Eduard Bernstein's Evolutionary Socialism

[Bee]

I have finished reading Eduard Bernstein's Evolutionary Socialism.
While I have always been critical of strict reformism as being dogmatic and liberal I feel Bernstein was logical in his notions that individuals have more political freedom under representative democracy than monarchism and that the socialist movement needs to utilize said democratic institutions in order to further working class interests (although I still remain adamant that the capitalist state on its own cannot be used to end capitalism).

What are your thoughts on Bernstein and his socialist reformism?

I am aware that despite criticism for his reformism and revisionism he is positively recieved for his critique of Orthodox Marxism which I have yet to give a look at.

[Rafiq]

I have finished reading Eduard Bernstein's Evolutionary Socialism.
While I have always been critical of strict reformism as being dogmatic and liberal I feel Bernstein was logical in his notions that individuals have more political freedom under representative democracy than monarchism and that the socialist movement needs to utilize said democratic institutions in order to further working class interests (although I still remain adamant that the capitalist state on its own cannot be used to end capitalism).

This fact is not a point of controversy however - that individuals have "more political freedoms" under bourgeois democracy than under monarchism. The error, however, is assuming that these freedoms are given under benevolence, rather than out of necessity - that is to say, that these freedoms are by in part granted as a result of capitalism's social antagonisms. Bernstein's point was not that the working class needs to "utilize democratic institutions" but that socialism can be wrought out from within the confines of capitalism, without a radical transformation of society politically. But the state is not a neutral entity, and to conceive concessions as the basis of the emancipation of the proletariat is to underestimate the creative power of capitalism and its ability to twist, bypass and corrupt these concessions in a way that suits its productive needs even better.

[G4b3n]

Bernstein was concerned with ethics first and socialism second. And that is great, if you have a nice and cozy spot in bourgeois society as an autonomous intellectual, but it is a reflection of your own politics being unwilling to challenge your own privilege.

Luxemburg also has solid arguments agianst the top reformists, taking their specific works into account in her Reform or Revolution. One of her best being that the reformist conflate the bourgeois state with society as a whole, and regard changes to the management of capital as fundamental changes to society as a whole.

"Konrad Schmidt commits the same error of historic perspective when he deals with social reforms. He expects that social reforms, like trade union organisations, will “dictate to the capitalists the only conditions under which they will be able to employ labour power.” Seeing reform in this light, Bernstein calls labour legislation a piece of “social control,” and as such, a piece of socialism. Similarly, Konrad Schmidt always uses the term “social control” when he refers to labour protection laws. Once he has thus happily transformed the State into society, he confidently adds: “That is to say, the rising working class.” As a result of this trick of substitution, the innocent labour laws enacted by the German Federal Council are transformed into transitory socialist measures supposedly enacted by the German proletariat. The mystification is obvious. We know that the present State is not “society” representing the “rising working class.” It is itself the representative of capitalist society. It is a class state. Therefore its reform measures are not an application of “social control,” that is, the control of society working freely in its own labour process."

[Thirsty Crow]

Bernstein didn't distinguish himself as theoretician by his idea of greater political freedom under liberal democratic institutions (and consequent emphasis on "utilising" said network of institutions). But the crux of the problem in his approach is the flat out rejection of Marx's analysis of the value form and capital, which led him to assume a constant progressive growth of both the productive forces and workers' income and participation in affairs of managing social reproduction and the production of commodities.

[blake 3:17]

He was writing at a strange time. He can easily be made into a villain and a class collaborationistist, even a proto-fascist, but I think that's misguided. I tried to read his Evolutionary Socialism a few years ago but got very bored. There's an interesting discussion of him in the JP Nettl biography of Rosa Luxemburg, a book I'd highly recommend. His role v Kautsky v Luxemburg in the German SPD is pretty interesting if you want to get into the blow by blow accounts, and how it played out in regards to both the party leadership and the party base. The centre and left had much more of a leadership role while the actual practice was closer to what Bernstein was talking about.

Certain questions on class conflict I don't think are all that clear. Sure there are crisis points, but there are also extended times of cooperation.

Just as a point of information, he was opposed to the First World War.

Some anti-Stalinist Marxists were attracted to his thought in later periods. I haven't studied this, but it could be a starting point.

[John Nada]

Bernstein was concerned with ethics first and socialism second. And that is great, if you have a nice and cozy spot in bourgeois society as an autonomous intellectual, but it is a reflection of your own politics being unwilling to challenge your own privilege.He was an opportunist neither concerned with ethics nor socialism, which I'll get to.
He was writing at a strange time. He can easily be made into a villain and a class collaborationistist, even a proto-fascist, but I think that's misguided. I tried to read his Evolutionary Socialism a few years ago but got very bored. There's an interesting discussion of him in the JP Nettl biography of Rosa Luxemburg, a book I'd highly recommend. His role v Kautsky v Luxemburg in the German SPD is pretty interesting if you want to get into the blow by blow accounts, and how it played out in regards to both the party leadership and the party base. The centre and left had much more of a leadership role while the actual practice was closer to what Bernstein was talking about.

Certain questions on class conflict I don't think are all that clear. Sure there are crisis points, but there are also extended times of cooperation.

Just as a point of information, he was opposed to the First World War.

Some anti-Stalinist Marxists were attracted to his thought in later periods. I haven't studied this, but it could be a starting point.
The fact of the modern national States or empires not having originated organically does not prevent their being organs of that great entity which we call civilised humanity, and which is much too extensive to be included in any single State. And, indeed, these organs are at present necessary and of great importance for human development. On this point Socialists can scarcely differ now. And it is not even to be regretted, from the Socialist point of view, that they are not characterised purely by their common descent. The purely ethnological national principle is reactionary in its results. Whatever else one may think about the race-problem, it is certain that the thought of a national division of mankind according to race is anything rather than a human ideal. The national quality is developing on the contrary more and more into a sociological function. But understood as such it is a progressive principle, and in this sense Socialism can and must be national. This is no contradiction of the cosmopolitan consciousness, but only its necessary completion. The world-citizenship, this glorious attainment of civilisation, would, if the relationship to national tasks and rational duties were missing, become a flabby characterless parasitism. Even when we sing “Ubi bene, ibi patria,” [1] we still acknowledge a “patria,” and, therefore, in accordance with the motto, “No rights without duties”; also duties towards her.
The way the Volksstaat defended Motteler against misinterpretation of his speech was, in fact, equivalent to disapproval of the above words. To-day, on the contrary, the Social-Democracy is, and that unanimously, the most decided Imperial [4] party that Germany knows. No other party is so keen to make over more and more legislative authority to the Empire, and to widen its competence, as the Social-Democracy. Compared with it, even that once most energetic representative of the Imperial idea, the National-Liberal party, is particularistic. And if the Social-Democracy, as opposition party, now as ever refuses to vote for the complete budget, still it goes much further in the way of voting certain portions of it than in those days.https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bernstein/works/1907/07/patriotism.htm
We may not occupy a purely negative standpoint on colonial policy, but must pursue a positive socialist colonial policy. (Applause), We must get away from the utopian idea which Leads to disposing of the colonies. The final, consequence of this approach would be to return the United States to the Indians. (Protests) The colonies are here to stay: we have to come to terms with that. Civilised peoples have to exercise a certain guardianship over uncivilised peoples – even socialists have to recognise this. Let us base ourselves on real facts, which will lead us to oppose capitalist colonial policy with a socialist one.[/b] Much of our economic life rests upon products from the colonies which the natives were not able to utilise. On all these grounds we must accept the resolution of the majority.https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1907/colonial/1-intro.htm
His so-called "ethical socialism" didn't extend outside of the German nation. When Belgium (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_Free_State) and Germany (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_Genocide) were committing genocide in the Congo and Namibia he voiced full support for German imperialism and colonialism in general("White man's burden"). Marxists such as Lenin correctly denounced the likes of Bernstein as chauvinists and social-imperialists because they were racist as fuck. IIRC Kautsky, before he sold out and became imperialism's running dog, even warned that the bourgeoisie's brutal methods of colonial rule could be brought home(in a way it did, in the form of fascism).

Bernstein conveniently declared like so many on the right that "Marx was wrong" right after Engels's death. I'm convinced that Bernstein was an opportunist all along, riding Engels's coattails for prestige in politics, who he would misquote to justify his betrayal. It's telling that revisionists, from the social democrats to the sell-out communist parties like the CPUSA, CPRF, and CCP, mimic if not outright copy Bernstein's revisionism.

[Tim Cornelis]

Just because you disagree with his ethics doesn't mean that his views can't be described as 'ethical socialism'.

@OP
Marx and Engels were also in favour of using liberal democracy. They believed that the bourgeoisie would betray democracy because of the demographic threat of the proletariat. Therefore, by using liberal democracy, this antagonism would be brought to a fore and the conflict fought out, resulting in communist revolution.

Bourgeois democracy, expressed in the democratic republic, which Engels believed was the most natural expression of bourgeois class rule stating so in letter to Eduard Bernstein in Zurich (1884b), is a form of limited political emancipation. So limited, in fact, that it borders on the farcical, as it conceals the nonneutrality of the state. It nevertheless provides conditions for what Marx called “general human emancipation”, which is contrasted to limited political emancipation (1844). It is in the arena of the democratic republic that the social classes may adopt “ideological forms in which men become conscious of [class] conflict and fight it out” (1859). Similarly, Engels argued that “The democratic republic does not do away with the opposition of the two classes; on the contrary, it provides the clear field on which the fight can be fought out” (1884a). The democratic republic permits a degree of civil liberties, such as freedom of organisation, assembly, and press, in which the proletariat can operate and organise in its own interests. Additionally, it can use its demographic leverage (as it was destined to become the absolute majority of the population in capitalist society) to direct bourgeois democracy against the bourgeoisie itself. It is therefore, according to Marx and Engels, under the democratic republic that the proletariat comes to power (1884a; 1884b). The wave of bourgeois revolutions in the nineteenth century, Marx and Engels believed, would allow for a transition to a proletarian revolution with the inauguration of a democratic constitution. Engels maintained that “The first, fundamental condition for the introduction of community of property is the political liberation of the proletariat through a democratic constitution.” (1847a). Thus, communist revolution, at least understood in the pre-Paris Commune context1, is a sort of permanent revolution from bourgeois democracy to socialist revolution by establishing and using democracy in the interests of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. In the words of Engels, “democracy would be quite useless if it were not immediately directed against the bourgeoisie” (1847b). In the pre-Commune period, the perception of communist revolution was quite gradualist, with policies directed against private property in preparation of the means of production becoming commonly owned (1847a). Following the experience of the Paris Commune, this view changed somewhat, and Marx and Engels became to regard their positions in this respect as outdated.