Die Vorläufer des neueren Sozialismus - Von Plato bis zu den Wiedertäufern

The author Karl Kautsky (1854-1938) was a German-Czech philosopher and social democratic politician. From 1885 to 1890, he lived in London and was closely friends with Friedrich Engels. In 1891, he, along with August Bebel and Eduard Bernstein, prepared the Erfurt Program of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Based on Marxist theory, it aimed for a socialist society in Germany. After the death of Friedrich Engels, Kautsky became the most important and influential theorist of the SPD and stood as the spokesperson for an orthodox Marxism alongside August Bebel in the party's Marxist center. In the present volume, he describes the precursors of modern socialism from Plato to the Anabaptists, from Platonic and early Christian communism to communism in the Middle Ages and the Reformation era. This is a reprint of the original edition from 1895.