Podcast on Kautsky
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For what its worth, Engels to Bebel in March 1875 —
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/letters/75_03_18.htm
— in which,
” ‘We would therefore suggest that ‘Gemeinwesen’ [“commonalty”] be universally substituted for ‘state’; it is a good old German word that can very well do service for the French “Commune.” “
Have we not someone on this site with the linguistic (native language) and presumed political competence to speak to the matter of ‘Zukunftsstaat’
The literal translation of Zukunftsstaat is of course Future State.
However, I do not consider myself sufficiently competent enough politically to say if Kautsky intended a more nuanced meaning.Gesellschaft, for example, could mean society but depending on the particular context might equally translate as corporation, company, group of people or guests!
Not much help I know 🙂
Did Kautsky envision the ‘Zukunftsstaat’ as having some kind of coercive force that stands above society in general? The only way we could answer that is to read the chapter, and then we can know if the translation of staat as ‘commonwealth’ was a liberty or not.
To bring this back to the podcast, rather than Kautsky in general, all of the commentators seemed to be sympathetic to the idea of the revolutionary use of parliament and said it is a view that isn’t expressed very often these days. But what can we conclude from that?
Marx himself used the word a few times in his Critique of the Gotha Programme. He used it in the literal sense of a future State as a political institution as he was criticising the programme’s advocacy of a “free people’s state”. He used it to show that their “future state” was the already existing capitalist state in countries like the USA and Switzerland.
At one point he also asked about “the future state of communist society” (“ zukünftigen Staatswesen der kommunistischen Gesellschaft” by which he said he meant “what social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present state functions?” (as of course will some administrative and other functions such as education).
I don’t know if there is any significance in the fact that he didn’t use the word Zukunftsstaat in this connection.
In any event, the content pof the section with that heading in Kautsky’s pamphlet indicates that he was using the word there in a wider sense than just the state as a political institution.
Chapter IV of The Class Struggle is Kautsky’s commentary on Article 5 of the Erfurt Program, the 1891 political platform of the German Social Democratic Party.
Engels , though preoccupied with preparation of Capital Volume III for the press, was involved on the sidelines.
The young bloggers are commenting on Kautsky’s Chapter IV.
Erfurt Program Article 5 reads
- “Private ownership in the instruments of production, once the means of securing to the producer the ownership of his product, has to-day become the means of expropriating the farmer, the artisan, and the small trader, and of placing the non-producers—capitalists and landlords—in possession of the products of labor. Only the conversion of private ownership of the means of production—the land, mines, raw materials, tools, machines and the means of transportation and communication—into social ownership and the conversion of commodity production into socialist production, carried on for and by society, can production on a large scale and the ever-increasing productivity of social labor be changed from a source of misery and oppression for the exploited classes, into one of well-being and harmonious development.”
It’s fascinating to hear how Kautsky’s 19th century social-democratic socialism pleasantly shocks the young commentators, and how much of it rings true in the 21st century to people, presumably schooled to see “socialism” through a Leninist lens.
The discussion reveals much anti-socialist confusion Lenin has wrought!
We can look for any linguistic justification but Karl Kautsky meant Socialist State, and socialist money , as well Dictatorship of the proletariat meant Government of the proletariat.
Kautsky meant that a state is going to be established in a future society, and for Marx it was only a temporary measure applicable to the condition of his time which is also wrong because the wage slave can not exploit himself or herself. Money will not exist in a socialist society, both Kautsky conceptions are wrong
Personally, I think that Marx should have never mentioned it because it has created too many confusion and it was used by the Bolsheviks to justify their dictatorship, even more, Lenin wrote that the central conception of Marxism is the dictatorship of the proletariat and that is wrong too
Yes, the podcast was interesting. What struck me was how their discussion of the version of Marxism we inherited from Kautsky led to the same sort of discussions and conclusions as we have had in our party — about the inevitability or not of socialism (more the inevitability that capitalism cannot continue indefinitely); the futility of drawing up blueprints since we can’t know the situation when socialism is established; how the “underdeveloped countries” cannot avoid capitalism as long as the developed parts of the world remain capitalist; how governments can only manage the capitalist status quo and how they have to comply with the economic laws of capitalism.
On this last point, the podcasters amused themselves by describing governments as “middle management” carrying out decisions made higher up the chain of command, their boss being the workings and imperatives of the capitalist economy. This analogy had already been made by Peter Joseph of Zeitgeist. It’s good and one we can take up.
At the beginning the Socialist Party was very uncritical on Karl Johann Kautsky He wrote several works which are similar to the stand of Marx and Engels but other of his works sound like Market socialism, although I do not think that Lenin book The Renegade Kautsky is fair, but as the socialist party said: Lenin in front of Kautsky is only a shadow,
https://bobocheesechimp.medium.com/in-defense-of-karl-kautsky-a575cc9327d3
It did not say Trotsky, but the spelling of Kautsky was incorrect. It was corrected
Anyway, here’s the view we expressed at the time on the Kautsky-Lenin debate:
I do not think that Lenin book The Renegade Trotsky is fair
It’s The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/Incidentally, Hal Draper has argued that Lenin’s vanguardism was implicit in the Second International generally and Kautsky in particular, and all Lenin was doing was making it explicit.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htmIf this is correct it would bring out another point of departure from the Second International and Kautsky. All the SPGB histories do not bring out the fact that we took the self-emancipation of the working class seriously, whereas the left did not. And this remains true today.
It was referring to the pamphlet written by Lenin known as : The Renegade Kautsky ( The proletarian revolution and the renegade Kautsky )
The concept of the vanguard party already existed in the Second International and Lenin said that it was a temporary measure applicable to Russia, and he was not going to edit What is to be done ? , the concept was internationally propagated by Stalin ( as well Stalin created the concept of Marxism Leninism ) and other leaders of the bolshevik party. The Marxist Humanists argue that the original idea came from Ferdinand Lasalle
I don’t think that Draper was right. Yes, both Social Democratic and Leninist parties seek to lead the working class and to act on its behalf doing something for the workers. In that sense both are “vanguards” that reject working class self-activity and that the emancipation of the working class can only be the work of the working class itself.
But the internal organisation of these two types of party is different. Social Democratic parties, at least on paper, are organised on a democratic basis, with local branches that can propose motions for debate at their conference which decides policy; there are internal elections and sometimes a vote of the whole membership. Ok, these parties are generally controlled by their parliamentary leaders but they are not in complete control.
Contrast this internal structure with that of a Leninist party. Members of these can elect the committee and officers of their local branch but that’s the limit. The leadership decides policy. Conferences don’t vote on motions presented by branches but on a “perspective” or “thesis” proposed by the leadership on a take it or leave it basis. The leadership itself is not elected from a list of individuals proposed by branches but from a slate chosen and presented by the outgoing leadership, once again on a take it or leave it basis. Individuals can’t stand against this slate; those who might disagree with what the leadership slate stands for have to present an alternative slate. Such a party has a built-in (and unapologetic) top-down command structure in the hands of a self-perpetuating leadership that renews itself by co-option.
That is what is more usually the meant by a “vanguard party”. It is a Leninist theory and practice. Social Democratic parties can be described as “vanguards” but not as “vanguard parties”.
Lenin may have originally intended this structure only for Russian political conditions under Tsarism but once the Bolshevik party got power it imposed this structure on the parties in the West that supported its rule. The transformation of these parties from Social Democrat parties to “vanguard parties” was called “Bolshevikisation”.
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