Karl Kautsky has been rightly considered the successor of Engels in the intellectual leadership of the Marxian School. Kautsky was the compiler and editor of Karl Marx's Theories of Surplus Value (1905-10), the founder of Die Neue Zeit and a political leader of the German Social Democrats. He denounced both Germany's aggression in World War I as well as the conduct of Russian Bolshevists after the 1917 Revolution.
Although Kautsky's own contributions to pure economic theory were relatively few, he took up the orthodox Marxian mantle in responding to challenges both within and without the Marxian school. As such, Kautsky served as the principal opponent of Eduard Bernstein's "revisionist" interpretation of Marx (1899), as a protagonist during the Socialist Calculation debate (1907), as well as an arbitrator during the intra-Marxian debate on the theory of crisis and the debate on imperialism. His main individual contribution was the extension of Marx's theory to agriculture (1899) - which provoked a sharp response by Bauer.
Major works of Karl Kautsky
Resources on Kautsky