Kautsky – new book
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Considering the influence of Karl Kautsky on the early members of the SPGB, isn’t it a bit surprising that subsequent studies of him have been left to others.
WW carries an article by Ben Lewis summarising his book on Kautsky.
https://www.weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1289/dispelling-the-kautsky-myths/
He quotes KK:
“The conquest of state power by the proletariat therefore does not simply mean the conquest of the government ministries, which then, without further ado, administers the previous means of rule – an established state church, the bureaucracy and the officer corps – in a ‘socialist’ manner. Rather, it means the dissolution of these institutions. As long as the proletariat is not strong enough to abolish these institutions of power, then taking over individual government departments and entire governments will be to no avail. A socialist ministry can at best exist temporarily. It will be worn down in the futile struggle against these institutions of power, without being able to create anything permanent.”
That’s exactly what we say and of course and why you quoted it. It is an expansion in clearer terms of what Engels wrote in his 1891 post script to Marx’s pamphlet in the Paris Commune if 1871, The Civil War in France:
“In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at the earliest possible moment, until such time as a new generation, reared in new and free social conditions, will be able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap-heap.”
This contrasts with Lenin’s view that the present state should be completely smashed and replaced by a new one based on the dictatorship of a vanguard party. In the debate between Kautsky and Lenin on the so-called “dictatorship of the proletariat” Kautsky wiped the floor with Lenin.
In the end Kautsky became a open reformist. It is significant that, while the Party published as separate pamphlets the first three sections of his explanation of the German Social Democratic Party’s 1891 Erfurt Programme, we omitted the fourth part which explained its programme of immediate democratic and social reforms.
We will definitely get a copy of that book to review but not quite sure how with it’s price of £121. So maybe we will just comment on Lewis’s article !
Pretty soon L Bird will show up saying that Karl Kautsky was a follower of Frederich Engels like the members of the SPGB.
Karl Kautsky took much better stands than Lenin, sadly, in the end, he became a reformist and a warmonger in 1900 instead of 1914 as Lenin indicated in his book Kautsky The renegade.
There are several works written by Engels which are correct and they can not be dismissed because they were written by Engels
marcos wrote: “Pretty soon L Bird will show up saying that Karl Kautsky was a follower of Frederich Engels like the members of the SPGB.”
An accurate forecast for an accurate statement, marcos! 😛
Yes, Lenin made Kautsky the most well known renegade since Judas Iscariot. But it’s a Leninist lie to say that Kautsky voted for Imperial Germany’s war credits in 1914. He wasn’t even a member of the Reichstag and in internal discussions urged abstention. Pretty weak in the circumstances but not the same as voting for. When the German SDP split over the war issue in 1917 he went with the pro-peace USPD (Independent SPD).
Actually of course it was Lenin who reneged — on Marx’s view of the socialist revolution.
I have read the whole article properly now. Presumably he wrote it and the book to justify the Weekly Worker’s demand for Britain to become a Republic. Obviously the monarchy can’t survive into socialism but it’s unclear whether the WW wants one now under capitalism. If they do, then the SWP member who Lewis criticises for saying “we don’t want to be like the US and France” was correct — that’s what we would say: there is no difference between a capitalist republic and a capitalist constitutional monarchy, so this is a non-issue.
It is also odd, for someone who has a PhD for a study of the period, to write that Waldeck-Rousseau, the entry into whose cabinet by nominal socialist Millerand in 1899 caused a scandal in socialist circles, was the butcher the Paris Commune. That was General Galliffet who was the Minister of War (in those days they called a spade a spade) in his cabinet; which made Millerand’s action all the more reprehensible.
The SPGB was represented at the Congress of the Second International in Amsterdam in 1904 and a report of the Bebel v Jaures debate that Lewis mentions appeared in issue No 1 of the Socialist Standard.
Also, I don’t think that Marx and Engels did use the term “commune state” as Lewis states.
I am glad that I read Engels when I was very young, it was much better than the crap that I learned from others books, the educational system and the jesuits and Salesian fathers it opened my eyes for a new world of new ideas
- The real renegade was Vladimir Lenin who turned Marx and Engels into a couple of nationalists and distorted everything written by them and at the present time we are paying the consequences, a bank robber is called a Marxist because he has stolen money and killed peoples in the name of the Marxist revolution
- I have read most of the works of Marx and Engels a I have not seen anywhere using the expression commune state , that is a distortion
- lenin also distorted Martov and up to now know his work are unknown but Lenin in front of him is not even close to his shadow, he is a midget compared with martov and only one of his book was enough to pulverize Lenin completely
- lenin wrote 42 volumes and only 5 of his works are important and they are a distortion of socialism and Marxism
L bird. Is it wrong what Engels wrote on the civil war in France which was written by Marx ?
marcos, Engels not only contradicted Marx, but also contradicted himself, within the same letter.
Plus, Engels wrote that ‘matter’ was a social product, but also wrote the ‘Dialectics of Nature‘, where ‘nature’ supposedly pre-exists its human creators.
Without Marx, no-one now would’ve heard of Engels, who would’ve been a long-forgotten, obscure, minor, 19th century worshipper of pre-Einstein ‘science’, with little to say to us, today.
But… for those who create the unity ‘Marx-Engels’… they live in Lenin’s world… ‘physical’ and ‘material’ world, of course.
And Kautsky lived in that world, too.
L Bird, you have not answered my question on item #194693. I have known for a long time that dialectic of nature is not correct, it is only possible in the realm of the mind. Have we created the unity of Marx-Engels? We have raised critique to both and also Marx contradicts himself on different occasion too. Without Engels volume 2 and 3 of capital would not have been able to be published and without Engels financial support Marx would not have been to able to finish all his works
marcos wrote: “L Bird, you have not answered my question on item #194693.”
Only because I don’t know anything about any issue regarding Engels, Marx, and his The Civil War in France.
marcos wrote: “I have known for a long time that dialectic of nature is not correct, it is only possible in the realm of the mind.”
It’s better to say that any ‘dialectic in nature’ must feature an account of social production, which necessarily involves a practice directed by an active human consciousness.
marcos wrote: “Have we created the unity of Marx-Engels?”
Well, all ‘materialists’ have, because the only way that their ideology can stand up is by: 1) quotes from Engels (there is nothing in Marx, who was critical of ‘materialism’); and 2) linking Engels to Marx, as a unified being, so that Marx’s authority can be invoked. So, as for Lenin, we have ‘Marx-Engels’.
marcos wrote: “We have raised critique to both and also Marx contradicts himself on different occasion too.”
Yes, both must be criticised, and Marx requires a critical update for the 21st century, by workers who begin from ‘Democratic Social Production’. We have to correct, clarify and update Marx’s works.
marcos wrote: “Without Engels volume 2 and 3 of capital would not have been able to be published…”
It’s quite possible to argue that it’s a pity that Engels did publish Marx’s unfinished texts, which completely ignored the work Marx had done after 1867 and his first volume, on Russia and its development and potential future. Marx supported the Narodniks, not the supposed ‘Marxists’, in their political debates of the 1870s and 80s, and seemed to think it was at least theoretically possible for Russia to skip ‘capitalism’ and proceed straight to ‘socialism’. If Marx had been able to publish his own later work, it’s very probable that it would have looked nothing like Capital 2 and 3, as we have them today.
marcos wrote: “…and without Engels financial support Marx would not have been to able to finish all his works”
No, you’re right, Fred was a sound, life-long mate of Charlie. And supporter of his kids, too.
But decency doesn’t necessarily mean he had a clue about Marx’s philosophy of ‘social productionism’ and its democratic imperative. In fact, it’s soon obvious to anyone who reads Engels works, from his 1859 review of Marx, that they were talking about different things.
Unfortunately, it’s Engels’ version of ‘Marx’ that most people are taught. We have to change that, marcos.
L Bird, you are always beating around the bushes
marcos wrote: “L Bird, you are always beating around the bushes”
Well, I thought I treated your post with respect, giving answers to all your points, including admitting that I didn’t have a clue about your earlier question.
Unfortunately, it always seems that materialists, like you, are unable to discuss civilly, or actually answer any questions about Marx, social production, or democracy.
These issues, since they don’t involve ‘matter’, are regarded as ‘beating around the bushes’.
To focus on the subject under discussion, Kautsky was an undemocratic, uneducated, elitist, like many who flocked to ‘Marxism’ in the late 19th/early 20th centuries.
What attracted them was Engels’ talk of ‘Science’ – not Marx’s democratic communism, or his philosophy of ‘social productionism’, within which humanity produces its own universe.
I’ve put this issue in a nutshell for ‘materialists’ to ponder, and hopefully answer: “Would you rather see ‘socialised science’ or ‘scientific socialism’?”.
The former is Marx’s political view – a revolutionised, democratic social activity which changes in history. The latter is Engels’ (and Kautsky’s) – a bourgeois, elitist, apolitical, ahistorical, asocial ‘method’, that allows an elite to tell the rest of us ‘what reality is’, without our active participation.
Neither Engels nor Kautsky understood this. Nor Plekhanov or Lenin. And, apparently, neither you nor the wider SPGB.
Hmmm… I think that I’ll keep ‘beating the bushes’, so that all workers can flush out the ‘materialists’ and their undemocratic ideology.
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