Translators Introduction

I decided to undertake the task of translating this article when, in the process of researching for a large critique of Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, it became abundantly clear to me that Lenin’s Imperialism could not be properly understood without reading several of Kautsky’s articles from around the same time, and that these articles by Kautsky were not yet readily available in English translation. This is not to say that non-German speakers have been wholly unfamiliar with the contents of the following article in the century since its publication. The article is frequently cited contemporaneously by Marxists who opposed the First World War, such as Lenin and Luxemburg, as proof of Kautsky’s betrayal of the international socialist movement. Because of this, a handful of notorious lines from this article, particularly one that appears on the seventh page of the original article in Die Neue Zeit (The New Era), have appeared sporadically in translation as quotations. While certain notorious lines from this article have previously been translated into English as part of other works, I have opted to do my own original translation of the whole article here, but have included the previous translations of which I’m aware in the footnotes alongside the original German.

It would’ve been preferable for this translation to have been done by an actual scholar, rather than an activist. While I’m widely read on Marxist theory and history, my knowledge has so far been limited to the quite abundant number of works available in English. My translation of this article was partially an effort to learn more German. Due to my not having read any of Marx and Engels’ texts in the original German, I admittedly lack the wherewithal to know when Kautsky may be using specific idiosyncratic language that should be rendered in English in accordance with the established traditions of Marxist translation. To compensate, I have tried to treat every word and passage in this article very carefully, in order to produce a translation that renders Kautsky’s arguments relatively faithfully. Of course, no language ever translates perfectly into another language. For this reason, all translations necessarily include interpretive decisions which deserve scrutiny. This translation of Social Democracy in the War is no different. I do not claim that this translation of Kautsky is in any way definitive; I’ve simply tried to create something which will be serviceable as a resource for anglophone Marxists looking to more fully understand the landscape of Marxism during the immediate outbreak of the First World War. If my translation succeeds in serving this purpose, I shall regard my time spent creating it as having been worth the effort.

Since all translation necessarily includes occasionally making interpretive decisions, it is incumbent upon me to explain the general rationale behind how I approached this translation. Where the original German rendered well in English, I opted simply for a word-for-word translation to save myself time and energy. This worked for much of the article since German is closely related to English, and this particular text is from the late modern period. But where I have made interpretive decisions in my translation, the argument could be made that my decisions were actually rather radical. There is one thing that contemporary Marxists of virtually every tendency and sect agree on: Karl Kautsky is an opportunist and a traitor to the Marxist movement. This view of Kautsky among contemporary Marxists, which I feel is quite well-warranted, is due in large part to this specific article which I have translated below, as well as a few other articles Kautsky published around the same time. For this reason, it would have been relatively easy for me to treat my translation of this article as something of a hatchet-job against Kautsky — deliberately rendering his statements in English using more inflammatory language than what Kautsky himself actually uses — and I probably wouldn’t have faced very much scrutiny for it because of the notoriety of Kautsky’s name nowadays.

I chose not to take this approach in my interpretive decisions for this translation for two main reasons: firstly, because it would have been intellectually dishonest and academically discrediting; and secondly, because it would’ve been incongruent with who the historical Karl Kautsky actually was. For a period of almost twenty years, between the death of Engels in 1895 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Karl Kautsky was recognized as the premier authority on Marxism. This authority was even acknowledged by highly astute Marxists contemporaneous with Kautsky, such as Lenin and Luxemburg, who believed Kautsky’s writing expressed a fundamental basic, if sometimes imperfect, continuity with the ideas of Marx and Engels. Modern historians such as Lars T. Lih have attested to this historical reality. This is why the article translated below was considered so notorious at the time of its publication: it was an abrupt departure from Marxism by the acknowledged leading theorist of the international Marxist movement.

Kautsky’s blatant departure from Marxism in the article below necessarily informs its content. In other words, Kautsky spends much of the article trying to rationalize positions that he knows will be unpopular with other astute Marxists like Lenin and Luxemburg because said positions have little to no basis in Marxist theory, as Lenin and Luxemburg both demonstrate in their criticisms of Kautsky. This fact was impossible to ignore because it was the primary source of difficulty in translating this article. There were numerous moments when I was uncertain that I had properly translated a sentence because it didn’t seem to say anything, but as I continued translating, it occurred to me that Kautsky’s rhetorical ambiguity was likely deliberate; that Kautsky was intentionally being evasive with his arguments because he knew that the positions he ultimately expressed in this article would be negatively received. This perceived ambiguity and evasiveness is what I tried to express with my interpretive decisions in this translation. When I ran into a German word or phrase that could be translated into English in multiple ways, I chose the English translation that used less inflammatory language, since this seemed, to me, to be the most thematically appropriate translation for the article’s subject matter.

That being said, there are also parts of the article where Kautsky makes statements which strike me as unambiguously inflammatory, and I felt like it would be irresponsible to attempt to moderate them, but I have still tried not to amplify or exaggerate the inflammatory quality of these statements. Therefore, in my translation, when Kautsky writes ambiguously, he writes very ambiguously, and when his writing is inflammatory, it is unambiguously inflammatory. This results in the perception that different parts of the article were written by two different Karl Kautskys; one of them a cowardly and evasive social chauvinist, and the other an unambiguous and belligerent social chauvinist. But this was also a dissonance that I felt when translating the original German, and so it carries over into my English translation.

Social Democracy in the War

Originally published in Die Neue Zeit (The New Era), October 2, 1914

Our party has had much discussion over the means and methods of preventing an impending war. However, the question of how the party should act during an impending war, which it has insufficient strength to prevent, has been less frequently discussed. This is probably no coincidence.

Social Democracy was still able to display its unhindered strength in its agitation for peace. However, it had to reckon from the beginning that the outbreak of war would place it under martial law and hinder its free movement. Never is a government so strong, never parties so weak, than at the outbreak of wars.

However, it is understandable that one approached so delicate a subject with great care, and how regrettable it is that we did not have this discussion in greater detail during peacetime. The position taken during wartime is a more complicated problem than agitating for peace. And wartime itself is a most unsuitable time for polite, unbiased discussion of controversial subjects. Objectivity becomes almost impossible; some people consider it criminal.

As long as there is merely the threat of war, the matter is far simpler for us: under present conditions, there is no war that would not be a disaster for the nations in general and the proletariat in particular. My discussion here is of which wars are useful, and which are harmful.

The situation changes with an attack; as soon as it turns out that we are not in the position to prevent the war—likewise as soon as it has broken out. As long as the time does not appear ripe for the conclusion of peace, the practical question is not “war or peace?” It is the victory or defeat of one’s own country.

It would be conceivable that after the outbreak of war a party could counteract it without paralyzing its own country. Additionally, this counteracting should be undertaken simultaneously and with the same success on both sides. This could bring about peace instead of defeat. Something like this has never been tried in practice. We have always disputed its possibility. We can entirely disregard it. After the outbreak of war, the only question that remains is “victory or defeat?”

This naturally excludes the case of practically working towards the defeat of one’s own country. The problem of the question is reduced to the following: whether one faces the war with passion, or with reservation. The answer to this question is by no means given; it hinges entirely on the type of war.^[1]

Bebel has said on many occasions, including in Essen (1907): “We must protect the fatherland if an attack comes.”

That was probably the opinion of the great majority of the party congress at that time. Indeed, one can say that it has long since overtaken the world. In and of itself, it’s hardly objectionable. But it often fails as an infallible guiding principle. Those attacked can always count on greater enthusiasm for war among its own people, but also on greater sympathy from the neutral countries, than the aggressors, who frivolously disturb peace, this greatest good. Because it is so, the true aggressors have also always strove to appear before the whole world as the attacked, where they are assisted by the secrecy in which diplomatic negotiations and war preparations proceed.

At the outbreak of war, therefore, both parties not only invoke the same god to protect their great cause, but also the population on both sides fancies itself attacked in the same way.

These experiences led me to oppose Bebel’s^[2] view in Essen — one of the few cases where we deviated from each other.

Bebel remarked at the time:

I have been told, and comrade Kautsky has also expressed this idea — what is a war of aggression? Indeed, it would be very unfortunate today, when large groups of people are more interested in politics than before, if we could still not judge whether a specific case was a war of aggression or not.

Experience shows that there are cases when the most extensive political training is insufficient to determine who is the aggressor without greater detail at the outbreak of war. For this reason, there are situations in which all the powers involved find themselves in a dead end, from which none can peacefully escape without significant loss of power and prestige, and surrender without a fight would mean defeat for everyone. It often depends on chance, or the different extents of diplomatic history, who delivers the first blow and appears as the aggressor.

This time the decision was particularly difficult due to the speed with which events transpired and through the complications involved with political alliances, which grew from day to day.^[3]

These complications also diminished the clarity of the guiding principle I upheld at Essen to correct Bebel’s view of wars of aggression. I said at that time:

The German government could one day convince the German proletariat that they’ve been attacked, the French government could convince the French proletariat of the same, and we would then have a war in which the German and French proletariat would follow their governments and cut each other’s necks with equal enthusiasm. That must be prevented, and will be prevented, if we apply the criteria of proletarian interests, rather than the criteria of wars of aggression.

This criteria, this guideline, would also be considered at the outbreak of the current war — but it led the Germans and French to different opinions in the same way as a war of aggression.

Our French comrades, in association with the Belgians, have issued a manifesto, in which they explain that they must stand behind their governments, firstly, because “the war of aggression was intentional” on the Germans’ part, and additionally, because they were championing “freedom and justice” against “German imperialism.”^[4] It should be noted that this concept of imperialism is not to be understood in the English sense, now familiar to us, of striving for a large colonial empire — in this respect, France and Belgium, as well as England, have nothing to reproach Germany for — rather, imperialism is meant here in the French sense, as a designation for imperial, as opposed to republican politics. In France, the word still has the aftertaste of bonapartism.^[5]

They feel themselves obligated as republicans to struggle against the German Empire. The same obligation to struggle is felt among most German social-democrats, who see the war as the struggle of an empire that has universal, equal suffrage, freedom of association, and freedom of the press against the despotism of tsarism. The Germans struggle simultaneously against the Tsar and the republic; the French struggle simultaneously against German “imperialism”^[6] and for Russian absolutism. Where do the interests of democracy and the proletariat lie?^[7]

Every time, however, we find that the opposition between German and French socialists does not lie in their criterions, not in their fundamental principles, but in their different evaluations of the situation, themselves resulting from the different geographic positions of those making the evaluations. This opposition will hardly be overcome as long as the war rages. However, it is not an opposition based on principle, but springing from a specific situation, and therefore need not outlast it.

Naturally, the view of German social democracy is not to be confused with that of the naive masses, still prevalent in Germany, which sees all Russians as Cossacks, Bakshirs, and Kalmyks — mindless tools of tsarism. Our party is very well aware of the colossal upheaval that occurred among the Russian people in the last generation and proven by the forceful outbreak of revolution in 1905. We acknowledge that democracy is on the rise in Russia; that it already made very noticeable progress among the bourgeoisie and the proletarian masses before the war. We no longer stand on the position that a war against Russia is necessary to break the power of the Tsar or protect Western-European democracy. On the contrary, war between Germany and Russia would today bring with it inhibitions for democracy in both empires, no matter who wins. The perception that war against Russia would be as tragic as any other war in no way contradicts the conviction that, after the war has descended upon us, of all the tragedy that would follow, a victory for tsarism would be most tragic.^[8]

But neither the criterion of a war of aggression nor of proletarian interests was able to bring the comrades of all lands to a clear and binding position. Instead a third criterion was decisive. People argue about who is the aggressor, who is the victim, what threatens European democracy more — a German victory over France, or a Russian victory over Germany. One thing is clear: every people, and the proletariat of every nation, has an urgent interest in preserving its territorial integrity to prevent the horrors of invasion. And in every nation-state, the proletariat must devote all its energy to preserving this territorial integrity. That is a significant piece of democracy; this necessary basis for the struggle and victory of the proletariat.^[9]

The position of the masses in a given country must become absolutely desperate and hopeless for them to see a military defeat of the government — that brings the enemy into the country and brings about the dismemberment of the nation or foreign rule — as a lesser evil to the prevailing conditions. Even a very oppressed people, who disapprove of government policies that lead to war, will turn around and oppose the invading enemies. If they feel strong enough later, in peacetime, they will overcome the pressure from the government on their own. Not even in Russia today is the position of the proletariat such that it could expect rescue as the result of the victory of invading enemies.

The criteria for protecting the homeland from devastation and plunder, the protection of the nation from dismemberment and foreign rule, are usually most obvious at the outbreak of wars of aggression or of proletarian interests. In a country that is only partially free, the question is simply of the balance of forces and the extent of the threat posed by the enemy. If the enemy is so weak that it is not able to invade a country with which it is at war, then the social-democrats of the stronger country will most decisively oppose their own government’s war efforts wherever possible, unless one of the other criteria dictates otherwise.

So it was in the United States during the war against Spain, in England during the Boer War, in Russia during the war with Japan — the Japanese, while strong, never threatened to devastate or reduce Russia — in Spain during the Moroccan expedition, and in Italy during the campaign to Tripoli.

The conditions in England are peculiar, primarily due to its insular location and some other factors. It is protected from invasion as long its navy rules the seas and its insular location has endowed it with a strong national unity. Since the seventeenth century, when Ireland became a permanent English possession,^[10] the English were neither lured nor discouraged by the reduction of their national territory. Like the states of continental Europe, they have waged numerous wars since then. But for the continental states in question, this almost always included the enlargement of their territory proper. For England, only colonies and naval bases, whose actual expediency is debatable.

When one considers the colossal power of the English parliament, which remains unparalleled by any other parliament, then the peculiar fact becomes understandable, that in contrast to all other European states, England has gone two hundred years without a large war or energetic domestic opposition.^[11] In the war against the American colonies, which began in 1775 and ended with their sovereignty in 1783, a strong party with steadfast determination emerged on the side of the rebellion in the English parliament. Fox and Burke were foremost among them. Fox glorified the generals of America and berated those of the English, who he found deplorable. Their defeats delighted him.

“In parliament, he offered all his eloquence to demonstrate that it was in the interests of France and Spain to draw their swords on the side of American independence… In every arena of struggle, the opposition used its influence to embarrass the government.” (Lecky, History of England in the 18th Century, IV, 73-74. Translated into German by Löwe.)

The same thing repeated itself in the war against France following the outbreak of the revolution:

“Every year the opposition proposed peace with France and taunted every defeat the English suffered as if they consisted of French and Irish rather than English.” (Oncken, The Age of Revolution, Empire and Wars of Liberation, II, p. 40.)^[12]

And this repeats to this day. We experienced this opposition against the war during the campaign in South Africa, and see it again now, where not only before the outbreak of war, but also during the war, the most vivid protests against it are being voiced, which would be impossible in every other state. No government, but probably also not the armed masses, would tolerate such conditions in a continental state.

It is remarkable that, as in the Boer War, the British socialists also have no uniform attitude this time. But the war opposition of today is not identical with those of fifteen years ago. While what one could call the right wing of the party, primarily the Fabians, supported the war at that time, and the radical elements branded it a crime — though there were exceptions — today the British Socialist Party^[13] shows itself to be more pro-war than the Fabians. The latter regard Russian absolutism as the most dangerous enemy, and oppose its support from England. However, those who place the threat to the French republic in the foreground hold that the prevention of a victory for German militarism is the main task.

The situation was quite different in England and in the wars of earlier decades mentioned above than at the outbreak of the current war on the continent. The strength of all belligerents were roughly the same. Nobody could foresee which side would be victorious. All of the involved people were threatened with the worst losses in the event of a defeat, and shattering defeat loomed when it wasn’t testing every nerve.

Furthermore, that this time the entire able-bodied population of the nations is directly involved in the war — again excepting England, which still holds to their old recruitment system, which is again connected with its insular position and freedom from the threat of invasion. If England lost control of the seas, it would introduce general conscription.

Under these circumstances, it is understandable that socialists who did not consider the question of who the aggressor is or which side better represented proletarian and democratic interests, passionately plunge themselves into the struggle — on both sides.^[14]

It is impossible to determine which of the three specified criterions of our position on the war have become decisive for the attitude of our comrades in the individual countries.

In most cases, no particular criterion has become clearly separated from the others, and all three combined certainly decided the verdict, insofar as it was grounded in reason rather than emotion. Among the population, the criterion of wars of aggression appears to predominate, insofar as one can judge the attitude of the press.

Socialist thought, however, faces dangers when its attitude on war depends exclusively on the response to the question: who is the aggressor? Namely, then, when the situation is doubtful, and one does not examine whether the war emerged out of great historical contradictions rooted in economic forces independent from individual discretion. Furthermore, when one refrains from investigating the political effects of the war’s outcome, instead reducing the investigation to a judicial proceeding to determine the culprits who frivolously unleashed the enormous crime of World War upon the peace-loving world and forced the others to defend against it. In such a perspective, all the fault and injustice lies on one side, everything righteous and innocent on the other side.

Following this criterion, the socialists of the attacking country are equally obligated to refuse war credits as the others are to approve them. When the socialists in the aggressing country vote for war credits, they thereby attest to either their cowardice, their inferiority, or their inability to recognize right from wrong.

How the socialists of either side come to the conviction that their state is the attacked — either directly, or indirectly through attack on their allies, whose weakening would result — then, from that, disdain, indeed, hatred, will emerge against the comrades in the hostile camp.

Furthermore, the aggressor is a criminal. One must punish them or render them harmless. Just so with the war they have forced upon us, which must be waged until the criminal lies helpless on the ground. Then their limbs must be amputated to render them immobile. This is the logical conclusion of the distinction between offensive and defensive wars. It must terribly intensify national antagonisms among the public.

The Marxist perspective is quite different. It does not seek to condemn, but to understand. They can, in one situation, conclude that among the various belligerents the same prevalent tendencies bring them into opposition with each other. In this respect, no one can reproach the other. If it comes to a war, despite the efforts of the social-democrats, then every nation must defend itself as best they can. From this, it follows that the social-democrats of all nations have the same right, or same duty, to participate in this defense. None may make accusations of the others.^[15]

It follows further from this that it is the duty of social democracy in every nation to regard the war only as a defensive war, to set defense from the enemy as its only goal, not their “punishment” or diminution. Since this orientation seeks the cause of the war, not in personal wickedness or inferiority of the belligerents, but in objective circumstances, it will endeavor to achieve the security that peace has to bring, not through the humiliation or mutilation of the enemy, which would only lead to a future war, but through abolishing the circumstances that produced the war — e.g. imperialist antagonisms and the arms race.

Naturally, our power is neither sufficient to dictate peace terms, nor prevent the outbreak of war at this time. We know not whether and to what extent it would succeed in giving such a basis to peace. It hinges on power relations that are impossible to predict at this time. But for proletarian praxis^[16] and international cooperation of social-democratic parties after the war, the basis upon which they demanded peace would make a significant difference: whether on that of disarmament and understanding of geopolitics, or on that of dismembering the defeated, whoever they are.^[17]

Despite these considerations, the criterion of wars of aggression still preoccupies public opinion, but it is not clearly distinguished from both other criterions of proletarian interests and military defense against every enemy assault. Defensive foreign policy is often conflated with a defensive strategy. Marx already objected to it in an 1870 letter to Engels:

“Kugelmann confuses defensive wars with defensive military operations. So if a chap assaults me in the streets, I may only parry their blows, but not knock them down, because doing so would then transform me into the aggressor.” (Marx to Engels, August 17, 1870, MECW, Vol. 43, p. 50-51)

Whether a war is better waged defensively or offensively is a purely military question, unrelated to whether it is undertaken for defense or offense. Every defensive campaign must ultimately transform into an offensive one in order to be effective.^[18]

Anyway, when military and political offensives are also strictly delineated, so remains that the military offensive, as soon as it becomes administered with exceptional success, retroactively influences foreign policy and likewise lends it an offensive character. This was the case with the War of 1870.^[19] At its start, it was generally seen as a war of aggression by Napoleon III, but in its course it increasingly assumed the character of a defensive war for the French, not only militarily, but also politically. Such a transformation during a war can also change the attitude of social democracy in a given country.

Both criterions — that of wars of aggression and that of proletarian interests — can fail at the outbreak of war. It can be doubtful who the aggressor is, from which side the proletarian or democratic cause can expect more. The only defining criterion remains the need to defend one’s own country from the devastation that would follow a defeat.^[20]

If the war takes a course that trends decisively in favor of one side, transforming it — from a purely political standpoint — into an offensive war on one side and a defensive war on the other, then all three criteria point unambiguously in the same direction: for the victorious nation, all concerns cease that their territory could become subjugated, devastated, or reduced to size. So horrible is the affliction of the defeated nation. So the war also always becomes more political — an assault for the one side; a defensive war for the other. And finally the proletarian and democratic interests demand that no nation should be diminished in its sovereignty and integrity.

Once the matter has progressed so far, there can be no more doubt that social democrats on all sides will no longer give opposing assessments of the situation and the obligations resulting from it.

It is a different matter when none of the nations win so decisively that they no longer have to fear invasion or violation by another in the course of the war. When the war continues until all belligerents are completely exhausted, then one must recognize the possibility that the position taken by the social democrats of all countries at the beginning of the war will not change. Then it becomes more likely that the terms of peace adopted at the end of the war correspond to our position.

1. Many parts of Lenin’s 1915 article, The Defeat of One’s Own Government in the Imperialist War, reply directly to this article by Kautsky. Lenin’s phraseology of “one’s own government” reads like a direct reference to Kautsky’s phraseology of “one’s own country” in this paragraph in particular.

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2. In the original German, Bebel is referred to here in the diminutive “Bebelschen.” While Kautsky is recounting an instance in which he and Bebel disagreed, his use of the diminutive in reference to Bebel is likely meant endearingly, rather than demeaningly. The diminutive is generally used affectionately, such as when a loving husband refers to his wife as his “Frauchen” [lit. Wifey]. Similar linguistic patterns exist in the English language, such as when one might refer to their friend Frank as “Frankie.” I have chosen to drop Kautsky’s use of the diminutive in my translation of this article, not because it is impossible to render in the English language, but because I was unsure how best to translate it for Bebel’s name specifically.

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3. Kautsky is probably referring here to the mobilization of the Russian military, which happened much faster than anyone anticipated, and the various mutual defence treaties the powers of Europe had with each other, which determined the battle lines of the First World War.

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4. Kautsky is almost certainly referring here to a joint Franco-Belgian manifesto published in L’Humanité on September 6, 1914. Though the manifesto’s composition necessarily happened earlier, its publication coincided with the First Battle of the Marne, where French and British forces halted the invading German military. The Battle of the Marne was followed by the “race to the sea,” (17 September to 19 October of 1915) in which French and German forces alternately tried to outflank each other to the North. The failure of either army to achieve any definitive advantage over the other during the race to the sea resulted in both sides fortifying their positions, leading to the trench warfare that defined the western front of the First World War. In short, in the midst that Kautsky was writing and publishing this article, the First World War was already becoming a quagmire that could only be escaped through proletarian revolution.

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5. Kautsky’s very brief articulation of the various contextual uses of the term imperialism substantiates what Lenin says at a couple points in his pamphlet Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: namely, that imperialism did not have a coherent definition at the time Lenin wrote his pamphlet, but gestured toward a number of related phenomena.

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6. Kautsky’s bracketing in quotations of the word imperialism in reference to Germany is quite egregious in and of itself. Whether used in the French sense in reference to Bonapartism, or in the more systemic sense popularized by Lenin, Kautsky is smart enough to know that there is grounds to apply the imperialist label to Germany.

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7. Here Kautsky gestures towards the hypocrisy of the various belligerents of the First World War, but does not take this observation to the logical conclusion expressed by social democrats who opposed the war, such as Lenin and Luxemburg, that none of the War’s belligerents are fighting for the interests of the proletariat, whose interests can only be served by transforming the imperialist war into a class war.

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8. The Bolsheviks actually shared the opinion that a victory for the Tsar would be the worst possible outcome for the First World War, and that the other European nations were justified in defending themselves from Russia. In a statement published on November 1, 1914, the Bolsheviks wrote: “In the present situation, it is impossible to determine, from the standpoint of the international proletariat, the defeat of which of the two groups of belligerent nations would be the lesser evil for socialism. But to us Russian Social-Democrats there cannot be the slightest doubt that, from the standpoint of the working class and of the toiling masses of all the nations of Russia, the defeat of the tsarist monarchy, the most reactionary and barbarous of governments, which is oppressing the largest number of nations and the greatest mass of the population of Europe and Asia, would be the lesser evil.” (Lenin, Vladimir. 1914. “The War and Russian Social Democracy.” Marxists Internet Archive.)

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9. Kautsky’s argument here is not completely without basis. In an 1882 letter to Kautsky, Engels wrote that “It is historically impossible for a great people even to discuss internal problems of any kind seriously, as long as it lacks national independence.” (Engels, Friedrich. 1882. “Nationalism, Internationalism, and the Polish Question.” Marxists Internet Archive.)

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10. 26 of Ireland’s 32 countries would successfully break away from the United Kingdom following the First World War.

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11. It would be more accurate to say that England had gone two hundred years without a war with another European country. England’s colonial empire had continued to expand in the decades prior to the First World War, and England had engaged in sizeable wars in some of its colonial territories, such as the Opium Wars.

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12. The title of the work cited by Kautsky has been translated into English here. In the original German, the title is Das Zeitalter der Revolution, des Kaiserreichs und der Befreiungskrieg.

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13. The name of the British Socialist Party is in english in the original Neue Zeit article.

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14. Kautsky’s lack of self-awareness in this line would be comical if its context weren’t so dire.

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15. The most notorious, frequently cited and translated lines in this article come from this paragraph. In the original German, they read “Kommt es trotz aller Bemühungen der Sozialdemokratie darob zu einem Kriege, dann muß sich eben jede Nation ihrer Haut wehren, so gut sie kann. Daraus folgt für die Sozialdemokraten aller Nationen das gleiche Recht oder die gleiche Pflicht, an dieser Verteidigung teilzunehmen, keine darf der anderen daraus einen Vorwurf machen.” In footnote. 345 to Volume. 36 of Lenin’s Collected Works (p. 659), Andrew Rothstein translates the lines as “if it comes to war, every nation has to defend itself as best it can. It follows that Social-Democrats of all nations have an equal right or an equal duty to take part in this defence; none should hurl reproaches at another.”

    With his concession to arguments in favor of national defence, Kautsky broke with the Resolution on Militarism which was adopted at the Stuttgart Congress of the Second International in 1907. Kautsky’s statements above essentially invert the language of the final paragraph of the Stuttgart resolution, which states: “In case war should break out anyway, it is [social democracy’s] duty to intervene in favor of its speedy termination and with all their powers to utilize the economic and political crisis created by the war to rouse the masses and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.” While it is true that the Stuttgart resolution does not explicitly call for the proletariat to answer wars between capitalist countries with proletarian revolution, this is how the Stuttgart resolution was understood by Lenin and Luxemburg, who were the two principal authors of the Stuttgart resolution. It would also be a stretch to argue that the Stuttgart resolution permits proletarian participation in national defence in a war between capitalist countries since this would not “hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule,” but reinforce it. The Stuttgart resolution was also never superseded by any later resolution permitting proletarian participation in national defence in a war between capitalist countries. The final two paragraphs of the Stuttgart resolution in particular are quoted in the Basle Manifesto from the 1912 congress of the Second International, which reaffirmed the position of the Stuttgart resolution.

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16. We have left the word praxis untranslated since it is a common idiosyncratic term on the left wing of the political spectrum, which also translates, more or less, directly from German to English. The word could be substituted for practice in English. To the extent that there is a distinction in the English language between the words practice and praxis, it is that praxis generally refers to a system of multiple interconnected activities derived from first principles, whereas practice can refer to individual activities, or to a system of interconnected activities derived from first principles.

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17. The German word Zerstückelung has been translated here, and throughout this article, as “dismembering” or some variation thereof. Strictly speaking, there is no other translation for Zerstückelung. Within the context of this specific paragraph, however, Kautsky uses separate words in German to distinguish “dismembering” (Zerstückelung in German), from “disarming” (Abrüstens in German). Though they don’t have the same meaning in English, “disarming” could conceivably be used instead of “dismembering” as a translation for Zerstückelung. Kautsky’s differentiation between disarming and dismembering in this paragraph could mean that “Zerstückelung” actually means “annexation” in context, but I have opted not to translate it as “annexation” since 1) there is already a specific German word for annexation (Annexion), and 2) using the language of annexation, even in the context of the paragraph in question, probably would have been seen as extremely inflammatory at the time. The popular slogan against the First World War was “peace without annexations” in many countries.

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18. Though it is not as notorious or frequently translated as other lines in this article, the last line of this paragraph in particular is as egregious as anything else in this article, as far as we are concerned.

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19. A reference to the Franco-Prussian War, which lasted from mid-1870 to early-1871.

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20. As demonstrated by Engels’ 1882 letter to Kautsky (cited above in footnote. 9), the argument that the proletariat of a given country must fight to safeguard its sovereignty is not wholly without basis. However, it doesn’t follow that the proletariat has to rally behind an existing bourgeois or reactionary government to accomplish this, as is shown by the example of the Bolsheviks.

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