Eduard Bernstein, 1850-1932

German Social Democratic Party leader and main author of  the "revisionist" version of Marxism.

A Berlin bank clerk, Eduard Bernstein joined the (Marxian) Social Democratic Worker's Party (SDAP) of Bebel and Liebknectht in 1872.  Bernstein participated in the Gotha Congress which united the Marxian SPAD party and the Lassallian ADAV party into the single Socialist Workers Party (SAP).  When the party was banned and socialist activity restricted in Germany in 1878, Bernstein went into exile to Zurich, Switzerland.  Bernstein moved on to London in 1888, where he remained until 1901.  During this time, he served as the editor of the socialist party newspaper, Der Sozialdemocrat and became a friend and companion of Friedrich Engels and entered into the circle of the Fabian Socialists.  It was particularly the influence of the latter that gave rise to Bernstein's "revisionist" views.  However, he would also use his close relationship with Engels to claim that the Marxian leader himself shared his views. 

Bernstein remained in London after the socialists were unbanned in Germany in 1890. Bernstein was one of the main authors of the 1891 Marxian-oriented "Erfurt Program" for the newly-renamed Social Democratic Party (SPD). 

Long a leading light of the Marxian establishment, considered the heir of Engels, Eduard Bernstein astonished friends and the entire movement socialist movement when he came out against the Marxian revolutionary thesis.  Effectively, Bernstein claimed that Marx was mistaken in identifying the revolutionary potential of workers, in predicting their increasing misery and the eventual collapse of capitalism by a proletarian revolution.  The conditions of the working classes, Bernstein observed, are improving, not worsening and the desire or need for revolution is weakening  - something he claimed that Marx himself had acknowledged as a possibility.

Edward Bernstein first set out his revisionist views in a series of articles for Die Neue Zeit in 1896 and 1898 which later emerged into his 1899 treatise. Bernstein denied the inevitability of "class conflict", the theory of increasing concentration of capital and sudden collapse of capitalism.  As a result, Bernstein argued that Marxian socialists should set their "revolutionary" hopes aside, and pursue a more practical, piecemeal movement towards a socialist state within a parliamentary democratic context.  On a more theoretical level, Bernstein stressed the "idealist" side of the Hegelian dialectic which he felt Marx had abandoned too quickly.  Later on, imbued with neo-Kantian thinking, he stressed the ethical side of socialism more and more.  He was not a fan of the labor theory of value or the abstract nature of Marxian economics.

Bernstein's 1896-99 ideas were bitterly disputed by orthodox Marxians such as Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Kautsky and Vladimir Lenin.   They got the SPD to officially condemn revisionism in 1899, but the debate raged on in the party nonetheless.  Returning to Germany in 1901, he became the  leader  the revisionist faction and expanded its appeal considerably among party members.  In 1902, he was elected in the Reichstag.  Always a pacificst, Bernstein resigned from party because of its support for the German war effort and founded an "independent" USPD.  Although also opposed to the "majority" SPD, Bernstein did not support the more radical efforts of Rosa  Luxemburg and the Spartacist League.  He rejoined the SPD after the war, served in government briefly in 1919. From 1920 to 1928, Bernstein was a SPD delegate in the Reichstag and one of the more vocal opponents of the rising Nazi party.  He died before they came to power.

Throughout this time, SPD remained officially a Marxist party by its Erfurt program, its theory remained "orthodox", with "revisionism" tolerated only as a minority opinion.  It was only until 1959 where, at a famous Bad Godesburg conference, the SPD formally unloaded its Marxian theory and embraced its identity as a reformist worker's party -- as Bernstein had wanted all along. 

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