Reference Writers: Eduard Bernstein

Eduard Bernstein
Internet 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


Eduard Bernstein

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.

Biography

Works:

The International Working Men’s Congress of 1889: A Reply to Justice, 1889

Socialism in the German Reichstag and on the German Throne, March 1890

Ferdinand Lassalle as a Social Reformer, 1893

German Influence, September 1894

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, February 1897

Marx and Social Reform, April 1897

What Drove Eleanor Marx to Suicide, July1898

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