Comments on: Why Kautsky was right (and why you should care)

By: Jacob Richter

Jacob Richter — Sat, 06 Apr 2019 17:44:51 +0000

My full criticism of Eric Blanc’s article, Post-Insurrectionary Strategy, can be found here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/ba6s16/postinsurrectionary_strategy/

By: geoff1954

geoff1954 — Sat, 06 Apr 2019 17:10:58 +0000

As is so often the case, Lenin got straight to the heart of the matter in the opening chapter of his polemic with Kautsky. Though written over a hundred years ago, some of Lenin’s words are quite timely today as we observe enormous excitement — and inflated hopes — over the recent elections of candidates, “guided by their name, that is, by a word, and not by the actual place they occupy in the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.” Today that “word” is “socialist.”

If Eric is following this discussion I wonder if he has a response to Lenin’s argument:

“The fundamental question that Kautsky discusses in his pamphlet is that of the very essence of proletarian revolution, namely, the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is a question that is of the greatest importance for all countries, especially for the advanced ones, especially for those at war, and especially at the present time. One may say without fear of exaggeration that this is the key problem of the entire proletarian class struggle. It is, therefore, necessary to pay particular attention to it .

“Kautsky formulates the question as follows: ‘The contrast between the two socialist trends’ (i.e., the Bolsheviks and non-Bolsheviks) ‘is the contrast between two radically different methods: the dictatorial and the democratic’ (p. 3).

“Let us point out, in passing, that when calling the non-Bolsheviks in Russia, i.e., the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, socialists, Kautsky was guided by their name, that is, by a word, and not by the actual place they occupy in the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. What a wonderful understanding and application of Marxism! But more of this later.

“For the moment we must deal with the main point, namely, with Kautsky’s great discovery of the ‘fundamental contrast’ between ‘democratic and dictatorial methods’. That is the crux of the matter; that is the essence of Kautsky’s pamphlet. And that is such an awful theoretical muddle, such a complete renunciation of Marxism, that Kautsky, it must be confessed, has far excelled Bernstein.

“The question of the dictatorship of the proletariat is a question of the relation of the proletarian state to the bourgeois state, of proletarian democracy to bourgeois democracy. One would think that this is as plain as a pikestaff. But Kautsky, like a schoolmaster who has become as dry as dust from quoting the same old textbooks on history, persistently turns his back on the twentieth century and his face to the eighteenth century, and for the hundredth time, in a number of paragraphs, in an incredibly tedious fashion chews the old cud over the relation of bourgeois democracy to absolutism and medievalism!”

I would repeat this was no abstract debate about theory. Lenin and the Bolshevik leadership faced a Civil War to defend Soviet power. Kautsky’s approach — in practice — would have led to the defeat of Soviet power and to counterrevolution.

By: Benoit Renaud

Benoit Renaud — Sat, 06 Apr 2019 12:22:16 +0000

This is a fascinating and timely article. Very relevant to Québec solidaire and how socialists should approach the big strategic questions. Thanks for keeping up the work. Benoit Renaud @benwareno819-930-2162

By: geoff1954

geoff1954 — Sat, 06 Apr 2019 03:32:59 +0000

I’ve already read the article in Jacobin and to be frank, I’m not impressed.

I’ll make two short points for now. The debate between Kautsky and Lenin (unlike the debate between Eric Blanc and the “Leninists” he refers to) was not an abstract or theoretical one; though it did touch on important aspects of theory.

So for those who have never read Lenin’s views, and for those who might benefit from re-reading them, I offer this link.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/

I find Eric’s arguments unpersuasive on many counts, not the least of them, this one:

“History has confirmed Kautsky’s predictions. Not only has there never been a victorious insurrectionary socialist movement under a capitalist democracy, but only a tiny minority of workers have ever even nominally supported the idea of an insurrection. For this reason, the most perceptive elements of the early Communist International began briefly moving back towards Kautsky’s approach in 1922–23 by advocating the parliamentary election of ‘workers’ governments’as a first step towards rupture.”

Most delegates to the 3rd and 4th congresses of the Comintern where the discussion of first the united front and then of “workers governments” (or “workers and farmers governments”), would not have agreed their decisions at these two congresses “confirmed Kautsky’s positions.” Quite to the contrary.
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By: James Creegan

James Creegan — Sat, 06 Apr 2019 01:38:10 +0000

It is highly peculiar that Blanc should cite the example of Finland in 1917-18 as somehow vindicating Kautsky. The Finnish Social Democrats did indeed attempt to use their majority to pass a series of radical reforms, But, according to my sources,it was precisely their faith in parliamentary methods that left them unprepared for the counterrevolutionary onslaught of Mannerheim’s white guards. In the words of Otto Kuusinen, then a left Social Democrat and later a Communist:

“Wishing not to risk our democratic conquests, and hoping to manoeuvre around this turning point of history by our parliamentary skill, we decided to evade the revolution… We did not believe in the revolution; we reposed no hope in it; we had no wish for it” (Quoted in Victor Serge, The Year One of the Russian Revolution)