David W. Morgan

Marxism and revolution : Karl Kautsky and the Russian Marxists, 1900-1924

This book offers a new interpretation of the origins of Russian Marxism, placing it firmly within the folds of the western European socialist movement. Moira Donald argues that the chief theoretician of German Marxism, Karl Kautsky, was a primary influence on Lenin and the Russian Social Democratic Party, and that only the revolution of 1917 severed the Bolsheviks from mainstream orthodox Marxism. Donald contends that Lenins thought was neither original nor especially significant in the development of Marxism, but that his ability lay in adapting his ideas to fit his revolutionary strategy. She places Lenins writings in their historical context, showing that they were written as individual pieces, each with a specific aim and often directed within the Party. Lenin was a tactician rather than a thinker, says Donald, and even those areas of his thought that seem most original - the party, the role of the intelligentsia, and imperialism - reveal his significant debt to Kautsky. According to Donald, Lenin was not the only Russian Marxist to borrow ideas from Kautsky: Trotskys theory of permanent revolution, which was to prove crucial when it was taken up by the Bolsheviks in 1917, was also influenced by Kautskys thought. Kautskys relationship with the Russian Social Democratic Party has been widely underestimated because of the later split between them. Using a wide range of published and unpublished sources, Donald reveals how important Kautskys role was in formulating the ideology of the Bolsheviks - the only effective revolutionary party in the socialist movement. Moira Donald was lecturer in history in the Department of History and Archaeology at Exeter University.

The Eclipse of Karl Kautsky, 1914-19241

The abrupt decline of Karl Kautsky’s influence and reputation during the First World War and German Revolution is traced not only to the gap between his doctrines and the shifting orientation of German and international socialism, but to some specific features of his outlook and situation: his rationalistic, moderate and mediating proclivities, his inability to maintain a connection to any political party on the German scene, and his loss of personal connections to the higher realms of practical politics. IN 1914 KARL KAUTSKY STOOD at the pinnacle of his fame and influence as the leading theoretical spokesman of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), the dominant party of the Socialist International. Editor of the influential weekly Die Neue Zeit, frequently consulted by the leadership on party policy, a respected voice at international socialist congresses, Kautsky for three decades before 1914 had been expounding and adapting Marxist doctrine in ways that are still honored (with reservations) by socialists and even by Leninists. But the ensuing era of war and revolutions changed all this. By the end of 1919 Kautsky was effectively a man without a party, clinging to a vestigial International, his editorial career over and his views on most subjects little heeded; by 1924 he had passed into a scholarly retirement in Vienna. Though he wrote extensively after 1914, including some of his largest works, today only his commentaries on the Bolshevik and German Revolutions are known beyond small circles of specialists and admirers. The collapse of his standing before contemporaries and before history was abrupt and dramatic. The deepest roots of Kautsky’s eclipse are plain: the nature and needs of the European socialist movement changed, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, while Kautsky’s thought continued along lines established before the war.2 His thinking belonged to an era of peace and seemingly inexorable progress ; of semi-authoritarian institutions and sharply drawn class lines which affronted the workers’ sense of justice and formed them into a united movement seeking radical change; of prosperity and political stability that made violent political action seem neither necessary nor possible in the near future. Kautsky’s aggressive but fundamentally optimistic, rationalistic, and peaceable thought, which combined prospects for reform and revolution in delicate theoretical balance, was well suited to such times. His emphasis was