Eduard Bernstein
Eduard Bernstein (German: [ˈeːduaʁt ˈbɛʁnʃtaɪn]; 6 January 1850 – 18 December 1932) was a German social democratic Marxist theorist and politician. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Bernstein had held close association to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but he began to identify what he believed to be errors in Marxist thinking and began to criticize views held by Marxism when he investigated and challenged the Marxist materialist theory of history.[1] He rejected significant parts of Marxist theory that were based upon Hegelian metaphysics and rejected the Hegelian perspective of an immanent economic necessity to socialism.[2]
Eduard Bernstein
Potsdam (Teltow-Beeskow-Charlottenburg)
Otto Pfundtner
Bruno Schönlank
Otto Pfundtner
18 December 1932
Berlin, Free State of Prussia, German Reich
Politics, economy, sociology
Early life[edit]
Bernstein was born in Schöneberg (now part of Berlin) to Jewish parents who were active in the Reform Temple on the Johannistrasse whose services were performed on Sunday. His father was a locomotive driver. From 1866 to 1878, he was employed in banks as a banker's clerk after leaving school.[3]
Bernstein's political career began in 1872, when he joined a socialist party with Marxist tendencies, known formally as the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany. The party was a proponent of the Eisenacher style of German socialism, named after the German town where it was founded. Bernstein soon became known as an activist. His party contested two elections against a rival socialist party, the Lassalleans (Ferdinand Lassalle's General German Workers' Association), but in both elections neither party was able to win a significant majority of the left-wing vote. Consequently, Bernstein, together with August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, prepared the Einigungsparteitag ("Unification Party Congress") with the Lassalleans in Gotha in 1875. Karl Marx's famous Critique of the Gotha Program criticized what he saw as a Lassallean victory over the Eisenachers, whom he favoured. 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 that so thoroughly irritated Marx.
In the 1877 elections, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) gained 493,000 votes. However, two assassination attempts on Kaiser Wilhelm I the next year provided Chancellor Otto von Bismarck a pretext to introduce a law banning all socialist organizations, assemblies and publications. 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 approve Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Laws.[4]
Bismarck's strict anti-socialist legislation was passed on 12 October 1878. For nearly all practical purposes the SPD was outlawed, and it was actively suppressed throughout Germany. However, it was still possible for Social Democrats to campaign as individuals for election to the Reichstag, which they did in spite of severe persecution. The party actually increased its electoral success, gaining 550,000 votes in 1884 and 763,000 in 1887.
Opinions[edit]
Opposition to violent revolution[edit]
Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus (1899) was Bernstein's most significant work. Bernstein was principally concerned with refuting Karl Marx's predictions about the imminent and inevitable demise of capitalism and Marx's consequent laissez-faire policy which opposed ameliorative social interventions before the demise. Bernstein indicated simple facts, which he considered to be evidence that Marx's predictions were not being borne out while he noted that while the centralization of capitalist industry was significant, it was not becoming wholescale and that the ownership of capital was becoming more and not less diffuse.[11][13] Bernstein's analysis of agriculture, according to which Bernstein believed that land ownership was becoming less concentrated, was largely based on the work of Eduard David[14] and was in its marshalling of facts impressive enough that even his Orthodox Marxist opponent Karl Kautsky acknowledged its value.[15]
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 so all compromise measures, such as the state regulation of the hours of labour and provisions for old-age pensions should be encouraged. For that reason, Bernstein urged the labouring classes to take an active interest in politics.[11] Bernstein also indicated what he considered to be some of the flaws in Marx's labour theory of value.[13]
Looking especially at the rapid growth in Germany, Bernstein argued that middle-sized firms would flourish, the size and power of the middle class would grow and that capitalism would successfully adjust and not collapse. He warned that a violent proletarian revolution, as in France in 1848, produced only reactionary successes, which undermined workers' interests. Therefore, he rejected revolution and instead insisted the best strategy to be patiently building up a durable social movement working for continuous nonviolent incremental change.[16]
In his work, The Quest for Evolutionary Socialism: Eduard Bernstein and Social Democracy, Manfred Steger touches on Bernstein's desire for socialism through peaceful means and incremental legislation. Some say that is Marxism in its mature form after the revisionists claimed many of Marx's theories to be wrong and came up with theories of their own, including socialism coming through democratic means.[17]
Bernstein's views under attack[edit]
Bernstein was vilified by the orthodox Marxists led by Karl Kautsky as well as the more radical current led by Rosa Luxemburg for his revisionism.[18] Nonetheless, Bernstein remained very much a socialist, albeit an unorthodox one as he believed that socialism would be achieved by the advancement of capitalism to social democracy and so on, not by capitalism's destruction (as rights were gradually won by workers, their cause for grievance would be diminished and consequently, so too would the motivation for revolution). During the intra-party debates about his ideas, Bernstein explained that for him the final goal of socialism was nothing; progress toward that goal was everything.
Luxemburg argued that socialism has its end in social revolution and revisionism "amounts in practice to the advice [...] that we abandon the social revolution—the goal of Social Democracy—and turn social reform from a means of the class struggle into its final aim".[19] She says revisionism has lost sight of scientific socialism and reverted to idealism and therefore lost its predictive force. Since reformists underestimate the anarchy of capitalism and say it has adaptability and viability, by which they mean that the contradictions of capitalism would not of historical necessity drive it to its doom, Luxemburg said they would abandon the objective necessity for socialism and give up all hope for a socialist future. The movement would collapse unless revisionism is repudiated. Trade unionists, who could see the successes of capitalism and the improvement of working conditions and who wanted to improve working conditions through parliament, generally followed Bernstein while those who were more orthodox generally followed Luxemburg.[20]
Foreign policy[edit]
Foreign policy was Bernstein's main intellectual interest between 1902 and 1914, with many articles in the Sozialistische Monatshefte (Socialist Monthly). He advocated policy positions for Germany that were aggressively nationalist, imperialist and expansionist.[21][22]
Bernstein considered protectionism (high tariffs on imports) as helping only a selective few, being fortschrittsfeindlich (anti-progressive) for its negative effects on the masses. He argued Germany's protectionism was based only on political expediency, isolating Germany from the world (especially from Britain), creating an autarky that would result only in conflict between Germany and the rest of the world.[23] Bernstein wanted to end Germany's protectionism and argued that tariffs did not increase grain production, did not counter British competition, did not increase farm profits and did not promote improvements in farming. Instead, it inflated rents, interest rates and prices, hurting everyone involved. In contrast, he argued that free trade led to peace, democracy, prosperity and the highest material and moral well-being of all humanity.[24]
Bernstein rejected reactionary bourgeois nationalism and called instead for a cosmopolitan-libertarian nationalism. He recognized the historical role of the national factor and said that the proletariat must support their country against external dangers. He called on workers to assimilate themselves within nation-states, which entailed support for colonial policies and imperial projects. Bernstein was sympathetic to the idea of imperial expansions as a positive and civilizing mission, which resulted in a bitter series of polemics with the anti-imperialist Ernest Belfort Bax.[25] Bernstein supported colonialism as he believed it uplifted backward peoples and it worked well for both Britain and Germany. Bernstein supported such policies in an intensely racialized manner, arguing in 1896 that "races who are hostile to or incapable of civilisation cannot claim our sympathy when they revolt against civilisation" and that the "savages [must] be subjugated and made to conform to the rules of higher civilisation".[26] However, he was disturbed by the Kaiser's reckless policies. He wanted strong friendship especially with Britain and France and protection against the Russian threat to Germany. He envisioned a sort of league of nations.[27][28]
Zionism[edit]
Bernstein's views on Jewish matters evolved. He never identified as a Zionist, but after initially favouring a wholly assimilationist solution to "the Jewish Question", his attitude toward Zionism became considerably more sympathetic after World War I.[29][30]