Reply To: Tribute to Kropotkin
Actually, Kautsky didn’t support the war. That’s a Leninist calumny against him for not supporting the Bolshevik coup and so becoming, in their view, the greatest “renegade” since Judas Iscariot.
He was not a member of the Reichstag and so didn’t vote for the war credits. This is what Wikipedia says about his attitude:
“In 1914, when the German Social-Democrat deputies in the Reichstag voted for war credits, Kautsky (who was not a deputy but attended their meetings) suggested abstaining. Kautsky claimed that Germany was waging a defensive war against the threat of Czarist Russia. However, in June 1915, about ten months after the war had begun and when it had become obvious that this was going to be a sustained, appallingly brutal and costly struggle, he issued an appeal with Eduard Bernstein and Hugo Haase against the pro-war leaders of the SPD and denounced the German government’s annexationist aims. In 1917 he left the SPD for the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) with united socialists who opposed the war.”