Kautsky, Karl

Karl Kautsky (1854-1938) was recognized as among the most authoritative promulgators of Orthodox Marxism after the death of Friedrich Engels and was called by some the "Pope of Marxism."

Following the First World War, Kautsky became an outspoken critic of the Bolshevik Revolution and its excesses, engaging in polemics with V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky on the nature of the Soviet state. A principal figure in the history of the Internationalist Socialist movement, he first became famous as editor of the fourth volume of Karl Marx's economic critique of capitalism, "Das Kapital."