28 Socialist World Issue 1, 2019 will miseducate young socialist activists.
Is Kautsky Now Relevant?
Karl Kautsky was a leading socialist theoretician during the rise of German capitalism in the late 19th century, when the idea that socialism could replace capitalism by incremental legislative reforms first developed among trade union leaders and in a wing of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). Kautsky opposed this reformism primarily because of the conclusions Marx had drawn from the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871, where the working class held power for three months. Kautsky and Lenin both agreed with Marx that the old capitalist state apparatus could not be taken over one brick at a time, but needed to be dismantled and replaced with a democratic workers state. Kautsky, as Blanc himself points out, eventually fell prey to reformism. As World War I broke out, Kautsky, along with the leadership of the SPD, rejected socialist internationalism and supported the German ruling class’ war mobilization. This historic betrayal, repeated by almost all the leaders of the mass workers’ parties in Europe, led 16 million working people to their deaths. In the war’s wake revolutions spread across Europe.
dissolved and new elections were held almost every year. When the Finnish Social Democratic Party (SDP) won a majority in the 1916 elections, the Tsar once again closed parliament. Thus Finland did not experience prolonged political stability, unlike Kautsky’s Germany or Finland’s neighbor Sweden, where the ideas of reformism were stronger and the socialist parties became more bureaucratic as they were increasingly dominated by the trade union officials and parliamentary representatives. Blanc attributes the Finnish SDP’s electoral victory to “patient class conscious organization and education” which is true but omits the dramatic change of consciousness brought about by events, especially the war. Finland did not experience steady, gradual economic progress, but was highly volatile during this period, in many ways more akin to the Russian experience. Russian and Finnish socialists were also in constant dialogue and the Bolsheviks’ correct approach to national oppression and support for Finland’s right to self-determination strengthened relations. At the June 1917 Finnish SDP Congress the Russian Bolshevik leader, Alexandra Kollontai won thunderous applause when she called for socialist revolution and for Finland’s right to independence. The Bolsheviks were deeply internationalist, reflected in the many Jews, Georgians, Ukrainians and other national minorities in their leadership. The suggestion that Finnish socialists “fell under the guidance of a cadre of young ‘Kautskyists’ led by Otto Kuussinen” is a very one-sided snapshot of the process. By late 1918 Kuussinen, having fled Finland with the victory of the Whites in May, 1918, had joined the Bolsheviks and founded the Finnish Communist Party in exile. Unfortunately he later sided with Stalin against Trotsky. Kautsky’s writings were widely read by Finnish socialists, but only until more useful theoretical ideas came along based on the rich experience of the Russian Revolution of 1917.
By counterposing Lenin and Kautsky, and the Russian and Finnish Revolutions, Blanc asks the reader to choose between two wrongly polarized conceptions.
Finland’s Parliament and Party
At the heart of Blanc’s article is the idea that the Russian Revolution is not relevant for working people in advanced capitalist countries and that, within the Finnish Revolution of 1917-8, we will find a new model for a “parliamentary road to socialism” that Kautsky had conceived. At the time of these revolutions, Finland and Russia were ruled by the Tzar with an iron fist and had limited electoral freedoms. Russia’s political system favored large landowners and the nascent capitalists, and prevented workers and poor peasants, the vast majority of the population, from having any political power. The Duma which was created by the Tsar was in no sense a true bourgeois parliament. It had very limited power, and could be dismissed at any time by the Tsar. In fact a real parliamentary democracy was a significant demand of the anti-Tsarist opposition. Nonetheless the Bolsheviks, the left wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, participated in most elections and were able to get representatives elected to the Duma. According to the book, Bolsheviks in the Tsarist Duma by Aleksei Badayev, the Bolsheviks won the support of 88% of the one million industrial workers who voted in the 1912 election. In Finland, then part of the Russian Empire, the Tsar conceded a limited parliament in 1907 following the 1905 Revolution. Between 1908 and 1916 the power of the Finnish Parliament was almost completely neutralized by the Russian Tsar Nicholas II with a government formed by Imperial Russian Army officers during the second period of “Russification”. The Parliament was
How the Finnish Revolution Unfolded
The Finnish revolution broke out in late 1917 after the SDP’s electoral defeat that year. Tensions rose with rising strikes and demonstrations. The Finnish capitalist class organized anti-socialist armed militias to prepare to behead the socialist movement and the threat of a Bolshevik Finland. The leaders of the SDP, the LO (the union federation), and the Red Guard (the workers’ armed self-defense militias) organized into a new formation, the Revolutionary Central Council. The Council initiated a general strike as a show of strength against the capitalist class. The strike paralyzed all of Finland and workers were poised to take power. However the workers’ leadership was split on the way forward and the general strike was called off. This was a crucial mistake that allowed the ruling class to remobilize. The Finnish capitalists, backed by Germany, then launched a civil war in which 20,000 people died. Blanc makes no reference
