Eduard Bernstein

German political theorist and politician

• Born: January 6, 1850
• Birthplace: Berlin, Prussia (now in Germany)
• Died: December 18, 1932
• Place of death: Berlin, Germany

Bernstein was a Marxian political theorist, socialist politician, and historian who originated revisionist socialism. Through revisionist socialism, he tried to modify the traditional Marxian prediction of the imminent collapse of capitalism and the subsequent rule of the proletarian class by proposing a theory according to which social-reformist social change would lead to the realization of socialism.

Early Life

Eduard Bernstein was born into a lower-middle-class family of German Jewish ancestry in Berlin. His father was originally a plumber but later became a railroad engineer. Since there were many children in the family Bernstein was the seventh of fifteen born his opportunities for a formal education were limited. At age sixteen, he left the gymnasium, an academic secondary school, and became first an apprentice and then a clerk at a bank. After his apprenticeship, his interests began to reach beyond his daily employment. He engaged in working-class political activity and joined the German Social Democratic Party in 1872, devoting occasional evenings and entire weekends to political agitation. He also continued his self-education by developing his public speaking skills and his notable intellectual talents, which brought him to the attention of Socialist Party leaders.

In 1878, Bernstein gave up his secure employment at a bank and moved to Switzerland to become secretary to Karl Höchberg, a wealthy socialist idealist whom he helped edit a socialist periodical and other publications. While engaged in these journalistic pursuits, he read and digested the recently published Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft (1877-1878; Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science, 1934), by Friedrich Engels. According to Bernstein’s recollection, it was this powerful book that converted him to Marxism. The enactment of the antisocialist law under Otto von Bismarck in the same year prompted the German Social Democratic Party to issue its principal newspaper, Der Sozialdemokrat, in Zurich for secret distribution in Germany. Bernstein became an early contributor to the party organ and, having earned the confidence of the party leadership, was appointed its editor late in 1880. During the following decade, he turned this newspaper into an effective instrument of agitation as well as a teaching tool for Marxist orthodoxy. In 1888, pressured by Bismarck, the Swiss government expelled Bernstein, who moved to London. He continued to edit the party newspaper there until the lapse of the antisocialist law in 1890. There Bernstein not only rounded out his own ideological education under the watchful eye of Engels but also was exposed to different socialist groups in England, including the Fabians.

Life’s Work

Although the repeal of the antisocialist legislation restored more normal conditions for political agitation in Germany and permitted socialist exiles to return to their homeland, the imperial government barred Bernstein from returning until 1901. All of his major publications relating to revisionist socialism were thus written abroad but published in Germany. After his work with the party newspaper ended, he edited Ferdinand Lassalle’s works, published a historical study of the English Revolution, and contributed to socialist publications in Germany. As he studied Marxian writings more closely, especially the first two volumes of Das Kapital (1867, 1885; Capital, 1886, 1907, 1909) and the third, issued by Engels in 1894, Bernstein became increasingly disturbed by the gap between Marx’s predictions and societal reality as he observed it. Marx had forecast the intensified centralization of capitalism and the advancing impoverishment of the proletariat, whereas British and German economic and social conditions indicated no such trends. The 1890’s brought, especially in Germany, increasing prosperity, which improved the condition of the proletariat and moderated the violence of the class struggle. A catastrophic change in the near future appeared to be unlikely. If anything, the British historical developments and the German Social Democratic experience pointed toward a process of evolutionary change.

Bernstein first expounded his new ideas in a series of articles entitled “Probleme des Sozialismus,” which appeared between 1896 and 1898 in Neue Zeit, the main German socialist periodical, edited by Karl Kautsky. One year later, his book Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben de Sozialdemokratie (1899; Evolutionary Socialism , 1909) expanded the theme that he had outlined in the earlier articles. Bernstein rejected Marx’s concept of the apocalyptic end of capitalism and the attendant immiseration of the working class. According to Bernstein, Marx had underestimated the economic, social, and political factors that stabilized the capitalist system and led to expanded production that also brought an increase in mass consumption and a rise in the workers’ real income. He demonstrated that Marx’s prediction that in a capitalist society the rich would become richer and the poor, poorer was not borne out by the facts. Rather, Bernstein found that the class structure under capitalism was becoming more differentiated. Rising income levels improved the condition of many workers, and the traditional middle class, instead of shrinking, as Marx had anticipated, was being expanded by a new middle class of white-collar workers and civil servants. Bernstein also raised serious questions about Marx’s theory of historical materialism, or economic determinism. In Bernstein’s view, noneconomic factors were often as important in determining historical processes as productive forces and relations of production. Lastly, the most heretical departure from Marxian orthodoxy was Bernstein’s contention that the realization of socialism would not come about within the scheme of inexorable determinism that Marx had borrowed from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel but within a critical intellectual framework informed by the rational principles of Immanuel Kant. In short, he implied that socialism would not be attained as a natural development of history but must be worked for as an ethical goal.

Bernstein’s propositions for the revision of Marxian theory created a controversy that lasted for years and resulted in a more rational basis for reformist politics in German social democracy, much of which had been in vogue since the founding of the party in Bismarck’s time. In contrast, the 1891 Erfurt Program of the German Social Democratic Party, the theoretical part of which had been drafted by Kautsky and its tactical section by Bernstein, was based on Marxist formulations. Doctrinaire Marxists such as Kautsky, the more eclectic August Bebel, and the radical Rosa Luxemburg all felt threatened by Bernstein’s new challenges to party dogma. They wanted to uphold the revolutionary party program in combination with moderate reformist practice, and they strongly objected to broadening reformist politics by collaboration with nonsocialist parties as the theory of revisionist socialism suggested. Bernstein’s ideas were hotly debated at party congresses in Germany between 1898 and 1903 as well as at the International Socialist Congress in 1904. Even though revisionist socialist theory was repeatedly rejected by action of the party congresses, it refused to die.

After his return to Germany in 1901, Bernstein was elected to the German Reichstag in the following year and served in the parliamentary body with no interruptions until 1928. His life as a party politician was never as significant as his work as a political theorist and journalist. Moreover, in the political arena he was by no means a consistent supporter of right-wing German social democracy. As a pacifist and internationalist, Bernstein quite often dissented from his reformist party colleagues on issues of foreign policy and militarism. His most notable break with the majority of the German Social Democratic Party came in 1915, during World War I. After reluctantly voting for war credits at the beginning of the war, he joined, late in 1915, a minority of largely left-wing party members, who refused to lend further financial support to the imperial government. First organized as a dissenting group, the defectors formally established the Independent Socialist Party in 1917. At the end of the war, Bernstein, however, returned to the majority German Social Democratic Party and even briefly served in a ministerial position in the government. Yet he always spoke out courageously on controversial issues despite hostility from party and public audiences. He defended many provisions of the Treaty of Versailles and even asserted that imperial Germany was guilty of causing the war. Some of his sharpest attacks were directed at the Russian revolutionary left, the Bolsheviks. He contended that in the Bolsheviks’ lust for power they had barbarized Marx’s evolutionary teachings, resorted to ruthless violence, and disregarded Marxist economics by leaping into socialism from a lower capitalist base than that of any Western country. These polemical controversies and frequently unpopular stands were not helpful to restoring Bernstein’s influence of earlier times. He came to be seen more as a party curiosity than a leader. At the same time, even his enemies granted that he was a man of unimpeachable integrity and intellectual honesty. In the last decade of his life, Bernstein concentrated on writing his memoirs, a party history, and journalistic articles; he also gave lectures before university audiences. He observed with concern the revival of anti-Semitism and the worsening of economic conditions not only in Germany but also throughout the world. His death in December, 1932, spared him the pain of experiencing the advent of a brutal dictatorship.

Significance

The significance of Bernstein’s contribution lay in his sharp criticism of orthodox Marxian theory and the introduction of an eclectic array of doctrines that provided a theoretical foundation for socialist reformist practice. He was not noted for great philosophical originality, and his ideas made only a modest contribution to socialist thought. The basic assumptions of revisionist socialism were not grounded in hard philosophical principles, nor were they, for that matter, always very clear. Common sense and empirical observation of facts were what often informed the philosophy of revisionist socialism and infused it with a rational optimism. Nevertheless, revisionist socialism provided a clear-cut direction for political action that was particularly relevant to the state and society of Germany. Bernstein regarded, above all, the democratization of political and economic institutions as a prerequisite for the realization of a socialist society. In the German Empire, he considered the immediate tasks of the German Social Democratic Party to be the struggle for political rights of the working class and the struggle for all reforms in the state that were likely to improve the conditions of the working class and to transform the state in the direction of democracy. In theory and practice, he reinforced an absolute commitment to a form of socialism that was, above all, democratic. During the Weimar Republic, the German Social Democratic Party program, adopted at Görlitz in 1921 under his influence, gave recognition to revisionist socialist principles that sharply differentiated this party from the German Communist Party. It was not until after the defeat of Hitler that the German Social Democratic Party threw overboard the remnants of tradition-honored Marxist dogmas and, in the Bad Godesberg program of 1959, declared many revisionist socialist principles to be the prevailing orthodoxy.

Bibliography

Bernstein, Eduard. Evolutionary Socialism: A Criticism and Affirmation. Translated by Edith C. Harvey. Reprint. New York: Schocken Books, 1961. This readable exposition is a full statement of Bernstein’s critique of Marxism and his formulation of the tasks and possibilities of social democracy.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. My Years of Exile: Reminiscences of a Socialist. Translated by Bernard Miall. Reprint. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1986. This reprint of Bernstein’s autobiography, which was first published in English in 1921, covers his years in exile in Switzerland and England. It provides insights into his personality and the milieu of socialist friends and associates, including Engels and Marx.

Fletcher, Roger, ed. Bernstein to Brandt: A Short History of German Social Democracy. Baltimore: Edward Arnold, 1987. British and German historians summarize the history of German social democracy from its beginning to the present. Good for a quick overview and a short summary on Bernstein in particular. Contains a very good bibliography.

Gay, Peter. The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism: Eduard Bernstein’s Challenge to Marx. New York: Columbia University Press, 1952. A classic intellectual biography of Bernstein. Even though it is dated, it remains very useful for an understanding of revisionist socialism and the way stations of its originator.

Hulse, James W. “Bernstein: From Radicalism to Revisionism.” In Revolutionists in London: A Study of Five Unorthodox Socialists. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970. Secondary material is combined with original research in this biographical chapter on Bernstein, which provides a good introduction to his life and ideas and is particularly suitable for advanced high school students and undergraduates.

Lichtheim, George. Marxism: An Historical and Critical Study. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1961. An excellent treatment of Marxism as a historical and theoretical body of thought that shows the interconnection between events and ideas. The emergence of revisionist socialism is succinctly analyzed in the broad spectrum of European socialism.

Lidtke, Vernon L. The Outlawed Party: Social Democracy in Germany, 1878-1890. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966. The standard study of the German Social Democratic Party during the “heroic epoch” when Bismarck attempted to suppress it. Bernstein’s role as editor of Sozialdemokrat and his involvement in party politics before 1890 are well described and judiciously interpreted.

Muravchik, Joshua. “What Is to Be Done: Bernstein Develops Doubts.” In Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism. San Francisco, Calif.: Encounter Books, 2002. This book about the development of various socialist movements contains a chapter about Bernstein’s life and ideas.

Schorske, Carl E. German Social Democracy, 1905-1917: The Development of the Great Schism. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1955. A classic study of the genesis of the factional split that destroyed the unity of German social democracy. Though it tends to favor the left in the party, Bernstein and revisionist socialism are also placed in their historical context.

Tudor, H., and J. M. Tudor, eds. Marxism and Social Democracy: The Revisionist Debate, 1896-1898. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. A judicious selection of articles, speeches, and letters illustrates the early debate on revisionist socialism by juxtaposing the orthodox Marxist Bernstein and the revisionist Bernstein as well as his Marxist opponents. An informative introduction by H. Tudor traces the evolution of the revisionist debate. Includes a good bibliography of the primary and secondary publications.