The Road to Power

by Karl Kautsky, John H. Kautsky, Raymond Meyer

The Road to Power was a highly controversial political pamphlet published in 1909―an important document for the understanding of the Wilhelmine Empire and especially of the German Social Democratic Party and Kautsky's role in it―and it was Kautsky's last major attack on the revisionists' hope for a gradual "growth in socialism" without any drastic changes in the political order. To this, Kautsky opposed his view of the political revolution that he hoped for and predicted as the achievement of parliamentary democracy and of working-class power through parliamentary majority. He believed that the initial democratization of the autocratic empire could be realized peacefully by electoral victories and trade-union political action.The present edition contains an excellent new translation of Kautsky's text; a scholarly introduction by John H. Kautsky; the author's prefaces to three German editions; and the correspondence concerning Kautsky's conflict with the Social Democratic Party's Executive Committee regarding publication of his work.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, History

121 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1909

About the author

Czech-German philosopher and politician. He was a leading theoretician of Marxism. He became the leading promulgator of Orthodox Marxism after the death of Friedrich Engels.

Reviews

[Yogy TheBear · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found about this relevant author and book, but so forgotten and ignored today, through the works of Lenin. Lenin hates Kausky… and that sparked my interest.
His version of Marxism is called orthodox Marxism and compared with Lenin this guy is good at writing and explaining.
Anyway the author clearly believes and is versed in the standard Marxian mind set. Thus a central element is the class antagonism. This class antagonism is an absolute one, he admits that class conflict can be relived and ameliorated but class antagonism is absolute and it will surface for sure. To justify this class antagonism we employs classic Marxist mystification and scientism; elements that are common of that time (not only to marxists). For this he rejects freedom of will and replaces it with freedom of will derived from the will to live. Combine this with his version of the material forces of production… We arrive at the capitalist/exploiter class that is a gross generalization that dose not take into account human personality and individuality. Thus the goal of the capitalist is to get rich on the back of the proletarian because he is bound to do this by his will to survive… Thus in a social Darwinian sense you have a battle to the death between classes… And my dilemma here is what scientific justification dose he have for tacking the side of the proletarians (working with his theories) ?? If it is a moral one then a moral one is also the conciliation of classes !! Or his strange impression that the proletarians are somehow superior and want the abolition of private property... That is naive and another gross generalization of the abstract notion of class..
Marxism theory has 2 elements: The first is socio-economical analysis and critique of current society and trends, that they claim it is scientific (and due to a lax clarification of the sciences, natural vs social was an unchallenged claim); this part can actually, on it’s own, be debated, contested and modified. But there is a second element… The revolutionary, the messianic character of the theory, this one it is claimed is compatible with the first scientific element. Yet it is not… And because of the need of eliberation and social improvement the scientific element must not be changed … so Marxistm (imo) got it’s necessity of being a dogmatic set of theory.
There are many social issues that can be said that the socialist brought to attention and resolved them. A fact is that the industrial revolution brought a thing that today is common: a person that works for others and receives money. For them this phenomenon was new as it was for society. I am sure that there were abuses and harsh conditions.. but for those you need social activism not necessary socialism.

[Aron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kausky at his most kautsky. Clear and strong Marxist analysis all unfortunately tinged with formulations of inevitability. The basic centre strategy of this book still has a lot of merit and is worth reading 100%.

"The proletariat hates war with all its strength. It would sacrifice everything rather than raise a cry for war."

[Jehiel L · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zinoviev in a 1909 review of this text argued that Kautsky here was in accordance with Bolshevism. At first glance, there does not seem to be anything necessarily objectionable in the central claims of the text from a revolutionary Marxist perspective, if we take the positions generally and see that in this way they were wielded by people like Lenin. The positions elaborated were on the left of debates at the time. But knowing that Kautsky had more left-wing positions than what he is often given credit for should not be about being soft on Kautsky. Rather, precisely the opposite, it should be an opportunity to investigate how the left wing positions he took were ones that were not good enough, that they were expressions of a problematic deeper political logic which would see him shift to the right in later circumstances. Once having done such an investigation, we can see evidence of Kautsky's limited rendition of Marxism in the text, particularly his discussion of prophecy, the relation of the proletariat to other classes, the relationship between spontaneity and consciousness, his unilinear logic of history, and his ambiguity on important questions like the political character of the peasantry.

On one specific point, Kautsky talks at the end of chapter IV about the function of increasing parliamentary representation. He does not say that victory comes through a majority in the Reichstag. Rather, he thinks that suffrage will be attacked well before a majority is achieved, and such a situation will bring about a heightened pitch of class struggle. The function of winning increased representation in parliament is to imbue the proletariat with confidence in its political strength so that it decides to seize political power.

The debate to be had is what political conditions are necessary and sufficient for the working class to see the need for such a seizure of power. It's on this point that a distinction between parliament and soviet can be fully developed. Kautsky's conception was that the proletariat would seize power via a parliament made sovereign by radical political struggle, with measures like disbanding the imperial army and giving up all colonial possessions. Lenin didn't disagree with this notion until being convinced of the idea of smashing the state after the outbreak of WW1. Lenin then innovatively conceives of soviets as a form of state power rather than just being a temporary body to give way to a constituent assembly. We have to understand what the political logic was which allowed Lenin to make such a move, and why it was conversely that Kautsky eventually sided with the parliament of a bureaucratic state apparatus over the soviets.

On another point, we might take issue in chapter V with his discussion of the danger of premature class battles. But Zinoviev in his review only has praise for this chapter. Holding back 'premature' struggle is not alien to revolutionary Marxism, we only need to think about the Russian July Days to see that. The issue of difference was the logic behind judging which things had to be held back, when, for what end, and it's in that logic that there is a severe problem with Kautsky. Elaboration on this issue of political logic has to be found elsewhere.

The latter part of the book also demonstrates that the difference was not just in that Lenin thought war brought about a revolutionary period, as Kautsky says as much here. The difference was in the specific analysis of imperialism and how differences here express broader political differences. On the question of revolution in Russia, Kautsky generally affirms the position he took a few years ago which was almost the same as Trotsky's, though there are notable ambiguities which allowed Lenin to see support for his position in Kautsky as well.

The divergence between Lenin and Kautsky was not as simple as it is often posed. However it can only be to our benefit to understand the actual terms of the debate and its deeper significance.

I give this book four stars for the utility of studying it rather than for any agreement with the author.

[Bhaskar Sunkara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ignore the political conclusions of Kautsky's theoretical statism and nationalism, which become more noxious in his later work, and you have the model for a what a worker's party in the Marxist tradition should be doing.

[Zapato · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Kautsky se le conoce mucho por la traición posterior y la polémica con Lenin (aunque decir que se le conoce mucho igual es mucho decir), pero antes era uno de los mayores exponentes del ala revolucionaria. Aquí, pese a algunas ambigüedades con la forma del Estado y algún otro matiz, plantea de forma muy clara elementos centrales del marxismo de los que más tarde renegaría. Y escribe muy bien el cabrón.

[Juanma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tras haber leído a Kautsky, puedo y no puedo entender tanta beligerancia por parte de Lenin, en el debate de sus diferencias en cuanto al uso de la violencia para conseguir los fines socialistas. Quizá en el contexto de principios del siglo XX, Lenin tuviera razón para llamarlo oportunista y aliado de la clase burguesa, pero hoy día yo creo que ya dejaríamos de llamar a Kautsky renegado.
A mi entender, Kautsky no rechaza frontalmente la revolución violenta, aunque no la considera deseable. Considera, de otro modo, que la descentralización y la dispersión del poder en los estados nacionales (de occidente en su momento) dificultaba más la posibilidad de alcanzarlo por medios sorprendentes y de ataque violento. Por su parte, Lenin quería armar al proletariado de cada país, para que se levantaran contra sus propias burguesías, no para desarrollar guerras imperialistas. Y hoy tenemos, estructuras supranacionales, con el poder concentrado pero compartido, probablemente serían éstas las que sofocaran el calor de alguna revolución violenta aislada, porque incluso lo hacen ya por medios institucionales (Troika, FMI...).
Kautsky reconoce la necesidad de construir proletariado (vanguardia y liderazgo) a niveles básicos comunitarios, no internacionales... y es, en parte, un reconocimiento de la diversidad de correlaciones de fuerzas y de diferencias culturales situadas en diversos contextos. Puede que Kautsky fuera un amarillo traidor a la revolución, no lo sé, pero en su obra, al menos, parece haber intenciones de construir socialismo y de avanzar en la mejora de condiciones de vida.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

His insistence on the inevitability of social antagonism, against growing calls for "social peace" within the party, was refreshing, at least compared to Bernstein's Evolutionary Socialism. His attempts to defend the SPD's do-nothing parliamentary strategy are quite grating, though. He's so afraid of state repression and the rollback of suffrage that he's unwilling to take any offensive measures. (Of course, the party executive was even more afraid of that than he was.) Instead, antagonism will manifest itself when the bourgeois will attack them and fail due to the massive size of the proletariat, rushing to defend the large but not as massive party.

His analysis of imperialism is decent, and his attitude toward non-European peoples and clear rejection of colonialism has improved somewhat since he wrote "The Class Struggle". He's still pretty negative towards immigrants, though. Worst of all, he doesn't suggest how to stop imperialism besides continuing to fight to democratize Prussia, and Germany at large, using methods which already presuppose democracy. There is a glimmer of the Leninist strategy of revolutionary defeatism in his belief that a war might not be bad for the proletariat, even though they are supposed to be the staunchest against militarism, insofar as the war could lead to a revolutionary situation that would discredit the existing bourgeois parties in some way or another.

Not a fan of his somewhat Nietzschean & Darwinian interpretation of the class struggle in terms of the "will to live". It's a clear sign of the degradation of Hegelian dialectics' influence on Marxism, and in some ways reminded me of Mao's "On Contradiction".

[Efrahim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bir dünya savaşına ve muazzam bir belirsizliğe doğru yol alındığının farkında olan (o dönemin birçok Marksisti gibi) Kautsky, Alman sosyal demokrasisi içerisinde oluşan sağ ve sol kanatlara karşı merkezde bir pozisyon almaya çalışırken epey yalpalıyor ve bu yalpalamadan doğan çelişkiler metnin her bölümüne sinmiş. Tabiri caizse, ne yardan ne serden vazgeçiyor. Bir yandan insan iradesinin varlığından bahsederken hemen sonrasında determinizme savruluyor, devrimin kaçınılmazlığından bahsederken buna temel olarak sayfalarca işçi sınıfının nicel çoğalmasından ve Reichstag'ın güçlendirilmesi gerektiğini yazıyor. Maalesef en büyük savrulmayı da; kitapta işçi sınıfının savaşa ve militarizme karşı olması gerektiğini sayfalarca anlattığı halde, 1914 Ağustosunda meclisteki savaş bütçesine onay verirken gerçekleştirecek.

[Wilson Tun · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting Marxist analysis on class antagonism and how reform is not the path towards true Socialism because in Kautsky’s opinion, as he initially expected, gradual reform and social peace in the parliamentary system will align the petite bourgeoisie with the laborers but he admitted that Orthodox Marxism has ‘erred’ by expecting too much from the petite bourgeoisie.

Another irony to note is that Kautsky himself fell into this reformist mindset as WW1 settles in as he was forced to align himself with the ruling class to not split the SDP’s votes in the parliament where Marxists have claimed that Kautsky has gone ‘renegade’.

[John Hess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Better than Lenin.

[Nathan Graves · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did a bad turn later when the war started, but makes a good case for how parliament can be used to further the revolution.

[Jorge Seijo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Antes de súa traizón Kautsky era un dos mellores representantes do marxismo ortodoxo e escribía especialmente ben. Porén, nesta última gran obra non acaba de romper cos límites do estado capitalista. Inda así é un clásico do que hai moito que aprender.