Karl Kautsky on Democracy and Republicanism

Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) was the leading theoretician of the German Social Democratic Party and one of the most prominent public intellectuals of his time.Ben Lewis is a tutor and Wolfson Scholar PhD candidate in Germanic Studies at the University of Sheffield. His publications include Clara Zetkin: Letters and Writings (Merlin Press, 2015); Karl Kautsky on Colonialism (November Publications, 2013); and Martov and Zinoviev: Head-to-Head in Halle (November Publications, 2011).

“Lewis’s book and his continuing work on translating texts of the Second International are of crucial help in rediscovering the continuity between Marx and Engels, the Second International and the Bolsheviks. Only if we go back and understand what these ‘old’ thinkers were saying and doing can we put the revolutionary strategy of actually practised ‘Leninism’ to the test and investigate what went wrong, what went right, and how we can use it as socialist revolutionaries.”—Andreas Chari, rs21“At a moment when there is an increasing interest in Kautsky across some parts of the Left, this volume is a welcome addition to our understanding of his democratic and republican thought, as well as his divergence from Bolshevism in his own words.”—Rida Vaquas, Prometheus

• Preface AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Karl Kautsky's Democratic RepublicanismPart 1 Karl Kautsky, Parliamentarism and Democracy (1893)Preface to the First EditionPreface to the Second EditionIntroduction1 Direct Legislation in Prehistory2 Direct Legislation in Civilisation3 Urban Democracy in Antiquity4 The Representative System5 Monarchical and Parliamentary Absolutism6 Modern Democracy7 Rittinghausen's Proposal8 Drafting Laws9 Implementing Laws10 Jurisprudence and the Press11 Parliamentarism and the Parties in England12 Parliamentarism and the Working Classes13 Direct Legislation by the People and the Class StrugglePart 2 Karl Kautsky, The Republic and Social Democracy in France (1905)1 Clarifying the Dispute2 The American Republic3 The First Republic4 The Second Republic and the Socialists5 The Second Empire and the Paris Commune6 The Constitution of the Third Republic7 The Bourgeois Republicans at Work8 Socialism in the Third RepublicPart 3 Karl Kautsky, The Development of a Marxist (1924)Appendix: Synoptic Overview of the Drafts of the Erfurt Programme (1891) Bibliography Index