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You are here: The Platypus Affiliated Society/Archive for tag Karl Kautsky

"How well Kautsky wrote [when he was still a Marxist]!" — Lenin, "Left-Wing" Communism — An Infantile Disorder (1920)

Platypus Leipzip lädt zum Ferienlesekreis über "Kautskys Marxismus".

Treff: ab 18. August immer dienstags 19 Uhr
Zoom-Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89579766660

Die Texte werden zu Hause gelesen und beim Lesekreis besprochen. Kein Vorwissen ist nötig. Neue Gesichter sind immer herzlich willkommen.

● vorausgesetzte Texte / + zusätzlich empfohlene Texte

Empfohlene HintergrundlektĂĽre:

+ Vernon Lidtke, The Outlawed Party: SPD 1878–1890 (1966)
+ Lidtke, The Alternative Culture: Socialist Labor in Imperial Germany (1985)
+ Carl Schorske, The SPD 1905-17: The Development of the Great Schism (1955)
+ James Joll, The Second International 1889–1914 (1966)


Einleitender Text:

• Monty Johnstone, “Marx and Engels and the concept of the party” (1967)
• J. P. Nettl, “The German Social Democratic Party 1890–1914 as a Political Model” (1965)
• Spartakist-Broschüre, "Kautskyanertum und die Ursprünge der russischen Sozialdemokratie" Kapitel 1, Lenin und die Avantgarde Partei (1978)

Woche 1 | Lassalle und Marx

+ Karl Korsch, "Der Marxismus der ersten Internationale" (1924)
• Karl Marx, „Inauguraladresse der Internationalen Arbeiter-Assoziation“ (1864)
• Ferdinand Lassalle, Offenes Antwortschreiben an das Zentralkommitee zur Berufung eines Allgemeinen Deutschen Arbeiterkongresses zu Leipzig (1863)

Woche 2 | Bakunin und Marx

• Mikhail Bakunin, A Critique of the German Social-Democratic Program (1870)
• Bakunin, "Marxismus, Freiheit, Staat" (1872)
• Marx, "Kritik des Gothaer Programms" (1875)
• Marx, "Einleitung zum Programm der französischen Arbeiterpartei" (1880)
+ Marx, Konspekt von Bakunins Buch "Staatlichkeit und Anarchie" (1874)

Woche 3 | „Das Erfurter Programm“

• Karl Kautsky, "Das Erfurter Programm" (1892)
+ Eugene Debs, "Competition versus Cooperation" (1900)
+ Hellen Keller, "How I became a socialist" (1912)
+ Eugene Debs, "How I became a socialist" (1902)

Woche 4 | „Die soziale Revolution“

• Kautsky, Die soziale Revolution (1902): Teil 1 und Teil 2

Woche 5 | „Der Weg zur Macht“

• Kautsky, "Der Weg zur Macht" (1909)

Woche 6 | „Die proletarische Revolution und der Renegat Kautsky“

• Vladimir Lenin, "Die proletarische Revolution und der Renegat Kautsky" (1918)
+ Debs, “The Day of the People” (1919)
+ Kautsky, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat (1918)

Woche 7 | 3. Internationale

• Leon Trotzki: Manifest der Kommunistischen Internationale an das Proletariat der ganzen Welt
• First Four Congress of the Third International: Leitsätze über den organisatorischen Aufbau der kommunistischen Parteien, über die Methoden und den Inhalt ihrer Arbeit (1921)
• O. Piatnitsky: The 21 Conditions of Admission into the Communist International [HTML] (1934)

On August 6th in Frankfurt am Main in Germany there was a Platypus panel on the question‚ “What is a left political organization?” Among the panelists was Daniel Behruzi from the German section of the Committee for a Worker’s International (CWI). Read the response by DGS_TaP and systemcrash.
ONE HUNDRED YEARS LATER, what does the crisis and split in Marxism, and the political collapse of the major parties of the 2nd International in 1914, mean for us today? The Spartacists, for example, are constantly in search of the "August 4" moment, the moment of betrayal of the proletariat's struggle for socialism by various tendencies in the history of Marxism. The Spartacists went so far as to confess their own "August 4th" when they failed to call for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake there. So, what happened, from a Marxist perspective, on August 4, 1914, when the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) members of the Reichstag voted to finance the Prussian Empire's war budget?
Time magazine nominated “the protester,” from the Arab Spring to the #Occupy movement, as “Person of the Year” for 2011. In addressing the culture of the #Occupy movement, Time listed some key books to be read, in a sidebar article, “How to stock a protest library.” Included were A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, The Prison Notebooks by Antonio Gramsci, Multitude by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, and Welcome to the Desert of the Real by Slavoj Žižek.
Karl Kautsky's 1924 review of Karl Korsch’s Marxism and Philosophy appears below in English for the first time. It is hoped that other reviews of Marxism and Philosophy will also be made available in the very near future, not least by leading German communists such as August Thalheimer. Given the highly disputed theoretical legacy of both Kautsky and Korsch, the publication of this review will doubtless add to the debate on the idea of a "coming of age" of Marxism in the late 1860s.