Hilferding’s Finance Capital in the Development of Marxist Thought

Abstract

When Rudolf Hilferding's 'Finance Capital' was first published, it was regarded as a major event in the development of Marxian political economy. Two of the most important contemporary social democratic theorists greeted its publication with great enthusiasm. For Otto Bauer the book read like a fourth volume of Marx's Capital, while Karl Kautsky concluded that Hilferding had vindicated Marx's approach to economics. Kautsky described Finance Capital as 'a completion of Capital', which both supplemented and revised volumes II and III (Bauer 1909 - 1910; Kautsky 1910 - 1911). Otto Bauer (1881 - 1938) was one of the leading theoreticians of the Austrian socialist party, and himself the author of an acclaimed text on the Marxian interpretation of nationalism (Bottomore and Goode 1978). Karl Kautsky (1854 - 1938), sometimes described as 'the Pope of Marxism', had been the most influential theorist in the German socialist movement since the death of Friedrich Engels in 1883 (Geary 1987). Their praise was not given lightly.