Karl Kautsky and the Socialist Revolution 1880-1938 (Verso Modern Classics) by Massimo Salvadori

Author:Massimo Salvadori [Salvadori, Massimo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2016-02-22T22:00:00+00:00

2The Birth of the USPD

Kautsky’s attitude towards the ‘domestic truce’ between the SPD and the German government after 4 August 1914 and to the ‘defence of the fatherland’ was meanwhile progressively shifting towards active criticism of the party majority, which gave nearly complete support to the government. He did not, however, share the attitude of Liebknecht, who had initially bowed to party discipline (and thus voted for the war credits on 4 August 1914 against his will), but then, on 2 December 1914, was the only member of the Reichstag to vote against another grant of war credits, thus defying the instructions of the party. Kautsky supported the Centrist opposition of Haase and Ledebour, who changed their positions as the illusion of a war of defence collapsed, and on 20 March and 20 August 1915 abstained on war credit votes, while intensifying their criticism of the oppressive internal régime within Germany. The difference between the opposition of Liebknecht and that of the ‘Centrists’ was not merely quantitative, but qualitative. Liebknecht considered the demand for peace without annexations – the main slogan of the ‘Centrists’ – utopian. Liebknecht’s line became increasingly radical, calling for agitation against the war as such, while the ‘Centrists’ opposed the ‘domestic truce’ in order to dissuade the government from its imperialist objectives. The Centrist strategy was designed to bring about a return to the pre-war situation.

The conflict between Liebknecht’s positions and those of the more moderate ‘Centrists’ became evident in June 1915. On 9 June the radical oppositionists presented the party executive and parliamentary group with a document, drawn up on the basis of a draft by Liebknecht himself, which denounced both the imperialist character of the war and the complicity of the SPD deputies with the government. The policy initiated on 4 August 1914, it declared, represented the beginning of a line that meant ‘not only the bankruptcy of the party’ at a moment of historic crisis, but also ‘an ever graver break with our previous principles’. Charging that it was becoming ‘ever clearer’ that the character of the war was one of ‘imperialist conquest’, it called for respect for the resolutions of the Stuttgart Congress of the International in 1907, which committed every party to exploit a war for purposes of class struggle and to work to ‘bring the war to an end as quickly as possible’. Finally, the document denounced the fact that ‘the Reichstag fraction, of which the majority of the leaders of the party are members, has abandoned opposition to the policy of imperialist conquest’.62

On 19 June 1915, just ten days after the 9 June manifesto, Bernstein (who had joined the ‘Centrists’ because of his disagreement with the majority’s support of the war), Haase, and Kautsky published a manifesto of their own in which they denounced German plans, as set out in a document submitted by major consortia to Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg on 20 May, for colonial expansion, war reparations, and the annexation of various European territories (inhabited by more than 7 million Belgians and 3 million French).

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