14 Facts About Karl Kautsky

Karl Kautsky moved back to Germany in 1890 and became active in the SPD, and wrote the theory section of its Erfurt Program of 1891, a major influence on other European socialist parties.

Karl Kautsky's influence dwindled during the 1920s, and he died in Amsterdam in 1938.

Karl Kautsky's stance sparked conflict with other leading Marxists, including Eduard Bernstein, who rejected revolution; Rosa Luxemburg, who championed revolutionary spontaneity; and Vladimir Lenin, whom Kautsky accused of launching a premature revolution in Russia in 1917 and leading the Soviet Union toward dictatorship.

The family moved to Vienna when Karl Kautsky was the age of seven.

Karl Kautsky studied history, philosophy and economics at the University of Vienna from 1874, and became a member of the Social Democratic Party of Austria in 1875.

In 1883, Karl Kautsky founded the monthly Die Neue Zeit in Stuttgart.

Karl Kautsky edited the magazine until September 1917: this gave him a steady income and allowed him to propagate Marxism.

When Bernstein attacked the traditional Marxist position of the necessity for revolution in the late 1890s, Karl Kautsky denounced him, arguing that Bernstein's emphasis on the ethical foundations of Socialism opened the road to a call for an alliance with the "progressive" bourgeoisie and a non-class approach.

Karl Kautsky claimed that Germany was waging a defensive war against the threat of Czarist Russia.

Karl Kautsky visited Georgia in 1920 and wrote a book on the Democratic Republic of Georgia that at that moment was still independent of Bolshevist Russia.

Karl Kautsky assisted in the creation of the party program adopted in Heidelberg by the German Social Democratic Party.

Karl Kautsky lived in Berlin-Friedenau for many years; his wife, Luise Kautsky, became a close friend of Rosa Luxemburg, who lived in Friedenau.

Karl Kautsky saw the Bolsheviks as a conspiratorial organization that had gained power by a coup and initiated revolutionary changes for which there was no economic rationale in Russia.

Karl Kautsky's son, Benedikt Kautsky, spent seven years in concentration camps; his wife, Luise Kautsky, was murdered in Auschwitz.