The Road to Power

The Road to Power: Political Reflections on Growing into the Revolution (German: Der Weg zur Macht. Politische Betrachtungen über das Hineinwachsen in die Revolution) is a 1909 book by the Marxist theoretician Karl Kautsky. Written at a time of growing internal division in the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the book was a defense of orthodox Marxist revolutionary strategy against the party's increasingly influential reformist wing. It argued that the era of peaceful capitalist development was ending and that a period of intense crisis and war would create a revolutionary situation, making the "conquest of political power by the proletariat" an imminent possibility.

The book was received very differently in Germany and Russia. In Germany, its publication caused a scandal within the SPD; the party executive tried to suppress it, and it drew criticism from both the reformist right and the radical left. In Russia, however, the Bolsheviks, including Vladimir Lenin, enthusiastically embraced the work as a "most complete exposition of the tasks of our times" and an endorsement of their own revolutionary positions. After the outbreak of World War I, Lenin repeatedly cited The Road to Power to denounce Kautsky as a "renegade" who had betrayed his own revolutionary principles. According to historian Lars T. Lih, the book helped to inspire the Bolsheviks to carry out the October Revolution in 1917, a "revolution à la Kautsky".