1st Edition
The New Reformism and the Revival of Karl Kautsky The Renegade’s Revenge
This text offers an authoritative historiography of German socialist theorist Karl Kautsky and his impact on debates about the Russian Revolution and the contemporary left. Known as the “Pope of Marxism,” Douglas Greene examines the totality of Kautsky’s political career and dissects the fundamental opportunism and passive radicalism that defined his Marxism. He later examines the most substantive Marxist critics of Kautsky, namely Rosa Luxemburg, V. I. Lenin, and Leon Trotsky, while offering a critical assessment of the work produced by scholars and activists, Lars Lih, Eric Blanc, and Mike Mcnair, seeking to revive Kautsky. The New Reformism and the Revival of Karl Kautsky is an important addition to scholarship on the subject and a valuable resource for those interested in the Russian Revolution, German politics, socialism, Marxism, and contemporary left-wing debates.
Biography
Douglas Greene is an independent Marxist historian living in the greater Boston area. He is also the author of three other books: Communist Insurgent: Blanqui’s Politics of Revolution (2017), A Failure of Vision: Michael Harrington and the Limits of Democratic Socialism (2022), and Stalinism and the Dialectics of Saturn: Anticommunism, Marxism, and the Fate of the Soviet Union (2023). His works have been published in Socialism and Democracy, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, Cosmonaut, Left Voice, Monthly Review Online, Counterpunch, Cultural Logic, and Red Wedge magazine. He blogs at The Blanquist: blanquist.blogspot.com
Many practical socialists think they are exempt from the intellectual influence of the past. But Doug Greene shows that the ghost of Karl Kautsky's reformism still haunts us, and continues to hinder today's struggles from developing revolutionary consciousness. Kautsky might be dead, but his political corpse stinks to high heaven.
Harrison Fluss, Author of Prometheus and Gaia
Kautsky was the original centrist: revolutionary in words and reformist in deeds. Long forgotten to all but the nerdiest historians, Kautsky experienced a brief revival by U.S. socialists eager to capitulate to the Democratic Party. With this incisive study, Doug Greene returns Kautsky to the obscurity where he spent most of the last century. Using critiques by Luxemburg, Lenin, and Trotsky, this book refutes Kautskyism and in the process elucidates revolutionary Marxism.
Nathaniel Flakin, Author of Revolutionary Berlin: A Walking Guide and Martin Monath, A Jewish Revolutionary Among Nazi Soldiers
Capitalist crises, developing in the wake of one another with distressing regularity, currently threaten humanity. A revolutionary left capable of challenging this contemporary drift to barbarism and planetary destruction struggles to revive and regroup. But traditions of dead generations do indeed weigh like a nightmare on the brain of the living left. Karl Kautsky, once an architect of the revolutionary Marxism of the Second International, but subsequently repudiated for his opportunism and vacillation in the face of imperialist war and the Russian Revolution, has recently been revived. The New Reformism and the Revival of Karl Kautsky: The Renegade's Revenge is a timely and indispensable refutation of the dangerous dead-ends of this neo-Kautskyism. Greene provides a cogent outline of Kautsky's rise and fall as a Marxist figure, dissecting the differentiated neo-Kautskyisms now on offer. A must-read for all who seek the birth of a better world.
Bryan D. Palmer, Author of James P. Cannon and the Emergence of Trotskyism in the United States, 1928-1938 (2022)
In his latest book, The New Reformism and the Revival of Karl Kautsky: The Renegade’s Revenge Doug Greene offers a comprehensive history of Karl Kautsky’s thought, and he tracks the indelible influence Katusky made on socialist movements, from the Bolsheviks to thinkers affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America today. This book offers an invaluable contribution to the history of Marxist thought and to the burgeoning field of neo-Katusky studies. Greene’s study reveals the blind spots and the shortcomings in the contemporary “neo-Kautskyist” turn on the left. This work will prove to be an invaluable resource for navigating contemporary socialist theory and politics.”
Daniel Tutt, Lecturer in Philosophy, George Washington University
Doug Greene doesn’t claim to draw a definitive balance sheet on the “renegade” Karl Kautsky—which would require a more thorough treatment of what Marx and Engels bequeathed—but his volume will be required reading for such a future project. Its most original contribution is his distillation and critique of the “Neo-Kautskyists,” particularly, Lars Lih, Eric Blanc and Mike Mcnair. For those who are aware of their claims but unfamiliar with the specifics, there is no better introduction than what Greene provides. Because the age-old debate about reformism versus revolution is sure to intensify as the crisis of capitalism deepens, Greene’s intervention will be of enormous value for those looking for a revolutionary way forward.
August H. Nimtz, Professor of Political Science and African American and African Studies, University of Minnesota
