THE RISE OF REVISIONISM

THE RISE OF REVISIONISM

Kautsky’s fatalistic approach would not be strong enough to keep him allied to the developing Social Democratic bureaucracy without disagreement. In any case, that bureaucracy did not need him. On the other hand, German Social Democracy had come to need the bureaucracy to organize it. A further complication was that it was only since 1890 that the Party had been able to develop legally; the German Anti-Socialist Laws were a recent memory and a standing threat against too radical political action.

And the reformists could argue that they were facing problems that orthodox Marxists ignored. However inadequately, they recognized the political problem of the need to win the small farmer. A year after their defeat on this, they could claim a further justification of their class collaborationism. In Saxony, the advance of Independent Social Democracy was answered by the Capitalist parties uniting to replace the comparatively democratic franchise with a form of the Prussian system. The South Germans argued that intelligent class collaboration could have avoided this : the Party’s majority had no answer. The time was ripe for German reformism to be given a theoretical dignity that would make it appear more than a system of surrender to events by alleged Marxists. In Britain, the Fabian Society was providing such a rationalization but it was not yet part of the working-class movement, nor was it trying to be.

Nonetheless, its members’ writings did influence Engels’ former secretary, Edward Bernstein (1850-1932).

Between 1896 and 1898, Bernstein published a series of articles that defended the practice of most Socialist Parties and counterposed it to the stated Marxist aim of the Socialist Society. He summarized his approach better than he realized in his comment that, for him, the aim is nothing . . . the movement everything. He reduced Marxism’s value to one of historical analysis of economic pressures and class struggles.

He denied the possibility of capitalist economic collapse, whether general (for society as a whole), or individual (small concern liquidating into monopoly). He substituted for the Marxist dialectic a combination of empirical investigation and moral purpose. For him a Socialist Party’s chief role was to produce a series of piecemeal reforms through Parliament. His proposals were a revision of Marxism : Revisionism.

In this haziness as to ends, Bernstein 14 was arguably more honest - if less radical - than the reformist spokesman, the Bavarian Georg Von Vollmar (1850-1922), who asserted that it would be possible and desirable to achieve a Socialist society within the State boundaries of one country.

Bernstein’s attack provoked a reaction from the Marxists who claimed the majority in German Social Democracy. Two foreign recruits, the Byelo-Russian Parvus (Alexander Helphand, 1869-1924) and the Pole, Rosa Luxemburg (1870-1919), published pamphlets defending Marxist principles. So too did Kautsky, another of Engels’ proteges and a far more prominent figure, but he did so only after persuasion by his Russian counterpart, George Plekhanov (1856-1918). What was more, although Bernstein’s ideas were condemned at successive Party Congresses between 1899 and 1903 and at the International’s Amsterdam Congress in 1904, many known revisionists, including himself, on occasion voted for the condemnation. His political career flourished and he was elected to the German Parliament (Reichstag) for his Party in 1902. The sun of mass political growth was nurturing bureaucratic interests in German Social Democracy. Their relationship to Bernstein’s Revisionism differed between the bureaucracies of the trade unions and that of the Party proper. Having trade unions organized by Party members had been expected to frustrate the opportunism that developed in Britain. In practice, their work’s necessary concentration on bread-andbutter issues with little political support and their own relative but increasing material privilege compared to their members, made the German Social Democratic trade union leaders the readiest to accept Revisionism. The Party’s own bureaucracy was organized at a higher political level; it was concerned more directly with advancing the Programme passed originally at Gotha (1875) and renewed at Erfurt (1891). This theoretical base was made less effective by the Programme’s division into a minimum list of reforms compatible with capitalism and a maximum or full Socialist programme. Basing themselves on the latter, the majority leaders of German Social Democracy attacked the theory of Revisionism, without being able to offer any alternative to the Revisionists practical solutions to the short-term problems. Both theory (against the Anarchists) and practice tended to limit Social Democracy’s strategy to one of parliamentary means. Against the Anarchist demand to abolish the State it had asserted the need to take State power.

But what did this mean? It was all too easy to interpret it as did the Revisionists : the electoral struggle every few years to win the right to administer the existing state ma- 15

chine. In itself this provided the reason for a major part of any Social Democratic activity, in Germany or elsewhere, at the time. In most countries manhood suffrage, without which electoral victory was impossible, did not existand women had no national vote outside Australia. In Belgium and Austria, indeed, the workers struck for the right to vote. Bernstein himself supported such a means for an end, since democracy was a necessary precondition for achieving the greatest reform. He disagreed with the political strike for other causes and had the agreement of most trade union leaders. Eventually, it would be the workers of Russia who would bring back the revolutionary seizure of Eduard Bernstein (1850-1932) 16 State power as, in effect, the missing and crucial part of any Socialist programme without which it would remain, at best, Marxist in theory and Revisionist in practice. [When Bernstein’s articles appeared first the Social Democratic Party Secretary, Ignaz Auer (1846-1907) wrote him : ‘My dear Ede, you don’t pass resolutions. You don’ t talk about it (Revisionism). You just do it” J.

Until 1899 the controversy over Revisionism remained centred in German Social Democracy. A\lthough French Socialism seemed even more divided (organizational as well as politically) between Possibilists and Impossibilists, the debate between the two was less developed and deemed likely to end in reconciliation as common (Reformist) practice tended to unite the participants. However, in 1899 the Possibilists broke even with that practice in a way that defied the basic principle of independent working-class political organizationeven more definitely than the South German budget votes. The Anti-Dreyfusards, a powerful Anti-Semitic movement supported and used as a front by Monarchists, Clericalists and Militarists, had influenced successive French Governments and seemed to threaten the Republic itself. To defend it and to open the way for possible reforms, Alexandre Millerand did not only pledge support for a new Government but joined it as Minister for Commerce, with the support of his Possibilist colleagues. The following year the matter was discussed at the International’s Fifth Congress, in Paris. After much debate, Kautsky drafted a compromise. It was passed, despite some Opposition which included that of two united national delegations, those of Belgium and Ireland (the Irish Socialist Republican Party; this was the only Second International Congress at which Ireland was represented). It was agreed that, in future, no member of an affiliate of the International would be allowed to take office in a State Government without his party’s permission. The central political issue (the relationship of the Party to the capitalist state) and the central person (Millerand) were both ignored. This was less than satisfactory, in that Millerand’s action was noteven justified by political results. He and his Ministerial colleagues did break the influence of the Anti- Dreyfusards, get their victim, Captain Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935) released from jail and begin a series of educational reforms, but they did little more over three years andended by using the army against striking workers and colonial peoples. As would happen in all such future alliances, Millerand had not captured a bourgeois ministry but had been captured by the capitalist state.

However, the controversy he had started reflected the fact that French 17 James Connolly 1868-1916 Marxism was starting from a theoretical basis even less developed than that of Germany. Its leader, Jules Guesde (1845-1922) was far more influenced by Proudhon’s anti-political views than Bebel or Kautsky were by Lassalle. For Guesde, the Dreyfus case was irrelevant to the working class. French Socialism’s most able thinker, Jean Jaures (1859-1914) was a Possibilist and a defender of Millerand. On the other hand, many genuinely revolutionary Socialists were abandoning Marxism or else trying to merge it with a new form of strategy that opposed the International’s definition of political action by action through industrial unions : Syndicalism.