The Proletarian Revolution and The Renegade Kautsky

This work, published at the end of 1918, was written after the appearance of Karl Kautsky’s pamphlet, “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” in which Kautsky criticizes Lenin’s “State and Revolution” and repeatedly reveals himself as an opponent of proletarian revolution and as an open counter-revolutionist. In “The Proletarian Revolution and Renegade Kautsky,” Lenin devotes himself chiefly to exposing Kautsky’s distortions and vulgarisations of the Marxist teachings on the state, proletarian revolution and proletarian dictatorship, and to the defence of the Russian proletarian revolution. In his pitiless criticism of Kautsky, in his exposure of the counter-revolutionary content of Kautskyism, and in his analysis of the experiences of the Russian Revolution, Lenin develops further his basic exposition contained in “State and Revolution.” Previous English editions of this work have been wanting in accuracy of translation and in the general quality of rendition. The present edition is a completely new and revised translation, based on the original text supplied by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute.