Sourcing a Kautsky quote

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Joseph Kay's picture
Joseph Kay
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Dec 6 2011 12:19
Sourcing a Kautsky quote

Gilles Dauvé quotes Kautsky saying:

Dauvé quoting Kautsky wrote:
"Socialist consciousness today (?!) can only arise on the basis of deep scientific knowledge (...) But the bearer of science is not the proletariat but the bourgeois intellectuals; (...) so then socialist consciousness is something brought into the class struggle of the proletariat from outside and not something that arises spontaneously within it."

There's some interestingly placed snips so I'd really like to read the original in context before quoting this myself, but searching phrases from the quote only yields links to Dauvé's text, which is unreferenced. Anybody got any idea what the original is?

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jonthom
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Dec 6 2011 12:40

Lenin quotes it (with some differences in translation) in What Is To Be Done?, referring to the "profoundly true and important words of Karl. Kautsky on the new draft programme of the Austrian Social-Democratic Party":

Quote:
Modern socialist consciousness can arise only on the basis of profound scientific knowledge. Indeed, modern economic science is as much a condition for socialist production as, say, modern technology, and the proletariat can create neither the one nor the other, no matter how much it may desire to do so; both arise out of the modern social process. The vehicle of science is not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia [K. K.’s italics]: it was in the minds of individual members of this stratum that modern socialism originated, and it was they who communicated it to the more intellectually developed proletarians who, in their turn, introduce it into the proletarian class struggle where conditions allow that to be done. Thus, socialist consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian class struggle from without [von Aussen Hineingetragenes] and not something that arose within it spontaneously [urwüchsig]
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Noa Rodman
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Dec 6 2011 12:46

Probably from his article in the Die Neue Zeit 1902, H3, (p 79); here. It's actually a totally casual remark that the proletariat didn't invent political economy, but Adam Smith et al., so there's no reason to turn this passage into the founding stone of Stalinism or what not.
Also Kautsky was very negative about intellectuals, e.g. in
http://marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1903/xx/int-work.htm

edit; Social-democrats (like Kautsky's grandson) then claim that Lenin misappropriated/distorted this.

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Joseph Kay
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Dec 6 2011 12:51

Ok, so looks like Kautsky was making a historical argument that socialist ideas came from the brains of Smith, Ricardo, Marx et al, rather than denying workers could come to socialist conclusions through struggle per se? Looks like Dauvé was quoting Lenin, and a bit of Chinese whispers might have crept in (innocently or by distortion, or both). Glad I checked before quoting it anywhere!

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mikail firtinaci
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Dec 6 2011 13:04

I think it is from 1902 social revolution pamphlet.

I strongly recommend Lars Lih Lenin Rediscovered before following the judgement of Dauve.

Personally I was very hostile towards Kautsky too but after starting to read him I was impressed by both his clear writing style and clever arguments.

About the comment. Lih argues that what Kautsky argued was not simply the workers are sheeps to be herd by the bourgeois intellectuals. Contrary to that it seems Kautsky was arguing that socialism was inevitable whether the intellectuals would be in it or not. In fact what Kautsky argued was a kind of union between the socialism as an ideal and workers movement as an entity moving towards socialism however blindly.

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Jacob Richter
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Dec 12 2011 02:35

I'm pleased to see that the Kautsky Revival isn't limited to just the CPGB, RevLeft posters, etc.

Re. Lars Lih, I believe the emphasis should be as follows (and I'll use his translation):

The vehicle of science is not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia; modern socialism arises among individual members of this stratum and then is communicated by them to proletarians who stand out due to their intellectual development, and these then bring it into the class struggle of the proletariat where conditions allow.

Not to sound egotistic, but I do consider myself amongst those "proletarians who stand out due to their intellectual development."

I'd like to link the last part of that quote to Lenin's adage that "without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement." Here I think Lenin was mistaken. Elaborate "revolutionary theory" tends to be the hallmark of sects. This, however, should be contrasted with a revolutionary program, the popularization of revolutionary theory. Without a revolutionary program, there can be no revolutionary movement!

This has been proven time and again, positively by the likes of Eisenach, Gotha, and Erfurt (in reference to the major political programs adopted by the pre-war SPD), and negatively by those who discard real program in favour of cheap "transitional" sloganeering at best and criticize-without-solutions at worst. Actual class struggle and social revolution is programmed.