The tasks of our times

Kautsky's road to power in Germany and Russia

Lars T. Lih

pp. 121-140

in: Studies in East European Thought 70, 2018.

Abstract

Kautsky's Road to Power (Der Weg zur Macht, 1909. https://www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/kautsky/1909/macht/index.htm) was received in very different ways in Germany and Russia. In Germany, it earned Kautsky hostility from the trade-unionists on the right of the party and the radicals on the left. Later writers dismiss the book as preaching "revolutionary passivity." In Russia, the Bolsheviks immediately seized on the book as an endorsement of specifically Bolshevik positions. After the war broke out, they used it to show that Kautsky was a renegade who did not live up to his stated views. In the end, Road to Power helped inspire Kautsky's greatest fans turned fiercest foes to make what he considered a tragic mistake: the October revolution.