6. The Vulgarisation of Marxism by the Opportunists¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter dissects the systematic betrayal of the Marxist theory of the state by leading figures of the Second International, focusing on Plekhanov and Kautsky. Their “vulgarisation” was not a mere theoretical error but a political manoeuvre that served the interests of opportunism, preparing the ground for the collapse of 1914. Plekhanov’s 1894 pamphlet Anarchism and Socialism is indicted for its fundamental evasion: it dodged the central question of the state’s relation to revolution entirely. Instead of engaging with the anarchist critique, Plekhanov resorted to philistine slander, equating anarchists with bandits. This intellectual cowardice revealed him as a semi-doctrinaire who, between 1905 and 1917, politically trailed the bourgeoisie.
The chapter’s core polemic is directed against Karl Kautsky, whose deviations were far more systematic and therefore more damaging. In his controversy with Bernstein, Kautsky faced a critical distortion: Bernstein had twisted Marx’s 1872 observation about the proletariat not being able to simply take over the ready-made state machinery into a warning against revolutionary zeal. Kautsky’s response was to avoid the issue entirely. He omitted Marx’s actual position—that the state machine must be smashed—and instead asserted that the proletariat could generally take it over. This was a fundamental break. In The Social Revolution (1902), Kautsky spoke of winning state power without mentioning its destruction, thereby reviving the very position Marx had declared obsolete in 1872. He discussed bureaucracy and the army, but ignored the lessons of the Paris Commune. Even in The Road to Power (1909), which proclaimed a revolutionary era, the question of the state was again evaded.
The climax of this betrayal came in Kautsky’s 1912 polemic with Pannekoek. He reduced the Marxist-anarchist distinction to a simple formula: anarchists want to destroy the state, Marxists want to win it. This, the chapter argues, is a complete vulgarisation. Marxism holds that the proletariat must smash the old state machine and replace it with an organisation of armed workers, like the Commune. Kautsky’s formulation left a fatal loophole for opportunists to interpret ‘conquest of power’ as merely acquiring a parliamentary majority. His real aim was not to destroy state power but to win a majority in parliament and make the government compliant—a step back from the Communist Manifesto. The chapter concludes that the proletariat must fight not to shift the balance of forces, but to overthrow the bourgeoisie, destroy bourgeois parliamentarism, and establish the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat through a Commune-type republic or Soviets.