Kautsky’s Critique of Religion

Abstract

“Up to the 1914–16 war,” said Lenin, “Karl Kautsky was a Marxist, and many of his major writings and statements will always remain models of Marxism.”¹ But from that time forward, Lenin vehemently attacked “The Renegade Kautsky.”² His “disgraceful rubbish, childish babble and shallowest opportunism impel me to ask: Why do we do nothing to fight the theoretical vulgarisation of Marxism by Kautsky?” Furthermore, and I reproduce Lenin’s comments exactly:

Kautsky has absolutely failed to understand and has distorted in a purely opportunist way

• the teaching of Marx on the state

• the teaching of Marx on the dictatorship of the proletariat

• the teaching of Marx on bourgeois democracy

• the teaching of Marx on parliamentarism

• the teaching of Marx on the role and significance of the Commune, etc.³