Karl Kautsky’s “The Proletarian Revolution and Its Program” (Translated from the original German)

This has been a challenge to translate so far, as the book scanned from library archives in Stuttgart is in intricate Gothic cursive.

This book is not available anywhere in English, and seems to be almost forgotten by historians and laypeople alike.

He’d written the book published below in response to his close reading of the Majority Socialists’ 1921 Görlitz Program.

Kautsky came to believe circa 1920 that the Wiemar Republic was the German form of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

This fits with Kautsky’s controversial thinking hammered out in the 1920 preface he’d added to his 1909 book The Road to Power. The preface and book would be published by his son in conjunction with a skilled editor in the 1990s in a new, revised English edition (the online English version of the Road to Power unfortunately lacks the crucial 1920 preface).

The Wiemar Republic, despite being under a shaky bourgeois-Socialist coalition government since 1919, was moving inevitably to a bright, Socialist future that would be devoid of all traces of capitalism, to paraphrase the leading German Socialist theorist in the 1920 preface to The Road to Power.

The Proletarian Revolution and Its Program, published in 1922, was simply an attempt no doubt to elaborate on his modified beliefs.

The tragedy of March 1933 was thus this: Instead of an inspiring model for Socialist democracy that could’ve and probably would’ve resulted in Socialist republics elsewhere, the world was tragically blighted by the wholly avoidable death of a young, promising, and vibrant Socialistic democracy, WWII, the Holocaust, and the postwar division of a shattered Germany into two rival States.

All of those terrible events, the translator of this book believes, never had to happen.

Maybe all is right in the universe?

Hopefully this translation of such an old, almost entirely forgotten book will inspire people to fight for something so much better than this moribund transnational capitalism.

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The Proletarian Revolution and Its Program (1922)

By: Karl Kautsky

Translation by: Reece Gatliff

Downloaded via Marxists.org

Original source of scanned archival material: Bibliothek der Friedrich–Ebert–Stiftung in Stuttgart

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Misprint

We apologize for the misprint made on page 166, in the printing made on 10/20. We have undertaken the correction of the the following sentence: “…property generates in conjunction with the product” should say [“…property generates in conjunction with the] means of production”.

Independent Socialist Ernst Däumig’s Speech at the First General Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils (My Translation With the German Text Printed Below)

Speech of the Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) Co-Chair Ernst Däumig at the All-German Council Congress:

Then, gentlemen, it is in this way a matter-of-fact that the history of the Revolutionary Parliament is not unique, self-made, yes, I say, it warms the soul that this has taken shape, that this first Revolutionary Parliament, that this has been formed here. Where is the huge mental shift, the ideal forceful shift, forced right through the gate by this National Convention? Where is the rejuvenation of youth, the enthusiasm of March, of the revolutionary years of 1848?  Where is the hymn, the enthusiasm of freedom, of the German People who have stood up? To infer not from all that!

When the history of these revolutionary weeks in Germany will be put to words, when to ponder the words of the German People itself will produce a smile: To preserve then the People, so blind, they see not, they are not themselves and are entrapped by this force sent down onto their throats? Regardless, then must each clear-thought be made real, the jubilant Social Contract made real by the coming National Assembly, the warrant of death for the system. Soon now you will belong to the Council System. And then you will have companionship, personally inaugurate a political Suicide Club. I gift them joy, and thanks to that I have played my part …

TextmaterialKritik von Ernst Däumig am Reichsrätekongress

Denn, meine Herren, kein einziges Revolutionsparlament der Geschichte hat einen so nüchternen, hausbackenen, ja ich sage, philiströsen Geist aufzuweisen, wie dieses erste Revolutionsparlament, das hier zusammengetreten ist. Wo ist der große seelische, ideale Schwung, der durch die Nationalkonvente durchging? Wo ist die jugendfrische Märzbegeisterung des Jahres 1848? Wo ist die Hymne, die aus der Freiheitsbegeisterung des deutschen Volkes entstanden ist? Nichts davon zu spüren!

Wenn die Geschichte dieser Revolutionswochen in Deutschland geschrieben werden wird, dann wird man sich lächelnd fragen: waren denn die Leute so blind, daß sie nicht sahen, daß sie sich selbst den Strick um den Hals legten? Denn das muß doch jedem Klardenkenden einleuchten, daß die jubelnde Zustimmung zur Nationalversammlung gleichbedeutend ist mit einem Todesurteil für das System, dem Sie jetzt angehören, für das Rätesystem. Und wenn Sie die Leidenschaft haben, einen politischen Selbstmörderklub darzustellen, ich lasse Ihnen das Vergnügen, ich für meinen Teil danke dafür …