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Born in Berlin, Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932) 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 “converted” to Marxist orthodoxy, only to return to an eclectic position that espoused a nonrevolutionary, democratic socialism that recognized Marxism as only one among several important theoretical sources.

Bernstein grew up in Berlin in modest circumstances. After a short career as a bank clerk, he joined the SPD in 1872 as a campaign speaker and pamphleteer. Expelled from Germany in 1878 as a result of German Chancellor Bismarck’s repressive antisocialist laws, Bernstein settled in Zurich, Switzerland, from where he edited Der Sozialdemokrat, the rallying point of the underground SPD press. After his expulsion from Switzerland, Bernstein continued the periodical from London, where he cultivated close contacts with Friedrich Engels and leaders of the British socialist Fabian Society. When Engels died, 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 several articles and books between 1896 and 1900, Bernstein 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, Marx and Engels had painted an unrealistic picture of a revolutionary “final goal.” 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. He argued that the SPD ought to broaden its narrow working-class base and appeal to the middle class as well, becoming 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 cornerstones of modern European social democracy after World War II (1939–1945), they were severely condemned by various European Marxists, including Vladimir Lenin in Russia and Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Kautsky in Germany. When the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in 1917, 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 tsars that would lead Russia into a “social and economic abyss.” Bernstein held high political posts in the German Weimar Republic (1918–1933), including as undersecretary of the treasury. During his parliamentary tenure (1920–1928), he concentrated on matters of taxation and foreign affairs while maintaining his busy journalistic schedule.

Bibliography:

Bernstein, Eduard. The Preconditions of Socialism, edited and translated by Henry Tudor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Originally published as Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie, Stuttgart: Dietz, 1899.
Selected Writings of Eduard Bernstein, 1900–1921, edited and translated by Manfred B. Steger. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities International, 1996.
Gay, Peter. The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism: Eduard Bernstein’s Challenge to Marx. New York: Columbia University Press, 1952.
Steger, Manfred B. The Quest for Evolutionary Socialism: Eduard Bernstein and Social Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.