The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky

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Cover of the first edition Lenin - Proletarskaia revoliutsiia i renegat Kautskii (1918).jpg
Cover of the first edition

The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky [a] (PRRK) [1] is a pamphlet written in October-November 1918 by Vladimir Lenin. In this work, he defends the newly formed Soviet government against criticisms leveled against it by Karl Kautsky, a leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Second International, and also a mentor to many Bolsheviks. [2]

Contents

The motivation for PRRK was Kautsky's pamphlet The Dictatorship of the Proletariat published earlier in 1918. Kautsky condemned the dictatorial actions taken by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as a deviation from socialist principles. Lenin responded by stating that the need for dictatorship was a core Marxist concept, found in numerous places in the writings of Marx and Engels, and that Kautsky's disapproval showed how a once-great Marxist theoretician had become a "renegade".

The back-and-forth between Lenin and Kautsky was part of a worldwide debate raging among Marxists—in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution—about the role of democracy and force in the transition to socialism. [3]

Background

Lenin's suspicions about Kautsky dated back to the start of World War I. Although the latter did not join the SPD's "capitulation of German social democracy to German imperialism in August 1914", he adopted what Lenin termed a "social-pacifist" position that indicated a drift away from revolutionary Marxism. [4] The complete rupture between the two men occurred in August 1918 when Kautsky published The Dictatorship of the Proletariat in Vienna. The fact that Lenin responded within weeks with PRRK was a testament to the importance of the issues at stake, and how Kautsky still "enjoyed great authority among socialists of all countries". [4]

Synopsis

The main argument in PRRK is that Kautsky distorted Karl Marx's and Friedrich Engels' ideas on democracy and its relation to socialism and revolution. In the first chapter, "How Kautsky Turned Marx into a Common Liberal", Lenin attacks Kautsky's usage of the term "pure democracy". [5] Lenin says it is absurd "to talk about 'pure democracy' in a class-divided society", that there is "bourgeois democracy" and "proletarian democracy", but there is no "pure democracy". [6] He writes:

It is natural for a liberal to speak of "democracy" in general; but a Marxist will never forget to ask: "for what class?" Everyone knows, for instance (and Kautsky the "historian" knows it too), that rebellions, or even strong ferment, among the slaves in ancient times at once revealed the fact that the ancient state was essentially a dictatorship of the slave owners. Did this dictatorship abolish democracy among, and for, the slave owners? Everybody knows that it did not. Kautsky the "Marxist" made this monstrously absurd and untrue statement because he "forgot" the class struggle.... [6]

Following this line of reasoning, Lenin characterizes the Soviet system as democracy for the proletariat, and dictatorship for the overthrown bourgeoisie. [7]

PRRK is structured as a long polemic, with many insults lobbed at Kautsky. For example, after citing Kautsky's allegation that Bolsheviks have "contempt for democracy", Lenin writes:

That is the sort of twaddle Kautsky uses to befog and confuse the issue, for he talks like the liberals, speaking of democracy in general, and not of bourgeois democracy; he even avoids using this precise, class term, and, instead, tries to speak about "presocialist" democracy. This windbag devotes almost one-third of his pamphlet, twenty pages out of sixty-three, to this twaddle, which is so agreeable to the bourgeoisie, for it is tantamount to embellishing bourgeois democracy, and obscures the question of the proletarian revolution. [6]

The next area of disagreement relates to universal suffrage. Kautsky suggested that a socialist state should rule via universal suffrage and parliamentary democracy since "[t]he most effective weapon of the proletariat is its numerical strength", [8] i.e., the working masses are the majority of the population and will win every election. [9] For him, universal suffrage was "the means of reconciling democracy and socialism". [10] Lenin replies in PRRK that "Kautsky the historian has never heard that universal suffrage sometimes produces petty-bourgeois, sometimes reactionary and counter-revolutionary parliaments." [11] In a chapter entitled "Can There Be Equality Between the Exploited and the Exploiter?", Lenin argues that a newly formed socialist state is not a level playing field in which political power can be decided by elections:

For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property—often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth. If the exploiters are defeated in one country only—and this, of course, is typical, since a simultaneous revolution in a number of countries is a rare exception—they still remain stronger than the exploited, for the international connections of the exploiters are enormous. [12]

A key complaint raised by Kautsky pertained to the Russian Constituent Assembly and whether its dispersal by the Bolsheviks "destroyed democracy". Lenin calls this complaint the "crux" of Kautsky's pamphlet, and adds that it is an important and interesting question "because the relation between bourgeois democracy and proletarian democracy here confronted the revolution in a practical form." [11] Lenin was particularly incensed by Kautsky's assertion that the decision to disband the Constituent Assembly was arrived at only after the Bolsheviks found themselves in the minority. Lenin insists that since his return to Russia in April 1917, he had consistently written and spoken against the Constituent Assembly and "proclaimed the superiority of the Paris Commune type of [workers] state over the bourgeois parliamentary republic." [11] He then asks rhetorically, "Is it true or not that the bourgeois-democratic parliamentary republic is inferior to the republic of the Paris Commune or Soviet type? This is the whole point, and Kautsky has evaded it. Kautsky has 'forgotten' all that Marx said in his analysis of the Paris Commune." [11] As Jukka Gronow writes, "Lenin never tired of repeating the claim that proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any form of bourgeois democracy." [5] [13]

Reactions

Kautsky replied to Lenin's attacks, first in 1920 with his book Terrorism and Communism: A Contribution to the Natural History of Revolution . Then, in Marxism and Bolshevism: Democracy and Dictatorship (1934), he wrote that the Bolsheviks, by taking control of the armed forces in Petrograd and Moscow, had simply laid the basis for a new dictatorship in place of the old Czarist autocracy. [14]

For 20th century revolutionaries, PRRK became a foundational text. Historians of the Chinese Communist Revolution have noted the pamphlet's influence on Mao Zedong's thinking, citing as one instance the adoption by Mao of the principle that a victorious socialist revolution must immediately dissolve the existing bourgeois army and replace it with a proletarian army. [15] [16]

Starting in the late 1960s, some scholars challenged Lenin's view expressed in PRRK that Kautsky was "a defector from the working-class cause." [17] Instead, they argued that (a) there were greater points of convergence between the two men's positions than Lenin gave credit for, and (b) Kautsky remained, in certain ways, more of an orthodox Marxist theorist than Lenin. [17] [18]

Notes

  1. ↑ Russian: Пролетарская революция и ренегат Каутский, romanized: Proletarskaya revolyutsiya i renegat Kautskiy

References

  1. ↑ It was also sometimes published in English under the title The Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Renegade Kautsky.
  2. ↑ Lih, Lars T. (29 June 2019). "Karl Kautsky as Architect of the October Revolution". Jacobin .
  3. ↑ Blanc, Eric (12 March 2022). "Ukrainian Marxists, Russian Bolsheviks, and National Liberation: 1900–1921". Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory. London.
  4. 1 2 Claudín, Fernando (November 1977). "Democracy and Dictatorship in Lenin and Kautsky" (PDF). New Left Review (106): 59–76.
  5. 1 2 Gronow, Jukka (2015). "The Question of Democracy and Dictatorship: Lenin's Critique of Kautsky the Renegade". On the Formation of Marxism: Karl Kautsky's Theory of Capitalism, the Marxism of the Second International and Karl Marx's Critique of Political Economy. Brill Academic Publishers. pp. 192–208. ISBN   978-9004306646. According to Lenin, democracy always functions in favour of one particular class.
  6. 1 2 3 Lenin, Vladimir. "PRRK: How Kautsky Turned Marx into a Common Liberal" – via Marxists Internet Archive.
  7. ↑ Lenin, Vladimir. "PRRK: Bourgeois And Proletarian Democracy" – via Marxists Internet Archive.
  8. ↑ Kautsky, Karl (1918). "The Effects of Democracy". The Dictatorship of the Proletariat– via Marxists Internet Archive.
  9. ↑ Muldoon, James (5 January 2019). "Reclaiming the Best of Karl Kautsky". Jacobin .
  10. ↑ Birnbaum, Pierre (Winter 1985). "Universal Suffrage, the Vanguard Party and Mobilization in Marxism". Government and Opposition. 20 (1): 53–69. JSTOR   44483549.
  11. 1 2 3 4 Lenin, Vladimir. "PRRK: The Constituent Assembly and the Soviet Republic" – via Marxists Internet Archive.
  12. ↑ Lenin, Vladimir. "PRRK: Can There Be Equality Between the Exploited and the Exploiter?" – via Marxists Internet Archive.
  13. ↑ van der Linden, Marcel (2007). Western Marxism and the Soviet Union: A Survey of Critical Theories and Debates Since 1917. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers. p. 16. ISBN   978-9004158757. Countering the accusation [by Kautsky] that the Russian post-revolutionary society was undemocratic, Lenin contended that, to the contrary, there was an unprecedented expansion and development of democracy. This was proved, he said, by the fact that foreign policy was being conducted in public, and also by the structure of the state, which involved the working masses directly in decision-making.
  14. ↑ Kautsky, Karl (1934). "Marxism and Bolshevism: Democracy and Dictatorship" . Retrieved 15 April 2020– via Marxists Internet Archive.
  15. ↑ Lenin, Vladimir. "PRRK: What Is Internationalism?" – via Marxists Internet Archive.
  16. ↑ Namboodiripad, E.M.S. (September 1976). "Mao Tse-tung's Contribution to Theory and Tactics of Revolution". Social Scientist . 5 (2): 57–66. JSTOR   3516570.
  17. 1 2 White, Dan S. (June 1995). "Reviewed Works: Marxism and Revolution: Karl Kautsky and the Russian Marxists, 1900-1924 by Moira Donald; Karl Kautsky: Marxism, Revolution and Democracy by John H. Kautsky". The Journal of Modern History . 67 (2): 393–395. JSTOR   2125075.
  18. ↑ Blanc, Eric (2 April 2019). "Why Kautsky Was Right (and Why You Should Care)". Jacobin.

See also

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