On Karl Kautsky's Understanding Of Materialist Conception Of History

This paper studies the view on Materialist Conception of History of Karl Kautsky--a very controversial figure on the development of Marxism.The relationship between Kautsky's thought and Marxist philosophy has always been of concern to people. From Kautsky' view, Materialist Conception of History is the most important academic contribution of Marx and Engels, is also the foundation of Scientific Socialism theory and practice. He devoted the whole life to explain and demonstrate Materialist Conception of History, and published a comprehensive expression named "Materialist Conception of History" in 1927. In this book, Kautsky made full advantage of the latest research on the anthropology to do a systematic in-depth explanation of Materialist Conception of History, it deepened and developed Materialist Conception of History to a certain extent. Kautsky has subjectively been loyal to Marxism, however, since he had no real understanding of Marxist scientific practice principle and dialectical materialism principle, coupled with the effect from Positivism, Darwinism and so on, he blended a variety of different philosophical theory together in a forced way and made a positivism, darwinism-like understanding of Materialist Conception of History. Thereby, it has affected his political practice, trended towords"Social Democracy". Compared with contemporary theorists such as LaFarge, Mehring, and Bernstein, Kautsky's thought has more depth. However, as well as these theorists, Kautsky distorted Marxism Conception of History in different aspects.This article attempts to take "Materialist Conception of History" as the nuclear basis, goes deep into the text, focuses on interpretation of Kautsky's understanding of Materialist Conception of History, and inquires into Kautsky's beneficial contribution and defects on the explaination of Materialist Conception of History, excavates the reason why he changed his understanding of Materialist Conception of History. Simultaneously, this paper wants to comprehend Materialist Conception of History from historical angle, and provides theoretical enlightenment to process the relationship between "insisting" and "developing" Marxism as well.