KAUTSKY, Karl. - German socialist, b. at Pragal on 16 Oct. 1854, d. in exile at Amsterdam on 17 Oct. 1938. He was secretary to F. Engels and, within German socialism, represented in a certain way the continuity of the “classical tradition” of Marxism.
He was a determined opponent of reformist and revisionist tendencies within German socialism, whose leading exponent was Bernstein. The totalitarian methods employed by the Russian Bolsheviks likewise met with severe criticism from K.: Lenin even called him, in his last years, a renegade and devoted a harsh polemical work to him. Among K.’s notable works are: Thomas More und seine Utopie (1887); Bernstein und das sozialdemokratische Programm (1898); Die Diktatur des Proletariats (1918); Materialistische Geschichtsauffassung (1927).
For a long time K. was called “the pope of socialism.” He was, however, a philosopher of rather shallow mind; his irony lacks refinement and depth; in his Marxism there is an accent that has perhaps not unjustly been termed “professional,” and a spiritual affinity with positivist positions. Politically, K., who in 1917 founded the “Independent Socialist Party,” exemplifies a characteristic blend of a fundamentally bourgeois temperament with schemes inspired by the class struggle as conceived in Marxist terms. In a certain way he represents the typical position of a socialism oscillating between petty everyday compromise and outdated semi-revolutionary formulas, between humanitarian democratic dreams and dogmatic intransigence: a position dangerous for any democracy that has a sense of reality and responsibility, and at the same time clearly inferior to fanatical and consistent revolutionaries.