A Return to Kautsky and Liebknecht for the SPD?
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https://www.dw.com/en/is-socialism-the-future-for-germanys-ailing-spd/a-49516665
Democratic socialism and a return to grassroots politics.
“We welcome accusations that our views are unrealistic, fantastic, that our heads are in the clouds,” Kühnert says calmly of his critics. “They say we’re radical.”
He grows louder as he lists off the ills of Germany’s current political establishment: Inhumane migration policies, the resurgence of right-wing extremism, ignored societal inequality. “The circumstances in which we’re living are radical!”“…Such scenes could lead one to believe that excitement for socialism is growing in Germany, especially among young people…Such assumptions wouldn’t be far-fetched…”
“…Such scenes could lead one to believe that excitement for socialism is growing in Germany, especially among young people…Such assumptions wouldn’t be far-fetched…”
Yes they would. Articles like this simply reinforce the already boundless confusion about socialism and what it actually means. As a supporter of TZM recently and erroneously observed “Socialism is defined as ‘the use of public funds to pay for public services’”, which is precisely what the SPD represents.
The article goes on to state: “So the new-and-improved SPD needs to be socialist, but not radically so. And it needs to be led by an outsider courageous enough to speak out about the tricky issues Germany faces in the future…..”
(emphasis added)Quite the antithesis of what we understand by Socialism.
I saw this as related to previous discussion that the idea of “socialism” is again being brought into popular discourse, akin to Sanders and AOC bringing the concept, no matter how inaccurate, back into the political discourse in America.
I was merely acknowledging that we are entering a time, a short window of opportunity, perhaps, where there is an increasing receptive audience for socialist ideas.
It is for those German socialists to resurrect the revolutionary tradition rather than just radical ideas of Luxemburg and Liebknecht and Kautsky (on a good day) which, may now have an atmosphere where their ideas might resonate.
Where these absent socialists are is the real question we should all be asking ourselves.
A return to Wilhelm Liebknecht that would be something:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/liebknecht-w/1899/nocomp/index.htm
But I couldn’t find any reference to either him or Kautsky in the link, so is anybody there really talking about this?
There was no mention, and as far as I can see, reading between the lines, the return to “socialism” is to the more left-wing post-war SPD governments.
Again my point is that there is the opportunity for a German socialist to raise the relevance of the radical wing of the SPD from the past. I have read the German DW website regularly and recall very few references to it.
There seemed to be a vacuum on the post-WW1 revolutionary upheaval as if the only events were the murders of L and L. It is as if they seek to hide it all from modern eyes.
If we had a German companion party, I am sure we would be concentrating the centenary commemorations of the lost or stillborn revolution as two historians have described it as.
I think this shift within the SPD is not a sea change in attitudes but simply the door beginning to open.
It has been a very long time since I last heard from our Comrade Sander so I am guessing we possess no German or Austrian contacts for us to use as a springboard.
We are forgetting that in Germany there is another party calling itself “socialist” which situates itself to the left of the SPD — Die Linke (The Left), which is in a line of descent from the old KPD and the SED party which ruled East Germany though it doesn’t claim this heritage. It has non-negligeable electoral support and is represented in the Bundestag and regional parliaments. Though it wouldn’t claim Kautsky it would both Liebknechts (father and son). Its foundation (all German parties have them for tax and subsidy purposes) is called the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. In contrast that of the SPD is called the Friederich Ebert Stiftung, after the first President of the Weimar Republic who was in that post at the time of the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.
Their English-language website is here. There is an interesting video on Rosa Luxemburg on the home page of the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. One of those interviewed is the “Marxist-Humanist” Peter Hudis.
There are also much smaller, more interesting groups in Germany such Gegen Kapital und Nation (Against Capital and Nation).
They will not return to the stands that Kaustky had before the 1900, during that time Kautsky was a revolutionary socialist, and Lenin was a pale image of him who called Kautsky a renegade in 1914
PS. Peter Hudis, and Kevin Anderson are doing a good job with Luxembourg and they are republishing all the works of Rosa Luxembourg
Marcos wrote “…during that time Kautsky was a revolutionary socialist…”.
That is a myth, Marcos. Kautsky was never any sort of ‘revolutionary socialist’. He was an elitist, who had no time for workers’ democracy, democratic control of social production, which are both how we, I think, would define as ‘revolutionary socialist’.
And you are a revolutionary socialists ? Now, in this occasion I would say that I prefer to choose Kautsky instead of you. You can not even tie the shoelaces of Karl Kautsky.
Always thought that it was the model of the German SPD that all socialist parties at the time aspired to be, even our own.
It was a class party, not just politically but socially, apart from a mass membership and vote, it also sponsored sports clubs, numerous national and local newspapers, many cultural societies and a lot more expressions and reflections of the German working class everyday life.
But this brought with it the professional politicians and party-machine bureaucrats. The political managers. And of course they required ideological pillars to support them.
The political manifestoes had become watered-down reformism even in Marx’s time and Kautsky, as much as Bernstein, did play his part in this process, as well as the legacy of Lassalle sowed its seeds that took root and grew. They were others complicit too Karl Liebknecht? August Bebel? A host of others.
Being Marxists we try not to assign blame to individuals but explore the broader and deeper material reasons and causes, while acknowledging the culpability of certain personalities, something I admit i’m not qualified to really explain, not being a fan of their style of writing.
But the left-wing was not without influence, it was not a fringe, ineffectual tendency but one that still had potential.
We in the SPGB did learn some lessons from the rise and fall of the SPD but I am not sure if our analysis is fully definitive. Well worth one of our more cleverer members to do a study on the topic, reaching back in time to contemporary sources and using hindsight to bring out the consequences (not sure if that is the scientific manner of a materialist student of history, not being an academic but I think you all know what I mean)
In certain occasions during their life Marx and Engels sounded like Mensheviks, elitists, and Blanquists, are we going to reject all their contributions because of that ? In certain occasions before 1903 Lenin sounded like Marx and Engels too, and then he changed his mind
The problem of the pre-WW1 SPD is not so much why a once revolutionary socialist party went reformist (which has tended to be our approach, ie because it had a minimum programme of democratic and social reforms which attracted support for these rather than for socialism) but why what was always essentially a pro-democracy reformist party claimed for a period to be a revolutionary socialist one (a thesis subject for Alan’s Ph.D. candidate).
ALB wrote… “The problem of the pre-WW1 SPD is … why what was always essentially a pro-democracy reformist party claimed for a period to be a revolutionary socialist one”
Yes, this is why it’s right to criticise not just Kautsky as an individual, but the whole movement: people, party, ideology, aims, methods, etc.
Neither Kautsky, nor the SPD, was revolutionary socialist, which raises the question of why any revolutionary socialists today would regard either Kauksky or any other of the, as alan lists “professional politicians, party-machine bureaucrats, political managers, ideological pillars”, should be regarded as in the revolutionary socialist tradition.
It was never, as alan also claims though, a ‘class party’. A ‘working class party’ is one which is democratically controlled by workers, and can be changed by them, rather than controlled and changed by “professional politicians, party-machine bureaucrats, political managers, ideological pillars”.
I think the early Party members regarded the SPD pre-WW1 in the same way that Tony Benn, I think it was, regarded (mistakenly) the Labour Party as: while not a socialist party at least a “party with socialists in it.” After all, they had themselves just come out of such an organisation.
What was Marx and Engels and others doing in a Reformist Party ? There were socialists within a reformist party. Why Marx and Engels drafted a document known as the Communist Manifesto with reformists and state capitalist clauses ?
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