Eduard Bernstein - Life

Life

Bernstein was born in Schöneberg (now part of Berlin) to Jewish parents, although they did not practice religion. His father was a locomotive driver. From 1866 to 1878, after leaving school, he was employed in banks as a banker's clerk. His political career began in 1872, when he joined the Eisenach (named after the German town Eisenach) wing of the German socialist movement, a socialist party with Marxist tendencies formally known as Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Eisenacher Programms and soon became prominent as an activist. Bernstein's party contested two elections against a rival socialist party, the Lassalleans (Ferdinand Lassalle's Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein), but in both elections neither party was able to win a significant majority of the left-wing vote. Consequently, together with August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, Bernstein prepared the Einigungsparteitag ("unification party congress") with the Lassalleans in Gotha in 1875. Karl Marx's famous Critique of the Gotha Program criticized what he saw as a Lassallean victory over the Eisenachers whom he favored; interestingly, Bernstein later noted that it was Liebknecht, considered by many to be the strongest Marxist advocate within the Eisenacher faction, who proposed the inclusion of many of the ideas which so thoroughly irritated Marx.

In the Reichstag elections of 1877, the German Social Democratic Party gained 493,000 votes. However, two assassination attempts on the Kaiser in the following year provided Bismarck with a pretext for introducing a law banning all socialist organizations, assemblies, and publications. There had been no Social Democratic involvement in either assassination attempt, but the popular reaction against "enemies of the Reich" induced a compliant Reichstag to pass Bismarck's "Socialist Law."

Otto von Bismarck's strict anti-Socialist legislation was passed on 12 October 1878. For nearly all practical purposes, the Social Democratic Party was outlawed and, throughout Germany, it was actively suppressed. However, it was still possible for Social Democrats to stand as individuals for election to the Reichstag, and this they did. Indeed, despite the severe persecution to which it was subjected, the party actually increased its electoral support, gaining 550,000 votes in 1884 and 763,000 in 1887.

The vehemence of Bernstein's opposition to the government of Bismarck made it desirable for him to leave Germany. Shortly before the "Socialist Law" came into effect, he went into exile in Zurich, accepting a position as private secretary for social democratic patron Karl Höchberg, a wealthy supporter of Social Democracy. A warrant subsequently issued for his arrest ruled out any possibility of his returning to Germany, and he was to remain in exile for more than twenty years. In 1888, Bismarck convinced the Swiss government to expel a number of key members of the German social democratic movement from its country, and so Bernstein moved to London, where he had close contacts with Friedrich Engels and Karl Kautsky. It was shortly after his arrival in Switzerland that he began to think of himself as a Marxist. In 1880, he accompanied Bebel to London in order to clear up a misunderstanding over his involvement in an article published by Höchberg and denounced by Marx and Engels as being "chock-full of bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideas." The trip was a success. Engels in particular was impressed by Bernstein's zeal and the soundness of his ideas.

Back in Zurich, Bernstein became increasingly active in working for Der Sozialdemokrat ("Social Democrat"), and later succeeded Georg von Vollmar as the paper's editor, a post he was to hold for the next ten years. It was during these years between 1880 and 1890 that Bernstein established his reputation as a leading party theoretician and a Marxist of impeccable orthodoxy. In this he was helped by the close personal and professional relationship he established with Engels. This relationship owed much to the fact that he shared Engels's strategic vision and accepted most of the particular policies which, in Engels's view, that vision entailed. In 1887, the German government persuaded the Swiss authorities to close down Der Sozialdemokrat. Bernstein moved to London where he resumed publication from premises in Kentish Town. His relationship with Engels soon blossomed into friendship. He also made contact with various English socialist organizations, notably the Fabian Society and Hyndman's Social Democratic Federation. Indeed, in later years, his opponents routinely claimed that his "revisionism" was due to his having come to see the world "through English spectacles." It is, of course, impossible to determine how far the charge was justified. Bernstein himself denied it.

In 1891, he was one of the authors of the Erfurt Program, and from 1896 to 1898, he released a series of articles entitled Probleme des Sozialismus ("Problems of Socialism") that led to the revisionism debate in the SPD. He also wrote a book titled Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie ("The Prerequisites for Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy") in 1899. The book was in sharp contrast to the positions of August Bebel, Karl Kautsky and Wilhelm Liebknecht. Rosa Luxemburg's 1900 essay Reform or Revolution? was also a polemic against Bernstein's position. In 1900, Berstein published Zur Geschichte und Theorie des Sozialismus ("The history and theory of socialism," 1900).

In 1901, he returned to Germany, following the lifting of a ban that had kept him from entering the country. He became an editor of Vorwärts that year, and a member of the Reichstag from 1902 to 1918. He voted against the armament tabling in 1913, together with the SPD fraction's left wing. Although he had voted for war credits in August 1914, from July 1915 he opposed World War I and in 1917 he was among the founders of the USPD, which united anti-war socialists (including reformists like Bernstein, "centrists" like Kautsky and revolutionary Marxists like Karl Liebknecht). He was a member of the USDP until 1919, when he rejoined the SPD. From 1920 to 1928 Bernstein was again a member of the Reichstag. He retired from political life in 1928.

Bernstein died on 18 December 1932 in Berlin. A commemorative plaque is placed in his memory at Bozener Straße 18, Berlin-Schöneberg, where he lived from 1918 to his death.