Blackwell Reference Online

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(1854–1938), politician and thinker, influential in the social democratic party of germany (SPD). He was born in Prague to middle-class Jewish parents. After the family relocated to Vienna, Kautsky joined the fledgling Austrian SPD. He also travelled to London where he met engels who became a close associate. In 1901 he returned to Germany and established himself as a leading member of the SPD, opposing both the revisionism of bernstein and the hard left's unreconstructed Marxism (see marx ). Though he voted military credits in 1914, as did most other socialists, he became a critic of world war i . In 1917 he helped to found the Independent Social Democratic Party, rejoining the SPD in 1920. At the time of the german revolution of 1918–19, he served as foreign minister in the brief-lived SPD-dominated government, but was unconvinced by lenin's calls for a revolutionary peace. In the 1920s, Kautsky settled in vienna where he devoted much of his time to uncovering the secret diplomacy that had preceded the World War. When hitler launched the anschluss , he left for Prague before spending his last months in Holland. (See also socialism ) ... log in or subscribe to read full text