Karl Kautsky

Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) was a Czech-Austrian Marxist theorist and political leader who shaped German social democracy and later criticized Bolshevik rule.

Friedrich Engels: German socialist philosopher and political organizer who collaborated with Karl Marx and helped edit and publish his work. Engels supported Kautsky’s scholarship and entrusted him with editing Marxist texts.
Historical materialism: An approach that explains social change through material conditions, economic structures, and conflicts between classes. Kautsky treated historical materialism as the basis for understanding socialism’s development.
Social Democratic Party of Germany: Germany’s major socialist party, founded in 1875 and known as the SPD. Kautsky helped define the party’s Marxist program and became its leading theoretician.
Revisionism: A socialist current that revises revolutionary Marxist expectations in favor of gradual reform. Kautsky opposed Bernstein’s revisionism while defending electoral politics as a route to power.
Second International: An international organization of socialist and labor parties founded in 1889 and dissolved during the First World War. Kautsky became one of its most influential theorists before the war exposed its political divisions.
Eduard Bernstein: German social-democratic theorist who argued that socialism could develop through democratic reform rather than revolution. Bernstein’s revisionism provoked Kautsky’s defense of Marxist revolutionary principles.
Class struggle: Conflict between social classes over economic resources, political power, and the organization of society. Kautsky saw class struggle as the force driving capitalist society toward political transformation.
Erfurt Program: The 1891 program of the German Social Democratic Party, combining Marxist analysis with immediate political demands. Kautsky drafted its theoretical section, setting a model for socialist parties across Europe.
Bolshevism: The revolutionary Marxist movement led by Lenin that seized power in Russia in 1917. Kautsky argued that Bolshevik rule substituted party dictatorship for democratic working-class government.
German Revolution of 1918–1919: The uprising that ended Germany’s monarchy and established a republic after the First World War. Kautsky’s role in the revolutionary period tested his commitment to parliamentary democracy and socialist government.

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