Marx and Engels on Karl Kautsky

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That Vladi­mir Len­in and his fel­low re­volu­tion­ar­ies of 1917 con­sidered the So­cial-Demo­crat­ic lead­er Karl Kaut­sky a ped­ant and a phil­istine is well known. Len­in pin­pointed the reas­on for Kaut­sky’s post-1914 reneg­acy in his di­lu­tion of Marxi­an dia­lectics. “How is this mon­strous dis­tor­tion of Marx­ism by the ped­ant Kaut­sky to be ex­plained…??” the Bolshev­ik asked rhet­or­ic­ally in a sec­tion of his 1918 po­lem­ic, The Pro­let­ari­an Re­volu­tion and the Reneg­ade Kaut­sky, “How Kaut­sky Turned Marx in­to a Com­mon Lib­er­al.” “As far as the philo­soph­ic­al roots of this phe­nomen­on are con­cerned,” he answered, “it amounts to the sub­sti­tu­tion of ec­lecticism and soph­istry for dia­lectics.” In an­oth­er chapter, Len­in ac­cused Kaut­sky of “pur­su­ing a char­ac­ter­ist­ic­ally petty-bour­geois, phil­istine policy [ти­пич­но ме­щан­скую, фи­лис­тер­скую по­ли­ти­ку]” by back­ing the Men­shev­iks. Need­less to say, Len­in’s im­mense re­spect for the so-called “Pope of Marx­ism” be­fore the war had all but evap­or­ated.

What is less well known, however, is that Karl Marx and Friedrich En­gels shared this ap­prais­al of Kaut­sky. But this would only be re­vealed in 1932, sev­er­al years after Len­in’s death, in ex­tracts pub­lished from their cor­res­pond­ence. En­gels con­fided to Eduard Bern­stein in Au­gust 1881 that “Kaut­sky is an ex­cep­tion­ally good chap, but a born ped­ant and hair­split­ter in whose hands com­plex ques­tions are not made simple, but simple ones com­plex.” Marx, for his part, sus­pec­ted that En­gels’ fond­ness of Kaut­sky was due to his ca­pa­city to con­sume al­co­hol, as he re­cor­ded in a note to his daugh­ter Jenny Longuet from April that same year:

[Jo­hann Most, grand­fath­er of le­gendary Bo­ston Celt­ics an­noun­cer Johnny Most,] has found a kindred spir­it in Kaut­sky, on whom he had frowned so grimly; even En­gels takes a much more tol­er­ant view of this joker [Kautz, pun­ning on Kautz-ky] since the lat­ter gave proof of his con­sid­er­able drink­ing abil­ity. When the charm­er — the little joker [Kautz], I mean — first came to see me, the first ques­tion that rose to my lips was: Are you like your moth­er? “Not in the least!” he ex­claimed, and si­lently I con­grat­u­lated his moth­er. He’s a me­diocrity, nar­row in his out­look, over-wise (only 26 years old), and a know-it-all, al­though hard-work­ing after a fash­ion, much con­cerned with stat­ist­ics out of which, however, he makes little sense. By nature he’s a mem­ber of the phil­istine tribe. For the rest, a de­cent fel­low in his own way; I un­load him onto amigo En­gels as much as I can.

Le­on Trot­sky was caught off-guard by the ca­su­istry Kaut­sky dis­played after 1914, re­mem­ber­ing the praise he had showered on the Rus­si­an work­ers’ move­ment a dec­ade or so earli­er. “Kaut­sky’s re­ac­tion­ary-pedant­ic cri­ti­cism [пе­дант­ски-ре­ак­ци­он­ная кри­ти­ка Ка­ут­ско­го] must have come the more un­ex­pec­tedly to those com­rades who’d gone through the peri­od of the first Rus­si­an re­volu­tion with their eyes open and read Kaut­sky’s art­icles of 1905-1906,” de­clared Trot­sky in his pre­face to the 1919 re­is­sue of Res­ults and Pro­spects (1906). “At that time Kaut­sky (true, not without the be­ne­fi­cial in­flu­ence of Rosa Lux­em­burg) fully un­der­stood and ac­know­ledged that the Rus­si­an re­volu­tion could not ter­min­ate in a bour­geois-demo­crat­ic re­pub­lic but must in­ev­it­ably lead to pro­let­ari­an dic­tat­or­ship, be­cause of the level at­tained by the class struggle in the coun­try it­self and be­cause of the en­tire in­ter­na­tion­al situ­ation of cap­it­al­ism… For dec­ades Kaut­sky de­veloped and up­held the ideas of so­cial re­volu­tion. Now that it has be­come real­ity, Kaut­sky re­treats be­fore it in ter­ror. He is hor­ri­fied at Rus­si­an So­viet power and thus takes up a hos­tile at­ti­tude to­wards the mighty move­ment of the Ger­man com­mun­ist pro­let­ari­at.”

Trot­sky un­der­scored this point again thir­teen years later in de­fend­ing Lux­em­burg against the calum­nies heaped upon her by Stal­in. “Len­in con­sidered Kaut­sky his teach­er [when he wrote What is to be Done?] and stressed this every­where he could. In Len­in’s work of that peri­od and for a num­ber of years fol­low­ing, one doesn’t find even a hit of cri­ti­cism dir­ec­ted against the Bebel-Kaut­sky tend­ency. One rather finds a series of de­clar­a­tions to the ef­fect that Bolshev­ism is not an in­de­pend­ent tend­ency, merely a trans­la­tion of the Bebel-Kaut­sky tend­ency in­to the lan­guage of Rus­si­an con­di­tions. Here is what Len­in wrote in his fam­ous pamph­let, Two Tac­tics, in the middle of 1905: ‘When and where have there been brought to light dif­fer­ences between me on the one hand and Bebel and Kaut­sky on the oth­er? Com­plete un­an­im­ity of in­ter­na­tion­al re­volu­tion­ary So­cial Demo­cracy on all ma­jor ques­tions of pro­gram and tac­tics is an in­con­tro­vert­ible fact.’ …But between Oc­to­ber 1916, when Len­in wrote about the Ju­ni­us pamph­let, and 1903, when Bolshev­ism had its in­cep­tion, there was a lapse of thir­teen years, dur­ing which Lux­em­burg was to be found in op­pos­i­tion to the Kaut­sky and Bebel Cent­ral Com­mit­tee, and her fight against the form­al, pedant­ic, and rot­ten-at-the-core ‘rad­ic­al­ism’ of Kaut­sky took on an ever in­creas­ingly sharp char­ac­ter.”

Just a dec­ade or so after Trot­sky penned these lines, Ad­orno wrote con­temp­tu­ously in Min­ima Mor­alia of “the so-called her­it­age of so­cial­ism and the phil­istin­ism [Ba­naus­ie] of the Bebels.” Franz Borkenau, a left com­mun­ist also as­so­ci­ated with the Frank­furt In­sti­tute of So­cial Re­search in ex­ile, re­marked upon the un­due re­spect ac­cor­ded to Kaut­sky and his ilk. Borkenau men­tioned in this con­nec­tion the dis­par­aging state­ments made by Marx and En­gels in private about their dis­ciple. In Borkenau’s 1939 over­view of World Com­mun­ism, he wrote:

Ad­mir­a­tion for West­ern Marx­ists played more than one trick on Len­in, which is re­mark­able giv­en that his rev­er­ence was spent on men who, without ex­cep­tion, were his in­feri­ors in every re­spect. Two cases are par­tic­u­larly in­ter­est­ing. One con­cerns Geor­gii Valentinovich Plekhan­ov, the man who in­tro­duced Marx­ism in its ori­gin­al form to Rus­sia. Plekhan­ov had pub­lished a num­ber of stud­ies on philo­sophy which, though one-sided, are prob­ably su­per­i­or to Len­in’s work [Borkenau is likely re­fer­ring here to Ma­ter­i­al­ism and Em­piri­ocriti­cism, since the note­books on Hegel were not widely known in the West]; as a politi­cian, though, Plekhan­ov was of no ac­count. He ended as an ex­treme par­tis­an of Men­shev­ism, openly fight­ing Len­in. Nev­er­the­less Len­in re­tained a par­tic­u­lar ad­mir­a­tion for this man the rest of his life; after all, he had brought Marx­ism to Rus­sia! But the case of Karl Kaut­sky, the of­fi­cial the­or­et­ic­al mouth­piece of Ger­man Marx­ism, is far more note­worthy. Any­one who takes the trouble to col­lect the quo­ta­tions con­cern­ing Kaut­sky in Len­in’s pre­war writ­ings will soon be con­vinced that Len­in re­garded this man as no less than an or­acle. Kaut­sky, it is true, was the de­light of that Ger­man Marx­ist left wing that so miser­ably col­lapsed in Au­gust 1914 and after. This was no reas­on for Len­in to ad­mire him, yet he did. For Len­in be­lieved as firmly in the Ger­man so­cial­ists as in Kaut­sky. The lat­ter was a man tim­id and slow in polit­ics, wooden and un­ori­gin­al in the­ory, true to the type of phil­istine who would ap­pear a the­or­eti­cian. A few mock­ing re­marks about him sur­vive in the cor­res­pond­ence of Marx and En­gels. As to the Ger­man So­cial­ist Party which Kaut­sky rep­res­en­ted, Len­in trus­ted it so firmly that when, in 1914, he learned of their vot­ing for the war cred­its he first be­lieved it to be a for­gery of the Ger­man For­eign Of­fice.

Un­for­tu­nately, the let­ters Borkenau al­ludes to here (fully ex­cerp­ted above) may have been the un­do­ing of the great schol­ar Dav­id Riazan­ov. Riazan­ov was ar­res­ted on March 6, 1931, ac­cused of con­spir­ing with the Men­shev­iks against the dic­tat­or­ship of the pro­let­ari­at. His bril­liant as­sist­ant at the Marx-En­gels In­sti­tute, Isaak Ru­bin, a first-rate eco­nom­ic the­or­ist, gave him up after en­dur­ing sev­er­al weeks of tor­ture. Mean­while, in Mex­ico, Trot­sky wrote in­cred­u­lously about the charges leveled at Riazan­ov. On May Day, he pub­lished an art­icle, “A New Slander against Dav­id Riazan­ov.” You can read it be­low.

A new slander against David Riazan­ov

Le­on Trot­sky
The Militant
May 1, 1931
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The March 12 is­sue of Pravda pub­lished a note en­titled “Marx on Karl Kaut­sky,” signed by the “Marx-En­gels In­sti­tute.” This note sub­sequently was re­pro­duced without com­ment by the world press of the Comin­tern. On the sur­face, the cen­ter of grav­ity of this note lay in the re­mark­able pas­sage from a let­ter by Marx in 1881 which made a crush­ing char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion of Kaut­sky, a char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion which was later fully veri­fied.

The pub­lic­a­tion of the note form­ally signed by the whole in­sti­tute has, however, an­oth­er aim — to be­smirch the per­son who cre­ated and headed the Marx-En­gels In­sti­tute. This is how the note con­cludes: “The ori­gin­al let­ter was turned over to Riazan­ov by the well-known Men­shev­ik Ly­dia Zederbaum-Dan as long ago as 1925. Riazan­ov had care­fully con­cealed the let­ter.”

Dur­ing the Men­shev­ik tri­al, Riazan­ov was pub­licly ac­cused by the pro­sec­utor of col­lab­or­a­tion in the con­spir­acy against the dic­tat­or­ship of the pro­let­ari­at. A few months after this ac­cus­a­tion, the whole world is now told of an­oth­er crime com­mit­ted by Riazan­ov. He had, it seems, in­to the bar­gain, con­cealed the quo­ta­tion from Marx’s let­ter of 1881. Their need to ad­vance such cir­cum­stances, all out of pro­por­tion to the first ac­cus­a­tion, in or­der to strengthen their case against Com­rade Riazan­ov shows that the Messrs. Ac­cusers have an un­easy con­science. These people make their dis­cov­er­ies by adding rude­ness to dis­loy­alty, only to be­tray the fra­gil­ity of their case.

We gave a hy­po­thet­ic­al ex­plan­a­tion at the time of how the ac­cus­a­tion against Riazan­ov ori­gin­ated. Everything that has been writ­ten to us from Mo­scow about this fully con­firms our sup­pos­i­tions. It is not dif­fi­cult to re­veal the mech­an­ism of the sup­ple­ment­ary ac­cus­a­tion launched today by the same ac­cusers un­der the pseud­onym of the Marx-En­gels In­sti­tute.

The “Men­shev­ik Ly­dia Zederbaum” turned over Marx’s let­ter to Riazan­ov back in 1925. Why did she give it to him? As a token of Riazan­ov’s friend­ship with the Men­shev­iks and of their fu­ture col­lab­or­a­tion in the con­spir­acy against the dic­tat­or­ship of the pro­let­ari­at? Not a word from the “in­sti­tute” on this. The term “Men­shev­ik” ought to shut the mouth of any who hes­it­ate, es­pe­cially since Riazan­ov “care­fully con­cealed” the let­ter since 1925. Why did he con­ceal it? Ob­vi­ously in or­der to safe­guard the in­terests of Kaut­sky and world Men­shev­ism. It is true that between 1925, when Riazan­ov entered in­to a con­spir­acy with the Men­shev­iks to con­ceal the his­tor­ic doc­u­ment, and 1931, when he was in­volved in the con­spir­acy against the dic­tat­or­ship of the pro­let­ari­at, Riazan­ov pub­lished not a few doc­u­ments and works which caused Men­shev­ism con­sid­er­able vex­a­tion. But to no avail. The read­ers of the Comin­tern press must be guided by the an­cient for­mula of the de­vout: “I be­lieve it no mat­ter how ab­surd it is.”

Good, the read­er will say, but what are the facts about the let­ter? Is it au­then­t­ic? Did Riazan­ov really hide it? And if he did, why? A look at the quo­ta­tion is enough to prove the au­then­ti­city of the let­ter: Marx can­not be fals­i­fied, even by Yaroslavsky in col­lab­or­a­tion with Ya­goda. On the ques­tion of the “con­ceal­ment” of the let­ter, we can, again, only pro­pose a hy­po­thes­is, whose like­li­hood, however, is guar­an­teed a hun­dred per­cent by all the cir­cum­stances of the case.

Riazan­ov could re­ceive the let­ter only from those who had it. The man­age­ment of the works of En­gels had fallen in­to Bern­stein’s hands by vir­tue of the same his­tor­ic­al lo­gic of the epi­gones which today per­mits Yaroslavsky to take charge of the works of Len­in. Riazan­ov dis­played ex­cep­tion­al per­sever­ance and in­genu­ity in gath­er­ing to­geth­er the writ­ings of Marx and En­gels. Like the Len­in In­sti­tute, the Marx-En­gels In­sti­tute bought nu­mer­ous doc­u­ments from the Men­shev­iks and through their in­ter­me­di­ar­ies. For ex­ample, archives were bought by the Len­in In­sti­tute from Po­tresov. Without a doubt, the “Men­shev­ik Ly­dia Zederbaum” did not simply turn over the let­ter to Riazan­ov but prob­ably sold it to him as an in­ter­me­di­ary for Bern­stein or someone among the old men who had Marx’s let­ter. It is quite likely that with the sale of this let­ter, which draws a dev­ast­at­ing pic­ture of Kaut­sky, Bern­stein or some oth­er own­er of the doc­u­ment from the same circle at­tached the con­di­tion that the let­ter not be pub­lished while Kaut­sky or the seller was alive. The rig­or­ous man­ner in which Bern­stein ap­plied this kind of cen­sor­ship over the cor­res­pond­ence of Marx and En­gels is suf­fi­ciently well known. Com­rade Riazan­ov had no al­tern­at­ive. In or­der to get pos­ses­sion of the let­ter, he was ob­liged to ac­cept the con­di­tion im­posed. Any­one else in his place would have done the same. Hav­ing ac­cep­ted this con­di­tion, he nat­ur­ally car­ried it out. Thanks to his ex­treme prudence and loy­alty in all mat­ters of this kind, Riazan­ov was able to se­cure from our ad­versar­ies pre­cious ma­ter­i­al from the her­it­age of our clas­sics.

We think it is now clear why Riazan­ov “con­cealed” the let­ter. Who­ever knows Riazan­ov knows that he, more than any­one else, must have ached to pub­lish his valu­able find. But he waited for the prop­er mo­ment to do it. By means of a raid, Marx’s let­ter was dis­covered in the pos­ses­sion of Riazan­ov. It was not only made pub­lic, thereby vi­ol­at­ing the agree­ment made by Riazan­ov, but it was then con­ver­ted in­to proof against Riazan­ov. What should we call such a pro­ced­ure? Let us call it by its right name: pro­ced­ure à la Stal­in.