With the recent upsurge in democratic socialism in the United States and the United Kingdom, a new generation of radicals is searching for a viable strategy to overcome capitalism. So it’s not surprising that a debate has broken out over the relevance of Karl Kautsky, the world’s preeminent Marxist theorist from the late 1880s through 1914.

This might seem like an obscure historical dispute, but it’s not. As the recent Jacobin contributions by James Muldoon and Charlie Post demonstrate, assessing Kautsky’s politics informs how today’s socialists respond to a central strategic question: How can class rule be overcome in a capitalist democracy?

Unfortunately, Muldoon and Post focus their articles on Kautsky’s approach to the German Revolution of 1918–19, confusing the discussion by failing to sufficiently distinguish between Kautsky’s long-standing radicalism and his late-in-life turn toward the political center.