Eduard Bernstein

January 6, 1850 (age 82)

Berlin, Germany

Bernstein first worked as a junior employee of the S. & L. Rothschild Bank in Berlin. He left Germany following the enactment of Bismarck’s antisocialist laws and made his base in Switzerland, where he became editor in 1881 of Per Sozialdemokrat, which was the official organ of the underground exiled Socialist party (SPD). The paper was published in Zurich and smuggled into Germany. At the request of Bismarck, Bernstein was expelled from Switzerland in 1888. He moved to London where he continued the publication of the periodical until 1890. In this period he was much influenced by the Fabian Society in England which advocated a gradualist development of socialism. Here he published his main work, Evolutionary Socialism (1899; English translation, 1909). In 1901 Bernstein returned to Germany to become the theoretician of the revisionist school of the reformist labor movement. In 1902, Bernstein was elected a member of the Reichstag, sitting until 1906 and again from 1912 to 1918. During World War I he sided with the Independent Socialists protesting against war and militarism. From 1920 to 1928 he sat in Parliament as a Social Democrat. Bernstein was worried about the growth in anti-Semitism in Germany even before his return in 1901. He became alarmed by Hitlerism and the rise of the right-wing National Socialist party but was powerless to prevent its advance. He died in 1932 six weeks before Hitler’s accession to power. His memoirs, My Years of Exile, appeared in 1921.

Eduard Bernstein

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politician

Background

Bernstein was born in Schöneberg (now part of Berlin), to Jewish parents, who were active in the Reform Temple on the Johannistrasse where services were performed on Sunday. His father was a locomotive driver.

Career

Bernstein first worked as a junior employee of the S. & L. Rothschild Bank in Berlin. He left Germany following the enactment of Bismarck’s antisocialist laws and made his base in Switzerland, where he became editor in 1881 of Per Sozialdemokrat, which was the official organ of the underground exiled Socialist party (SPD). The paper was published in Zurich and smuggled into Germany.

At the request of Bismarck, Bernstein was expelled from Switzerland in 1888. He moved to London where he continued the publication of the periodical until 1890. In this period he was much influenced by the Fabian Society in England which advocated a gradualist development of socialism. Here he published his main work, Evolutionary Socialism (1899; English translation, 1909).

In 1901 Bernstein returned to Germany to become the theoretician of the revisionist school of the reformist labor movement. In 1902, Bernstein was elected a member of the Reichstag, sitting until 1906 and again from 1912 to 1918. During World War I he sided with the Independent Socialists protesting against war and militarism. From 1920 to 1928 he sat in Parliament as a Social Democrat.

Bernstein was worried about the growth in anti-Semitism in Germany even before his return in 1901. He became alarmed by Hitlerism and the rise of the right-wing National Socialist party but was powerless to prevent its advance. He died in 1932 six weeks before Hitler’s accession to power. His memoirs, My Years of Exile, appeared in 1921.

Achievements

Eduard was a Social Democratic propagandist, political theorist, and historian, one of the first Socialists to attempt a revision of Karl Marx’s tenets, such as abandoning the ideas of the imminent collapse of the capitalist economy and the seizure of power by the proletariat. Although he was not a distinguished theoretician, Bernstein, called “the father of revisionism,” envisaged a type of social democracy that combined private initiative with social reform.

Works

Evolutionary socialism: A criticism and affirmation (Schocken paperbacks) Evolutionary socialism: A criticism and affirmation (Schocken paperbacks)

Evolutionary Socialism Evolutionary Socialism

Bernstein: The Preconditions of Socialism (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought) Bernstein: The Preconditions of Socialism (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought)

Ferdinand Lassalle As a Social Reformer (Classic Reprint) Ferdinand Lassalle As a Social Reformer (Classic Reprint)

My Years of Exile: Reminiscences of a Socialist My Years of Exile: Reminiscences of a Socialist

book

Politics

Eduard was moved politically toward social democracy by the events of the time, particularly the economic crisis of the early 1870s, which reinforced his belief in the fragility of capitalism, and the speeches of German radical and socialist leaders following the 1870 Franco-Prussian war. In 1872 he joined the Marxist wing of the labor movement.

Bernstein formulated the basis of a democratic socialism that suited the changing conditions of capitalist society. He was the first German socialist to challenge the fundamental economic assumptions on which Marx’s model of the revolution was based, and he questioned the concentration on the final goal of socialism at the expense of the means and the method by which it was achieved.

Eduard rejected Marx’s theory of an imminent collapse of capitalist society, pointing out that the middle class was not declining, the peasants were not sinking, crises were not growing larger, and mass misery was not increasing. He argued that the prospects for lasting success lay in steady advancement rather than mass upheaval.

Views

Quotations: "The Communist Manifesto was correct but we see the privileges of the capitalist bourgeoisie yielding to democratic organizations. In my judgment success lies in a steady [peaceful] advance [rather] than in a catastrophic crash."

"The increase of social wealth is not accompanied by a diminishing number of capitalist magnates, but by an increasing number of capitalists of all degrees."

"The economic interpretation of history does not necessarily mean that all events are determined solely by economic forces. It simply means that economic facts are the ever recurring decisive forces, the chief points in the process of history."

Connections

Uncle:: Aaron Bernstein

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