You may remember the period because AWL comrades had been involved in the Vestas wind turbine factory occupation – perhaps the high point of socialist ecology so far in the UK. I recall you spoke at an ecosocialist conference in London organised by Socialist Resistance. Our comrades offered to speak, but sadly the sectarianism of Socialist Resistance meant they excluded us (without having exactly excelled themselves in the Vestas struggle).

I enjoy reading the material on your climate change website, but I find the amalgam of post-Trotsky Trotskyism with Stalinism, Guevarism, Chavismo etc excruciatingly unhelpful for recasting socialism for the 21st century. You appear to fillet class from emancipation. The potential for a global working class-based climate movement is enormous – but the Marxist left needs to slough off much of the ‘conventional wisdom’ your book regurgitates.
Comradely,
Paul

Lars Lih writes: “Why did Rosa get the attribution wrong? I’m thinking, for the same reason that you suggest for later writers: she unconsciously was reluctant to grant authority to Kautsky, whom she now despised.”

I don’t think this explanation can be correct, since later in the same pamphlet Luxemburg favorably quotes something that Kautsky wrote in 1907:

“Thus it is always the historic milieu of modern imperialism that determines the character of the war in the individual countries, and this milieu makes a war of national self-defence impossible.

“Kautsky also expressed this, only a few years ago, in his pamphlet Patriotism and Social Democracy, Leipzig 1907, pages 12-14”

http://marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1915/junius/ch07.htm

Ian’s hypothesis that the phrase had become common currency and its origin forgotten is a better one. Or it may be that Luxemburg simply made a mistake, just as we might wrongly attribute something Lenin said to Trotsky, or vice versa, even if we hold both of them in high esteem.

A couple of thoughts inspired by your discussion. First, you are right to emphasize how crucial The Erfurt Program was — in Russia, for example, it simply was the basic definition of Social Democracy, and more influential a piece of writing than anything written by Russian Marxists themselves. It was still being used as a textbook at least in the twenties. Look at the Appendix in Moira Donald’s book that lists Russian publications of Kautsky.

You are curious about what are the abridgments and distortions I found in the existing English translation. It’s been a while, but as I recall, it was more a paragraph by paragraph thing — this line left out, this thought simplified, etc. Again, as I recall, the words “Social Democracy” were simply removed, and replaced, I think, by “socialism.” So, when people read it today, they often don’t realize Kautsky is talking about a specific movement and party, not just a vague doctrine. — And, of course, the title is changed!

Why did Rosa get the attribution wrong? I’m thinking, for the same reason that you suggest for later writers: she unconsciously was reluctant to grant authority to Kautsky, whom she now despised. Lenin was willing to give the earlier Kautsky much credit — as I have documented — but, evidently, Luxemburg had more “cognitive dissonance” about admitting she had learned from someone like Kautsky.

By the way, your post joins in a larger movement to bring Kautsky back — not only my own stuff on Lenin, but the anthologies edited by Day and Gaido, Ben Lewis at the Weekly Worker, and others. I think your post makes in a striking way the point all of us are making: socialist history is distorted by our ignorance and contempt of Kautsky.

Anyway, thanks for making the discovery and writing it up in clear and compelling fashion!

Lars Lih

(Originally sent to Ian Angus and posted with Lars’s and Ian’s permission. John Riddell)

The passage from Kautsky appears in chapter 4, section 6, “Der Zukunftsstaat”, “Der Aufbau des Zukunftsstaates” (The Future State, The Basis/Foundation of the Future State), just over 2/5ths of the way through – http://marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/kautsky/1892/erfurter/4-zukunftsstaat.htm

Just doing a search with the cited German phrase of Kautsky’s brings up as #1 a 2007 essay by Hans Heinz Holz, ‘Revolution neuen Typs’ (Rev. of a New Kind/Type), in a journal, Topos, no.28, entitled ‘Revolution’ – http://toposzeitschrift.de/

His opening paragraph, on the SPD siding with barbarism in World War One, says in a matter-of-fact way that “In der von Kautsky einst formulierten Alternative Sozialismus oder Barbarei[3] (die später von Rosa Luxemburg wieder aufgenommen wurde) hatten die sozialdemokratischen Parteien sich auf die Seite der Barbarei geschlagen. ” (. . . that RL would later take up).