The Tactics of Democratic Republicanism
What Lenin, Kautsky, and Luxemburg said about democracy and a democratic state
We host a reading group each Sunday at 6 PM EST. We are working through “Equal Human and Political Rights and Democratic Republicanism,” created by blog contributors. Below are the introductions to Sections Eight, Nine, and Ten, covering Lenin’s, Karl Kautsky's, and Rosa Luxemburg’s political thought, including the demand for a democratic republic.
Section Eight
We oppose all oppression and stand for equal freedom for all. In his obituary for Engels in 1895, Lenin traced Marx’s and Engels’ hatred for political despotism to the democratic part of Marxism’s heritage, not the socialist part. Socialists have come in a variety of forms: some utopian separatists, some apolitical, some reformist, some racist, some anti-LGBTQ+ and women’s rights, and some pro-colonial. Of the three sources and component parts of Marxism described by Lenin, it is the democratic republican universal rights component that is the source of opposition to any impingement on the free and equal development of each individual. This is the moral content that Marx extracted from The Rights of Man and Citizen and projected into the historical movement of the proletariat, leaving the rights language behind as “egoistic.”
The various programs in Section Seven state Marxism's general principles and aims but do not include the tactical means required to achieve them. Lenin contributed significantly to Marxist and democratic theory by creating a political party and literary organ that combined all abuses against every member of society into the demand and movement for a democratic republic. Until 1917, the Bolsheviks ceaselessly agitated for gathering a constituent assembly and a democratic constitution that would place unimpeded lawmaking power in a single legislative assembly elected by universal and equal suffrage. Lenin focused on infusing political consciousness into the working-class movement. Workers’ demands could only be realized by obliterating Tsarist despotism and creating a democratic republic.
Section Nine
Around 1904, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) published critiques of the French Third Republic (1870-1940) in party newspapers. The critiques of this “bourgeois republic” were so intense that critics accused the socialists of harboring secret desires for a monarchical restoration. To set the record straight, Kautsky took up his pen and elaborated on the orthodox Marxist demand for a democratic republic. Kautsky attacked the Third Republic’s undemocratic constitution, which vests King-like power in the president and splits the legislature into two houses with a malapportioned upper house, much like the U.S. Constitution. The French government at the time said all opposition forces should band together to defend the Third Republic from reactionary forces during the Dreyfus Affair. Kautsky and Luxemburg said the only way to defeat the right was to advocate democratic republican and socialist principles.
Kautsky’s writings clarify the difference between a bourgeois or constitutional republic and a democratic republic. In a bourgeois republic, legislative power is split between an upper and lower house, with representatives chosen not based on universal and equal suffrage. In a democratic republic, power resides in a unicameral legislature elected by universal and equal suffrage. In The Road to Power, published in 1909, Kautsky repeated the orthodox Marxist position that “The only form of the state in which Socialism can be realized is that of a republic and a thoroughly democratic republic at that.” Kautsky’s critique of the French bourgeois republic, along with Engel’s comments to the Germans and the SPA’s 1912 discussed in Section Seven, proves that Marxists pursued the strategy of achieving a democratic republic in all countries that lacked a system of universal and equal suffrage, whether that country was economically advanced, like France, Germany, or the United States, or economically backward, like Poland or Russia.
A note on the Dreyfus Affair and the socialist position on liberal rights. In 1894, a Jewish French army captain, Alfred Dreyfus, was falsely convicted of passing military secrets to the Germans. His multiple trials and eventual exoneration divided French society. French socialist Jules Guesde said that the tribulations of a privileged military man were of no concern to the workers' movement. Jean Jaurès, Luxemburg, and Kautsky all wrote in support of Dreyfus’ right to a fair trial. As Lenin wrote in “Political Agitation and the Class Point of View,” “The political demands of working-class democracy do not differ in principle from those of bourgeois democracy, they differ only in degree.” In a move that became infamous in social democratic circles, Alexandre Millerand, who had no affiliation to any existing socialist party, accepted a position in Waldeck-Rousseau’s coalition cabinet of "Republican Defense" to unite against clerical and monarchical interests. Millerand’s decision sparked a debate within the social democratic movement about how to relate to bourgeois governments and the extent to which the Third Republic really was a defense against the Right (Kautsky and Luxemburg’s answer: no defense at all).
Section Ten
1910 saw massive demonstrations for suffrage reform in Prussia, the largest state in the German Empire and the bastion of militarism and reactionary Junker (landlord) rule. Kautsky had exclaimed in response to smaller demonstrations in 1908 that nothing like it had been seen since the Revolutions of 1848, but his reaction in 1910 was more subdued. He wanted to focus on the upcoming 1912 Reichstag elections to pass suffrage reform legislation in partnership with other Reichstag parties. Luxemburg disagreed, explaining that it was the perfect time for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) to bring back the demand for a democratic republic and expose the undemocratic nature of the Reichstag. The debate around how the SPD should relate to the suffrage struggle and the importance of the demand for a democratic republic irrevocably split Kautsky and Luxemburg. It exposed Kautsky’s gradual shift away from the democratic republicanism so apparent in his 1905 critique of the French Third Republic (as we will see next week).
Before 1910, both Kautsky and Luxemburg believed the German state might preemptively repress the SPD before it reached an electoral majority. Therefore, they thought the party should not place all its bets on a smooth electoral transition to power. In addition, given the minimal powers of the legislature itself in the German monarchical system, even gaining a majority would not result in real political power. Before 1910, Kautsky acknowledged these possible contingencies and held that no tactics could be ruled out in advance. In 1910, he abandoned his earlier counsel of the need for flexible tactical thinking and opted for straight electoralism against Luxemburg’s mass democratic republicanism.
Franz Mehring took Kautsky’s side in the argument, arguing that Luxemburg was obsessed with republicanism and that the principle was anachronistic because no SPD member supported the German Kaiser. Mehring completely missed the point, as Luxemburg was quick to point out. Republicanism is about a universal and equal voting system for delegates to a single national assembly, not simply opposition to the rule of Church and King. In polemicizing with Kautsky and Mehring, Luxemburg remained faithful to the strategic demand for a democratic republic outlined in numerous places, including Engels’ 1891 critique of the SPD’s Erfurt Program. Ultimately, the SPD talked of social democracy but failed to walk the walk by adapting to the undemocratic German Reich and leaping into the oblivion of WWI.
Section Eight primary readings: Neil Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought: Volume 1, Chapter 7 and the last few pages of Chapter 6; Lenin, What Is To Be Done? Chapter 3; Lenin, Political Agitation and the Class Point of View.
Section Nine primary readings: Jean Jaurès, The Socialist Interest; Luxemburg, The Dreyfus Affair and the Millerand Case; Ben Lewis, Karl Kautsky and Republicanism, introduction, pp. 32-37; Lars Lih, The Book That Didn't Bark; Karl Kautsky, Excerpts of Republic & Social Democracy in France, Chapters 5-8
Section Ten primary readings: Ben Lewis, The Good, the Baden and the Ugly; Rosa Luxemburg, Theory and Practice, Part 1; Lars Lih, A Perfectly Ordinary, Highly Instructive Document; Carl Schorske, German Social Democracy: 1905-1917, Chapter 7; Video- Ben Lewis, “1910 and All That”
Thanks for this. Reading and thinking!