Leon Trotsky: Karl Kautsky

March 18, 1919, revised April 24, 1922

[Leon Trotsky, Portraits Political & Personal, New York 1977, p. 28-33]

Nashe Slovo had to settle accounts with Kautsky among others. His international authority, on the eve of the imperialist war, was still very great, though not nearly what it had been at the turn of the century and especially at the time of the first Russian revolution.

Kautsky was undoubtedly the foremost theoretician of the Second International, and for the better part of his conscious life he represented and gave generalized expression to the best aspects of the Second International. A propagandist and popularizer of Marxism, Kautsky saw his principal theoretical mission as the reconciling of reform and revolution. But he achieved intellectual maturity in an era of reform. Reform was for him the reality. Revolution was a theoretical generalization and a long-term historical prospect.

The Darwinian theory of the origin of species encompasses the entire span of development of the plant and animal kingdoms. The struggle for survival and the processes of natural and sexual selection proceed continuously and uninterruptedly. But if one could observe these processes with ample time at one’s disposal — a millennium, say, as the smallest unit of measure — one would undoubtedly discover with one’s own eyes that there are long ages of relative equilibrium in the world of living things, when the laws of selection operate almost imperceptibly, and the different species remain relatively stable, seeming the very embodiment of Plato’s ideal types. But there are also ages when the equilibrium between plants, animals, and their geophysical environment is disrupted, epochs of geo-biological crisis, when the laws of natural selection come to the fore in all their ferocity, and evolution passes over the corpses of entire plant and animal species. On this gigantic scale Darwinian theory stands out above all as the theory of critical epochs in the plant and animal development.

Marx’s theory of the historical process encompasses the entire history of human social organization. But in ages of relative social equilibrium the fact that ideas depend upon class interests and the property system remains masked. The age of revolution is Marxism’s school of advanced study. Then the struggle of classes resulting from systems of property assumes the character of open civil war, and the systems of government, law, and philosophy are stripped bare and revealed as instruments in the service of classes. Marxist theory itself was first formulated in a prerevolutionary period, when the classes were searching for a new orientation, and it achieved its final form through the experiences of revolution and counterrevolution in 1848 and the following years.

Kautsky did not have this irreplaceable living experience of revolution. He accepted Marxism as a ready-made system and popularized it like a schoolmaster of scientific socialism. The heyday of his activity came in the middle of the deep trough between the crushing of the Paris Commune and the first Russian revolution. Capitalism expanded with invincible might. The working class organizations grew almost automatically, but the final goal, i.e., the social revolutionary task of the proletariat, became separated from the movement itself and led a purely academic existence. This is the source of Bernstein’s notorious aphorism, “The movement is everything, the final goal nothing.” As the philosophy of a workers’ party this was banal nonsense. But as the reflection of the actual spirit of the German Social Democracy during the last quarter century before the war, Bernstein’s utterance was highly indicative: the day-to-day struggle for reforms assumed a self-sufficient quality: the final goal was left to Kautsky’s department.

Kautsky untiringly defended the revolutionary essence of Marx and Engels’s doctrine, although the initiative in repelling revisionist sallies was not usually his, but was taken by the more decisive elements (Luxemburg, Plekhanov, Parvus). In the political arena, however, Kautsky made total peace with the Social Democracy in the form it had acquired, never commenting on its profoundly opportunist nature and never responding to the efforts to make the party’s tactics more resolute. As far as that went, the party, i.e., the ruling bureaucracy, also made peace with Kautsky’s theoretical radicalism. This combination of practical opportunism with revolution in principle found its highest expression in August Bebel, the brilliant skilled worker (a turner), who became the undisputed leader of the party for almost half a century. Bebel supported Kautsky in the realm of theory and remained for Kautsky the court of last appeal in questions of policy. Only Luxemburg sometimes tugged Kautsky farther left than Bebel wanted him to go.

The German Social Democracy had the leading place in the Second International. Kautsky was its acknowledged theoretician and, it seemed, its inspirer. He emerged the victor from the battle with Bernstein. French socialist ministerialism (Millerandism) was condemned in 1903 at the Amsterdam congress in a resolution introduced by Kautsky. Thus Kautsky seemed to have become the acknowledged theoretical lawgiver of international socialism. This was the period of his greatest influence. Opponents and enemies called him the “pope” of the International. Sometimes he was given that grand title by friends, too, though in an affectionate way. As I recall, Kautsky's old mother, a writer of didactic novels, which she dedicated to her "son and teacher,” on her seventieth birthday received a greeting from Italian socialists that read alla mamma del papa (“to the mother of the pope”).

Then came the outbreak of the 1905 revolution [in Russia]. It immediately strengthened the radical tendencies in the international workers’ movement and greatly reinforced Kautsky’s authority as a theoretician. In the internal disputes on questions of the revolution he took a resolute position (though, to be sure, later than others) and forecast a revolutionary Social Democratic government in Russia. Bebel would joke in private about how “Karl has gotten carried away," and smile out of the comer of his thin mouth. In the German party things went as far as a discussion on the general strike and the adoption of a radical resolution. This was Kautsky’s high point. After that came the decline.

I first met Kautsky in 1907, after my flight from Siberia. The defeat of the revolution was not yet evident. Luxemburg’s influence on Kautsky was very great at that time. His authority was beyond question for all the factions of the Russian Social Democracy. It was not without emotion that I walked up the steps of his neat little home in Friedenau, a suburb of Berlin. He gave an “otherworldly” impression — a white-haired little old man with clear blue eyes who welcomed me in Russian: “Zdravstvuite.” With what I already knew of Kautsky from his scholarly works, which had taught us all a good deal, this seemed to complete a very charming personality. The thing that appealed to me most was his lack of vanity, which, as I discovered later, was the result of his unchallenged authority and the inner confidence it gave him. One got very little, however, out of personal conversation with Kautsky. His mind was too angular and dry, too lacking in nimbleness and psychological insight. His judgments were schematic, his jokes trite. For the same reason Kautsky was extremely weak as an orator.

In Russia the revolution was beaten down and the proletariat thrown back. Socialism was shattered and driven underground. The liberal bourgeoisie sought reconciliation with the monarchy on the basis of an imperialist program. A wave of disillusionment with revolutionary methods swept through the International. Opportunism took its revenge. At the same time the tension in international relations between the major capitalist countries kept mounting. The denouement grew nearer. And each socialist party was obliged to make its position completely clear: Was it with its own national state or against it? It was necessary either to draw the appropriate conclusion from revolutionary theory or to carry practical opportunism to its logical end. Yet all of Kautsky’s authority rested on the reconciliation of opportunism in politics with Marxism in theory. The left wing (Luxemburg and others) demanded direct answers. The entire situation demanded them. From the other direction the reformists took the offensive all along the line. Kautsky grew less and less sure of himself, he fought the left wing more and more determinedly, drew closer and closer to the Bernstein people, while vainly trying to maintain the appearance of loyalty to Marxism. He was no longer himself during this time, even in outward appearance. His clear-eyed calm disappeared. Anxiety flickered in his glance. Something was pitilessly gnawing at him from within.

The war brought things to a head, exposing the utter falsity and rottenness of Kautskyism from its very first day. Kautsky's advice was either to abstain from voting for the war credits to Wilhelm or to vote for them “with reservations.” Then a polemic went on for several months during which it became clear exactly what Kautsky was advising. “The International is an instrument of peace, not of war.” Kautsky grabbed at this empty phrase like a drowning man at a straw. Having criticized the excesses of chauvinism, Kautsky began to prepare the way for a general reconciliation with the social patriots after the war. “We are all human; everyone makes mistakes; nevertheless, the war will pass; and we will make a fresh start.”

When the German revolution broke out, Kautsky became something of a foreign minister for the bourgeois republic. He preached a break with Soviet Russia (“No matter, it will fall in a few weeks”) and, giving Marxism a new twist along Quaker lines, he groveled on all fours in front of Wilson.

How savagely the dialectic of history has dealt with one of its own apostles!