but did not complete any degree. Kautsky’s political activism seems to have been originally inspired by Czech nationalism, which he became aware of during a visit to his aunt in Bohemia in 1868. In his formative years, he was influenced by figures as diverse as English historian Thomas Buckle, German biologist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel, German physician and philosopher Ludwig Büchner, Czech historian and politician Frantisek Palacky, and French novelist George Sand. Beginning in the early 1870s, Kautsky became increasingly more interested in various strands of socialist thinking. In January 1875, just nine months after its establishment, Kautsky became a member of the Austrian Social Democratic Worker’s Party. However, it would take him several years to adopt a Marxist framework of analysis.

Kautsky established himself as a leading socialist thinker in the 1880s; developed personal contacts and friendships with the most important exponents of Marxian thinking of his time, such as Friedrich Engels, Max Adler, August Bebel, and Eduard Bernstein; and became the primary editor of the famous socialist periodical die Neue Zeit. His standing in the Marxian movement was obvious at the Erfurt Congress of 1891, where he wrote the theoretical part of the official program of the world’s largest socialist party, Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD). Das Erfurter Programm, Kautsky’s pamphlet that was later turned into a book in 1892, became his most famous work, and is still considered one of the important Marxist classics. In the 1890s, he was also at the forefront of Marxist reflections on the so-called agrarian question, namely, the intensely debated potential impact of nonproletarian classes on the proletarian struggle.

From the early 1900s forward, Kautsky found himself in the unfortunate position of having to fight simultaneous battles on numerous fronts: against the establishment of the day, against noncontinental socialists such as Ernest Belfort Bax, against Bernstein’s controversial revisionism, and against the more revolutionary exponents of Marxism. In all his battles, he tried to expose the silent and hidden debates involved. For example, he wrote a remarkably candid article in which he reflected on his own initial encouragement of Bernstein’s Marxist self-criticism. Such intellectual integrity, however, would cost him dearly. Following the Russian Revolution of 1905, Kautsky came increasingly under attack from radical Marxists. In the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Lenin openly targeted him for his theories such as ultra-imperialism, in which Kautsky entertained the possibility of relatively peaceful continuation of capitalist exploitation under evolving interimperial strategies. Thereafter, “renegade Kautsky,” as he was labeled by Lenin, became gradually marginalized both politically and intellectually. Kautsky died in Amsterdam on October 17, 1938, leaving behind a wide range of writings in different formats.

Bibliography:

Geary, Dick. Karl Kautsky. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987.
Kautsky, Karl. Karl Kautsky: Selected Political Writings. Translated and edited by Patrick Goode. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983.
Pierson, Stanley. Marxist Intellectuals and the Working-Class Mentality in Germany, 1887–1912. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993.
Salvadori, Massimo. Karl Kautsky and the Socialist Revolution, 1880–1938. London:Verso, 1979.
Steenson, Gary P. Karl Kautsky, 1854–1938: Marxism in the Classical Years. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1978.

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