Kautsky, Karl

Kautsky, Karl

(born Oct. 16, 1854, Prague, Bohemia—died Oct. 17, 1938, Amsterdam, Neth.) German Marxist theorist and leader. He was the author of the Erfurt Program adopted by Germany's Social Democrat Party in 1891, which committed the party to an evolutionary form of Marxism that rejected both the radicalism of Rosa Luxemburg and the evolutionary socialism of Eduard Bernstein. He founded the Marxist review Neue Zeit in 1883, which he edited in various European cities until 1917, and wrote several books about Marx's doctrines and about St. Thomas More. He joined the Independent Social Democrats in opposing World War I.