Eduard Bernstein
Reference Archive
1850-1932
“Their influence would be much greater than it is to-day if the social democracy could find the courage to emancipate itself from a phraseology which is actually outworn and if it would make up its mind to appear what it is in reality to-day: a democratic, socialistic party of reform.” – Evolutionary Socialism
Originally a collaborator of Engels, Eduard Bernstein became the foremost theoretician of revisionism, the theoretical expression of the growing reformism within German and international Social Democracy at the end of the 19th century. Initially his arguments were rebuffed at the 1903 Party Congress in Dresden but increasingly Bernstein’s conceptions became enshrined in the actual political practice of the party.
In another sphere Bernstein was also a political pioneeer, although this time in a more progressive sense. He was one of the first socialists to deal sympathetically with the issue of homosexuality.
Works:
The International Working men’s Congress of 1889: A Reply to “Justice”, 1889
Ferdinand Lassalle as a social reformer, 1893
Cromwell and Communism, 1895
On the occasion of a sensational trial, 1895
The Judgement of Abnormal Sexual Intercourse, 1895
Amongst the Philistines: A Rejoinder to Belfort Bax, November 1896
What Marx Really Taught, 1897
What Drove Eleanor Marx to Suicide, 1898
Evolutionary Socialism, 1899
Patriotism, Militarism and Social-Democracy, July 1907
My Years in exile, 1915/1922
On the Russian and German Revolutions, 1922
Further reading:
Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution, 1900
Vladimir Lenin, What is to be done?, 1902