Blackwell Reference Online

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Eduard Bernstein was a leading German social democratic politician and theorist. His life is a microcosmic reflection of the first century of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). Like the German labor movement itself, Bernstein started out as a socialist eclectic, then he “converted” to Marxist orthodoxy only to return to an eclectic position which, enriched by Marxist theory, nonetheless espoused a non-revolutionary, democratic socialism that recognized Marxism only as one among several important theoretical sources. Reviled by his enemies as a “traitor of the working class” and celebrated by his supporters as a “champion of democracy,” Bernstein contributed more than any other pre-World War I socialist theorist to the conceptual framework of twentieth-century European social democracy.Born in Berlin on January 6, 1850, Bernstein grew up in modest circumstances. After a short career as a bank clerk in Berlin, he joined the SPD as a campaign speaker and pamphleteer. After being expelled from Germany in 1878 as a result of German Chancellor Bismarck's repressive “Anti-Socialist Laws,” Bernstein settled in Zurich, Switzerland, from where he edited Der Sozial-demokrat, the rallying point of the underground SPD press. When Bismarck secured his expulsion from Switzerland, Bernstein continued publication of the periodical from London, where he cultivated close contacts with Friedrich ... log in or subscribe to read full text