Bernstein, Eduard

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BERNSTEIN, EDUARD

BERNSTEIN, EDUARD (1850–1932), German politician and theorist.

Eduard Bernstein was a leading German social-democratic politician and theorist. His life is a microcosmic reflection of the first century of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). Like the German labor movement itself, Bernstein started out as a socialist eclectic, then he "converted" to Marxist orthodoxy only to return to an eclectic position which, enriched by Marxist theory, nonetheless espoused a nonrevolutionary, democratic socialism that recognized Marxism only as one among several important theoretical sources.

Born in Berlin on 6 January 1850, Eduard Bernstein grew up in modest circumstances. After a short career as a bank clerk in Berlin, he joined the SPD as a campaign speaker and pamphleteer. Expelled from Germany in 1878 as a result of the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck's repressive "Anti-Socialist Laws," Bernstein settled in Zürich, Switzerland, from where he edited Der Sozialdemokrat, the rallying point of the underground SPD press. When Bismarck secured his expulsion from Switzerland, Bernstein continued publication of the periodical from London, where he cultivated close contacts to Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) and the leaders of the British socialist Fabian Society. When Engels died in 1895, Bernstein served as his literary executor and was widely regarded as one of the leading Marxist voices in Europe.

Thus, it came as a shock to his party comrades when Bernstein launched a series of tough criticisms against Marxist theory. In a number of articles and books that appeared between 1896 and 1900, the former Marxist stalwart rejected the central Marxist dogma of the inevitable collapse of capitalist society and the ensuing revolutionary seizure of power by the working class. In his view, Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Engels had painted an unrealistic picture of a utopian "final goal." As he put the matter famously, "I must confess that I have very little interest in what is usually referred to the 'final goal of socialism.' This goal, whatever it may be, is nothing to me, while the movement is everything. By 'the movement' I mean the progressive social change and its political and economic organization by working people" (quoted in Tudor and Tudor, pp. 168–169).

Suggesting that capitalism was getting better at containing its weaknesses, Bernstein advocated an "evolutionary" road to socialism through peaceful, parliamentary means centered on success at the ballot box and gradual democratic reforms. Stressing the tight connection between means and ends, he insisted that the extension of democracy required democratic methods. Moreover, he argued that the SPD ought to broaden its narrow working-class base and appeal to the middle class as well, thus turning itself into a genuine "people's party." Finally, rejecting the Marxist view that liberalism and socialism constituted diametrically opposed worldviews, Bernstein urged socialists to consider themselves "the legitimate heirs of liberalism" and embrace the Enlightenment language of citizenship, human rights, rule of law, and universal ethics.

Although Bernstein's views became the widely accepted cornerstones of modern European social democracy after World War II, they were severely condemned at three successive SPD congresses at the turn of the century. Various European Marxists, such as V. I. Lenin (1870–1924) in Russia and Rosa Luxemburg (1870–1919) and Karl Johann Kautsky (1854–1938) in Germany, wrote vitriolic pamphlets against Bernstein, calling him a "muddleheaded revisionist" betraying the cause of the working class. Unlike these leading Marxist theorists, however, Bernstein proved himself to be a skillful orator and organizer who recognized the importance of practical politics. Allowed to return to Berlin in 1901 after twenty-three years of political exile, he was elected to the Reichstag, the German parliament, and served from 1902 to 1906, 1912 to 1918, and 1920 to 1928.

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Bernstein first voted with the entire SPD leadership in favor of the war, but reversed his opinion a year later, arguing that the German imperial government had been the aggressor. Three years later, when the Bolsheviks successfully seized power in Russia, Bernstein emerged as one of their earliest and fiercest critics, warning that Lenin's brand of Soviet communism was based on the "erroneous belief in the omnipotence of brute force." He predicted, correctly as it turned out, that the Soviet regime represented an "odd repetition of the old despotism of the Czars" that would lead Russia into a "social and economic abyss." In the short-lived German Weimar Republic (1918–1933), the aging Bernstein held high political posts, including the cabinet position of undersecretary of the treasury. During his parliamentary tenure from 1920 to 1928, he concentrated on matters of taxation and foreign affairs while maintaining his busy journalistic schedule. Eduard Bernstein died on 18 December 1932, only six weeks before Adolf Hitler took power in Germany.