Kautsky, the greatest authority of the Second International, represents in the highest degree a typical and vivid example of how verbal recognition of Marxism has led in practice to its transformation into "Struvism" or "Brentanism"{221}. We see this likewise in the example of Plekhanov. From Marxism its revolutionary living soul is hollowed out through patent sophisms; in Marxism everything is recognized except the revolutionary means of struggle, the advocacy and preparation of them, the education of the masses precisely in this direction. Kautsky ideationally "reconciles" the fundamental idea of social-chauvinism—the recognition of defense of the fatherland in the given war—with diplomatic, ostentatious concessions to the left in the form of abstention in voting on credits, verbal recognition of his own opposition, and so forth. Kautsky, who in 1909 wrote an entire book on the approach of the epoch of revolutions and on the connection between war and revolution, Kautsky, who in 1912 signed the Basel Manifesto on the revolutionary use of the impending war, now in every way justifies and embellishes social-chauvinism and, like Plekhanov, joins with the bourgeoisie in ridiculing any thought of revolution, any steps toward direct revolutionary struggle.

The working class cannot fulfill its world-revolutionary role without waging a merciless war against this renegadism, spinelessness, servility to opportunism, and the unprecedented theoretical vulgarization of Marxism. Kautskianism is not accidental, but a social product of the contradictions of the Second International—the joining together of fidelity to Marxism in words and submission to opportunism in deed.

In different countries this fundamental falsehood of "Kautskianism" manifests itself in different forms. In Holland, Roland-Holst, rejecting the idea of defense of the fatherland, upholds unity with the opportunist party. In Russia, Trotsky, likewise rejecting this idea, equally upholds unity with the opportunist and chauvinist group "Nasha Zarya." In Rumania, Rakovsky, declaring war on opportunism as the culprit in the collapse of the International, at the same time is prepared to recognize the legitimacy of the idea of defense of the fatherland. All this—these are manifestations of that evil which the Dutch Marxists (Gorter, Pannekoek) called "passive radicalism" and which amounts to the replacement of revolutionary Marxism with eclecticism in theory and to servility or impotence before opportunism in practice.