Eduard Bernstein, German social democrat, born 6 January 1850, died 18 December 1932. Some texts are available here.
This entry was posted on Monday, December 18th, 2006 @ 9:04 pm on the category dsw.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
forgive my ever so slight inebriation but bernstein is deffo worth reading, he rocks and luxemburg was wrong. sorry, hit my blog and i’ll poswt more tomorrow, but there was just cause for macdonald sitting at his knee, so to speak. any self-respecting lefty should read bernstein.
At the present time it might seem that Bernstein was right, but if we think back 50 years and consider the history of Two World Wars, the rise of Fascism, the Russian Revolution and the Great Depression then the peaceful ‘evolution’ of socialism seems more questionable. Luxemburg asked ‘Socialism or Barbarism?’, and for 50 years there was an awful lot of barbarism. Plus even in more placid times all those years of reformism haven’t brought us much closer to socialism, for all the social advances of the past 100 years.
I may be mistaken, but I thought that Bernstein’s view was that the peaceful evolution of capitalist society towards socialism wasn’t inevitable — but that it was a better approach than waiting for (or trying to effect) cataclysmic change. If one compares the fate of countries which pursued a reformist social-democratic path to those where socialism was associated with revolution, I think the weight of experience comes down more on Bernstein’s side than that of the Spartacists. One certainly doesn’t want to blame the horrors of the century on poor Luxembourg et. al.; but I do think her posing of the alternatives was somewhat misleading, in retrospect: the twentieth century often witnessed socialism AND barbarism. Where socialism remained un-barbaric and politically succesful, it was often (though not invariably) because Bernsteinian strategies had been, in effect, adopted.
Also, one should remember that Bernstein’s revisionism was a response of the plain failure of Marx’s own predictions of capitalism’s crisis and collapse. Even if one rejects the strategy for pursuing socialism that he propounded, it seems to me that one has to acknowledge that his analysis was more in line with events than those of more ‘orthodox’ Marxists (whether one thinks that Bernstein actually improved on Marx himself is another matter).
(As a sidenote: it may be a generational thing, but I’ve never fully understood the spell that Luxembourg seems to cast over leftist intellectuals. She was a powerful thinker and eloquent writer, and her identification of the dangers inherent in Leninism deserves respect just as her murder evokes outrage and pity. Still, much of her energy seems to have been devoted to quarrels with fellow socialists; and in the major internecine conflicts in which she was involved - against Bernstein’s revisionism, and in Poland against Abramowski’s cooperatist socialism — she seems to me to have been, on balance, on the wrong side. But no doubt I’m missing something.)
I think ‘ right or wrong’ isn’t a good way of approaching the question of Bernstein or Luxemburg. Bernstein provided some valuable insights and was useful in advocating a political approach, ie. not sitting and waiting for a revolutionary situation to arise but actually looking for reforms and improvements in society. You have to acknowledge, though, that he was overoptimistic about the ability of capitalism to avoid crises, and the political effect of capitalist change.
Rosa Luxemburg will always have great relevance to socialists because of the combination of intellectual insight, idealism and humanity. She just happens to be a much more interesting figure than Bernstein!
Thanks for these. No time for a sensible reflection, as I’m perpetually in transit these days, but here’s something I posted at Oliver Kamm’s blog, several decades ago when it had comments, which gives a sense of what I think I think about Bernstein, and why the terms of the German debate don’t neatly map onto social-democratic / radical divisions in the present:
*** One of Bernstein’s key points was that socialists had to behave in accordance with socialist values all the time, inside the party (or the “movement”), and not just behave strategically in the present in order to try to bring about a future socialist society (”the goal”). Those anarchist and other radical groups which insist on their democratic, anti-authoritarian, feminist, non-violent or participatory principles informing all aspects of their political practice in the present are, perhaps, among the most Bernsteinian of them all — and also the ones most intransigently hostile to existing structures of political and economic power. By contrast, from this point of view, the least Bernsteinian actors of all would be those social democratic elites like Mr Blair’s outfit, which tries further their vaguely progressive ends through basically non-democratic institutions like the World Bank, the European Union, the Murdoch press, the House of Lords, or indeed the Labour Party in its current incarnation. ***
forgive my ever so slight inebriation but bernstein is deffo worth reading, he rocks and luxemburg was wrong. sorry, hit my blog and i’ll poswt more tomorrow, but there was just cause for macdonald sitting at his knee, so to speak. any self-respecting lefty should read bernstein.
↓ Quote | Posted 19 December, 2006, 12:12 amAt the present time it might seem that Bernstein was right, but if we think back 50 years and consider the history of Two World Wars, the rise of Fascism, the Russian Revolution and the Great Depression then the peaceful ‘evolution’ of socialism seems more questionable. Luxemburg asked ‘Socialism or Barbarism?’, and for 50 years there was an awful lot of barbarism. Plus even in more placid times all those years of reformism haven’t brought us much closer to socialism, for all the social advances of the past 100 years.
↓ Quote | Posted 19 December, 2006, 11:27 amI may be mistaken, but I thought that Bernstein’s view was that the peaceful evolution of capitalist society towards socialism wasn’t inevitable — but that it was a better approach than waiting for (or trying to effect) cataclysmic change. If one compares the fate of countries which pursued a reformist social-democratic path to those where socialism was associated with revolution, I think the weight of experience comes down more on Bernstein’s side than that of the Spartacists. One certainly doesn’t want to blame the horrors of the century on poor Luxembourg et. al.; but I do think her posing of the alternatives was somewhat misleading, in retrospect: the twentieth century often witnessed socialism AND barbarism. Where socialism remained un-barbaric and politically succesful, it was often (though not invariably) because Bernsteinian strategies had been, in effect, adopted.
↓ Quote | Posted 20 December, 2006, 6:55 amAlso, one should remember that Bernstein’s revisionism was a response of the plain failure of Marx’s own predictions of capitalism’s crisis and collapse. Even if one rejects the strategy for pursuing socialism that he propounded, it seems to me that one has to acknowledge that his analysis was more in line with events than those of more ‘orthodox’ Marxists (whether one thinks that Bernstein actually improved on Marx himself is another matter).
(As a sidenote: it may be a generational thing, but I’ve never fully understood the spell that Luxembourg seems to cast over leftist intellectuals. She was a powerful thinker and eloquent writer, and her identification of the dangers inherent in Leninism deserves respect just as her murder evokes outrage and pity. Still, much of her energy seems to have been devoted to quarrels with fellow socialists; and in the major internecine conflicts in which she was involved - against Bernstein’s revisionism, and in Poland against Abramowski’s cooperatist socialism — she seems to me to have been, on balance, on the wrong side. But no doubt I’m missing something.)
Who was right? When we have socialism we’ll know.
↓ Quote | Posted 20 December, 2006, 12:27 pmI think ‘ right or wrong’ isn’t a good way of approaching the question of Bernstein or Luxemburg. Bernstein provided some valuable insights and was useful in advocating a political approach, ie. not sitting and waiting for a revolutionary situation to arise but actually looking for reforms and improvements in society. You have to acknowledge, though, that he was overoptimistic about the ability of capitalism to avoid crises, and the political effect of capitalist change.
↓ Quote | Posted 20 December, 2006, 12:50 pmRosa Luxemburg will always have great relevance to socialists because of the combination of intellectual insight, idealism and humanity. She just happens to be a much more interesting figure than Bernstein!
Thanks for these. No time for a sensible reflection, as I’m perpetually in transit these days, but here’s something I posted at Oliver Kamm’s blog, several decades ago when it had comments, which gives a sense of what I think I think about Bernstein, and why the terms of the German debate don’t neatly map onto social-democratic / radical divisions in the present:
*** One of Bernstein’s key points was that socialists had to behave in accordance with socialist values all the time, inside the party (or the “movement”), and not just behave strategically in the present in order to try to bring about a future socialist society (”the goal”). Those anarchist and other radical groups which insist on their democratic, anti-authoritarian, feminist, non-violent or participatory principles informing all aspects of their political practice in the present are, perhaps, among the most Bernsteinian of them all — and also the ones most intransigently hostile to existing structures of political and economic power. By contrast, from this point of view, the least Bernsteinian actors of all would be those social democratic elites like Mr Blair’s outfit, which tries further their vaguely progressive ends through basically non-democratic institutions like the World Bank, the European Union, the Murdoch press, the House of Lords, or indeed the Labour Party in its current incarnation. ***
↓ Quote | Posted 22 December, 2006, 9:50 pm