Eduard Bernstein

Eduard Bernstein
Bernstein in 1895
Member of the Reichstag from Brandenburg
In office 7 June 1920 – 20 May 1928
Constituency	Potsdam (Teltow-Beeskow-Charlottenburg)
Member of the Imperial Reichstag from Silesia
In office 13 January 1912 – 10 November 1918
Preceded by	Otto Pfundtner
Succeeded by	Reichstag dissolution
Constituency	Breslau-West
In office 31 October 1901 – 25 January 1907
Preceded by	Bruno Schönlank
Succeeded by	Otto Pfundtner
Constituency	Breslau-West
Personal details
Born	(1850-01-06)6 January 1850 Berlin-Kreuzberg, Kingdom of Prussia
Died	18 December 1932(1932-12-18) (aged 82) Berlin, Free State of Prussia, German Reich
Political party	SDAP (1872–1875) SPD (1875–1917) USPD (1917–1919) SPD (1918–1932)
Philosophical work
Era	Modern philosophy 19th-century philosophy 20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy German philosophy
School	Socialism
Main interests	Politics, economy, sociology
Notable ideas	Social democracy Revisionism

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 (SPD), Bernstein is best known for his challenge to Marxism known as revisionism, in which he questioned the revolutionary predictions of Karl Marx and advocated for a gradual, parliamentary path to socialism. His political and theoretical work played a significant role in the development of democratic socialism and social democracy.

Born into a lower-middle-class Jewish family in Berlin, Bernstein became active in socialist politics in his early twenties. He spent years in exile in Switzerland and London during the period of the Anti-Socialist Laws in Germany, where he became a close associate of Friedrich Engels. During his time in London, his interactions with the reformist Fabian Society and his observation of the stability of late Victorian capitalism led him to question key tenets of orthodox Marxism.

After Engels's death in 1895, Bernstein began to publicly articulate his revisionist views. In his most influential work, The Preconditions of Socialism (1899, also known as Evolutionary Socialism), he rejected the Hegelian dialectical method and disputed the Marxist predictions of the inevitable collapse of capitalism, the disappearance of the middle class, and the increasing immiseration of the proletariat. Instead, he argued that socialists should work for gradual social and political reforms through democratic institutions. His famous aphorism, "The movement means everything to me and what is usually called 'the final aim of Socialism' is nothing," encapsulated his focus on practical, democratic progress over revolutionary goals.

Although his views were officially condemned by the SPD, which maintained its orthodox Marxist Erfurt Program, the party's practical policies were largely reformist, reflecting the reality Bernstein described. His work sparked major debates within the international socialist movement, pitting him and his supporters against orthodox Marxists like Karl Kautsky and radicals like Rosa Luxemburg. During World War I, Bernstein's principles led him to break with the SPD's pro-war majority and co-found the anti-war Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), though he rejoined the SPD after the war. He served in the Reichstag during the Weimar Republic, where he continued to advocate for democracy and peace. He died in Berlin in late 1932, weeks before the Nazi seizure of power.

Early life and political beginnings

Eduard Bernstein was born in Berlin on 6 January 1850, a time of political reaction in Germany following the failure of the Revolutions of 1848. He was the seventh of fifteen children born to Jakob Bernstein, a railway engineer, and his wife, Johanne. His family was Jewish but did not practice their religion, celebrating Christmas as a German rather than a Christian holiday. This environment fostered in Bernstein a skeptical and half-believing worldview from a young age. The family's income was modest, placing them in the "genteel poverty" of the lower middle class, or petty bourgeoisie.

At sixteen, Bernstein left school without finishing Gymnasium and began an apprenticeship at a Berlin bank. He worked as a bank clerk from 1869 until 1878, a profession that provided a livelihood but did not capture his primary interests. His real education was self-directed, and he developed intellectual pursuits in theatre, poetry, and philosophy.

Bernstein's political awakening occurred during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. Initially a patriot, he became sympathetic to the anti-war stance of socialist leaders August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht after they were accused of treason. In February 1872, after reading works by Ferdinand Lassalle and Eugen Dühring, Bernstein and his friends joined the Social Democratic Workers' Party, known as the "Eisenachers" for the town where they were founded. He quickly became a skilled public speaker and an active party member, undertaking grueling speaking tours and engaging in debates with the rival Lassallean socialist party.

The two most influential books on the young Bernstein were Karl Marx's The Civil War in France, an exaltation of the Paris Commune, and Dühring's Cursus der National- und Sozialökonomie. His enthusiasm for Dühring's work proved contagious, and he was instrumental in popularizing Dühring's ideas within the socialist movement, even introducing them to Bebel. This early attachment to Dühring's thought, a blend of positivism and idealism, would later be exorcised by Friedrich Engels's sharp critique, Anti-Dühring.

Amidst government harassment and internal divisions, the Eisenachers and the Lassalleans recognized the need for unity. In 1875, the two factions merged at a congress in Gotha. The twenty-five-year-old Bernstein was a delegate to the preliminary conference and participated in the creation of the unified party, which would become the Social Democratic Party (SPD). The resulting Gotha Program was a compromise between Marxist and Lassallean ideas, which drew a sharp critique from Marx himself. Bernstein later acknowledged that the Eisenachers, himself included, had an inadequate grasp of Marxist theory at the time.

Exile (1878–1901)

Bernstein in 1878

In 1878, following two assassination attempts on Emperor Wilhelm I, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck enacted the Anti-Socialist Laws, which banned socialist organizations, meetings, and publications. Just before the law took effect, Bernstein accepted an offer to become the private secretary to Karl Höchberg, a wealthy socialist sympathizer, and moved to Zurich, Switzerland, in October 1878. What he expected to be a temporary stay became an exile of over twenty years.

Zurich

In Zurich, Bernstein worked with Höchberg on various publishing projects. Their first enterprise, a reprint of Karl Christian Friedrich Krause's Quintessence of Socialism, aimed to convert the intelligentsia to socialism, a tactic of "permeation" that Marx disdained. During this period, Bernstein encountered Engels's Anti-Dühring, a book which he recalled "converted me to Marxism".

In 1879, Bernstein became embroiled in a controversy that caused serious friction with Marx and Engels, whom he had never met. He had a minor role in the publication of an anonymous article in a new Yearbook for Social Science, financed by Höchberg. The article, written by Karl Flesch and revised by Höchberg, criticized the SPD for its proletarian focus and its "hatred of the bourgeoisie". Marx and Engels were furious, believing the article represented a bourgeois takeover of the party's organ. Engels accused Bernstein of being a key figure in this "trio of Zurichers" and demanded that Höchberg be expelled from the party.

Despite this incident, the SPD established its official, albeit illegal, newspaper, Der Sozialdemokrat, in Zurich in September 1879. Bernstein was active with the paper from the start. Anxious to clear his name with Marx and Engels, he and Bebel traveled to London in December 1880. The visit was a success; Bernstein won the full confidence of the "Londoners", and his relationship with Engels grew into a close friendship and a lifelong correspondence. In January 1881, Bernstein was appointed editor of Der Sozialdemokrat. Under his leadership, and with Engels as a frequent adviser, the paper became, in Engels's words, "unquestionably the best newspaper this party has ever had." During his Zurich years, Bernstein became one of the key members of the SPD, and his circle of friends included future socialist luminaries like Karl Kautsky.

London

In 1888, under pressure from Bismarck, the Swiss government expelled the staff of Der Sozialdemokrat. Bernstein and his colleagues relocated to London, which became his home for the next thirteen years. He continued to edit the paper until the Anti-Socialist Laws lapsed in 1890. With the SPD now able to operate legally in Germany, the exiled paper was no longer needed, and Bernstein, still under indictment in Germany, found himself without his editorial post. He began making a living as a freelance writer and London correspondent for the SPD's new official newspaper, Vorwärts.

The 1890s were a crucial decade for Bernstein's intellectual development. He spent much of his time in the reading room of the British Museum, the same place Marx had worked for so long. He was responsible for the tactical sections of the SPD's new Erfurt Program of 1891, which was largely Marxist in its theoretical sections drafted by Kautsky. He also undertook a major historical work, Sozialismus und Demokratie in der grossen englischen Revolution (Socialism and Democracy in the Great English Revolution, 1895), a pioneering study of the English Civil War from a social and economic perspective. The book, particularly his "discovery" of the communist thinker Gerrard Winstanley, was an original contribution to scholarship.

Throughout his early years in London, Bernstein remained in the shadow of Engels, who was the preeminent authority on Marxism. When Engels died in August 1895, he named Bernstein as one of his literary executors, a sign of complete confidence. It was only after Engels's death that Bernstein felt free to publicly question the orthodox Marxism he had inherited. His time in England had a profound impact on his thinking. He observed a stable, prosperous capitalist society with strong democratic traditions and a reformist, rather than revolutionary, labour movement. He also established close relations with English socialists, most notably the Fabian Society, whose leaders included George Bernard Shaw and Sidney and Beatrice Webb. While Bernstein later denied that Fabianism was the direct source of his new views, the Fabians' gradualist, empirical, and ethical approach to socialism undoubtedly reinforced the direction of his own thought.

Revisionism

Bernstein in 1895

Bernstein's revisionism developed from a series of articles he wrote for the SPD's theoretical journal, Die Neue Zeit, between 1896 and 1898, under the title Probleme des Sozialismus ("Problems of Socialism"). These culminated in his landmark book, Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie (1899), translated into English as The Preconditions of Socialism or Evolutionary Socialism. The book created an immediate storm of controversy within the international socialist movement. Bernstein's critique of Marxism was comprehensive, targeting its philosophy, economic predictions, and political strategy. His central argument was that the reality of late 19th-century capitalism had diverged significantly from Marx's forecasts. This "moulting", as he called it, required socialists to reconcile their theories with the facts.

Philosophy

Bernstein rejected the Hegelian dialectic that formed the philosophical core of Marxism, viewing it as a "snare" and a "treacherous element" that led to dogmatic and inaccurate predictions. He argued that the dialectical method, with its emphasis on contradiction and violent transformation, was a remnant of radical Utopianism that had no place in a scientific socialist movement. Instead of dialectical materialism, he advocated for a return to the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant and a greater emphasis on ethics.

For Bernstein, socialism was not a historical inevitability but an ethical ideal. It was something that ought to be, a goal to be striven for based on a commitment to justice and equality, rather than something that must be as a result of impersonal historical laws. This réintroduction of ethics into socialist theory was a direct challenge to Marxist determinism. He famously declared in a response to his critics:

I confess openly, I have extraordinarily little interest or taste for what is generally called the 'final goal of Socialism.' This aim, whatever it be, is nothing to me, the movement everything.

This statement, often taken out of context, was not a rejection of socialist goals but an assertion of the primacy of the democratic and ethical process—the "movement"—over dogmatic adherence to a single, predetermined outcome.

Economics

Bernstein's economic revisionism was based on his observation that capitalism was not collapsing but adapting and stabilizing. He presented statistical evidence to refute several key Marxist predictions:

• Concentration of capital: While Marx predicted that capital would become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, Bernstein argued that the number of property owners was in fact growing, thanks to the rise of joint-stock companies and a more differentiated class structure. He showed that small and medium-sized enterprises were proving resilient, not disappearing as Marx had forecast.
• Collapse theory (Zusammenbruchstheorie): Bernstein rejected the idea that capitalism was doomed to collapse through increasingly severe economic crises. He argued that the development of the credit system, cartels, and an improved world market had given capitalism greater adaptability and flexibility, making general crises less likely.
• Immiseration theory: The Marxist theory of the "growing misery" of the proletariat was, according to Bernstein, incorrect. He pointed to evidence that the working class in advanced industrial countries was experiencing an improvement in its standard of living. He also argued that the middle class was not vanishing but changing its character, with the rise of a "new middle class" of white-collar workers, technicians, and public officials.

Politics

From this revised analysis of capitalism, Bernstein drew radical conclusions for socialist political strategy. If capitalism was not on the verge of collapse, and if democracy was expanding, then the path to socialism was not revolution but gradual, peaceful, parliamentary reform. He argued that the SPD should "dare to appear what it is today: a democratic-Socialist reform party."

Bernstein saw democracy as both the means and the end of socialism. He advocated for the expansion of political and economic rights through the existing state, championing trade unions and cooperatives as key "democratic elements in industry". He rejected the concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" as a "barbarian" and "atavistic" idea, arguing that socialism could only be achieved democratically. While he saw the necessity for the mass strike as a defensive weapon to protect democratic rights like the suffrage, he fundamentally believed in the power of gradual, "organic" evolution over violent upheaval.

Return to Germany and political career

Bernstein c. 1910s

After the warrant for his arrest was allowed to lapse, Bernstein returned to Germany in February 1901. He was now the intellectual leader of a significant, if controversial, movement within the SPD. He was in heavy demand as a public speaker, and in 1902 he was elected to the Reichstag representing the constituency of Breslau-West, a seat he won with broad support from across the party. He served in the Reichstag for most of the next three decades (1902–1906, 1912–1918, and 1920–1928).

His return intensified the "Bernstein Debates" within the SPD. At successive party congresses, particularly the one in Dresden in 1903, his theories were the subject of heated discussion. The party leadership, dominated by Bebel and Kautsky, officially condemned revisionism and reaffirmed the revolutionary goals of the Erfurt Program. However, the SPD's day-to-day practice continued to be largely reformist, and Bernstein's views found wide, if often unacknowledged, support, especially among trade union leaders and the party's southern German branches. Bernstein himself remained a loyal, though critical, member of the party, continuing to argue for a policy of democratic reform and alliances with progressive elements of the bourgeoisie.

World War I

The outbreak of World War I in 1914 confronted Bernstein and the SPD with their most severe test. Bernstein initially accepted the argument that Germany was fighting a defensive war against Tsarist Russia and, with a heavy heart, voted with the SPD majority to approve war credits on 4 August 1914. He had been deeply affected by the assassination of his friend, the French socialist leader Jean Jaurès, which he wrongly believed had been engineered by Russian agents.

However, as documentation of Germany's aggressive war aims came to light, Bernstein's position shifted dramatically. His Anglophile sentiments and his deep commitment to internationalism and truth led him to become a vocal opponent of the war. He began publishing articles denouncing German chauvinism and annexationist ambitions, which isolated him from his former revisionist colleagues and led to the termination of his long collaboration with the Sozialistische Monatshefte.

On 20 March 1915, he was among a minority of SPD deputies who left the chamber rather than vote for further war credits. In June 1915, he, Kautsky, and Hugo Haase published a manifesto, "The Demand of the Hour", which condemned the war as an imperialist venture. The growing split within the SPD became permanent in March 1916, when Haase and his followers were expelled from the parliamentary party. Bernstein followed them, and in April 1917, he became a founding member of the anti-war Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD).

Weimar Republic and final years

Bernstein (second from right) with the rest of the USPD Executive Board, December 1919

During the German Revolution of 1918–1919, Bernstein served as an assistant secretary in the Treasury Department under the provisional government formed by the SPD and USPD. Driven by his lifelong desire for party unity, he rejoined the SPD in early 1919 in a personal attempt to bridge the gap between the warring socialist factions, though the USPD prohibited dual membership and the move failed to inspire a larger reconciliation.

Throughout the Weimar Republic, Bernstein was a courageous voice for reason and democracy. At the 1919 SPD party congress, he argued against the widespread nationalist sentiment in his party, insisting on Germany's share of responsibility for the war and the necessity of accepting the Treaty of Versailles, despite its harshness. His unwavering commitment to truth earned him ridicule from his colleagues but underscored his integrity. He also became a staunch opponent of Bolshevism, which he viewed as a "brutalized" and dictatorial perversion of Marxism.

As the Weimar Republic faltered, Bernstein found himself increasingly isolated. The party leadership was too preoccupied with its own version of Realpolitik to heed his warnings against the rising dangers of both right-wing reaction and communism. Upon his retirement from the Reichstag in 1928, he issued a manifesto urging the SPD to guard against "the deadly enemies of the republic", the alliance of great landowners, captains of industry, and the Communists.

Bernstein in 1932

Eduard Bernstein died in Berlin on 18 December 1932, at the age of 82. He was spared from witnessing the final collapse of the republic he had championed, as Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany six weeks later.

Legacy

Eduard Bernstein is regarded as one of the founders of modern democratic socialism and a primary figure in the history of revisionism. His critique of orthodox Marxism forced the international socialist movement to confront the discrepancies between theory and reality at the turn of the 20th century. Although his ideas were officially rejected by the SPD, they reflected the party's actual reformist practice and provided a theoretical basis for social democratic parties throughout Europe in the 20th century.

His work highlights the central "dilemma of democratic socialism": the tension between achieving radical social change and adhering to democratic, parliamentary means. He was unwavering in his conviction that socialism without democracy was a betrayal of its core principles. While critics like Rosa Luxemburg argued that his approach sacrificed the revolutionary goal of socialism for the sake of bourgeois reform, Bernstein insisted that a gradual, ethical, and democratic evolution was the only path compatible with a humane society. The historian Peter Gay concludes that Bernstein's greatest contribution was his profound honesty and his courage to "submit Marxist dogma to searching examination while not surrendering the Socialist standpoint".

Works

• Ferdinand Lassalle as a Social Reformer. Eleanor Marx Aveling, trans. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1893.
• Evolutionary Socialism: A Criticism and Affirmation. [1899] Edith C. Harvey, trans. New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1909. This book has also been translated into English as The Preconditions of Socialism.
• Cromwell and Communism: Socialism and Democracy in the Great English Revolution. H.J. Stenning, trans. London: Allen and Unwin, 1930.
• My Years of Exile: Reminiscences of a Socialist., trans. Bernard Miall, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1921. online free
• Selected Writings of Eduard Bernstein, 1900–1921. Prometheus Books, 1996.
• Marius S. Ostrowski (ed.), Eduard Bernstein on Social Democracy and International Politics: Essays and Other Writings. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
• Marius S. Ostrowski (ed.), Eduard Bernstein on the German Revolution: Selected Historical Writings. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
• Marius S. Ostrowski (ed.), Eduard Bernstein on Socialism Past and Present: Essays and Lectures on Ideology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.
• Klaus Leesch: Eduard Bernstein (1850-1932). Leben und Werk. Frankfurt a.M./New York: campus-Verlag, 2024.

Primary sources

• Tudor, Henry Tudor and J. M. Tudor, eds. Marxism and Social Democracy: The Revisionist Debate, 1896–1898. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

References

Works cited

• Gay, Peter (1962) [1952]. The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism: Eduard Bernstein's Challenge to Marx. New York: Collier Books.

Sources

• Fletcher, R. A. "Cobden as Educator: The Free-Trade Internationalism of Eduard Bernstein, 1899–1914." American Historical Review 88.3 (1983): 561–578. online
• Fletcher, R. A. "In the interest of peace and progress: Eduard Bernstein's socialist foreign policy." Review of International Studies 9.2 (1983): 79–93.
• Fletcher, Roger. "A Revisionist Looks at Imperialism: Eduard Bernstein's Critique of Imperialism and Kolonialpolitik, 1900–14." Central European History 12.3 (1979): 237–271.
• Fletcher, Roger. "Revisionism and Nationalism: Eduard Bernstein's Views on the National Question, 1900–1914." Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism 11.1 (1984) pp 103–117.
• Fletcher, Roger. "World Power without War. Eduard Bernstein's Proposals for an Alternative Weltpolitik, 1900–1914." Australian Journal of Politics & History 25.2 (1979): 228–236.
• Fletcher, Roger. "An English Advocate in Germany. Eduard Bernstein’s Analysis of Anglo-German Relations 1900–1914." Canadian Journal of History 13.2 (1978): 209–236.
• Gustafsson, Bo. "A new look at Bernstein: Some reflections on reformism and history." Scandinavian Journal of History 3#1-4 (1978): 275–296.
• Hamilton, Richard F. Marxism, Revisionism, and Leninism: Explication, Assessment, and Commentary (Greenwood, 2000) online Archived 16 July 2018 at the Wayback Machine
• Hulse, James W. Revolutionists in London: A Study of Five Unorthodox Socialists. (Clarendon Press, 1970.
• Ostrowski, Marius S. "Bernstein, Eduard." In Mortimer Sellers and Stephan Kirste (eds.), Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (Springer, 2021) online
• Leesch, Klaus "Eduard Bernstein (1850-1932) Leben und Werk." (Campus, 2024).
• Ostrowski, Marius S. "Eduard Bernstein and the Lessons of the German Revolution." In James Muldoon and Gaard Kets (eds.), The German Revolution and Political Theory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019): 137–158. online
• Ostrowski, Marius S. "'Reform or revolution, redux: Eduard Bernstein on the 1918–19 German Revolution." Historical Research 95.268 (2022): 213–239. online
• Ostrowski, Marius S. "Social Democracy and "positive" foreign policy: The evolution of Eduard Bernstein's international thought, 1914–1920." History of Political Thought 42.3 (2021): 520–564. online
• Pachter, Henry. "The Ambiguous Legacy of Eduard Bernstein." Dissent 28#2 (1981). pp 203–216.
• Rogers, H. Kendall. Before the Revisionist Controversy: Kautsky, Bernstein, and the Meaning of Marxism, 1895–1898. (Routledge, 2015).
• Steger, Manfred B. The Quest for Evolutionary Socialism: Eduard Bernstein and Social Democracy. (Cambridge UP, 1997).
• Steger, Manfred. "Historical materialism and ethics: Eduard Bernstein's revisionist perspective." History of European Ideas 14.5 (1992): 647–663.
• Thomas, Paul. Marxism & Scientific Socialism: From Engels to Althusser. (Routledge, 2008).

External links

• Works by Eduard Bernstein at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Eduard Bernstein at the Internet Archive
• Eduard Bernstein Archive at Marxists Internet Archive
• Bernstein on Homosexuality, Articles from Die Neue Zeit, 1895 and 1898
• Evolutionary Socialism: a Criticism and Affirmation: (Die Voraussetzungen Des Sozialismus und Die Aufgaben Der Sozialdemokratie) (Google Books)
• Archive of Eduard Bernstein Papers at the International Institute of Social History
• Newspaper clippings about Eduard Bernstein in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW