‘The natural leader of the proletariat’: Eduard Bernstein on trade unions and the path to socialist cooperation

ABSTRACT

This paper offers a reinterpretation of Eduard Bernstein’s theory of evolutionary socialism. It does so by examining the leading role that he envisioned for unions of skilled workers in the socialist movement. During his time in London in the 1890s, Bernstein’s engagement with English Fabianism led him to emphasize the proletariat’s differentiated nature. He claimed skilled workers most readily organized and became the first proletarians to develop class consciousness. Unskilled workers, on the other hand, remained largely unorganized and estranged from the socialist movement. Bernstein opposed the socialist political strategy of nationalization because it would subordinate unskilled workers to party revolutionaries rather than realize cooperative self-government in industry. This focus on promoting industrial self-government made Bernstein stress the importance of workers’ further unionization and adoption of skilled unionists’ method of collective bargaining. This would produce socialist cooperation because it facilitated cooperative wage determination. In Bernstein’s view, skilled unionists influenced the socialist party to take political action to organize and elevate more proletarians to class consciousness. In contrast to those who claim Bernstein prioritized the party’s autonomous ethical appeals and legislation, I emphasize his focus on union-party interactions and defense of unions as central for the advance into socialism’s cooperative society.

KEYWORDS:

• Eduard Bernstein
• social democracy
• trade unionism
• class-consciousness
• history of the left

Acknowledgements

I want to thank Jan-Werner Müller, Greg Conti, Steve Macedo, and Dimitri Halikias, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I would also like to give special thanks to Hedwig Lieback for her zealous debate, close readings, and suggestions which helped improve this paper in countless ways.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Bernstein was in exile from Germany due to the anti-socialist laws, which banned socialist newspapers.

2 Rosa Luxemburg, ‘Die englische Brille’, Leipziger Volkszeitung, May 9, 1899, 1.

3 For accounts of Bernstein which focus on the question of his relationship to Marxism, see Henry Tudor, ‘Introduction’, in Marxism and Social Democracy: The Revisionist Debate 1896–1898, eds. and trans. H. and J. M. Tudor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 1–38; Manfred Steger, The Quest for Evolutionary Socialism: Eduard Bernstein and Social Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 66–120; Jamie Melrose, ‘Agents of Knowledge: Marxist Identity Politics in the Revisionismusstreit’, History of European Ideas 42, no. 8 (2016): 1069–88.

4 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Nachwort’, in Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Geschichte des Britischen Trade Unionismus, trans. Regina Bernstein (Stuttgart: Dietz, 1895), 447.

5 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Vom Wesen des Sozialismus’, in Zur Theorie und Geschichte des Sozialismus, vol 3. (Berlin: Drümmler, 1904). Original publication in 1898.

6 Scholars have neglected how Bernstein’s worry about worker subordination influenced his critique of nationalization because they have not examined his well-known publications from 1896–9 in light of his earlier analyses of the unskilled. Thomas Meyer, Bernsteins konstruktiver Sozialismus: Eduard Bernsteins Beitrag zur Theorie des Sozialismus (Berlin: Dietz, 1977), 131 and 145; Helga Grebing, Der Revisionismus: Von Bernstein bis zum, Prager Frühling‘ (München: Beck, 1977), 20; Bo Gustafsson, Marxismus und Revisionismus: Eduard Bernsteins Kritik des Marxismus und ihre ideengeschichtlichen Voraussetzungen (Frankfurt: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1972), 102 and 106–7. These scholars argue that Bernstein rejected nationalization because he insisted the attempt to transform a complex and differentiated economy through a single, ‘catastrophic’ act of expropriation would lead to economic chaos. This is certainly part of the story. My aim is to highlight the other, equally important, aspect of Bernstein’s objection to nationalization: how it was likely to result in elite control rather than worker empowerment.

7 Robert Michels, Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie: Untersuchungen über die oligarchischen Tendenzen des Gruppenlebens (Leipzig: Verlag von Dr. Werner Klinkhardt, 1911).

8 Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso, 2001), 30 and 32.

9 Peter Gay, The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism: Eduard Bernstein’s Challenge to Marx (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), 239–42; Steger, The Quest for Evolutionary Socialism, 188; Sheri Berman, The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe’s Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 43; Marius Ostrowski, ‘Introduction’, in Eduard Bernstein on Socialism Past and Present: Essays and Lectures on Ideology, ed. Marius Ostrowski (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), 54–5; Marius Ostrowski, ‘From “noble patriotism” to the “republic of peoples”: Eduard Bernstein and the “national question” in Social Democracy’, History of Political Thought 43, no. 3 (2022): 9.

10 Steger rightly emphasizes that Bernstein did not ‘dissolve Marxism into pure ethics.’ Steger, The Quest for Evolutionary Socialism, 112–4. Bernstein thought socialism’s moral ideals only gained uptake given certain economic conditions. But Steger does not follow this line of thought in Bernstein’s writings on unionism. This is because he focuses on philosopher F.A. Lange’s importance influence on Bernstein’s ethics rather than the Webbs’ influence on his understanding of proletarian organization.

11 While some scholars recognize that, for Bernstein, workers achieved competence or maturity through organization, they miss that he developed this concept of maturity with reference to skilled unions’ interactions with the party. Meyer, Bernsteins konstruktiver Sozialismus, 135 and 168–70; Leszek Kołakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, trans. P. S. Falla, vol. 2: The Golden Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 107; Ostrowski, ‘Introduction’, 62–7. Beyond Laclau and Mouffe, others ignore unions’ role in cultivating moral maturity across the proletariat. Gay, The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism, 139; Steger, The Quest for Evolutionary Socialism, 144.

12 For analyses of Bernstein’s idea of industrial democracy that do not mention his focus on union leaders, see Steger, The Quest for Evolutionary Socialism, 144–5 and Meyer, Bernsteins konstruktiver Sozialismus, 361–3.

13 George Steinmetz, ‘Workers and the Welfare State in Imperial Germany’, International Labor and Working-Class History 40 (1991): 27–8; Roger Davidson, ‘The Board of Trade and Industrial Relations, 1896–1914’, The Historical Journal 3 (1978): 571–91.

14 This emphasis on the role of moral ideals in cultivating class consciousness was essential to Bernstein’s revision of Marxist determinism. On Bernstein’s account of regulative moral ideals, see Steger, The Quest for Evolutionary Socialism, 103–5 and 113–5. For discussion of skilled workers’ important role in the SPD at this time, see Stefan Berger, Social Democracy and the Working Class in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Germany (London: Routledge, 2000), 58 and 67. On similar developments in French socialism, see Bernard Moss, The Origins of the French Labor Movement: The Socialism of Skilled Workers 1830–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976).

15 Bernstein argued that the later Marx and Engels shared his skepticism about a strategy which focused on seizing state power to nationalize industry. He pointed out that, in their introduction to the 1872 English edition of the Communist Manifesto, they wrote: ‘one thing especially was proved by the commune, viz., that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery and wield it for its own purposes.” Eduard Bernstein, ‘Kritisches Zwischenspiel’, Die Neue Zeit 16, Bd. 1 (1898): 745.

16 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Zur Frage des ehernen Lohngesetzes’, in Zur Theorie und Geschichte des Sozialismus, vol. 1 (Berlin: Drümmler, 1904). The first edition of this anthology appeared in 1901.

17 On the New Unionism movement in England, see Derek Matthews, ‘1889 and All That: New Views on the New Unionism’, International Review of Social History 36, no.1 (2008). For discussion of the 1890 Hamburg dock worker strike and its impact on the SPD, see Rolf Hoffrogge, Sozialismus und Arbeiterbewegung in Deutschland: von den Anfängen bis 1914 (Stuttgart: Schmetterling, 2011), 123–4.

18 Bernstein, ‘Zur Frage des ehernen Lohngesetzes’, 11–2.

19 Ibid., 54.

20 Ibid., 54.

21 Ibid., 54.

22 Ibid., 34.

23 Ibid., 55.

24 Bernstein, ‘Nachwort’, 447.

25 Ibid., 446. Kautsky and Emile Vandervelde, for example, argued that automation produced a homogeneous, de-skilled, and immiserated proletariat. See Karl Kautsky, Der Parlamentarismus, die Volksgesetzgebung, und die Demokratie, (Stuttgart: Dietz, 1893), 107; Emile Vandervelde, Les associations professionnelles d’artisans & ouvriers en Belgique (Bruxelles: Travaux Publics, 1891), 43 and 78.

26 Bernstein, ‘Nachwort’, 447.

27 Sidney and Beatrice Webb, History of Trade Unionism (London: Longmans, 1896), 402 and 406–7; Bernstein, ‘Nachwort’, 448.

28 Bernstein, ‘Nachwort’, 448; Webb, History of Trade Unionism, 430.

29 Bernstein, ‘Nachwort’, 448.

30 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Das Prämienlohnsystem und die Arbeiter’, Sozialistische Monatshefte 8, no. 12 (1902): 919.

31 Bernstein, ‘Das Prämienlohnsystem und die Arbeiter’, 919.

32 On English workers’ ‘quietism’ and indifference to socialism, see Eduard Bernstein, ‘Englische Partei-Entwicklungen’, Die Neue Zeit 14, Bd. 1 (1896): 84.

33 Bernstein, ‘Vom Wesen des Sozialismus’, 41.

34 Ibid., 42.

35 Ibid., 40.

36 Ibid., 40.

37 Eduard Bernstein to Karl Kautsky, 8 April 1892, in Eduard Bernsteins Briefwechsel mit Karl Kautsky (1890–1895), ed. Till Schelz-Brandenburg (Frankfurt: Campus, 2003), 62. Bernstein argued that pursuing ‘the interest in personal self-preservation alone does not make a worker socialist,’ then, because he thought it kept workers in a state of ego-centric thoughtlessness. Bernstein, ‘Vom Wesen des Sozialismus’, 41.

38 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Die soziale Doktrin des Anarchismus’, Die Neue Zeit 10, no. 2 (1892): 427.

39 Historians have emphasized that the vast majority of unskilled workers did not affiliate with the SPD at this time. They formed the ‘other’ worker movement. Karl Heinz Roth, Die ‘andere’ Arbeiterbewegung und die Entwicklung der kapitalistischen Repression von 1880 bis zur Gegenwart (München: Trikont, 1974); Berger, Social Democracy and the Working Class, 67.

40 Eduard Bernstein to Karl Kautsky, 23 December 1897, in Eduard Bernsteins Briefwechsel, 536.

41 Eduard Benrstein to Karl Kautsy, 28 February 1898, in Eduard Bernsteins Briefwechsel mit Karl Kautsky (1895–1905), ed. Till Schelz-Brandenburg (Frankfurt: Campus, 2003), 579.

42 For Bernstein’s criticism of Mehring, see Eduard Bernstein to Karl Kautsky, 10 March 1897, in Eduard Bernsteins Briefwechsel mit Karl Kautsky (1895–1905), ed. Till Schelz-Brandenburg (Frankfurt: Campus, 2003), 379–80. On Kautsky and Liebknecht, see Eduard Bernstein to Karl Kautsky, 9 November 1898, in Eduard Bernsteins Briefwechsel mit Karl Kautsky (1895–1905), ed. Till Schelz-Brandenburg (Frankfurt: Campus, 2003), 830. On Hyndman’s utopianism, see Eduard Bernstein, ‘Sozialistische Ökonomie in England’, Die Neue Zeit 15, Bd. 1 (1896): 53.

43 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Klassenkampf-Dogma und Klassenkampf-Wirklichkeit’, Die Neue Zeit 17, Bd. 2 (1899): 578.

44 Bernstein, ‘Nachwort’, 449.

45 Ibid., 449.

46 Eduard Bernstein, Die Arbeiterbewegung (Berlin: Rütten & Loening, 1910), 193.

47 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Das realistische und das ideologische Moment im Sozialismus. Probleme des Sozialismus, 2. Serie II’, Die Neue Zeit 16, Bd. 2 (1898): 293.

48 Bernstein, ‘Vom Wesen des Sozialismus’, 41.

49 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Probleme des Sozialismus. 5. Die sozialpolitische Bedeutung von Raum und Zahl’, Die Neue Zeit 15, Bd. 2 (1897): 106.

50 Bernstein, ‘Die sozialpolitische Bedeutung von Raum und Zahl’, 145.

51 Eduard Bernstein, Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie (Stuttgart: Dietz, 1899), 186.

52 Bernstein, Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus, 183.

53 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Nachtrag’, in Louis Heritier, Geschichte der französischen Revolution von 1848, ed. Wilhelm Eichhoff and Eduard Bernstein, (Stuttgart: Dietz, 1896), 707.

54 Eduard Bernstein to Karl Kautsy, 17 May 1897, in Eduard Bernsteins Briefwechsel mit Karl Kautsky (1895–1905), ed. Till Schelz-Brandenburg (Frankfurt: Campus, 2003), 409.

55 Eduard Bernstein to Karl Kautsky, 20 February 1898, in Eduard Bernsteins Briefwechsel mit Karl Kautsky (1895–1905), ed. Till Schelz-Brandenburg (Frankfurt: Campus, 2003), 563–4.

56 Bernstein, Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus, 134. Mark Bevir has argued that Hyndman defended a peaceful, parliamentary road to socialism. Mark Bevir, The Making of British Socialism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 79–80. Yet Bernstein read him as a revolutionary and criticized his indifference to whether the transition to socialism would be ‘peaceful or tumultuous.’ Bernstein, ‘Sozialistische Ökonomie in England’, 53.

57 Eduard Bernstein to Karl Kautsky, 20 February 1898, 560. It may seem odd that Bernstein developed an anxiety about tyrannical socialist leaders in England – after all, the English socialist movement was not particularly centralized or revolutionary in the 1890s. But his view becomes more intelligible when we recognize that he followed the antagonism between the SDF leaders and unionists in this period closely. For example, he condemned the SDF’s attempt to turn the 1894 general union congress in Cardiff into a ‘socialist party congress’ by demanding the passage of certain statutes. The SDF’s branding of the union leader John Burns as a ‘Judas of socialism’ for opposing its influence in the congress showed Bernstein that it was intolerant of dissent. See Eduard Bernstein, ‘Der Trade Unions-Kongress von Cardiff und seine Bedeutung’, Die Neue Zeit 13, Bd. 2 (1894): 788 and 791. While he also occasionally criticized the leaders of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), he saw less of a potential for dictatorial Jacobinism in the ILP because its leaders were mostly former heads of the old, skilled unions (e.g., Kier Hardie and Tom Mann). See Eduard Bernstein to Karl Kautsky, 13 April 1895, in Eduard Bernsteins Briefwechsel mit Karl Kautsky (1895–1905), ed. Till Schelz-Brandenburg (Frankfurt: Campus, 2003), 534.

58 Bernstein thought that capitalists and unionists’ participation in arbitration institutions ultimately led them settle contracts and manage their affairs in a genuinely cooperative manner. In his mind, this meant that interventions from state-appointed neutral arbiters to resolve disputes became less necessary over time. See Eduard Bernstein, ‘Aus der Geschichte des Sozialismus’, Dokumente des Sozialismus 4 (1904): 21. Section iv of this paper discusses this part of Bernstein’s theory in greater detail.

59 Bernstein, Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus, 133–4.

60 Bernstein was critical of producer cooperatives: they were unstable and tended to exclude new workers from participation in internal democratic procedures. See Bernstein, Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus, 100–5.

61 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Kapitalmacht und Gewerkschaftsmacht’, Sozialistische Monatshefte 10, no. 2 (1904): 136.

62 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Frauenrechtlerei und Arbeiterschutz’, Die Neue Zeit 9, Bd. 2 (1891): 180; Eduard Bernstein, ‘Der gesetzliche Minderlohn in England’, Sozialistische Monatshefte 18, no. 7 (1912): 409–14.

63 Steinmetz, ‘Workers and the Welfare State’, 27. An 1891 law also limited the working day to ten hours for children under sixteen and to eleven hours for women.

64 Karl Heinrich Pohl, ‘Sozialdemokratie und Gewerbeinspektion: Zum Verhältnis von Staat und Arbeiterbewegung und Arbeitgebern 1890–1914’, Vierteljahrsschrift für Sozial und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 75, no. 4 (1988): 457–82.

65 Bernstein, ‘Klassenkampf-Dogma und Klassenkampf-Wirklichkeit’, 580.

66 Ibid., 580.

67 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Kritische Bibliographie des Sozialismus’, Dokumente des Sozialismus 4 (1904): 14.

68 Carl Schorske, German Social Democracy, 1905–1917: The Development of the Great Schism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 24.

69 At this time, the Reichstag was elected according to universal suffrage and majorities could initiate legislation. The Kaiser, however, could dissolve the Reichstag at will.

70 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Noch einmal Partei, Gewerkschaft, und Maifeier’, Sozialistische Monatshefte 11, no. 7 (1905): 579.

71 Karl Kautsky, Bernstein und das sozialdemokratische Programm (Stuttgart: Dietz, 1899), 177.

72 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Der Wahlkampf und das Mandat’, Sozialistische Monatshefte 13, no. 3 (1907): 171.

73 Bernstein, ‘Der Wahlkampf und das Mandat’, 190.

74 Bernstein, ‘Noch einmal Partei, Gewerkschaft, und Maifeier’, 578.

75 Ibid., 583

76 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Geschichtliches zur Gewerkschaftsfrage’, Sozialistische Monatshefte 6, no. 7 (1900): 388.

77 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Ein Ausblick auf die bevorstehende Reichstagswahlen’, Sozialistische Monatshefte 9, no. 3 (1903): 193.

78 On this debate, see Schorske, German Social Democracy, 29–39; Michael Hughes, ‘The knife in the hands of children? Debating the political mass strike and political citizenship in Imperial Germany’, Labor History 50, no. 2 (2009): 113–38.

79 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Der Streik als politische Kampfmittel’, Die Neue Zeit 12, Bd. 1 (1893): 689–695

80 Rosa Luxemburg, ‘Die Revolution in Russland’, Die Neue Zeit 23, Bd. 1 (1905): 572–3.

81 Rosa Luxemburg, Massenstreik, Partei, und Gewerkschaften (Hamburg: Erdmann Dubber, 1906), 20.

82 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Politischer Massenstreik und Revolutionsromantik’, Sozialistische Monatshefte 12, no. 1 (1906): 15.

83 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Fragen der Taktik in Russland’, Sozialistische Monatshefte 12, no. 3 (1906): 212.

84 Eduard Bernstein, Der politische Massenstreik (Breslau: Verlag der Volkswacht, 1905), 30 and 34.

85 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Ist der politische Streik in Deutschland möglich?’, Sozialistische Monatshefte 11, no. 1 (1905): 34.

86 Bernstein, ‘Politischer Massenstreik und Revolutionsromantik’, 19–20.

87 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Wird die Sozialdemokratie Volkspartei?’, Sozialistische Monatshefte 11, no. 8 (1905): 668.

88 Bernstein, ‘Wird die Sozialdemokratie Volkspartei?’, 669.

89 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Die Sandsäcke Preußens und die Lage der Wahlrechtsreform’, Sozialistische Monatshefte 16, no. 10 (1910): 600.

90 Bernstein, ‘Politischer Massenstreik und Revolutionsromantik’, 19.

91 Ibid., 16.

92 Ibid., 18.

93 Bernstein, ‘Der Streik als politische Kampfmittel’, 694.

94 Eduard Bernstein, Die Geschichte der Berliner Arbeiter-Bewegung, vol. 1 (Berlin: Vorwärts, 1907), 33.

95 Bernstein, ‘Wird die Sozialdemokratie Volkspartei?’, 669–70. Postmen, for example, had no right to strike at this time because they could be punished for violating their state oath. Eduard Bernstein, Die Geschichte der Berliner Arbeiter-Bewegung, vol. 3 (Berlin: Vorwärts, 1910), 188.

96 Bernstein, ‘Wird die Sozialdemokratie Volkspartei?’, 670.

97 Steinmetz, ‘Workers and the Welfare State in Imperial Germany’, 27–8.

98 Bernstein thought this legislation could be expanded to include lower state bureaucrats.

99 Davidson, ‘The Board of Trade and Industrial Relations’, 571–2.

100 Bernstein, Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus, 131.

101 Hoffrogge, Arbeiterbewegung und Sozialismus, 125–7.

102 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Die Neueste Prognose der Sozialen Revolution’, Sozialistische Monatshefte 8, no. 8 (1902): 590.

103 Bernstein, Die Geschichte der Berliner Arbeiter-Bewegung, vol. 3, 254.

104 Ibid., vol. 3, 254.

105 Eduard Bernstein, Der Streik, sein Wesen und sein Wirken (Frankfurt am Main: Rütten & Loening, 1906), 108.

106 On this issue, see Eduard Bernstein, ‘Der Trade Unions-Kongress von Cardiff und seine Bedeutung’, Die Neue Zeit 13, Bd. 2 (1894): 783–91; Bernstein, Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus, 137.

107 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Gewerkschaftsdemokratie’, Sozialistische Monatshefte 15, no. 2 (1909): 86.

108 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Modernität im Kampf’, Sozialistische Monatshefte 14, no. 26 (1908): 1646.

109 Eduard Bernstein, Von der Sekte zur Partei: Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie Einst und Jetzt (Jena: Diederichs, 1911), 37.

110 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Kritische Bibliographie des Sozialismus’, Dokumente des Sozialismus Bd. 3 (1903): 399.

111 Webb, History of Trade Unionism, 460.

112 Bernstein, Der Streik, 118.

113 Ibid., 33.

114 Ibid., 108.

115 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Die Generalstreikgewerkschaft’, Sozialistische Monatshefte 12, no. 8 (1906): 639.

116 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Vom Klassenkampf’, Sozialistische Monatshefte 12, no. 7 (1906): 824.

117 Bernstein, Die Geschichte der Berliner Arbeiter-Bewegung, vol. 3, 254.

118 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Aus der Geschichte des Sozialismus’, Dokumente des Sozialismus 4 (1904): 21.

119 Bernstein, ‘Modernität im Kampf’, 1646–7.

120 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Vom deutschen Arbeiter einst und jetzt’, Sozialistische Monatshefte 8, no. 3 (1902): 185.

121 For recent work on Bernstein’s writings on international politics and nationalism, see Ostrowski, ‘From ‘noble patriotism’ to the ‘republic of peoples’, 517–54 and Marius Ostrowski, ‘Social Democracy and “positive” foreign policy: the evolution of Eduard Bernstein’s international thought, 1914–1920’, History of Political Thought 42, no. 3 (2021): 520–64.

122 Marius Ostrowski has recently focused on Bernstein’s unduly neglected writings on the Russian and German revolutions. He does not, however, read these writings in light of Bernstein’s worry about unskilled workers’ immaturity. He thus fails to explain why Bernstein thought revolutionary councils could not fulfil unions’ educative function. This is in part because he does not analyze the 1920 edition of Bernstein’s book The Strike, which included a newly written essay on the revolutionary council movements. See Marius Ostrowski, ‘“Reform or Revolution”, redux: Eduard Bernstein on the 1918–1919’, Historical Research 95, no. 268 (2022): 213–39.

123 Indeed, in his 1921 book How A Revolution Perished, which examined both Bolshevism and its influence on the German Revolution, Bernstein republished his 1896 essay on the 1848 French revolution. This was to highlight the relationship between Jacobinism, Blanquism, and Bolshevism. See Eduard Bernstein, Wie eine Revolution Zugrunde Ging (Stuttgart: J.H.W. Dietz, 1921), 11–51.

124 Eduard Bernstein, Der Sozialismus Einst und Jetzt: Streitfragen des Sozialismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Berlin: J.H.W. Dietz, 1922), 121.

125 Eduard Bernstein, Der Streik: sein Wesen und sein Wirken (Frankfurt am Main: Rütten & Loening, 1920), 140. Hereafter, I refer to this edition as Der Streik II. On most Russian workers as unskilled, see Eduard Bernstein, ‘Bankerott des Bolschewismus’, Vorwärts, May 10, 1920, 3.

126 Eduard Bernstein, Der Sozialismus Einst und Jetzt, 123.

127 Ibid., 123.

128 Bernstein, ‘Bankerott des Bolschewismus’, 3.

129 Bernstein, Der Streik II, 147.

130 Ibid., 150.

131 In Bernstein’s mind, the only way to salvage the council idea was to view councils as complements – rather than alternatives – to union-based industrial democracy. Council delegates would represent workers in discussions about work arrangements in a single factory, while unions would engage in collective bargaining with capitalists across an industry. Since unionists possessed a sense of social responsibility, they would ‘steer councils’ thirst for [strike] action [Tatendrang] in a way that is most advantageous to the overall economy, which ultimately determines the working-class’ well-being.” Bernstein, Der Streik II, 150. This meant that, even if council members did not join unions, the moral culture of skilled unionism would influence them. They would thus come to participate in democratic, cooperative self-government in industry. Bernstein’s view of complementary councils and unions was influential within the SPD during Weimar. For example, the leadership of the General German Federation of Trade Unions (ADGB) advocated for such a relationship. For discussion of the ADGB’s policy on this issue during Weimar, see the lecture by Hans Mommsen, Klassenkampf oder Mitbestimmung: Zum Problem der Kontrolle wirtschaftlicher Macht in der Weimarer Republik (Köln: EVA, 1978).

132 In an essay written during the war, Bernstein suggested that democracy could ‘grow into the rule of oligarchy, and even despotism’ if the ‘emergent proletariat [remained] … political lumpen’ – that is, if workers remained unaware of their labour’s social function and failed to recognize themselves as ‘bearers of the social edifice.’ This was the first time he had referred to elements of the proletariat as lumpen. Clearly, this was a worry about the unskilled’s lack of political education and moral maturity, which later influenced his analysis of the revolutionary council movements. See Eduard Bernstein, Sozialistische Völkerpolitik, die Sozialdemokratie, und die Frage Europa: Gesammelte Aufsätze (Leipzig: Verlag Naturwissenschaften, 1917), 3.

133 Bernstein, ‘Bankerott des Bolschewismus’, 3.

134 In a lecture on socialization in 1919, Bernstein endorsed nationalization in certain industries with large majorities of unskilled workers. Yet, it is essential to see that he only did so because the SPD’s ‘officialdom had become better trained.’ Eduard Bernstein, Die Sozialisierung der Betriebe (Basel: National-Zeitung, 1919), 15. The implication was that the expansion of unionism among the unskilled had produced a class of responsible worker-managers. Nationalization would therefore mean the state leasing enterprises to unions for day-to-day management rather than rule by party revolutionaries.

135 The programme, for example, did not use the word Vergesellschaftung [socialization] and defend the necessity of state expropriation. It instead called for the establishment of public bodies in the economy with democratic administration – i.e., arbitration courts as institutions of industrial democracy. See Protokoll über die Verhandlungen der Parteitage der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands. Abgehalten in Görlitz vom 18. Bis 24. September 1921 (Berlin: Vorwärts, 1921), iii-vi. For a discussion of Bernstein’s influence on the Görlitz programme, see Heinrich August Winkler, ‘Klassenbewegung oder Volkspartei? Zur Programmdiskussion in der Weimarer Sozialdemokratie 1920–1925’ Geschichte und Gesellschaft 8, no. 1 (1982): 21–4.

136 Eduard Bernstein, Das Görlitzer Programm der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands (Berlin: Verlag der Sozialwissenschaft, 1922), 31.

137 Bernstein, Das Görlitzer Programm, 30–1

138 Ibid., 31.

139 Franz Neumann, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, 1933–1944 (Chicago: Ivan Dee, 2009), 13–20.

140 This was Rudolf Hilferding’s view – the SPD finance minister during Weimar. See Harold James, ‘Rudolf Hilferding and the Application of the Political Economy of the Second International’, The Historical Journal 24, no. 4 (1981): 847–69.

141 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Une lettre d’Eduard Bernstein à Sorel’, Cahiers Georges Sorel 1 (1983): 131.

142 Bernstein first made this argument in 1902 and then returned to it in his final statement of his theory in 1922. See Bernstein, ‘Das Prämienlohnsystem und die Arbeiter’, 919; Bernstein, Der Sozialismus Einst und Jetzt, 46.