Abstract

The traditional dismissive characterization of Karl Kautsky's Marxism as a form of mechanical or even Darwinian evolutionism is a caricature that obscures the very real and important contribution he made to historical materialism in the early years of the last century. Kautsky's historical studies of both the early Church and Reformation "communism," as well as his attempts to analyze the contemporary Russian and American social formations, show that, while Kautsky's Marxism suffered from consistent political weaknesses, his theory of history, especially as it was articulated in the years before 1910, was sophisticated and powerful. While the power of Kautsky's Marxism became muted after this period, the weaknesses of his later works should not be allowed to obscure the insights contained within his earlier work; insights that informed some of the best work of the next generation of Marxists