Podcast on Kautsky
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Perhaps, in this aspect (in reference to the article above) Kautsky and Lenin (or at least the Lenin of 1901) and the SPGB do align i.e. the case for socialism needs to be consciously elicited and won’t come automatically out of struggles over pay and conditions.
The divergence is in the role of the party. Only the SPGB and Kautsky take self-emancipation seriously.
Yes, I think the difference will be that while we agree that socialist consciousness comes from outside the day-to-day economic struggle we would say that this comes from other workers and not from outside the working class (as by Lenin’s professional revolutionaries recruited mainly from the Russian intelligentsia).
Also, the political consciousness that Lenin had in mind in 1901 was not a socialist one but a consciousness of the need to overthrow the Tsarist regime and establish a bourgeois republic in Russia.
The really big difference came when, after seizing power, the Bolsheviks including Lenin himself apllied their theory of the need for a vanguard party to lead the political struggle for bourgeois democracy to the political struggle for socialism.
Only the SPGB and Kautsky take self-emancipation seriously.
You have provided no evidence that Kautsky took working class self-emancipation seriously, or at all.
Here is Lenin quoting Kautsky approvingly from an article in Neue Zeit:
Modern socialist consciousness can arise only on the basis of profound scientific knowledge. Indeed, modern economic science is as much a condition for socialist production as, say, modern technology, and the proletariat can create neither the one nor the other, no matter how much it may desire to do so; both arise out of the modern social process. The vehicle of science is not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia [Kautsky’s emphasis]: it was in the minds of individual members of this stratum that modern socialism originated, and it was they who communicated it to the more intellectually developed proletarians who, in their turn, introduce it into the proletarian class struggle where conditions allow that to be done. Thus, socialist consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian class struggle from without and not something that arose within it spontaneously.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ii.htm
“You have provided no evidence that Kautsky took working class self-emancipation seriously, or at all.”
Well no, I didn’t then – I was writing a short forum comment not a masters thesis. But the passage you mention is precisely the one which Lewis thinks has been mistranslated or misrepresented.
From “Karl Kautsky on Democracy and Republicanism” translated by Ben Lewis, footnote by the translator on pg 175
Most English-speaking readers will be familiar with the Russian translation of urwüchsig, as it appears in the famous Kautsky passage quoted by V.I. Lenin in his 1902 pamphlet What is to be done?: ‘In this way, socialist awareness is something brought in to class struggle of the proletariat from without (von Außen Hineingetragenes) and not something that emerges from the class struggle in stikhiinyi [elemental fashion – urwüchsig]. Correspondingly, the old Hainfeld programme [of Austrian social democracy written by Victor Adler and endorsed by Kautsky in 1889] said with complete justice that the task of social democracy is bringing to the proletariat (literally: filling the proletariat up with) the awareness of its position and the awareness of its task’ (quoted in Lih 2008, p. 710). Urwüchsig is often translated as ‘elemental’ or ‘primitive’. This underlines how in this text Kautsky uses it to denote the working-class movement in its most elemental form: i.e., the immediate conflict between the worker and the boss. The above passage is as controversial as it is misrepresented. Numerous anarchists, syndicalists and modern-day Trotskyists see in this passage irrefutable proof of the ‘elitism’ of both Kautsky and Lenin and their distrust of the ‘spontaneous’ working-class movement. However, as can be seen in his discussion of French socialism here, the point Kautsky is mak- ing is that the working class must move beyond this to create a rounded world view if it is to emancipate itself. This is something which does not simply emerge from the conflict between boss and worker. It presupposes the proletariat organising itself in an independent political organisation, which aims at capturing state power and has a revolutionary outlook in respect of all classes in society as a whole – something in which, as Kautsky underlines, all of the tendencies of French socialism at the time were lacking.
If Kautsky was so sure that the working class couldn’t achieve socialism on their own means why was he so keen on democracy, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly etc? If he was a vangardist like Lenin why would he have been critical of the Bolshevik seizure of the state?
The string of assertions by Ben Lewis do not in themselves show that Kautsky was mistranslated or misrepresented. The fact is that Kautsky never supported working class self-emancipation; it was always the leading role of the party.
If Kautsky was so sure that the working class couldn’t achieve socialism on their own means why was he so keen on democracy, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly etc? If he was a vangardist like Lenin why would he have been critical of the Bolshevik seizure of the state?
Kautsky was keen on democracy, freedom of press, etc, and he was critical of Bolshevik suppression of them. There was no contradiction, as you appear to believe, between that and his poor opinion of the working class.
In that passage Lenin quotes, Kautsky is not just saying that socialist consciousness will not develop out of the elemental day-to-day workers struggles. He goes further and says that the idea of socialism first originated in the minds of (bourgeois) intellectuals who communicated it to “the more intellectually developed proletarians” who in turn communicate it to the rest of the working class.
Is this historically correct? The “members of the bourgeois intelligentsia“ Marx and Engels may have clarified socialist theory but they learnt socialist ideas from German and French artisans.
Lewis may have satisfactorily shown that Kautsky (and Lenin) held that socialist consciousness would not emerge spontaneously and automatically out of the elemental workers’ struggles, but not the different proposition that the idea of socialism itself first arose outside the working class. I haven’t read his book so I don’t know whether or not he defends this proposition too.
Actually, the (English translation of the) passage from the draft programme of the Austrian Social Democratic Party that Kautsky criticises does not seem that bad (or to necessarily bear the interpretation Kautsky puts on it):
“The more capitalist development increases the numbers of the proletariat, the more the proletariat is compelled and becomes fit to fight against capitalism. The proletariat becomes conscious of the possibility and of the necessity for socialism.”
What’s wrong with that?
Yes, I noticed that stuff about the origins of socialism too. I don’t think it’s historically correct.
And scientists now, I’m not sure how much it would have been the case in Kautsky’s time, are largely drawn from the working class, not the ‘bourgeois intelligentsia’.
I guess the criticised passage could be read as saying that socialist consciousness arises automatically out of the development of capitalism, and that is how Kautsky is reading it. But I agree, it doesn’t have to be read that way.
Kautsky says that the working class can’t develop socialist consciousness without socialist education (largely provided by a socialist party which would be largely composed of working class people).
Lenin says that since there are only two ideologies (capitalist and socialist), the socialist party is required to stop the working class doing what it would do otherwise – falling under the influence of capitalist ideology. Already in this we can see a difference.
Kautsky might have had a schoolmaster like attitude, but that is different from being a vanguardist in the sense that we describe the Bolsheviks. I’ve not found anything that would support that idea. If others have, please show me.
Democracy and republicanism was mailed it is going to be at the spgb library It is a brand new edition
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