Cm's video: Eduard Bernstein

Eduard Bernstein (6 January 1850 – 18 December 1932) was a German social-democratic Marxist theorist and politician. A member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Bernstein had held close association to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but he saw flaws in Marxist thinking and began to criticise views held by Marxism when he investigated and challenged the Marxist materialist theory of history. He rejected significant parts of Marxist theory that were based upon Hegelian metaphysics and rejected the Hegelian dialectical perspective. Bernstein distinguished between early and mature Marxism. The former, exemplified by Marx and Engels's 1848 The Communist Manifesto was opposed by Bernstein for what he regarded as its violent Blanquist tendencies. Bernstein embraced the latter, holding that socialism could be achieved by peaceful means through incremental legislative reform in democratic societies. Early life. Bernstein was born in Schöneberg (now part of Berlin) to Jewish parents who were active in the Reform Temple on the Johannistrasse whose services were performed on Sunday. His father was a locomotive driver. From 1866 to 1878, he was employed in banks as a banker's clerk after leaving school. Bernstein's political career began in 1872, when he joined a socialist party with Marxist tendencies, known formally as the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany, a proponent of the Eisenach, named after a German town, type of German socialism. He soon became known as an activist. Bernstein's party contested two elections against a rival socialist party, the Lassalleans (Ferdinand Lassalle's General German Workers' Association), but in both elections neither party was able to win a significant majority of the left-wing vote. Consequently, Bernstein, together with August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, prepared the Einigungsparteitag ("Unification Party Congress") with the Lassalleans in Gotha in 1875. Karl Marx's famous Critique of the Gotha Program criticised what he saw as a Lassallean victory over the Eisenachers, whom he favoured. 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 that so thoroughly irritated Marx. In the 1877 elections, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) gained 493,000 votes. However, two assassination attempts on Kaiser Wilhelm I the next year provided Chancellor Otto von Bismarck a pretext to introduce a law banning all socialist organisations, 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 approve Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Laws. Bismarck's strict anti-socialist legislation was passed on 12 October 1878. For nearly all practical purposes, the SPD was outlawed and throughout Germany, it was actively suppressed. However, it was still possible for Social Democrats to campaign as individuals for election to the Reichstag, which they did, despite the severe persecution subjected to the party, and actually increased its electoral success, gaining 550,000 votes in 1884 and 763,000 in 1887. Exile. The vehemence of Bernstein's opposition to the government of Bismarck made it desirable for him to leave Germany. Shortly before the Anti-Socialist Laws came into effect, Bernstein went into exile in Zurich, accepting a position as private secretary for the social l-democratic patron Karl Höchberg, a wealthy supporter of social democracy. A warrant subsequently issued for his arrest ruled out any possibility for him to return to Germany, and he was to remain in exile for more than 20 years. In 1888, Bismarck convinced the Swiss government to expel a number of important members of German social democracy and so Bernstein relocated to London, where he associated with Friedrich Engels and Karl Kautsky. It was soon after his arrival in Switzerland that he began to think of himself as a Marxist. In 1880, he accompanied Bebel to London to clear up a misunderstanding concerning his involvement with an article published by Höchberg that was denounced by Marx and Engels as being "chock-full of bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideas". The visit was a success, and particularly, Engels in particular was impressed by Bernstein's zeal and ideas.