Marxism and ethics

Karl Kautsky

pp. 32-52

in: Karl Kautsky, Selected political writings, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1983

Abstract

In September 1905 Kautsky was involved in a controversy with the majority of the editorial board, led by Eisner, of the party paper Vorwärts (Forward). Kautsky reported that having had to fight against their "ethical tendencies", he decided to give a brief account of ethics based on the materialist conception of history.¹Kautsky defended materialism against neo-Kantianism, as he had done earlier in the revisionist controversy when Bernstein had provocatively entitled the last section of Evolutionary Socialism, "Kant against Cant", claiming that the Hegelian dialectic was a comfortable refuge for the cant which sought to get a hold on the working-class movement.²

Cited authors

Kant Immanuel

Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich

Marx Karl