Eduard Bernstein
Encyclopedia
Eduard Bernstein was a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 social democratic
Social democracy
Social democracy is a political ideology of the center-left on the political spectrum. Social democracy is officially a form of evolutionary reformist socialism. It supports class collaboration as the course to achieve socialism...

 theoretician and politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...

, a member of the SPD
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...

, and the founder of evolutionary socialism and revisionism
Revisionism (Marxism)
Within the Marxist movement, the word revisionism is used to refer to various ideas, principles and theories that are based on a significant revision of fundamental Marxist premises. The term is most often used by those Marxists who believe that such revisions are unwarranted and represent a...

.

Life

Bernstein was born in Schöneberg
Schöneberg
Schöneberg is a locality of Berlin, Germany. Until Berlin's 2001 administrative reform it was a separate borough including the locality of Friedenau. Together with the former borough of Tempelhof it is now part of the new borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg....

 (now part of Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

) to Jewish parents, although they did not practice religion. His father was a locomotive driver. From 1866 to 1878, after leaving school, he was employed in banks as a banker's clerk. His political career began in 1872, when he joined the Eisenach (named after the German town Eisenach
Eisenach
Eisenach is a city in Thuringia, Germany. It is situated between the northern foothills of the Thuringian Forest and the Hainich National Park. Its population in 2006 was 43,626.-History:...

) wing of the German socialist movement, a socialist party with Marxist tendencies formally known as Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Eisenacher Programms
Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany, in German Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, SDAP, was a German left-wing political party founded on August 7/August 9, 1869 in Eisenach, Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach by, among others, Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel...

 and soon became prominent as an activist. Bernstein's party contested two elections against a rival socialist party, the Lassalleans (Ferdinand Lassalle
Ferdinand Lassalle
Ferdinand Lassalle was a German-Jewish jurist and socialist political activist.-Early life:Ferdinand Lassalle was born on 11 April 1825 in Breslau , Silesia to a prosperous Jewish family descending from Upper Silesian Loslau...

's Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein
General German Workers' Association
The General German Workers' Association, in German Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein, ADAV) was founded on 23 May 1863 in Leipzig, Kingdom of Saxony by Ferdinand Lassalle and existed under this name until 1875, when it combined with August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht's SDAP to form the...

), but in both elections neither party was able to win a significant majority of the left-wing vote. Consequently, together with August Bebel
August Bebel
Ferdinand August Bebel was a German Marxist politician, writer, and orator. He is best remembered as one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.-Early years:...

 and Wilhelm Liebknecht
Wilhelm Liebknecht
Wilhelm Martin Philipp Christian Ludwig Liebknecht was a German social democrat and a principal founder of the SPD. His political career was a pioneering project combining Marxist revolutionary theory with practical, legal political activity...

, Bernstein prepared the Einigungsparteitag ("unification party congress") with the Lassalleans in Gotha
Gotha (town)
Gotha is a town in Thuringia, within the central core of Germany. It is the capital of the district of Gotha.- History :The town has existed at least since the 8th century, when it was mentioned in a document signed by Charlemagne as Villa Gotaha . Its importance derives from having been chosen in...

 in 1875. Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...

's famous Critique of the Gotha Program
Critique of the Gotha Program
The Critique of the Gotha Program is a document based on a letter by Karl Marx written in early May 1875 to the Eisenach faction of the German social democratic movement, with whom Marx and Friedrich Engels were in close association...

 criticized what he saw as a Lassallean victory over the Eisenachers whom he favored; interestingly, Bernstein later noted that it was Liebknecht, considered by many to be the strongest Marxist advocate within the Eisenacher faction, who proposed the inclusion of many of the ideas which so thoroughly irritated Marx.

In the Reichstag
Reichstag (German Empire)
The Reichstag was the parliament of the North German Confederation , and of the German Reich ....

 elections of 1877, the German Social Democratic Party gained 493,000 votes. However, two assassination attempts on the Kaiser
Kaiser
Kaiser is the German title meaning "Emperor", with Kaiserin being the female equivalent, "Empress". Like the Russian Czar it is directly derived from the Latin Emperors' title of Caesar, which in turn is derived from the personal name of a branch of the gens Julia, to which Gaius Julius Caesar,...

 in the following year provided Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck
Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg , simply known as Otto von Bismarck, was a Prussian-German statesman whose actions unified Germany, made it a major player in world affairs, and created a balance of power that kept Europe at peace after 1871.As Minister President of...

 with a pretext for introducing a law banning all socialist organizations, assemblies, and publications. As it happened. there had been no Social Democratic involvement in either assassination attempt, but the popular reaction against enemies of the Reich induced a compliant Reichstag to pass Bismarck's "Socialist Law."

On October 12, 1878, Otto von Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck
Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg , simply known as Otto von Bismarck, was a Prussian-German statesman whose actions unified Germany, made it a major player in world affairs, and created a balance of power that kept Europe at peace after 1871.As Minister President of...

's strict anti-Socialist legislation was passed in the Reichstag
Reichstag (German Empire)
The Reichstag was the parliament of the North German Confederation , and of the German Reich ....

. For nearly all practical purposes, the party was outlawed and, throughout Germany, it was actively suppressed. However, it was still possible for Social Democrats to stand as individuals for election to the Reichstag, and this they did. Indeed, despite the severe persecution to which it was subjected, the party actually increased its electoral support, gaining 550,000 votes in 1884 and 763,000 in 1887. Shortly before the Socialist Law came into effect, Bernstein went into exile
Exile
Exile means to be away from one's home , while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return...

 in Zurich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

, accepting a position as private secretary for social democratic patron Karl Höchberg
Karl Höchberg
Karl Höchberg was a German social-reformist writer, publisher and economist, who acted under the pseudonyms Dr. Ludwig Richter e R.F. Seifert. In 1876 he became a member of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany . From 1877 to 1878, he was responsible for editing the Zukunft magazine...

, a wealthy supporter of Social Democracy. A warrant subsequently issued for his arrest ruled out any possibility of his returning to Germany, and he was to remain in exile for more than twenty years. In 1888, Bismarck convinced the Swiss
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 government to expel a number of key members of the German social democratic movement from its country, and so Bernstein moved to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, where he had close contacts with Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...

 and Karl Kautsky
Karl Kautsky
Karl Johann Kautsky was a Czech-German philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician. Kautsky was recognized as among the most authoritative promulgators of Orthodox Marxism after the death of Friedrich Engels in 1895 until the coming of World War I in 1914 and was called by some the "Pope of...

. It was shortly after his arrival in Switzerland that he began to think of himself as a Marxist.In 1880, he accompanied Bebel to London in order to clear up a misunderstanding over his involvement in an article published by Höchberg and denounced by Marx and Engels as being 'chock-full of bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideas'. The trip was a success. Engels in particular was impressed by Bernstein's zeal and the soundness of his ideas.

Back in Zurich, Bernstein became increasingly active in working for "Der Sozialdemokrat" ("Social Democrat"),and later succeeded Georg von Vollmar
Georg von Vollmar
Georg Heinrich von Vollmar was a democratic socialist politician from Bavaria.He was born in Munich, and educated in a school attached to a Benedictine monastery at Augsburg, and in 1865 entered the Bavarian army as a lieutenant in a cavalry regiment. He served in the campaign of 1866, and then...

 as the paper's editor, a post he was to hold for the next ten years. It was during these years between 1880 and 1890 that Bernstein established his reputation as a leading party theoretician and a Marxist of impeccable orthodoxy. In this he was helped by the close personal and professional relationship he established with Engels. This relationship owed much to the fact that he shared Engels's strategic vision and accepted most of the particular policies which, in Engels's view, that vision entailed. In 1887, the German government persuaded the Swiss authorities to close down Der Sozialdemokrat. Bernstein moved to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 where he resumed publication from premises in Kentish Town
Kentish Town
Kentish Town is an area of north west London, England in the London Borough of Camden.-History:The most widely accepted explanation of the name of Kentish Town is that it derived from 'Ken-ditch' meaning the 'bed of a waterway'...

. His relationship with Engels soon blossomed into friendship. He also made contact with various English socialist organizations, notably the Fabian Society
Fabian Society
The Fabian Society is a British socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World...

 and Hyndman's Social Democratic Federation
Social Democratic Federation
The Social Democratic Federation was established as Britain's first organised socialist political party by H. M. Hyndman, and had its first meeting on June 7, 1881. Those joining the SDF included William Morris, George Lansbury and Eleanor Marx. However, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx's long-term...

. It is vailed in England at the time. Indeed, in later years, his opponents routinely claimed that his 'Revisionism
Revisionism
Revisionism may refer to:*Historical revisionism, the critical re-examination of presumed historical facts and existing historiography** The "revisionists" school of thought in Soviet and Communist studies, as opposed to the Cold War "traditionalists" school....

' was due to his having come to see the world 'through English spectacles'. It is, of course, impossible to determine how far the charge was justified. For what it is worth, Bernstein himself denied it.

In 1891, he was one of the authors of the Erfurt Program
Erfurt Program
The Erfurt Program was adopted by the Social Democratic Party of Germany during the SPD congress at Erfurt in 1891. Formulated under the political guidance of Eduard Bernstein, August Bebel, and Karl Kautsky, it superseded the earlier Gotha Program....

, and from 1896 to 1898, he released a series of articles entitled "Probleme des Sozialismus" ("Problems of Socialism") that led to the revisionism debate in the SPD. He also wrote a book titled "Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie" ("The Prerequisites for Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy") in 1899. The book was in sharp contrast to the positions of August Bebel
August Bebel
Ferdinand August Bebel was a German Marxist politician, writer, and orator. He is best remembered as one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.-Early years:...

, Karl Kautsky
Karl Kautsky
Karl Johann Kautsky was a Czech-German philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician. Kautsky was recognized as among the most authoritative promulgators of Orthodox Marxism after the death of Friedrich Engels in 1895 until the coming of World War I in 1914 and was called by some the "Pope of...

 and Wilhelm Liebknecht
Wilhelm Liebknecht
Wilhelm Martin Philipp Christian Ludwig Liebknecht was a German social democrat and a principal founder of the SPD. His political career was a pioneering project combining Marxist revolutionary theory with practical, legal political activity...

. Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen...

's 1900 essay Reform or Revolution? was also a polemic
Polemic
A polemic is a variety of arguments or controversies made against one opinion, doctrine, or person. Other variations of argument are debate and discussion...

 against Bernstein's position. In 1900, Berstein published Zur Geschichte und Theorie des Sozialismus ("The history and theory of socialism," 1900).
In 1901, he returned to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, following the lifting of a ban that had kept him from entering the country. He became an editor of Vorwärts
Vorwärts
Vorwärts was the central organ of the Social Democratic Party of Germany published daily in Berlin from 1891 to 1933 by decision of the party's Halle Congress, as the successor of Berliner Volksblatt, founded in 1884....

that year, and a member of the Reichstag
Reichstag (German Empire)
The Reichstag was the parliament of the North German Confederation , and of the German Reich ....

 from 1902 to 1918. He voted against the armament tabling in 1913, together with the SPD fraction's left wing. Although he had voted for war credits in August 1914, from July 1915 he opposed World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 and in 1917 he was among the founders of the USPD
Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany was a short-lived political party in Germany during the Second Reich and the Weimar Republic. The organization was established in 1917 as the result of a split of left wing members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany...

, which united anti-war socialists (including reformists like Bernstein, 'centrists' like Kautsky and revolutionary Marxists like Karl Liebknecht
Karl Liebknecht
was a German socialist and a co-founder with Rosa Luxemburg of the Spartacist League and the Communist Party of Germany. He is best known for his opposition to World War I in the Reichstag and his role in the Spartacist uprising of 1919...

). He was a member of the USDP until 1919, when he rejoined the SPD. From 1920 to 1928 Bernstein was again a member of the Reichstag. He retired from political life in 1928.

Bernstein died on December 18, 1932 in Berlin. A commemorative plaque is placed in his memory at Bozener Straße 18, Berlin-Schöneberg, where he lived from 1918 to his death.

Views

Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus (1899) was Bernstein's most significant work. Bernstein was principally concerned with refuting Marx's predictions about the imminent and inevitable demise of capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...

, and Marx's consequent laissez faire policy which opposed socialist interventions before the demise. Bernstein pointed out simple facts that he took to be evidence that Marx's predictions were not being borne out: he noted that the centralisation of capitalist industry, while significant, was not becoming wholescale and that the ownership of capital was becoming more, and not less, diffuse.

As to Marx's belief in the disappearance of the middleman, Bernstein declared that the entrepreneur class was being steadily recruited from the proletariat class, and therefore all compromise measures, such as the state regulation of the hours of labor, provisions for old-age pensions, and so on, should be encouraged and taken advantage of. For this reason, Bernstein urged the laboring classes to take an active interest in politics. Bernstein also pointed out what he considered to be some of the flaws in Marx's labor theory of value
Labor theory of value
The labor theories of value are heterodox economic theories of value which argue that the value of a commodity is related to the labor needed to produce or obtain that commodity. The concept is most often associated with Marxian economics...

.

In its totality, Bernstein's analysis formed a powerful critique of Marxism, and this led to his vilificationamong many orthodox Marxists
Orthodox Marxism
Orthodox Marxism is the term used to describe the version of Marxism which emerged after the death of Karl Marx and acted as the official philosophy of the Second International up to the First World War and of the Third International thereafter...

. Bernstein remained, however, very much a socialist, albeit an unorthodox one: he believed that socialism would be achieved through capitalism, not through capitalism's destruction (as rights were gradually won by workers, their cause for grievance would be diminished, and consequently, so too would the foundation of revolution). During the intra-party debates about his ideas, Bernstein explained that, for him, the final goal of socialism was nothing; movement toward that goal was everything.

Although Marx would argue that free trade
Free trade
Under a free trade policy, prices emerge from supply and demand, and are the sole determinant of resource allocation. 'Free' trade differs from other forms of trade policy where the allocation of goods and services among trading countries are determined by price strategies that may differ from...

 would be the quickest fulfillment of the capitalist system, and thus its end, Bernstein viewed protectionism
Protectionism
Protectionism is the economic policy of restraining trade between states through methods such as tariffs on imported goods, restrictive quotas, and a variety of other government regulations designed to allow "fair competition" between imports and goods and services produced domestically.This...

 as helping only a selective few, being fortschrittsfeindlich (anti-progressive), for its negative effects on the masses. Germany's protectionism, Bernstein argued, was only based on political expediency, isolating Germany from the world (especially from Britain), creating an autarky
Autarky
Autarky is the quality of being self-sufficient. Usually the term is applied to political states or their economic policies. Autarky exists whenever an entity can survive or continue its activities without external assistance. Autarky is not necessarily economic. For example, a military autarky...

 that would only result in conflict between Germany and the rest of the world.

He is also noted for being "one of the first socialists to deal sympathetically with the issue of homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...

."

Further reading

  • Eduard Bernstein, Cromwell and Communism: Socialism and Democracy in the Great English Revolution, International Specialized Book Service Inc, 1963, hardcover, ISBN 0-7146-1454-8; trade paperback, Spokesman Books, 1980, ISBN 0-85124-286-3; trade paperback, 287 pages, Coronet Books, 2000, ISBN 0-85124-630-3
  • Eduard Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism: A Criticism and Affirmation, Random House, 1961, trade paperback, ISBN 0-8052-0011-8; trade paperback, ISBN 1-299-16172-3
  • Eduard Bernstein, My Years of Exile: Reminiscences of a Socialist, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1986, hardcover, ISBN 0-313-25114-2
  • Eduard Bernstein, Selected Writings of Eduard Bernstein, 1900-1921, Prometheus Books, 1996, hardcover, ISBN 1-57392-357-5
  • Francis L. Carsten, Eduard Bernstein: 1850–1932. Eine politische Biographie, München 1993, ISBN 3-406-37133-7
  • Peter Gay
    Peter Gay
    Peter Gay is Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University and former director of the New York Public Library's Center for Scholars and Writers . Gay received the American Historical Association's Award for Scholarly Distinction in 2004...

    , The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism: Eduard Bernstein's challenge to Marx, Octagon Books, ISBN 0-88254-837-9; Collier Books, trade paperback ISBN 0-374-93017-1
  • James W. Hulse, Revolutionists in London: a study of five unorthodox Socialists, Clarendon Press, 1970, ISBN 0-19-827175-1
  • S. Ramaswamy and Subrata Mukherjee, Eduard Bernstein - His Thoughts and Works: His Life and Works, Deep & Deep Publications, 1998, hardcover, ISBN 81-7100-768-6
  • Manfred B. Steger, Quest for Evolutionary Socialism: Eduard Bernstein and Social Democracy, Cambridge University Press, 1997, hardcover, 287 pages, ISBN 0-521-58200-8
  • Edited by Henry Tudor and J. M. Tudor, Marxism and Social Democracy: The Revisionist Debate, 1896-1898, Cambridge University Press, 1988, hardcover, 1988, ISBN 0-521-34049-7

External links

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