Karl Kautsky and the Twilight of Orthodoxy
1982; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 10; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1177/0090591782010004007
ISSN1552-7476
Autores Tópico(s)Critical Theory and Philosophy
ResumoOR OVER A quarter of a century, Karl Kautsky was viewed as the predominant theoretician of social democracy and the authentic interpretor of the Marxist legacy. He was a friend of Marx and Engels, a prolific scholar,' the founder and editor of Die Neue Zeit, which was destined to become the major Marxist publication under his reign, as well as co-author with Eduard Bernstein of the Erfurt Programm, which would serve as the guiding document of German social democracy and the inspiration for other European socialist parties. But today he is almost forgotten and, when not, his name is generally greeted with contempt on the left.2 Usually, Kautsky is simply seen as the defender of Marxist orthodoxy against the revisionist onslaught. Actually, however, Kautsky's Marxism was never dialectical, always mechanistic, and-in concrete political terms-the formal victory that he won over his reformist opponents proved illusory. But Kautsky's fame and his influence on supporters as well as future opponents cannot be dismissed. Given the development of Marxism in its dominant manifestations, it is necesary to understand how Kautsky's thought reflects the values and presuppositions of social democracy in its most vibrant period. In Kautsky's view, Marxism was a single unified schema that encompassed and explained the totality of human existence. Throughout his life's work, Kautsky refused to accept any fundamental distinction between the natural and the social world. Following the Engels of the Anti-Duhring and The Dialectics of Nature, Kautsky
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