The Austro-Marxian school (Bauer, Renner, Hilferding, Max Adler,
Friedrich Adler) in the past more than once was contrasted with the
school of Kautsky, as veiled opportunism might be contrasted with true
Marxism. This has proved to be a pure historical misunderstanding,
which deceived some for a long time, some for a lesser period, but
which in the end was revealed with all possible clearness. Kautsky is
the founder and the most perfect representative of the Austrian
forgery of Marxism. While the real teaching of Marx is the theoretical
formula of action, of attack, of the development of revolutionary
energy, and of the carrying of the class blow to its logical
conclusion, the Austrian school was transformed into an academy of
passivity and evasiveness, because of a vulgar historical and
conservative school, and reduced its work to explaining and
justifying, not guiding and overthrowing. It lowered itself to the
position of a hand-maid to the current demands of parliamentarism and
opportunism, replaced dialectic by swindling sophistries, and, in the
end, in spite of its great play with ritual revolutionary phraseology,
became transformed into the most secure buttress of the capitalist
State, together with the altar and throne that rose above it. If the
latter was engulfed in the abyss, no blame for this can be laid upon
the Austro-Marxian school.
What characterizes Austro-Marxism is repulsion and fear in the face of
revolutionary action. The Austro-Marxist is capable of displaying a
perfect gulf of profundity in the explanation of yesterday, and
considerable daring in prophesying concerning to-morrow--but for
to-day he never has a great thought or capacity for great action.
To-day for him always disappears before the wave of little opportunist
worries, which later are explained as the most inevitable link between
the past and the future.
The Austro-Marxist is inexhaustible when it is a question of
discovering reasons to prevent initiative and render difficult
revolutionary action. Austro-Marxism is a learned and boastful theory
of passivity and capitulation. Naturally, it is not by accident that
it was just in Austria, in that Babylon torn by fruitless national
antagonisms, in that State which represented the personified
impossibility to exist and develop, that there arose and was
consolidated the pseudo-Marxian philosophy of the impossibility of
revolutionary action.
The foremost Austrian Marxists represent, each in his own way, a
certain "individuality." On various questions they more than once did
not see eye to eye. They even had political differences. But in
general they are fingers of the same hand.
_Karl Renner_ is the most pompous, solid, and conceited representative
of this type. The gift of literary imitation, or, more simply, of
stylist forgery, is granted to him to an exceptional extent. His
May Day article represented a charming combination of the most
revolutionary words. And, as both words and their combinations live,
within certain limits, with their own independent life, Renner's
articles awakened in the hearts of many workers a revolutionary
fire which their author apparently never knew. The tinsel of
Austro-Viennese culture, the chase of the external, of title of rank,
was more characteristic of Renner than of his other colleagues. In
essence he always remained merely an imperial and royal officer, who
commanded Marxist phraseology to perfection.
The transformation of the author of the jubilee article on Karl Marx,
famous for its revolutionary pathos, into a comic-opera-Chancellor,
who expresses his feelings of respect and thanks to the Scandinavian
monarchs, is in reality one of the most instructive paradoxes of
history.
_Otto Bauer_ is more learned and prosaic, more serious and more
boring, than Renner. He cannot be denied the capacity to read books,
collect facts, and draw conclusions adapted to the tasks imposed upon
him by practical politics, which in turn are guided by others. Bauer
has no political will. His chief art is to reply to all acute
practical questions by commonplaces. His political thought always
lives a parallel life to his will--it is deprived of all courage. His
words are always merely the scientific compilation of the talented
student of a University seminar. The most disgraceful actions of
Austrian opportunism, the meanest servility before the power of the
possessing classes on the part of the Austro-German Social-Democracy,
found in Bauer their grave elucidator, who sometimes expressed himself
with dignity against the form, but always agreed in the essence. If it
ever occurred to Bauer to display anything like temperament and
political energy, it was exclusively in the struggle against the
revolutionary wing--in the accumulation of arguments, facts,
quotations, _against_ revolutionary action. His highest period
was that (after 1907) in which, being as yet too young to be a deputy,
he played the part of secretary of the Social-Democratic group,
supplied it with materials, figures, substitutes for ideas, instructed
it, drew up memoranda, and appeared almost to be the inspirer of great
actions, when in reality he was only supplying substitutes, and
adulterated substitutes, for the parliamentary opportunists.
_Max Adler_ represents a fairly ingenuous variety of the Austro-Marxian
type. He is a lyric poet, a philosopher, a mystic--a philosophical
lyric poet of passivity, as Renner is its publicist and legal expert,
as Hilferding is its economist, as Bauer is its sociologist. Max Adler
is cramped in a world of three dimensions, although he had found a
very comfortable place for himself with the framework of Viennese
bourgeois Socialism and the Hapsburg State. The combination of the
petty business activity of an attorney and of political humiliation,
together with barren philosophical efforts and the cheap tinsel
flowers of idealism, have imbued that variety which Max Adler
represented with a sickening and repulsive quality.
_Rudolf Hilferding_, a Viennese like the rest, entered the German
Social-Democratic Party almost as a mutineer, but as a mutineer of the
Austrian stamp, _i.e._, always ready to capitulate without a fight.
Hilferding took the external mobility and bustle of the Austrian
policy which brought him up for revolutionary initiative; and for a
round dozen of months he demanded--true, in the most moderate terms--a
more intelligent policy on the part of the leaders of the German
Social-Democracy. But the Austro-Viennese bustle swiftly disappeared
from his own nature. He soon became subjected to the mechanical
rhythm of Berlin and the automatic spiritual life of the German
Social-Democracy. He devoted his intellectual energy to the purely
theoretical sphere, where he did not say a great deal, true--no
Austro-Marxist has ever said a great deal in any sphere--but in which
he did, at any rate, write a serious book. With this book on his back,
like a porter with a heavy load, he entered the revolutionary epoch.
But the most scientific book cannot replace the absence of will, of
initiative, of revolutionary instinct and political decision, without
which action is inconceivable. A doctor by training, Hilferding is
inclined to sobriety, and, in spite of his theoretical education, he
represents the most primitive type of empiricist in questions of
policy. The chief problem of to-day is for him not to leave the lines
laid down for him by yesterday, and to find for this conservative and
bourgeois apathy a scientific, economic explanation.
_Friedrich Adler_ is the most balanced representative of the
Austro-Marxian type. He has inherited from his father the latter's
political temperament. In the petty exhausting struggle with the
disorder of Austrian conditions, Friedrich Adler allowed his ironical
scepticism finally to destroy the revolutionary foundations of his
world outlook. The temperament inherited from his father more than
once drove him into opposition to the school created by his father. At
certain moments Friedrich Adler might seem the very revolutionary
negation of the Austrian school. In reality, he was and remains its
necessary coping-stone. His explosive revolutionism foreshadowed acute
attacks of despair amidst Austrian opportunism, which from time to
time became terrified at its own insignificance.
Friedrich Adler is a sceptic from head to foot: he does not believe in
the masses, or in their capacity for action. At the time when Karl
Liebknecht, in the hour of supreme triumph of German militarism, went
out to the Potsdamerplatz to call the oppressed masses to the open
struggle, Friedrich Adler went into a bourgeois restaurant to
assassinate there the Austrian Premier. By his solitary shot,
Friedrich Adler vainly attempted to put an end to his own scepticism.
After that hysterical strain, he fell into still more complete
prostration.
The black-and-yellow crew of social-patriotism (Austerlitz, Leitner,
etc.) hurled at Adler the terrorist all the abuse of which the
cowardly sentiments were capable.
But when the acute period was passed, and the prodigal son returned
from his convict prison into his father's house with the halo of a
martyr, he proved to be doubly and trebly valuable in that form for
the Austrian Social-Democracy. The golden halo of the terrorist was
transformed by the experienced counterfeiters of the party into the
sounding coin of the demagogue. Friedrich Adler became a trusted
surety for the Austerlitzes and Renners in face of the masses.
Happily, the Austrian workers are coming less and less to distinguish
the sentimental lyrical prostration of Friedrich Adler from the
pompous shallowness of Renner, the erudite impotence of Max Adler, or
the analytical self-satisfaction of Otto Bauer.
The cowardice in thought of the theoreticians of the Austro-Marxian
school has completely and wholly been revealed when faced with the
great problems of a revolutionary epoch. In his immortal attempt to
include the Soviet system in the Ebert-Noske Constitution, Hilferding
gave voice not only to his own spirit but to the spirit of the whole
Austro-Marxian school, which, with the approach of the revolutionary
epoch, made an attempt to become exactly as much more Left than
Kautsky as before the revolution it was more Right. From this point of
view, Max Adler's view of the Soviet system is extremely instructive.
The Viennese eclectic philosopher admits the significance of the
Soviets. His courage goes so far that he adopts them. He even
proclaims them the apparatus of the Social Revolution. Max Adler, of
course, is for a social revolution. But not for a stormy, barricaded,
terrorist, bloody revolution, but for a sane, economically balanced,
legally canonized, and philosophically approved revolution.
Max Adler is not even terrified by the fact that the Soviets infringe
the "principle" of the constitutional separation of powers (in the
Austrian Social-Democracy there are many fools who see in such an
infringement a great defect of the Soviet System!). On the contrary,
Max Adler, the trade union lawyer and legal adviser of the social
revolution, sees in the concentration of powers even an advantage,
which allows the direct expression of the proletarian will. Max Adler
is in favor of the direct expression of the proletarian will; but only
not by means of the direct seizure of power through the Soviets. He
proposes a more solid method. In each town, borough, and ward, the
Workers' Councils must "control" the police and other officials,
imposing upon them the "proletarian will." What, however, will be the
"constitutional" position of the Soviets in the republic of Zeiz,
Renner and company? To this our philosopher replies: "The Workers'
Councils in the long run will receive as much constitutional power as
they acquire by means of their own activity." (_Arbeiterzeitung_,
No. 179, July 1, 1919.)
The proletarian Soviets must gradually _grow up_ into the political
power of the proletariat, just as previously, in the theories of
reformism, all the proletarian organizations had to grow up into
Socialism; which consummation, however, was a little hindered by the
unforeseen misunderstandings, lasting four years, between the Central
Powers and the Entente--and all that followed. It was found necessary
to reject the economical programme of a gradual development into
Socialism without a social revolution. But, as a reward, there opened
the perspective of the gradual development of the Soviets into the
social revolution, without an armed rising and a seizure of power.
In order that the Soviets should not sink entirely under the burden of
borough and ward problems, our daring legal adviser proposes the
propaganda of social-democratic ideas! Political power remains as
before in the hands of the bourgeoisie and its assistants. But in the
wards and the boroughs the Soviets control the policemen and their
assistants. And, to console the working class and at the same time to
centralize its thought and will, Max Adler on Sunday afternoons will
read lectures on the constitutional position of the Soviets, as in the
past he read lectures on the constitutional position of the trade
unions.
"In this way," Max Adler promises, "the constitutional regulation of
the position of the Workers Councils, and their power and importance,
would be guaranteed along the whole line of public and social life;
and--without the dictatorship of the Soviets--the Soviet system would
acquire as large an influence as it could possibly have even in a
Soviet republic. At the same time we should not have to pay for that
influence by political storms and economic destruction" (idem). As we
see, in addition to all his other qualities, Max Adler remains still
in agreement with the Austrian tradition: to make a revolution without
quarrelling with his Excellency the Public Prosecutor.
* * * * *
The founder of this school, and its highest authority, is Kautsky.
Carefully protecting, particularly after the Dresden party congress
and the first Russian Revolution, his reputation as the keeper of the
shrine of Marxist orthodoxy, Kautsky from time to time would shake his
head in disapproval of the more compromising outbursts of his Austrian
school. And, following the example of the late Victor Adler, Bauer,
Renner, Hilferding--altogether and each separately--considered Kautsky
too pedantic, too inert, but a very reverend and a very useful father
and teacher of the church of quietism.
Kautsky began to cause serious mistrust in his own school during the
period of his revolutionary culmination, at the time of the first
Russian Revolution, when he recognized as necessary the seizure of
power by the Russian Social-Democracy, and attempted to inoculate the
German working class with his theoretical conclusions from the
experience of the general strike in Russia. The collapse of the first
Russian Revolution at once broke off Kautsky's evolution along the
path of radicalism. The more plainly was the question of mass action
in Germany itself put forward by the course of events, the more
evasive became Kautsky's attitude. He marked time, retreated, lost his
confidence; and the pedantic and scholastic features of his thought
more and more became apparent. The imperialist war, which killed every
form of vagueness and brought mankind face to face with the most
fundamental questions, exposed all the political bankruptcy of
Kautsky. He immediately became confused beyond all hope of
extrication, in the most simple question of voting the War Credits.
All his writings after that period represent variations of one and the
same theme: "I and my muddle." The Russian Revolution finally slew
Kautsky. By all his previous development he was placed in a hostile
attitude towards the November victory of the proletariat. This
unavoidably threw him into the camp of the counter-revolution. He lost
the last traces of historical instinct. His further writings have
become more and more like the yellow literature of the bourgeois
market.
Kautsky's book, examined by us, bears in its external characteristics
all the attributes of a so-called objective scientific study. To
examine the extent of the Red Terror, Kautsky acts with all the
circumstantial method peculiar to him. He begins with the study of the
social conditions which prepared the great French Revolution, and also
the physiological and social conditions which assisted the development
of cruelty and humanity throughout the history of the human race. In a
book devoted to Bolshevism, in which the whole question is examined in
234 pages, Kautsky describes in detail on what our most remote human
ancestor fed, and hazards the guess that, while living mainly on
vegetable products, he devoured also insects and possibly a few birds.
(See page 122.) In a word, there was nothing to lead us to expect that
from such an entirely respectable ancestor--one obviously inclined to
vegetarianism--there should spring such descendants as the Bolsheviks.
That is the solid scientific basis on which Kautsky builds the
question!...
But, as is not infrequent with productions of this nature, there is
hidden behind the academic and scholastic cloak a malignant political
pamphlet. This book is one of the most lying and conscienceless of its
kind. Is it not incredible, at first glance, that Kautsky should
gather up the most contemptible stories about the Bolsheviks from the
rich table of Havas, Reuter and Wolff, thereby displaying from under
his learned night-cap the ears of the sycophant? Yet these
disreputable details are only mosaic decorations on the fundamental
background of solid, scientific lying about the Soviet Republic and
its guiding party.
Kautsky depicts in the most sinister colors our savagery towards the
bourgeoisie, which "displayed no tendency to resist."
Kautsky attacks our ruthlessness in connection with the Socialist
Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, who represent "shades" of
Socialism.