Course Reform or Revolution

Education For Socialists

Revolutionary Classics

3 Reform or
Revolution
Rosa Luxemburg

Education for Socialists
The Challenge of

Revisionism
Reform or Revolution
Rosa Luxemburg
3-4
5-72
The Challenge of
Revisionism
Introducing REform or Revolution
Rosa Luxemburgs classic pamphlet Reform or Revolution (also

known as Social Reform or Revolution) was first published in 1899.1
Much of the material had appeared in article form over the preceding year in the Leipziger Volkszeitung.
The articles took issue with the work of Eduard Bernstein, an
important figure within the German and international socialist
movement (he had even been named by Frederick Engels as Karl
Marxs literary executor). Bernstein had recently come out as an
open supporter of reformism, then known as revisionism.
His argument, which has been echoed by reformist politicians
and thinkers many times since, was that capitalism was overcoming
its tendency towards crisis, and blunting rather than sharpening the
antagonism between workers and capitalists. This created a framework in which the socialist movement should push for piecemeal
reform, rather than the revolutionary overthrow of the system.
Luxemburg, a 27 year old Polish Marxist who arrived in Germany only in 1898, produced the most powerful refutation of Bernstein. She would go on to establish herself as a major figure within
the socialist movementorganised through the S
ozialdemokratische
Partei Deutschlands (SPD, the Social Democratic Party).
The SPD had grown up in a period of relative prosperity and
stability after 1873, a period which saw a gradual improvement in
1: The text here is based on a 1908 version, edited by Luxemburg herself,
which slightly revised the original pamphlet.
workers living standards, and the strengthening of trade unions

and cooperatives. It was in this context that the SPD developed, in
practice, in a reformist direction. Bernsteins arguments gave theoretical expression to this development.
Although other leaders of the SPD, notably Karl Kautsky, a socialist theoretician of huge stature at the time, would put forward arguments challenging Bernstein, in practice the grip of reformism over
the party would grow rather than diminish. By 1914 the SPD, along
with most of its counterparts across Europe, would betray the international working class movement by falling in behind its own ruling
class in the First World War. Lenin, who was profoundly shocked
by this development, would admit, Rosa Luxemburg was right; she
long ago realised that Kautsky was a time-serving theorist, serving
the majority of the party, in short, serving opportunism.
Now, after a century during which the betrayals by reformist
leaders were manifold, it is possible to lose sight of just how brilliant
Luxemburg was to identify this trend, still in its infancy, and to challenge it so sharply.
Luxemburg understood that revolutionaries had to fight for
reforms. But this fight cannot be an end in itself; revolutionaries
must bring the most militant methods of struggle to the fore in
order to help the working class acquire the self-confidence, organisation and militancy it requires if it is to make a revolution.
At the time she wrote Reform and Revolution, Luxemburg did not
see the need to leave the SPD and found a clearly revolutionary
organisation, though neither did any of the other leading revolutionaries of the day. A growing recognition of the hold of reformism, the need to break with it, to form revolutionary parties, and
to simultaneously find ways to reach out to and fight alongside
workers influenced by reformism, would be the focus of many
debates after 1914, and especially after the Russian Revolution of
1917. But Marxists such as Lenin and Leon Trotsky who were to
develop this approach owed a great debt to the pioneering work
of Luxemburg.
Reform or
Revolution
Rosa Luxemburg
At first view the title of this work may be found surprising. Can
social democracy be against reforms?2 Can we counterpose social
revolution, the transformation of the existing order, our final goal,
to social reforms? Certainly not. The daily struggle for reforms, for
the amelioration of the condition of the workers within the framework of the existing social order, and for democratic institutions, is
for social democracy indissolubly tied to its final goal. The struggle
for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its goal.
It is in Eduard Bernsteins theory, presented in his articles on Problems of Socialism, in Neue Zeit of 1897-8, and in
his book Die Voraussetzungen des Socialismus und die Aufgaben der
Sozialdemokratie,3 that we find, for the first time, the opposition of
the two factors of the labour movement. His theory tends to counsel
us to renounce social transformation, the final goal of social democracy and, inversely, to make of social reforms, the means of the class
struggle, its end. Bernstein himself has very clearly and characteristically formulated this viewpoint when he wrote, The final goal, no
matter what it is, is nothing; the movement is everything.
2: This work pre-dates the historic division between reformist organisations,

which were often called social democratic, and revolutionary organisations that
were, in the years following the 1917 Russian Revolution, called communist.
Luxemburg was writing as a member of the German Social Democratic Party,
which was then an ostensibly Marxist organisationeditors note.
3: The Presuppositions of Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy, which is
better known in English under the title Evolutionary Socialismeditors note.
But since the final goal of socialism constitutes the only decisive
factor distinguishing the social democratic movement from bourgeois democracy and from bourgeois radicalism, the only factor
transforming the entire labour movement from a vain effort to
repair the capitalist order into a class struggle against this order,
for the suppression of this orderthe question, Reform or revolution? as it is posed by Bernstein is for social democracy equal to
the question: To be or not to be? In the controversy with Bernstein and his followers everybody in the party ought to understand
clearly it is not a question of this or that method of struggle, or the
use of this or that set of tactics, but of the very existence of the social
democratic movement.
The Opportunist Method

If it is true that theories are only the images of the phenomena of
the exterior world in the human consciousness, it must be added,
concerningEduard Bernsteins system, that theories are sometimes
inverted images. Think of a theory of instituting socialism by means
of social reforms in the face of the complete stagnation of the reform
movement in Germany. Think of a theory of trade union control.
Consider the theory of winning a majority in parliament, after the
revision of the constitution of Saxony and in view of the most recent
attempts against universal suffrage. However, the pivotal point of
Bernsteins system is not located in his conception of the practical
tasks of social democracy. It is found in his stand on the course of the
objective development of capitalist society, which, in turn, is closely
bound to his conception of the practical tasks of social democracy.
According to Bernstein, a general decline of capitalism seems to
be increasingly improbable because, on the one hand, capitalism
shows a greater capacity of adaptation and, on the other hand, capitalist production becomes more and more varied.
The capacity of capitalism to adapt itself, says Bernstein, is manifested first in the disappearance of general crises, resulting from the
development of the credit system, employers organisations, wider
means of communication and informational services. It shows itself
secondly in the tenacity of the middle classes, which hails from the
growing differentiation of the branches of production and the elevation of vast layers of the proletariat to the level of the middle class.
It is furthermore proved, argues Bernstein, by the amelioration of
the economic and political situation of the proletariat as a result of
its trade union activity.
From this theoretical stand is derived the following general
conclusion about the practical work of social democracy. The latter must not direct its daily activity toward the conquest of political
power, but toward the betterment of the condition of the working
class within the existing order. It must not expect to institute socialism as a result of a political and social crisis, but should build socialism by means of the progressive extension of social control and the
gradual application of the principle of cooperation.
Bernstein himself sees nothing new in his theories. On the contrary, he believes them to be in agreement with certain declarations
of Marx and Engels. Nevertheless, it seems to us that it is difficult to
deny that they are in formal contradiction with the conceptions of
scientific socialism.
If Bernsteins revisionism merely consisted in affirming that the
march of capitalist development is slower than was thought before,
he would merely be presenting an argument for adjourning the
conquest of power by the proletariat. Its only consequence would
be a slowing up of the pace of the struggle. But that is not the case.
What Bernstein questions is not the rapidity of the development of
capitalist society, but the march of the development itself and, consequently, the very possibility of a transition to socialism.
Socialist theory up to now declared that the point of departure
for a transformation to socialism would be a general and catastrophic crisis. We must distinguish in this outlook two things: the
fundamental idea and its exterior form. The fundamental idea consists of the affirmation that capitalism, as a result of its own inner
contradictions, moves toward a point when it will be unbalanced,
when it will simply become impossible. There were good reasons
for conceiving that juncture in the form of a catastrophic general
commercial crisis. But that is of secondary importance when the
fundamental idea is considered.
The scientific basis of socialism rests, as is well known, on three

principal results of capitalist development. First, on the growing
anarchy of capitalist economy, leading inevitably to its ruin. Second, on the progressive socialisation of the process of production,
which creates the germs of the future social order. And third, on the
increased organisation and consciousness of the proletarian class,
which constitutes the active factor in the coming revolution.
Bernstein pulls away from the first of the three fundamental supports of scientific socialism. He says that capitalist development does
not lead to a general economic collapse.
He does not merely reject a certain form of the collapse. He
rejects the very possibility of collapse. He says, One could claim
that by collapse of the present society is meant something else than
a general commercial crisis, worse than all others, that is a complete collapse of the capitalist system brought about as a result of
its own contradictions. And to this he replies, With the growing
development of society a complete and almost general collapse of
the present system of production becomes more and more improbable, because capitalist development increases on the one hand the
capacity of adaptation and, on the otherthat is at the same time,
the differentiation of industry.
But then the question arises: Why and how, in that case, can we
attain the final goal? According to scientific socialism, the historic
necessity of the socialist revolution manifests itself above all in the
growing anarchy of capitalism, which drives the system into an
impasse. But if one admits with Bernstein that capitalist development does not move in the direction of its own ruin, then socialism
ceases to be objectively necessary. There remain the other two mainstays of the scientific explanation of socialism, which are also said to
be consequences of capitalism itself: the socialisation of the process
of production and the growing consciousness of the proletariat. It
is these two matters that Bernstein has in mind when he says, The
suppression of the theory of collapse does not in any way deprive
socialist doctrine of the power of persuasion. For, examined closely,
what are all factors enumerated by us that make for the suppression or the modification of the former crises? Nothing else, in fact,
than the conditions, or even in part the germs, of the socialisation of

production and exchange.
Very little reflection is needed to understand that here too we face a
false conclusion. Where lies the importance of all the phenomena that
are said by Bernstein to be the means of capitalist adaptationcartels,
the credit system, the development of means of communication, the
amelioration of the situation of the working class, etc? Obviously, in
that they suppress or, at least, attenuate the internal contradictions
of capitalist economy, and stop the development or the aggravation of these contradictions. Thus the suppression of crises can only
mean the suppression of the antagonism between production and
exchange on the capitalist base. The amelioration of the situation of
the working class, or the penetration of certain fractions of the class
into middle layers, can only mean the attenuation of the antagonism
between capital and labour. But if these factors suppress the capitalist contradictions and consequently save the system from ruin, if
they enable capitalism to maintain itselfand that is why Bernstein
calls them means of adaptationhow can cartels, the credit system,
trade unions, etc, be at the same time the conditions and even, in
part, the germs of socialism? Obviously only in the sense that they
express most clearly the social character of production.
But by presenting it in its capitalist form, the same factors render
superfluous, inversely, in the same measure, the transformation of
this socialised production into socialist production. That is why they
can be the germs or conditions of a socialist order only in a theoretical sense and not in a historical sense. They are phenomena which,
in the light of our conception of socialism, we know to be related to
socialism but which, in fact, not only do not lead to a socialist revolution but render it, on the contrary, superfluous.
There remains one force making for socialismthe class consciousness of the proletariat. But it, too, is in the given case not the simple
intellectual reflection of the growing contradictions of capitalism and
its approaching decline. It is now no more than an ideal whose force
of persuasion rests only on the perfection attributed to it.
We have here, in brief, the explanation of the socialist programme
by means of pure reason. We have here, to use simpler language,
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an idealist explanation of socialism. The objective necessity of socialism, the explanation of socialism as the result of the material development of society, falls to the ground.
Revisionist theory thus places itself in a dilemma. Either the
socialist transformation is, as was admitted up to now, the consequence of the internal contradictions of capitalism, and with the
growth of capitalism will develop its inner contradictions, resulting
inevitably, at some point, in its collapse (in that case the means of
adaptation are ineffective and the theory of collapse is correct); or
the means of adaptation will really stop the collapse of the capitalist system and thereby enable capitalism to maintain itself by suppressing its own contradictions. In that case socialism ceases to be a
historic necessity. It then becomes anything you want to call it, but it
is no longer the result of the material development of society.
The dilemma leads to another. Either revisionism is correct in its
position on the course of capitalist development, and therefore the
socialist transformation of society is only a utopia, or socialism is not
a utopia, and the theory of means of adaptation is false. There is
the question in a nutshell.
The Adaptation of Capital

According to Bernstein, the credit system, the perfected means
of communication and the new employers organisations4 are the
important factors that forward the adaptation of capitalist economy.
Credit has diverse applications in capitalism. Its two most important functions are to extend production and to facilitate exchange.
When the inner tendency of capitalist production to extend boundlessly strikes against the restricted dimensions of private property,
credit appears as a means of surmounting these limits in a particular
capitalist manner. Credit, through shareholding, combines in one
magnitude of capital a large number of individual capitals. It makes
available to each capitalist the use of other capitalists moneyin
the form of industrial credit. As commercial credit it accelerates
4: By employers organisations Luxemburg means new methods of organisation
of capitalist production such as trusts, cartels and monopolieseditors note.
11
the exchange of commodities and therefore the return of capital

into production, and thus aids the entire cycle of the process of
production. The manner in which these two principal functions of
credit influence the formation of crises is quite obvious. If it is true
that crises appear as a result of the contradiction existing between
the capacity of extension, the tendency of production to increase,
and the restricted consumption capacity of the market, credit is
precisely, in view of what was stated above, the specific means that
makes this contradiction break out as often as possible. To begin
with, it increases disproportionately the capacity of the extension of
production and thus constitutes an inner motive force that is constantly pushing production to exceed the limits of the market.
But credit strikes from two sides. After having (as a factor of the
process of production) provoked overproduction, credit (as a factor
of exchange) destroys, during the crisis, the very productive forces
it itself created. At the first symptom of the crisis, credit melts away.
It abandons exchange where it would still be found indispensable,
and where it still exists it appears ineffective and useless, and thus
it reduces to a minimum the consumption capacity of the market.
Besides having these two principal results credit also influences
the formation of crises in the following ways. It constitutes the technical means of making available to an entrepreneur the capital of other
owners. It stimulates at the same time the bold and unscrupulous
utilisation of the property of others. That is, it leads to speculation.
Credit not only aggravates the crisis in its capacity as a dissembled
means of exchange, it also helps to bring about and extend the crisis
by transforming all exchange into an extremely complex and artificial mechanism that, having a minimum of metallic money as a real
base, is easily disarranged at the slightest occasion.
We see that credit, instead of being an instrument for the suppression or the attenuation of crises, is on the contrary a particularly
mighty instrument for the formation of crises. It cannot be anything
else. Credit eliminates the remaining rigidity of capitalist relationships. It introduces everywhere the greatest elasticity possible. It
renders all capitalist forces extensible, relative and mutually sensitive to the highest degree. Doing this, it facilitates and aggravates
12
crises, which are nothing more or less than the periodic collisions of
the contradictory forces of capitalist economy.
That leads us to another question. Why does credit generally have
the appearance of a means of adaptation of capitalism? No matter
what the relation or form in which this adaptation is represented
by certain people, it can obviously consist only of the power to suppress one of the several antagonistic relations of capitalist economy,
that is, of the power to suppress or weaken one of these contradictions, and allow liberty of movement, at one point or another, to the
other fettered productive forces.
In fact, it is precisely credit that aggravates these contradictions to
the highest degree. It aggravates the antagonism between the mode
of production and the mode of exchange by stretching production
to the limit and at the same time paralysing exchange at the smallest
pretext. It aggravates the antagonism between the mode of production and the mode of appropriation by separating production
from ownership, that is, by transforming the capital employed in
production into social capital and at the same time transforming
a part of the profit, in the form of interest on capital, into a simple
title of ownership. It aggravates the antagonism existing between
the property relations (ownership) and the relations of production by putting into a small number of hands immense productive
forces and expropriating large numbers of small capitalists. Lastly,
it aggravates the antagonism existing between the social character of
production and private capitalist ownership by rendering necessary
the intervention of the state in production.
In short, credit reproduces all the fundamental antagonisms
of the capitalist world. It accentuates them. It precipitates their
development and thus pushes the capitalist world forward to its
own destruction. The prime act of capitalist adaptation, as far as
credit is concerned, should really consist in breaking and suppressing credit. In fact, credit is far from being a means of capitalist adaptation. It is, on the contrary, a means of destruction of the
most extreme revolutionary significance. Has not this revolutionary character of credit actually inspired plans of socialist reform?
As such, it has had some distinguished proponents, some of whom
13
(Isaac Pereira in France) were, as Marx put it, half prophets, half
rogues.
Just as fragile is the second means of adaptation: employers
organisations. According to Bernstein, such organisations will put
an end to anarchy of production and do away with crises through
their regulation of production. The multiple repercussions of the
development of cartels and trusts have not been considered too
carefully up to now. But they predict a problem that can only be
solved with the aid of Marxist theory.
One thing is certain. We could speak of a damming of capitalist anarchy through the agency of capitalist combines only in the
measure that cartels, trusts, etc become, even approximately, the
dominant form of production. But such a possibility is excluded by
the very nature of cartels. The final economic aim and result of combines is the following. Through the suppression of competition in
a given branch of production, the distribution of the mass of profit
realised on the market is influenced in such a manner that there
is an increase of the share going to this branch of industry. Such
organisation of the field can increase the rate of profit in one branch
of industry at the expense of another. That is precisely why it cannot
be generalised, for when it is extended to all important branches of
industry, this tendency suppresses its own influence.
Furthermore, within the limits of their practical application the
result of combines is the very opposite of suppression of industrial
anarchy. Cartels ordinarily succeed in obtaining an increase of profit
in the home market by producing at a lower rate of profit for the
foreign market, thus utilising the supplementary portions of capital
which they cannot utilise for domestic needs. That is to say, they sell
abroad cheaper than at home. The result is the sharpening of competition abroadthe very opposite of what certain people want to find.
That is well demonstrated by the history of the world sugar industry.
Generally speaking, combines treated as a manifestation of the
capitalist mode of production can only be considered a definite
phase of capitalist development. Cartels are fundamentally nothing
else than a means resorted to by the capitalist mode of production
for the purpose of holding back the fatal fall of the rate of profit
14
in certain branches of production. What method do cartels employ

for this end? That of keeping inactive a part of the accumulated
capital. That is, they use the same method which in another form is
employed in crises. The remedy and the illness resemble each other
like two drops of water. Indeed the first can be considered the lesser
evil only up to a certain point. When the outlets of disposal begin to
shrink, and the world market has been extended to its limit and has
become exhausted through the competition of the capitalist countriesand sooner or later that is bound to comethen the forced
partial idleness of capital will reach such dimensions that the remedy
will become transformed into a malady, and capital, already pretty
much socialised through regulation, will tend to revert again to the
form of individual capital. In the face of the increased difficulties of
finding markets, each individual portion of capital will prefer to take
its chances alone. At that time, the large regulating organisations will
burst like soap bubbles and give way to aggravated competition.
In a note to the third volume of Capital, Engels wrote in 1894:
Since the above was written (1865), competition on the world
market has been considerably intensified by the rapid development of industry in all civilised countries, especially in America
and Germany. The fact that the rapidly and enormously growing productive forces grow beyond the control of the laws of
the capitalist mode of exchanging commodities, inside of which
they are supposed to move, this fact impresses itself nowadays
more and more even on the minds of the capitalists. This is
shown especially by two symptoms. First, by the new and
general mania for a protective tariff, which differs from the
old protectionism especially by the fact that now the articles
which are capable of being exported are the best protected.
In the second place it is shown by the trusts of manufacturers
of whole spheres of production for the regulation of production, and thus of prices and profits. It goes without saying that
these experiments are practicable only so long as the economic
weather is relatively favourable. The first storm must upset
them and prove that, although production assuredly needs
15
regulation, it is certainly not the capitalist class which is fitted

for that task. Meanwhile the trusts have no other mission but
to see to it that the little fish are swallowed by the big fish still
more rapidly than before.
Generally, cartels, just like credit, appear therefore as a determined phase of capitalist development, which in the last analysis
aggravates the anarchy of the capitalist world and expresses and
ripens its internal contradictions. Cartels aggravate the antagonism
existing between the mode of production and exchange by sharpening the struggle between the producer and consumer, as is the case
especially in the US. They aggravate, furthermore, the antagonism
existing between the mode of production and the mode of appropriation by opposing, in the most brutal fashion, to the working
class the superior force of organised capital, and thus increasing the
antagonism between capital and labour.
Finally, capitalist combinations aggravate the contradiction existing between the international character of capitalist world economy
and the national character of the statein so far as they are always
accompanied by a general tariff war, which sharpens the differences
among the capitalist states. We must add to this the decidedly revolutionary influence exercised by cartels on the concentration of production, technical progress, etc.
In other words, when evaluated from the angle of their final effect
on capitalist economy, cartels and trusts fail as means of adaptation. They fail to attenuate the contradictions of capitalism. On the
contrary, they are an instrument of greater anarchy. They encourage
the further development of the internal contradictions of capitalism.
They accelerate the coming of a general decline of capitalism.
But if the credit system, cartels and the rest do not suppress the
anarchy of capitalism, why have we not had a major commercial
crisis for two decades, since 1873? Is this not a sign that, contrary
to Marxs analysis, the capitalist mode of production has adapted
itselfat least, in a general wayto the needs of society? Hardly had
Bernstein rejected, in 1898, Marxs theory of crises, when a profound
general crisis broke out in 1900, while seven years later a new crisis,
16
beginning in the US, hit the world market. Facts proved the theory
of adaptation to be false. They showed at the same time that the
people who abandoned Marxs theory of crisis only because no crisis
occurred within a certain space of time merely confused the essence
of this theory with one of its secondary exterior aspectsthe tenyear cycle. The description of the cycle of modern capitalist industry
as a ten-year period was to Marx and Engels, in 1860 and 1870, only
a simple statement of facts. It was not based on a natural law but on
a series of given historic circumstances that were connected with the
rapidly spreading activity of young capitalism.
The crisis of 1825 was in effect the result of extensive investment of
capital in the construction of roads, canals, gasworks, which took place
during the preceding decade, particularly in England, where the crisis broke out. The following crisis of 1836-9 was similarly the result
of heavy investments in the construction of means of transportation.
The crisis of 1847 was provoked by the feverish building of railroads
in England (from 1844 to 1847, in three years, the British parliament
gave railway concessions to the value of 1.5 billion taler). In each of
the three mentioned cases, a crisis came after new bases for capitalist
development were established. In 1857, the same result was brought
about by the abrupt opening of new markets for European industry in America and Australia, after the discovery of the gold mines,
and the extensive construction of railway lines, especially in France,
where the example of England was then closely imitated. (From 1852
to 1856, new railway lines to the value of 1,250 million francs were
built in France alone.) And finally we have the great crisis of 1873a
direct consequence of the firm boom of large industry in Germany
and Austria, which followed the political events of 1866 and 1871.5
So up to now, the sudden extension of the domain of capitalist economy, and not its shrinking, was each time the cause of the
commercial crisis. That the international crises repeated themselves precisely every ten years was a purely exterior fact, a matter
of chance. The Marxist formula for crises as presented by Engels
5: This is a reference to a series of conflicts with other European powers as Otto
von Bismarck sought to unify Germany under Prussian leadershipeditors note.
17
inAnti-Dhringand by Marx in the first and third volumes ofCapital

applies to all crises only in the measure that it uncovers their international mechanism and their general basic causes.
Crises may repeat themselves every five or ten years, or even every
eight or twenty years. But what proves best the falseness of Bernsteins
theory is that it is in the countries having the greatest development
of the famous means of adaptationcredit, perfected communications and truststhat the last crisis (1907-8) was most violent.
The belief that capitalist production could adapt itself to
exchange presupposes one of two things: either the world market
can spread unlimitedly, or on the contrary the development of the
productive forces is so fettered that it cannot pass beyond the bounds
of the market. The first hypothesis constitutes a material impossibility. The second is rendered just as impossible by the constant technical progress that daily creates new productive forces in all branches.
There remains still another phenomenon which, says Bernstein,
contradicts the course of capitalist development as it is indicated
above. In the steadfast phalanx of medium sized enterprises,
Bernstein sees a sign that the development of large industry does
not move in a revolutionary direction and is not as effective from
the angle of the concentration of industry as was expected by the
theory of collapse. He is here, however, the victim of his own lack
of understanding. For to see the progressive disappearance of large
industry is to misunderstand sadly the nature of this process.
According to Marxist theory, small capitalists play in the general
course of capitalist development the role of pioneers of technical
change. They possess that role in a double sense. They initiate new
methods of production in well established branches of industry;
they are instrumental in the creation of new branches of production
not yet exploited by the big capitalist. It is false to imagine that the
history of the medium sized capitalist establishments proceeds rectilinearly in the direction of their progressive disappearance. The
course of this development is on the contrary purely dialectical and
moves constantly among contradictions. The middle capitalist layers
find themselves, just like the workers, under the influence of two
antagonistic tendencies, one ascendent, the other descendent. In
18
this case, the descendent tendency is the continued rise of the scale
of production, which overflows periodically the dimensions of the
average-sized parcels of capital and removes them repeatedly from
the terrain of world competition.
The ascendent tendency is, first, the periodic depreciation of the
existing capital, which lowers again, for a certain time, the scale of
production in proportion to the value of the necessary minimum
amount of capital. It is represented, besides, by the penetration
of capitalist production into new spheres. The struggle of the
averagesized enterprise against big capital cannot be considered a
regularly proceeding battle in which the troops of the weaker party
continue to melt away directly and quantitatively. It should be rather
regarded as a periodic mowing down of the small enterprises, which
rapidly grow up again, only to be mowed down once more by large
industry. The two tendencies play ball with the middle capitalist layers. The descending tendency must win in the end.
The very opposite is true about the development of the working
class. The victory of the descending tendency must not necessarily
show itself in an absolute numerical diminution of the medium sized
enterprises. It must show itself first in the progressive increase of
the minimum amount of capital necessary for the functioning of the
enterprises in the old branches of production; second in the constant
diminution of the interval of time during which the small capitalists
conserve the opportunity to exploit the new branches of production.
The result as far as the small capitalist is concerned is a progressively
shorter duration of his stay in the new industry and a progressively
more rapid change in the methods of production as a field for investment. For the average capitalist strata, taken as a whole, there is a
process of more and more rapid social assimilation and dissimilation.
Bernstein knows this perfectly well. He himself comments on
this. But what he seems to forget is that this very thing is the law
of the movement of the average capitalist enterprise. If one admits
that small capitalists are pioneers of technical progress, and if it is
true that the latter is the vital pulse of the capitalist economy, then
it is manifest that small capitalists are an integral part of capitalist development, which can only disappear together with it. The
19
progressive disappearance of the medium sized enterprisein the

absolute sense considered by Bernsteinmeans not, as he thinks,
the revolutionary course of capitalist development, but precisely the
contrary, the cessation, the slowing up of development. The rate of
profit, that is to say, the relative increase of capital, said Marx, is
important first of all for new investors of capital, grouping themselves independently. And as soon as the formation of capital falls
exclusively into a handful of big capitalists, the revivifying fire of
production is extinguished. It dies away.
The Realisation of Socialism through Social Reforms

Bernstein rejects the theory of collapse as a historic road toward
socialism. Now what is the way to a socialist society that is proposed
by his theory of adaptation to capitalism? Bernstein answers this
question only by allusion. Konrad Schmidt,6 however, attempts to
deal with this detail in the manner of Bernstein. According to him,
The trade union struggle for hours and wages and the political
struggle for reforms will lead to a progressively more extensive
control over the conditions of production, and as the rights of
the capitalist proprietor will be diminished through legislation, he
will be reduced in time to the role of a simple administrator. The
capitalist will see his property lose more and more value to himself
till finally the direction and administration of exploitation will be
taken from him entirely and collective exploitation instituted.
Therefore trade unions, social reforms and, adds Bernstein,
the political democratisation of the state are the means of the progressive realisation of socialism. But the fact is that the principal
function of trade unions (and this was best explained by Bernstein
himself inNeue Zeitin 1891) consists in providing the workers with
a means of realising the capitalist law of wages, that is to say, the sale
of their labour power at current market prices. Trade unions enable
the proletariat to utilise at each instant the conjuncture of the market. But these conjunctures(1) the labour demand determined by
6: Schmidt was another member of the SPDeditors note.
20
the state of production, (2) the labour supply created by the proletarianisation of the middle strata of society and the natural reproduction of the working classes, and (3) the momentary degree of
productivity of labourthese remain outside of the sphere of influence of the trade unions. Trade unions cannot suppress the law of
wages. Under the most favourable circumstances, the best they can
do is to impose on capitalist exploitation the normal limit of the
moment. They have not, however, the power to suppress exploitation itself, not even gradually.
Schmidt, it is true, sees the present trade union movement in a
feeble initial stage. He hopes that in the future the trade union
movement will exercise a progressively increased influence over the
regulation of production. But by the regulation of production we
can only understand two things: intervention in the technical domain
of the process of production and fixing the scale of production itself.
What is the nature of the influence exercised by trade unions in these
two departments? It is clear that in the technique of production, the
interest of the capitalist agrees, up to a certain point, with the progress and development of capitalist economy. It is his own interest
that pushes him to make technical improvements. But the isolated
worker finds himself in a decidedly different position. Each technical transformation contradicts his interests. It aggravates his helpless
situation by depreciating the value of his labour power and rendering
his work more intense, more monotonous and more difficult.
In so far as trade unions can intervene in the technical department of production, they can only oppose technical innovation. But
here they do not act in the interest of the entire working class and
its emancipation, which accords rather with technical progress and,
therefore, with the interest of the isolated capitalist. They act here
in a reactionary direction. And in fact, we find efforts on the part of
workers to intervene in the technical part of production not in the
future, where Schmidt looks for it, but in the past of the trade union
movement. Such efforts characterised the old phase of English
trade unionism (up to 1860), when the British organisations were
still tied to medieval corporative vestiges and found inspiration in
the outworn principle of a fair days wage for a fair days labour.
21
On the other hand, the effort of the labour unions to fix the scale
of production and the prices of commodities is a recent phenomenon. Only recently have we witnessed such attemptsand again
in England. In their nature and tendencies, these efforts resemble those dealt with above. What does the active participation of
trade unions in fixing the scale and cost of production amount to?
It amounts to a cartel of the workers and entrepreneurs in a common stand against the consumer and especially rival entrepreneurs.
In no way is the effect of this any different from that of ordinary
employers associations. Basically we no longer have here a struggle
between labour and capital, but the solidarity of capital and labour
against the total consumers. Considered for its social worth, it is
seen to be a reactionary move that cannot be a stage in the struggle
for the emancipation of the proletariat, because it represents the
very opposite of the class struggle. Considered from the angle of
practical application, it is found to be a utopia which, as shown by
a rapid examination, cannot be extended to the large branches of
industry producing for the world market.
The scope of trade unions is limited essentially to a struggle for
an increase of wages and the reduction of labour time, that is to say,
to efforts at regulating capitalist exploitation. But trade unions can
in no way influence the process of production itself. Moreover, trade
union development movescontrary to what is asserted by Konrad
Schmidtin the direction of a complete detachment of the labour
market from any immediate relation to the rest of the market. That is
shown by the fact that even attempts to relate labour contracts to the
general situation of production by means of a system of sliding wage
scales have been outmoded with historic development. The British
trade unions are moving farther and farther away from such efforts.
Even within the effective boundaries of its activity the trade union
movement cannot spread in the unlimited way claimed for it by the
theory of adaptation. On the contrary, if we examine the long periods of social development, we see that we are not moving toward
an epoch marked by a victorious development of trade unions, but
rather toward a time when the hardships of trade unions will increase.
Once industrial development has attained its highest p
ossible point
22
and capitalism has entered its descending phase on the world market, the trade union struggle will become doubly difficult.
In the first place, the objective conjuncture of the market will be
less favourable to the sellers of labour power, because the demand
for labour power will increase at a slower rate and labour supply
more rapidly than at present. In the second place, the capitalists
themselves, in order to make up for losses suffered on the world
market, will make even greater efforts than at present to reduce the
part of the total product going to the workers (in the form of wages).
The reduction of wages is, as pointed out by Marx, one of the principal means of retarding the fall in the rate of profit. The situation in
England already offers us a picture of the beginning of the second
stage of trade union development. Trade union action is reduced of
necessity to the simple defence of already realised gains, and even
that is becoming more and more difficult. Such is the general trend
of things in our society. The counterpart of this tendency should be
the development of the political side of the class struggle.
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, 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 Bundesrat7 are transformed into
measures for the transition to socialism 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
7: The upper house of Germanys parliament, which was not democratically
electededitors note.
23
reform measures are not an application of social control. They

are forms of control applied by the class organisation of capital to
the production of capital. The so-called social reforms are enacted
in the interests of capital. Yes, Bernstein and Konrad Schmidt see at
present only feeble beginnings of this control. They hope to see a
long succession of reforms in the future, all favouring the working
class. But here they commit a mistake similar to their belief in the
unlimited development of the trade union movement.
A basic condition for the theory of the gradual realisation of
socialism through social reforms is a certain objective development
of capitalist property and of the state. Konrad Schmidt says that
the capitalist proprietor tends to lose his special rights with historic
development and is reduced to the role of a simple administrator.
He thinks that the expropriation of the means of production cannot
possibly be effected as a single historic act. He therefore resorts to
the theory of expropriation by stages. With this in mind, he divides
the right to property into (1) the right of sovereignty (ownership)which he attributes to a thing called society and which he
wants to extendand (2) its opposite, the simple right of use, held
by the capitalist, but which is supposedly being reduced in the hands
of the capitalists to the mere administration of their enterprises.
This interpretation is either a simple play on words, and in that
case the theory of gradual expropriation has no real basis, or it is a
true picture of judicial development, in which case, as we shall see,
the theory of gradual expropriation is entirely false.
The division of the right of property into several component
rights, an arrangement serving Konrad Schmidt as a shelter wherein
he may construct his theory of expropriation by stages, characterised feudal society, founded on natural economy. In feudalism the
total product was shared among the social classes of the time on the
basis of the personal relations existing between the feudal lord and
his serfs or tenants. The decomposition of property into several partial rights reflected the manner of distribution of the social wealth
of that period. With the passage to the production of commodities
and the dissolution of all personal bonds among the participants
in the process of production, the relation between men and things
24
(that is to say, private property) became reciprocally stronger. Since

the division is no longer made on the basis of personal relations
but through exchange, the different rights to a share in the social
wealth are no longer measured as fragments of property rights having a common interest. They are measured according to the values
brought by each on the market.
The first change introduced into juridical relations with the
advance of commodity production in the medieval city communes was
the development of absolute private property. The latter appeared in
the very midst of the feudal juridical relations. This development has
progressed at a rapid pace in capitalist production. The more the process of production is socialised, the more the process of distribution
(division of wealth) rests on exchange. And the more private property
becomes inviolable and closed, the more capitalist property becomes
transformed from the right to the product of ones own labour to the
simple right to appropriate somebody elses labour. As long as the
capitalist himself manages his own factory, distribution is still, up to a
certain point, tied to his personal participation in the process of production. But as the personal management on the part of the capitalist
becomes superfluouswhich is the case in the shareholding societies
todaythe property of capital, so far as its right to share in the distribution (division of wealth) is concerned, becomes separated from any
personal relation with production. It now appears in its purest form.
The capitalist right to property reaches its most complete development in capital held in the shape of shares and industrial credit.
So Konrad Schmidts historic schema, tracing the transformation
of the capitalist from a proprietor to a simple administrator, belies
the real historical development. In historical reality, on the contrary,
the capitalist tends to change from a proprietor and administrator
to a simple proprietor. What happens here to Konrad Schmidt, happened to Goethe: What is, he sees as in a dream / What no longer
is, becomes for him reality.
Just as Schmidts historic schema travels, economically, backwards from a modern shareholding society to an artisans shop, so,
juridically, he wishes to lead back the capitalist world into the old
feudal shell of the Middle Ages.
25
Also from this point of view, social control appears in reality

under a different aspect than seen by Konrad Schmidt. What functions today as social controllabour legislation, the control of
industrial organisations through shareholding, etchas absolutely
nothing to do with his supreme ownership. Far from being, as
Schmidt believes, a reduction of capitalist ownership, his social
control is, on the contrary, a protection of such ownership. Or,
expressed from the economic viewpoint, it is not a threat to capitalist exploitation, but simply the regulation of exploitation. When
Bernstein asks if there is more or less of socialism in a labour protective law, we can assure him that, in the best of labour protective laws,
there is no more socialism than in a municipal ordinance regulating the cleaning of streets or the lighting of street lamps.
Capitalism and the State

The second condition for the gradual realisation of socialism is,
according to Bernstein, the evolution of the state in society. It has
become a commonplace to say that the present state is a class state.
This, too, like referring to capitalist society, should not be understood in a rigid, absolute manner, but dialectically.
The state became capitalist with the political victory of the bourgeoisie. Capitalist development modifies essentially the nature of
the state, widening its sphere of action, constantly imposing on it
new functions (especially those affecting economic life), making
more and more necessary its intervention and control in society. In
this sense, capitalist development prepares little by little the future
fusion of the state to society. It prepares, so to say, the return of the
function of the state to society. Following this line of thought, one
can speak of an evolution of the capitalist state into society, and this
is undoubtedly what Marx had in mind when he referred to labour
legislation as the first conscious intervention of society in the vital
social process, a phrase upon which Bernstein leans heavily.
But on the other hand, the same capitalist development realises
another transformation in the nature of the state. The present state
is, first of all, an organisation of the ruling class. It assumes functions favouring social developments specifically because, and in the
26
measure that, these interests and social developments coincide, in

a general fashion, with the interests of the dominant class. Labour
legislation is enacted as much in the immediate interest of the capitalist class as in the interest of society in general. But this harmony
endures only up to a certain point of capitalist development. When
capitalist development has reached a certain level the interests of
the bourgeoisie as a class and the needs of economic progress begin
to clash even in the capitalist sense. We believe that this phase has
already begun. It shows itself in two extremely important phenomena of contemporary social life: on the one hand, the policy of tariff
barriers and, on the other, militarism. These two phenomena have
played an indispensable and in that sense a progressive and revolutionary role in the history of capitalism. Without tariff protection
the development of large industry would have been impossible in
several countries. But now the situation is different.
At present, protection does not serve so much to develop young
industry as to maintain artificially certain aged forms of production.
From the angle of capitalist development, that is, from the point
of view of world economy, it matters little whether Germany exports
more merchandise into England or England exports more merchandise into Germany. From the viewpoint of this development it
may be said that the Moor has done his workthe Moor may go.8
Given the condition of reciprocal dependence in which the various
branches of industry find themselves, a protectionist tariff on any
commodity necessarily results in raising the cost of production of
other commodities inside the country. It therefore impedes industrial development. But this is not so from the viewpoint of the interests of the capitalist class. While industry does not need tariff barriers
for its development, the entrepreneurs need tariffs to protect their
markets. This signifies that at present tariffs no longer serve as a
means of protecting a developing capitalism against other modes of
8: The quote is a line from Schillers play Fiesco, or the Genoese Conspiracy (and
not, as is claimed in some editions, a reference to Marx, who was known as the
Moor among friends and family). In other words, from the viewpoint of world
capitalism, tariffs have served their purposeeditors note.
27
production. They are now used by one national group of capitalists

against another group. Furthermore, tariffs are no longer necessary
as an instrument of protection for industry in its movement to create
and conquer the home market. They are now indispensable means
for the cartelisation of industry, that is, means used in the struggle
of capitalist producers against consuming society as a whole. What
brings out in an emphatic manner the specific character of contemporary customs policies is the fact that today agriculture, and not
industry, plays the predominant role in the making of tariffs. The
policy of customs protection has become a tool for expressing feudal
interests in capitalist form.
The same change has taken place in militarism. If we consider
history as it wasnot as it could have been or should have beenwe
must agree that war has been an indispensable feature of capitalist
development. The US, Germany, Italy, the Balkan States, Poland, all
owe the condition of their capitalist development to wars, whether
they resulted in victory or defeat. As long as there were countries
marked by internal political division or economic isolation which
had to be destroyed, militarism played a revolutionary role, considered from the viewpoint of capitalism. But at present the situation
is different. If world politics have become the theatre of menacing
conflicts, it is not so much a question of the opening of new countries to capitalism, but of already existing European antagonisms,
which, transported into other lands, have exploded there. The
armed adversaries we see today in Europe and on other continents
do not range themselves as capitalist countries on one side and
backward countries on the other. They are states pushed to war as
a result of their similarly advanced capitalist development. In view
of this, an explosion is certain to be fatal to this development, in the
sense that it must provoke an extremely profound disturbance and
transformation of economic life in all countries.
However, the matter appears entirely different when considered
from the standpoint of thecapitalist class. For the latter militarism has
become indispensable. First, as a means of struggle for the defence of
national interests in competition against other national groups.
Second, as a means of investment of financial and industrial c apital.
28
Third, as an instrument of class domination over the labouring population inside the country. In themselves, these interests have nothing
in common with the development of the capitalist mode of production. What demonstrates best the specific character of presentday
militarism is the fact that it develops generally in all countries as an
effect, so to speak, of its own internal, mechanical motive power, a
phenomenon that was completely unknown several decades ago.
We recognise this in the fatal character of the impending explosion, which is inevitable in spite of the complete indecisiveness of
the objectives and motives of the conflict. From a motor of capitalist
development militarism has changed into a capitalist malady.
In the clash between capitalist development and the interest of
the dominant class the state takes a position alongside of the latter. Its policy, like that of the bourgeoisie, comes into conflict with
social development. It thus loses more and more of its character as
a representative of the whole of society and is transformed at the
same rate into a pure class state. Or, to speak more exactly, these
two qualities distinguish themselves more from each other and find
themselves in a contradictory relation in the very nature of the state.
This contradiction becomes progressively sharper. For, on the one
hand, we have the growth of the functions of a general interest on
the part of the state, its intervention in social life, its control over
society. But, on the other hand, its class character obliges the state
to move the pivot of its activity and its means of coercion more and
more into domains which are useful only to the class interests of the
bourgeoisie, as in the case of militarism, and tariff and colonial policies. Moreover, the social control exercised by this state is at the
same time penetrated with and dominated by its class character (see
how labour legislation is applied in all countries).
The extension of democracy, which Bernstein sees as a means
of realising socialism by degrees, does not contradict but, on the
contrary, corresponds perfectly to the transformation realised in the
nature of the state. Konrad Schmidt declares that the conquest of a
social democratic majority in parliament leads directly to the gradual socialisation of society. Now, the democratic forms of political
life are without a question a phenomenon expressing clearly the
29
evolution of the state in society. They constitute, to that extent, a

move toward a socialist transformation. But the conflict within the
capitalist state, described above, manifests itself even more emphatically in modern parliamentarism.
Indeed, in accordance with its form, parliamentarism serves to
express, within the organisation of the state, the interests of the whole
society. But what parliamentarism expresses here is capitalist society,
that is to say, a society in which capitalist interests predominate. In
this society, the representative institutions, democratic in form, are in
content the instruments of the interests of the ruling class. This manifests itself in a tangible fashion in the fact that as soon as democracy
shows the tendency to negate its class character and become transformed into an instrument of the real interests of the population, the
democratic forms are sacrificed by the bourgeoisie and by its state
representatives. That is why the idea of the conquest of a parliamentary reformist majority is a calculation which, entirely in the spirit of
bourgeois liberalism, preoccupies itself only with one sidethe formal
sideof democracy, but does not take into account the other side, its
real content. All in all, parliamentarism is not a directly socialist element impregnating gradually the whole capitalist society. It is, on the
contrary, a specific form of the bourgeois class state, helping to ripen
and develop the existing antagonisms of capitalism.
In the light of the history of the objective development of the
state, Bernsteins and Konrad Schmidts belief that increased social
control results in the direct introduction of socialism is transformed
into a formula that finds itself from day to day in greater contradiction with reality.
The theory of the gradual introduction of socialism proposes
progressive reform of capitalist property and the capitalist state in
the direction of socialism. But in consequence of the objective laws
of existing society, one and the other develop in a precisely opposite
direction. The process of production is increasingly socialised, and
state intervention, the control of the state over the process of production, is extended. But at the same time, private property becomes
more and more the form of open capitalist exploitation of the labour
of others, and state control is penetrated with the e xclusive interests
30
of the ruling class. The state, that is to say thepoliticalorganisation

of capitalism, and the property relations, that is to say the juridicalorganisation of capitalism, become morecapitalistand not more
socialist, opposing to the theory of the progressive introduction of
socialism two insurmountable difficulties.
Fouriers scheme of changing, by means of a system of
phalansteries, the water of all the seas into tasty lemonade was
surely a fantastic idea.9 But Bernstein, proposing to change the sea

of capitalist bitterness into a sea of socialist sweetness, by progressively pouring into it bottles of social reformist lemonade, presents
an idea that is merely more insipid but no less fantastic.
The production relations of capitalist society approach more and
more the production relations of socialist society. But, on the other
hand, its political and juridical relations establish between capitalist
society and socialist society a steadily rising wall. This wall is not
overthrown, but is on the contrary strengthened and consolidated
by the development of social reforms and the course of democracy.
Only the hammer blow of revolution, that is, the conquest of political power by the proletariat, can break down this wall.
The General Nature of Reformism

In the first chapter we aimed to show that Bernsteins theory lifted
the programme of the socialist movement off its material base and
tried to place it on an idealist base. How does this theory fare when
translated into practice?
Upon the first comparison, the party practice resulting from
Bernsteins theory does not seem to differ from the practice followed by social democracy up to now. Formerly, the activity of the
Social Democratic Party consisted of trade union work, of agitation
for social reforms and the democratisation of existing political institutions. The difference is not in thewhat,but in thehow.
9: Fourier was one of the utopian socialists. The phalansteries were utopian
communities he envisaged. The notion of the sea turning to lemonade was one
of the flights of fantasy in which he speculated what might happen in a future
utopian societyeditors note.
31
At present the trade union struggle and parliamentary practice

are considered to be the means of guiding and educating the proletariat in preparation for the task of taking over power. From the
revisionist standpoint, this conquest of power is at the same time
impossible or useless. And therefore, trade union and parliamentary activity are to be carried on by the party only for their immediate results, that is, for the purpose of bettering the present situation
of the workers, for the gradual reduction of capitalist exploitation,
for the extension of social control.
If we ignore momentarily the immediate amelioration of the
workers conditionan objective common to our party programme
and revisionismthe difference between the two outlooks is, in
brief, the following. According to the present conception of the
party, trade union and parliamentary activity are important for the
socialist movement because such activity prepares the proletariat
that is to say, creates thesubjectivefactor of the socialist transformationfor the task of realising socialism. But, according to Bernstein,
trade unions and parliamentary activity gradually reduce capitalist
exploitation itself. They remove from capitalist society its capitalist
character. They realise objectivelythe desired social change.
Examining the matter closely, we see that the two conceptions
are diametrically opposed. Viewing the situation from the current
standpoint of our party, we say that as a result of its trade union and
parliamentary struggles, the proletariat becomes convinced of the
impossibility of accomplishing a fundamental social change through
such activity and arrives at the understanding that the conquest
of power is unavoidable. Bernsteins theory, however, begins by
declaring that this conquest is impossible. It concludes by affirming
that socialism can only be introduced as a result of the trade union
struggle and parliamentary activity. For, as seen by Bernstein, trade
union and parliamentary action has a socialist character because it
exercises a progressively socialising influence on capitalist economy.
We tried to show that this influence is purely imaginary. The relations between capitalist property and the capitalist state develop in
entirely opposite directions, so that the daily practical activity of present social democracy loses, in the last analysis, all connection with
32
work for socialism. From the viewpoint of a movement for socialism,

the trade union struggle and our parliamentary practice are vastly
important in so far as they make socialistic theawareness, the consciousness, of the proletariat and help to organise it as a class. But
once they are considered as instruments of the direct socialisation
of capitalist economy, they lose not only their usual effectiveness
but also cease being means of preparing the working class for the
conquest of power. Eduard Bernstein and Konrad Schmidt suffer
from a complete misunderstanding when they console themselves
with the belief that even though the programme of the party is
reduced to work for social reforms and ordinary trade union work,
the final objective of the labour movement is not thereby discarded,
for each forward step reaches beyond the given immediate aim and
the socialist goal is implied as a tendency in the supposed advance.
That is certainly true about the present procedure of German
social democracy. It is true whenever a firm and conscious effort for
conquest of political power impregnates the trade union struggle
and the work for social reforms. But if this effort is separated from
the movement itself and social reforms are made an end in themselves, then such activity not only does not lead to the final goal of
socialism but moves in a precisely opposite direction.
Konrad Schmidt simply falls back on the idea that an apparently
mechanical movement, once started, cannot stop by itself, because
ones appetite grows with the eating, and the working class will
not supposedly content itself with reforms till the final socialist
transformation is realised.
Now the last mentioned condition is quite real. Its effectiveness
is guaranteed by the very insufficiency of capitalist reforms. But the
conclusion drawn from it could only be true if it were possible to
construct an unbroken chain of augmented reforms leading from
the capitalism of today to socialism. This is, of course, sheer fantasy.
In accordance with the nature of things as they are the chain breaks
quickly, and the paths that the supposed forward movement can
take from the point on are many and varied.
What will be the immediate result should our party change its
general procedure to suit a viewpoint that wants to emphasise the
33
practical results of our struggle, that is, social reforms? As soon as

immediate results become the principal aim of our activity the
clear-cut, irreconcilable point of view, which has meaning only in
so far as it proposes to win power, will be found more and more
inconvenient. The direct consequence of this will be the adoption by
the party of a policy of compensation, a policy of political trading,
and an attitude of diffident, diplomatic conciliation.10 But this attitude cannot be continued for a long time. Since the social reforms
can only offer an empty promise, the logical consequence of such a
programme must necessarily be disillusionment.
It is not true that socialism will arise automatically from the daily
struggle of the working class. Socialism will be the consequence of:
(1) the growing contradictions of capitalist economy and (2) the comprehension by the working class of the unavoidability of the suppression of these contradictions through a social transformation.When,
in the manner of revisionism, the first condition is denied and the
second rejected, the labour movement finds itself reduced to a simple cooperative and reformist movement. We move here in a straight
line toward the total abandonment of the class viewpoint.
This consequence also becomes evident when we investigate the
general character of revisionism. It is obvious that revisionism does
not wish to concede that its standpoint is that of the capitalist apologist. It does not join the bourgeois economists in denying the existence of the contradictions of capitalism. But, on the other hand,
what precisely constitutes the fundamental point of revisionism and
distinguishes it from the attitude taken by the social democracy up
to now is that it does not base its theory on the belief that the contradictions of capitalism will be suppressed as a result of the logical
inner development of the present economic system.
We may say that the theory of revisionism occupies an intermediate place between two extremes. Revisionism does not expect to
see the contradictions of capitalism mature. It does not propose to
10: The policy of compensation was the argument from revisionists that the
social democrats should request greater democratisation in exchange for voting
through increases in military spending in parliamenteditors note.
34
suppress these contradictions through a revolutionary transformation. It wants to lessen, to attenuate, the capitalist contradictions.
Thus the antagonism existing between production and exchange is
to be mollified by the cessation of crises and the formation of capitalist combines. The antagonism between capital and labour is to
be adjusted by bettering the situation of the workers and by the
conservation of the middle classes. And the contradiction between
the class state and society is to be liquidated through increased state
control and the progress of democracy.
It is true that the present procedure of social democracy does
not consist in waiting for the antagonisms of capitalism to develop to
an extreme and, only then, suppressing them. On the contrary, the
essence of revolutionary procedure is to be guided by the direction
of this development, once it is ascertained, to push its consequences
to the extreme. Thus social democracy has combated tariff wars and
militarism without waiting for their reactionary character to become
fully evident. Bernsteins procedure is not guided by a consideration
of the development of capitalism, by the prospect of the aggravation
of its contradictions. It is guided by the prospect of the attenuation
of these contradictions. He shows this when he speaks of the adaptation of capitalist economy.
Now, when could such a conception be correct? If it is true that
capitalism will continue to develop in the direction it takes at present,
then its contradictions must necessarily become sharper and more
aggravated instead of disappearing. The possibility of the attenuation of the contradictions of capitalism presupposes that the capitalist
mode of production itself will stop its progress. In short, the general
condition of Bernsteins theory is the cessation of capitalist development. However, his theory condemns itself in a twofold manner.
In the first place, it manifests its utopian character in its stand
on the establishment of socialism. For it is clear that a defective
capitalist development cannot lead to a socialist transformation. In
the second place, Bernsteins theory reveals itsreactionarycharacter when it refers to the rapid capitalist development that is taking
place at present. Given the development of real capitalism, how can
we explain, or rather state, Bernsteins position?
35
We demonstrated in the first chapter the baselessness of the economic conditions on which Bernstein builds his analysis of existing
social relationships. We have seen that neither the credit system nor
cartels can be said to be means of adaptation of capitalist economy.
We have seen that neither the temporary cessation of crises, nor the
survival of the middle class, can be regarded as symptoms of capitalist adaptation. But even should we fail to take into account the erroneous character of all these details we cannot help but be stopped
short by one feature common to all of them. Bernsteins theory does
not seize these manifestations of contemporary economic life as
they appear in their organic relationship with the whole of capitalist
development, with the complete economic mechanism of capitalism.
His theory pulls these details out of their living economic context. It
treats them asdisjecta membra11of a lifeless machine.
Consider, for example, his conception of the adaptive effect of
credit. If we recognise credit as a higher natural stage of the process
of exchange and, therefore, of the contradictions inherent in capitalist exchange, we cannot at the same time see it as a mechanical
means of adaptation existing outside of the process of exchange. It
would be just as impossible to consider money, merchandise and
capital as means of adaptation of capitalism. However, credit,
like money, commodities and capital, is an organic link of capitalist
economy at a certain stage of its development. Like them, it is an
indispensable gear in the mechanism of capitalist economy and, at
the same time, an instrument of destruction, since it aggravates the
internal contradictions of capitalism. The same thing is true about
cartels and the new, perfected means of communication.
The same mechanical view is presented by Bernsteins attempt
to describe the promise of the cessation of crises as a symptom of
the adaptation of capitalist economy. For him, crises are simply
derangements of the economic mechanism. With their cessation,
he thinks, the mechanism could function well. But the fact is that
crises are not derangements in the usual sense of the word. They
11: Scattered fragmentseditors note.
36
are derangements without which capitalist economy could not

develop at all. For if crises constitute the only method possible in
capitalismand therefore the normal methodof solving periodically the conflict existing between the unlimited extension of production and the narrow limits of the world market, then crises are
an organic manifestation inseparable from capitalist economy.
In the unhindered advance of capitalist production lurks a
threat to capitalism that is much greater than crises. It is the threat
of the constant fall of the rate of profit, resulting not only from
the contradiction between production and exchange, but from the
growth of the productivity of labour itself. The fall in the rate of
profit has the extremely dangerous tendency of rendering impossible the production of small and medium capitals. It thus limits the
new formation and therefore the extension of placements of capital.
And it is precisely crises that constitute the other consequence
of the same process. As a result of their periodic depreciation of
capital, crises bring a fall in the prices of means of production, a
paralysis of a part of the active capital and, in time, an increase of
profits. They thus create the possibilities of the renewed advance
of production. Crises therefore appear to be the instruments of
rekindling the fire of capitalist development. Their cessationnot
temporary cessation, but their total disappearance in the world
marketwould not lead to the further development of capitalist
economy. It would destroy capitalism. True to the mechanical view
of his theory of adaptation, Bernstein forgets the necessity of crises
as well as the necessity of new small and medium capitals. And that
is why the constant r eappearance of small capital seems to him to be
the sign of the cessation of capitalist development, though it is, in
fact, a symptom of normal capitalist development.
It is important to note that there is a viewpoint from which all the
above-mentioned phenomena are seen exactly as they have been
presented by the theory of adaptation. It is the viewpoint of the
isolated (single) capitalist who reflects in his mind the economic facts
around him just as they appear when refracted by the laws of competition. The isolated capitalist sees each organic part of the whole
of our economy as an independent entity. He sees them as they act
37
on him, the single capitalist. He therefore considers these facts to

be simple derangements of simple means of adaptation. For the
isolated capitalist, it is true, crises are really simple derangements;
the cessation of crises accords him a longer existence. As far as he
is concerned, credit is only a means of adapting his insufficient
productive forces to the needs of the market. And it seems to him
that the cartel of which he becomes a member really suppresses
industrial anarchy.
Revisionism is nothing else than a theoretical generalisation made
from the angle of the isolated capitalist. Where does this viewpoint
belong theoretically, if not in vulgar bourgeois economics?
All the errors of this school rest precisely on the conception that
mistakes the phenomena of competition, as seen from the angle of
the isolated capitalist, for the phenomena of the whole of capitalist
economy, just as Bernstein considers credit to be a means of adaptation to the needs of exchange. Vulgar economy, too, tries to find the
antidote against the ills of capitalism in the phenomena of capitalism. Like Bernstein, it believes that it is possible to regulate capitalist
economy. And in the manner of Bernstein, it arrives in time at the
desire to palliate the contradictions of capitalism, that is, at the belief
in the possibility of patching up the sores of capitalism. It ends up
by subscribing to a programme of reaction. It ends up in a utopia.
The theory of revisionism can therefore be defined in the following way: it is a theory of socialist standstill built, with the aid of
vulgar economy, on a theory of capitalist standstill.
Economic Development and Socialism12

The greatest conquest of the developing proletarian movement has
been the discovery of the basis for the realisation of socialism in
theeconomic conditionsof capitalist society. As a result of this discovery, socialism was changed from an ideal dreamt of by humanity for thousands of years to a thing ofhistoric necessity.
12: In the original pamphlet this marks the beginning of the second part of
the pamphlet, which considers Bernsteins The Presuppositions of Socialism and the
Tasks of Social Democracyeditors note.
38
Bernstein denies the existence of the economic conditions for

socialism in the society of today. On this count his reasoning has
undergone an interesting evolution. At first, in Neue Zeit, he simply
contested the rapidity of the process of concentration taking place
in industry. He based his position on a comparison of the occupational statistics of Germany in 1882 and 1895. In order to use these
figures for his purpose, he was obliged to proceed in an entirely
summary and mechanical fashion. In the most favourable case, he
could not, even by demonstrating the persistence of medium sized
enterprises, weaken the Marxist analysis because the latter does not
suppose as a condition for the realisation of socialism either a definite rate of concentration of industrythat is, a definitedelayof the
realisation of socialismor, as we have already shown, theabsolute
disappearanceof small capitals, usually described as the disappearance of the petty bourgeoisie.
In the course of the latest development of his ideas Bernstein
furnishes us, in his book, a new assortment of proofs: the statistics
ofshareholding societies. These statistics are used in order to prove
that the number of shareholders increases constantly and as a result
the capitalist class does not become smaller but grows bigger. It is
surprising that Bernstein has so little acquaintance with his material. And it is astonishing how poorly he utilises the existing data on
his own behalf.
If he wanted to disprove the Marxist law of industrial development by referring to the condition of shareholding societies, he
should have resorted to entirely different figures. Anybody who
is acquainted with the history of shareholding societies in Germany knows that their average foundation capital13 has diminished almost constantly. Thus while before 1871 their average
foundation capital reached the figure of 10.8 million marks, it was
only 4.01 million marks in 1871, 3.8 million in 1873, less than a
million from 1882 to 1887, 0.52 million in 1891 and only 0.62 million in 1892. After this date the figures oscillated around 1 million
13: The investment in the company at its foundationeditors note.
39
marks, falling from 1.78 in 1895 to 1.19 in the course of the first
half of 1897.
These are surprising figures. Using them, Bernstein hoped to show
the existence of a counter-Marxian tendency for r etransformation of
large enterprises into small ones. The obvious answer to his attempt
is the following. If you are to prove anything at all by means of your
statistics, you must first show that they refer to thesamebranches
of industry, that they do not appear only where small enterprises or
even artisan industry were the rule before. This, however, you cannot show. The statistical passage of immense shareholding societies
to medium and small enterprises can be explained only by referring to the fact that the system of shareholding societies continues
to penetrate new branches of production. Before, only a small number of large enterprises were organised as shareholding societies.
Gradually shareholding organisation has won medium and even
small enterprises. Today we can observe shareholding societies with
a capital of below 1,000 marks.
Now, what is the economic significance of the extension of the
system of shareholding societies? Economically, the spread of shareholding societies stands for the growing socialisation of production
under the capitalist formsocialisation not only of large but also
of medium and small production. The extension of shareholding
does not, therefore, contradict Marxist theory but, on the contrary,
confirms it emphatically.
What does the economic phenomenon of a shareholding society
actually amount to? It represents, on the one hand, the unification
of a number of small fortunes into a large capital of production. It
stands, on the other hand, for the separation of production from
capitalist ownership. That is, it denotes a double victory being won
over the capitalist mode of productionbut still on a capitalist base.
What is the meaning, therefore, of the statistics cited by Bernstein
according to which an ever greater number of shareholders participate in capitalist enterprises? These statistics demonstrate precisely
the following: at present a capitalist enterprise does not correspond, as
before, to a single proprietor of capital but to a number of capitalists.
Consequently,the economic notion of capitalist no longer signifies
40
an isolated individual. The industrial capitalist of today is a collective

person composed of hundreds and even of thousands of individuals.
The category capitalist has itself become a social category. It has
become socialisedwithin the framework of capitalist society.
In that case, how shall we explain Bernsteins belief that the phenomenon of shareholding societies stands for the dispersion and
not the concentration of capital? Why does he see the extension of
capitalist property where Marx saw its suppression?
That is a simple economic error. By capitalist Bernstein does
not mean a category of production but the right to property. To
him, capitalist is not an economic unit but a fiscal unit. And capital is for him not a factor of production but simply a certain quantity of money. That is why in his English sewing thread trust he does
not see the fusion of 12,300 persons with money into a single capitalist unit but 12,300 different capitalists. That is why the engineer
Schulze whose wifes dowry brought him a large number of shares
from stockholder Mller is also a capitalist for Bernstein.14 That is
why for Bernstein the entire world seems to swarm with capitalists.
Here too, the theoretical basis of his economic error is his popularisation of socialism. By transporting the concept of capitalism
from its productive relations to property relations, and by speaking of simple individuals instead of speaking of entrepreneurs, he
moves the question of socialism from the domain of production
into the domain of relations of fortunethat is, from the relation
between capital and labour to the relation between poor and rich.
In this manner we are merrily led from Marx and Engels to the
author ofThe Evangel of the Poor Sinner.15 There is this difference,
however.Weitling, with the sure instinct of the proletarian, saw in
the opposition between the poor and the rich class antagonisms in
their primitive form, and wanted to make these antagonisms a lever
14: These are references to examples used in Bernsteins bookeditors note.
15: Some English translations give this title as The Evangel of the Poor Fisherman
(rather than Poor Sinner). However, the original German is: Das Evangelium
eines armen Snders. This refers to the work of that name by the early socialist
Wilhelm Weitling, who is mentioned by Luxemburg in the following sentence
editors note.
41
of the movement for socialism. Bernstein, on the other hand, sees

the realisation of socialism in the possibility of making the poor rich.
That is, he locates it in the attenuation of class antagonisms and
therefore in the petty bourgeoisie.
True, Bernstein does not limit himself to the statistics of incomes.
He furnishes statistics of economic enterprises, especially those of the
following countries: Germany, France, England, Switzerland, Austria and the US. But these statistics are not the comparative figures
ofdifferent periodsin each country but of each period in different
countries. We are not therefore offered (with the exception of Germany where he repeats the old contrast between 1895 and 1892) a
comparison of the statistics of enterprises of a given country at different epochs but theabsolutefigures for different countries: England
in 1891, France in 1894, the US in 1890, etc.
He reaches the following conclusion: Though it is true that large
exploitation is already supreme in industry today, it nevertheless represents, including the enterprises dependent on it, even in a country
as developed in Prussia,16at most half of the population occupied in
production. This is also true of Germany, England, Belgium, etc.
What does he actually prove here? He proves not the existence of such
or such a tendency of economic development but merely the absolute relation of forcesof different forms of enterprise or, put in other
words, the absolute relations of the various classes in our society.
Now if one wants to prove in this manner the impossibility of realising socialism, ones reasoning must rest on the theory according
to which the result of social efforts is decided by the relation of the
numerical material forces of the elements in the struggle, that is, by
the mere factor ofviolence. In other words, Bernstein, who always
thunders against Blanquism, himself falls into the grossest Blanquist
error.17 There is this difference, however. To the Blanquists, who
16: Prussia was a German kingdom whose rulers were central to the creation
of the unified German Empire in the 19th century, and it remained the leading
state within that empire in the run-up to the First World Wareditors note.
17: Louis Auguste Blanqui was a French socialist of the 19th century who
argued for a revolution carried through by a small band of socialists in the name
of the masseseditors note.
42
represented a socialist and revolutionary tendency, the possibility of

the economic realisation of socialism appeared quite natural. They
built the chances of a violent revolutioneven by a small minorityon this possibility. Bernstein, on the contrary, infers from the
numerical insufficiency of a socialist majority the impossibility of
the economic realisation of socialism. Social democracy does not,
however, expect to attain its aim either as a result of the victorious violence of a minority or through the numerical superiority of
a majority. It sees socialism as a result of economic necessityand
the comprehension of that necessityleading to the suppression of
capitalism by the working masses.And this necessity manifests itself
above all in the anarchy of capitalism.
What is Bernsteins position on the decisive question of anarchy
in capitalist economy? He denies only the great, general crises.
He does not deny partial and national crises. In other words, he
refuses to see a great deal of the anarchy of capitalism; he sees
only a little of it. He isto use Marxs illustrationlike the foolish virgin who had a child but it was such a little one.18 But the
misfortune is that in matters such as economic anarchy, little and
much are equally bad. If Bernstein recognises the existence of a
little of this anarchy, we may point out to him that by the mechanism of the market economy this bit of anarchy will be extended to
unheard-of proportions, and end in breakdown. But if Bernstein
hopes to transform gradually his bit of anarchy into order and harmony, while maintaining the system of commodity production, he
again falls into one of the fundamental errors of bourgeois political
economy, according to which the mode of exchange is independent of the mode of production.
This is not the place for a lengthy demonstration of Bernsteins
surprising confusion concerning the most elementary principles of
political economy. But there is one pointto which we are led by the
fundamental questions of capitalist anarchythat must be clarified
immediately.
18: Marx uses this line in chapter eight of Capitaleditors note.
43
Bernstein declares that Marxs labour theory of value19 is a mere

abstraction, which, according to him, is a dirty word in political
economy. But if the labour theory of value is only an abstraction, a
mental imagethen every normal citizen who has done military
service and pays his taxes on time has the same right as Karl Marx to
fashion his own mental image, to make his own law of value. Marx
has as much right to neglect the qualities of commodities till they are
no more than the incarnation of quantities of simple human labour
as the economists of the Bhm-Jevons school have to abstract from
all the qualities of commodities apart from their utility.20
To Bernstein, Marxs social labour and Mengers abstract utility
are quite similarpure abstractions. Bernstein forgets completely
that Marxs abstraction is not a mental image; it is a discovery. It
does not exist in Marxs head, but in the market economy. It has
not an imaginary existence, but a real social existence, so real that it
can be cut, hammered, weighed and marked. The abstract human
labour discovered by Marx is, in its developed form, no other
thanmoney. That is one of the greatest of Marxs discoveries, while to
all bourgeois political economists, from the first of the mercantilists
to the last of the classical economists, the mystical creature, money,
remained a book with seven seals.
The Bhm-Jevons abstract utility is, in fact, merely a mental
image, or, more correctly, it is a representation of intellectual emptiness, a private absurdity, for which neither capitalism nor any other
society can be made responsible, but only vulgar bourgeois economics itself. Hugging their brainchild, Bernstein, Bhm and Jevons,
and the entire subjective fraternity, can remain 20 years or more
before the mystery of money, without arriving at a solution that is
19: The notion, expounded by Marx in Capital, that the value of a commodity
reflects the total socially necessary labour time that goes into its production
editors note.
20: Eugen Bhm-Bawerk, William Stanley Jevons and Carl Menger, who
is mentioned in the next paragraph, were all economists who were critical of
the labour theory of value and who contributed to the marginalist school of
economics, which helped lay the foundations for contemporary mainstream
economicseditors note.
44
different from the one reached by any cobbler, namely that money is
also a useful thing. Bernstein has lost all comprehension of Marxs
law of value. Anybody with even a small understanding of Marxist
economics can see that without the law of value Marxs doctrine is
incomprehensible. Or to speak more concretelyfor he who does
not understand the nature of the commodity and its exchange, the
entire economy of capitalism, with all its concatenations, must of
necessity remain an enigma.
What precisely was the key that enabled Marx to open the door to
the secrets of capitalist phenomena and solve, with consummate ease,
problems that were not even suspected by the greatest minds of classic bourgeois economy? It was his conception of capitalist economy
as a historic phenomenonnot merely in the sense recognised in
the best of cases by the classical economists, that is, when it concerns
the feudal past of capitalismbut also in so far as it concerns the
socialist future. The secret of Marxs theory of value, of his analysis
of the problem of money, of his theory of capital, of the theory of
the rate of profit and consequently of the entire existing economic
system, is found in the transitory character of capitalism, the inevitability of its collapse leadingand this is only another aspect of the
same phenomenonto socialism. It is only because Marx looked at
capitalism from a socialist viewpoint, that is, the historic viewpoint,
that he was able to decipher the hieroglyphics of capitalist economy.
And it is precisely because he took the socialist viewpoint as a point
of departure for his analysis of bourgeois society that he was in the
position to put socialism on a scientific basis.
This is the measure by which we evaluate Bernsteins remarks.
He complains of the dualism found everywhere in Marxs monumentalCapital. The work wishes to be a scientific study and prove,
at the same time, a thesis that was completely elaborated a long time
before the editing of the book; it is based on a schema that already
contains the result to which he wants to lead. The return to theCommunist Manifesto[ie, the socialist goal!RL], proves the existence of
vestiges of utopianism in Marxs doctrine.
But what is Marxs dualism, if not the dualism of the socialist
future and the capitalist present? It is the dualism of capitalism and
45
labour, the dualism of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. It is the

scientific reflection of the dualism existing in bourgeois society, the
dualism of the class antagonism writhing inside the social order of capitalism.
Bernsteins recognition of this theoretical dualism in Marx as a
survival of utopianism is really his naive avowal that he denies the
class antagonisms in capitalism. It is his confession that socialism has
become for him only a survival of utopianism. What is Bernsteins
monismBernsteins unitybut the eternal unity of the capitalist
regime, the unity of the former socialist who has renounced his aim
and has decided to find in bourgeois society, one and immutable,
the goal of human development? Bernstein does not see in the economic structure of capitalism the development that leads to socialism. But in order to conserve his socialist programme, at least in
form, he is obliged to take refuge in an idealist construction placed
outside of all economic development. He is obliged to transform
socialism itself from a definite historical phase of social development
into an abstract principle.
That is why the cooperative principlethe meagre decantation of socialism by which Bernstein wishes to garnish capitalist
economyappears as a concession made not to the socialist future
of society but to Bernsteins own socialist past.
Cooperatives, Unions, Democracy

Bernsteins socialism offers to the workers the prospect of sharing
in the wealth of society. The poor are to become rich. How will this
socialism be brought about? His articles, Problems of Socialism
in Neue Zeit, contain only contained vague hints on this question.
Adequate information, however, can be found in his book.
Bernsteins socialism is to be realised with the aid of two instruments: labour unionsor as Bernstein himself characterises them,
economic democracyand cooperatives. The first will suppress
industrial profit; the second will do away with commercial profit.
Cooperativesespecially in the field of productionconstitute a
hybrid form in the midst of capitalism. They can be described as
small units of socialised production within capitalist exchange. But
in a capitalist economy exchange dominates production and, as a
46
result of competition, ruthless exploitation, ie the complete control

of the production process by the interests of capital, becomes a condition for the survival of each enterprise. The domination of capital
over the process of production expresses itself in the following ways.
Labour is intensified. The working day is lengthened or shortened,
according to the situation of the market. And, depending on the
requirements of the market, labour is either employed or thrown
back into the street. In other words, use is made of all methods
that enable an enterprise to stand up against its competitors. The
workers forming a cooperative in the field of production are thus
faced with the contradictory necessity of governing themselves with
the utmost absolutism. They are obliged to play the role of capitalist
entrepreneur toward themselvesa contradiction that accounts for
the usual failure of cooperatives in production, which either become
pure capitalist enterprises or, if the workers interests continue to
predominate, end by dissolving.
Bernstein has himself taken note of these facts. But it is evident
that he has not understood them. For, together with Mrs PotterWebb,21 he explains the failure of cooperatives in production in
England by their lack of discipline. But what is so superficially and
flatly called here discipline is nothing else than the natural regime
of capitalism, which, it is plain, the workers cannot successfully use
against themselves.
Producers cooperatives can survive within capitalist economy
only if they manage to suppress, by means of some detour, the
capitalistcontrolled contradictions between the mode of production and the mode of exchange. And they can accomplish this only
by removing themselves artificially from the influence of the laws of
free competition. And they can succeed in doing the last only when
they assure themselves beforehand of a constant circle of consumers, that is, when they assure themselves of a constant market.
21: Beatrice Webb, who, together with Sidney Webb, founded the Fabian
Society, which preached the gradual and peaceful introduction of socialism in
Britaineditors note.
47
It is the consumers cooperative that can offer this service to its

brother in the field of production. Hereand not in Oppenheimers22
distinction between cooperatives that produce and cooperatives that
sellis the secret sought by Bernstein: the explanation for the invariable failure of producers cooperatives that function independently
and the survival of those backed by consumers organisations.
If it is true that the possibility for the existence of producers
cooperatives within capitalism is bound up with the possibility of
existence of consumers cooperatives, then the scope of the former is
limited, in the most favourable of cases, to the small local market and
to the manufacture of articles serving immediate needs, especially
food products. Consumers and therefore producers cooperatives
are excluded from the most important branches of productionthe
textiles, mining, metallurgical and petroleum industries, machine
and locomotive construction, and shipbuilding. For this reason
alone (forgetting for the moment their hybrid character), cooperatives in the field of production cannot be seriously considered as the
instrument of a general social transformation. The establishment
of producers cooperatives on a wide scale would suppose, first of
all, the suppression of the world market, the breaking up of the
present world economy into small local spheres of production and
exchange. The highly developed capitalism of our time is expected
to fall back to the merchant economy of the Middle Ages.
Within the framework of present society, producers cooperatives
are limited to the role of simple annexes to consumers cooperatives.
It appears, therefore, that the latter must be the beginning of the
proposed social change. But this way the expected reform of society
by means of cooperatives ceases to be an offensive against capitalist
production. That is, it ceases to be an attack against the principal
basis of capitalist economy. It becomes, instead, a struggle against
commercial capital, especially small and medium sized commercial
capital. It becomes an attack made on the twigs of the capitalist tree.
22: Franz Oppenheimer was a German sociologist who Bernstein quoted

approvingly on cooperativeseditors note.
48
According to Bernstein, trade unions too are a means of attack

against capitalism in the field of production. We have already shown
that trade unions cannot give workers influence over production,
either as regards the scale of production or the technical process
of production. This much may be said about the purely economic
side of the struggle of the rate of wages against the rate of profit,
as Bernstein labels the activity of the trade union. It does not take
place in the blue sky; it takes place within the well-defined framework of the law of wages. The law of wages is not shattered but
realised by trade union activity.
According to Bernstein, it is the trade unions that leadin the
general movement for the emancipation of the working classthe
real attack against the rate of industrial profit. According to Bernstein, trade unions have the task of transforming the rate of industrial profit into rates of wages. The fact is that trade unions are least
able to execute an economic offensive against profit. Trade unions
are nothing more than the organiseddefenceof workers against the
attacks of profit. They express the resistance offered by the working
class to the oppression of capitalist economy. This, for two reasons.
First, trade unions influence the market situation of labour
power. But this influence is being constantly overcome by the proletarianisation of the middle layers of society, which continually
brings new labour power onto the market. The second function of
the trade unions is to ameliorate the condition of workers. That
is, they attempt to increase the share of social wealth going to the
working class. This share, however, is being reduced with the fatality
of a natural process by the growth of the productivity of labour. One
does not need to be a Marxist to notice this. It suffices to readRodbertussIn Explanation of the Social Question.
In other words, the objective conditions of capitalist society transform the two economic functions of the trade unions into a sort of
labour of Sisyphus,23 which is, nevertheless, indispensable. For, as
23: In Greek mythology Sisyphus was a king who, after his death, was punished
by the gods for his arrogance by being compelled to eternally push a heavy boulder
up an incline, only to watch it roll back to the bottom each timeeditors note.
49
a result of the activity of his trade unions, the worker succeeds in

obtaining for himself the rate of wages due to him in accordance
with the situation on the labour market. As a result of trade union
activity, the capitalist law of wages is applied and the effect of the
depressing tendency of economic development is paralysed, or to
be more exact, attenuated.
However, the transformation of the trade union into an instrument for the progressive reduction of profit in favour of wages
presupposes the following social conditions; first, the cessation of
the proletarianisation of the middle strata of our society; second, a
stoppage of the growth of productivity of labour. We have in both
casesa return to pre-capitalist conditions.
Cooperatives and trade unions are totally incapable of transforming thecapitalist mode of production. Bernstein is dimly aware of
this, for he refers to cooperatives and trade unions as a means of
reducing the profit of the capitalists and thus enriching the workers.
In this way, he renounces the struggle against thecapitalist mode of
productionand attempts to direct the socialist movement towards
struggle against capitalist distribution. Again and again, Bernstein
refers to socialism as an effort towards a fair, equitable and still
more equitable mode of distribution.
Of course the unfair distribution characteristic of capitalism
gives an impetus to the socialist movement among the masses.
When social democracy struggles for the socialisation of the entire
economy, it aspires also to a fair distribution of the social wealth.
But, guided by Marxs observation that the mode of distribution of
a given epoch is a natural consequence of the mode of production of
that epoch, social democracy does not struggle for fair distribution
within the framework of capitalist production; it struggles instead
for the suppression capitalism. In a word, social democracy wants
to establish socialist distribution by suppressing the capitalist mode
of production. Bernsteins method, on the contrary, proposes to
combat the capitalist mode of distribution in the hopes of gradually
establishing, in this way, the socialist mode of production.
What, in that case, is the basis of Bernsteins programme for the
reform of society? Does it find support in definite tendencies of
50
c apitalist production? No. In the first place, he denies such tendencies. In the second place, the socialist transformation of production
is, for him, the effect and not the cause of distribution. He cannot give his programme a materialist base, because he has already
overthrown the aims and the means of the movement for socialism,
and therefore its economic conditions. As a result, he is obliged to
construct himself an idealist base.
Why represent socialism as the consequence of economic compulsion? he complains. Why degrade mans understanding, his
feeling for justice, his will? Bernsteins superlatively fair distribution is to be attained thanks to mans free will; mans will acting
not because of economic necessity, since this will is only an instrument, but because of mans comprehension of justice, because of
mansidea of justice. We thus quite happily return to the principle
of justice, to the old war horse on which the reformers of the earth
have rocked for ages, for the lack of surer means of historic transportation. We return to the lamentable Rocinante on which the Don
Quixotes of history have galloped towards the great reform of the
earth, always to come home with a black eye.24
The relation of the poor to the rich, taken as a base for socialism,
the principle of cooperation as the content of socialism, the most
fair distribution as its aim, and the idea of justice as its only historic
legitimisationwith how much more force and more fire did Weitling defend that sort of socialism 50 years ago. However, that genius
of a tailor did not know scientific socialism. If today the conception
torn into pieces by Marx and Engels half a century ago is patched
up and presented to the proletariat as the last word of social science,
that too is the art of a tailor, but it has nothing of a genius about it.
Trade unions and cooperatives are the economic support for the
theory of revisionism. Its principal political condition is the growth
of democracy. The present manifestations of political reaction are
to Bernstein only convulsions. He considers them accidental,
24: Rocinante was the name of the steed of the hero of Cervantess Don Quixote,
on which he rides off on his deluded questeditors note.
51
momentary, and suggests that they are not to be considered in the

elaboration of the general directives of the labour movement.
To Bernstein, democracy is an inevitable stage in the development
of society. To him, as to the bourgeois theoreticians of liberalism,
democracy is the great fundamental law of historic development,
the realisation of which is served by all the forces of political life.
However, Bernsteins thesis is completely false. Presented in this
absolute form, it appears as a petty bourgeois vulgarisation of the
results of a very short phase of bourgeois development, the last
25 or 30 years. We reach entirely different conclusions when we
examine the historic development of democracy a little closer and
consider, at the same time, the general political history of capitalism.
Democracy has been found in the most dissimilar social formations: in primitive communist societies, in the slave states of antiquity
and in medieval communes. Similarly, absolutism and constitutional
monarchy are to be found under the most varied economic orders.
When capitalism began, with the first production of commodities, it
resorted to a democratic constitution in the municipal communes of
the Middle Ages. Later, when it developed manufacturing, capitalism found its corresponding political form in the absolute monarchy.
Finally, as a developed industrial economy, it brought into being in
France the democratic republic of 1793, the absolute monarchy of
Napoleon I, the nobles monarchy of the Restoration period (181530), the bourgeois constitutional monarchy of Louis-Philippe, then
again the democratic republic, and against the monarchy of Napoleon III, and finally, for the third time, the Republic.
In Germany the only truly democratic institutionuniversal
suffrageis not a conquest of bourgeois liberalism; here it was an
instrument for the fusion of the small states. It is only in this sense that
it has any importance for the development of the German bourgeoisie, which is otherwise quite satisfied with semi-feudal constitutional
monarchy. In Russia capitalism prospered for a long time under oriental absolutism, without the bourgeoisie manifesting the least desire
to introduce democracy. In Austria universal suffrage was above all
a lifebelt thrown to a foundering and decomposing monarchy. In
Belgium the conquest of universal suffrage by the labour movement
52
was due to the weakness of the local militarism, and consequently to

the special geographic and political situation. But we have here a bit
of democracy that has been won not by the bourgeoisie butagainst it.
The uninterrupted victory of democracy, which to revisionism as
well as to bourgeois liberalism appears as a great fundamental law of
human history and especially modern history, is shown upon closer
examination to be a phantom. No absolute and general relation can
be constructed between capitalist development and democracy. The
political form of a given country is always the result of the composite
of all the existing political factors, domestic as well as foreign. It
admits within its limits all variations of scale from absolute monarchy to the democratic republic.
We must abandon, therefore, all hope of establishing democracy
as a general law of historical development even within the framework
of modern society. Turning to the present phase of bourgeois society,
we observe here, too, political factors which, instead of assuring the
realisation of Bernsteins schema, led rather to the abandonment by
bourgeois society of the democratic conquests won up to now.
Democratic institutionsand this is of the greatest significance
have completely exhausted their function as aids in the development of bourgeois society. In so far as they were necessary to bring
about the fusion of small states and the creation of large modern
states (Germany, Italy) they are no longer indispensable. Economic
development has meanwhile effected an internal healing process.
The same thing can be said concerning the transformation of the
entire political and administrative state machinery from a feudal or
semi-feudal mechanism to a capitalist mechanism. While this transformation has been historically inseparable from the development
of democracy, it has been realised today to such an extent that the
purely democratic ingredients of society, such as universal suffrage and the republican state form, may be suppressed without
having the administration, the state finances or the military organisation find it necessary to return to pre-March forms.25
25: The phrase pre-March refers to German institutions prior to the revolution
of March 1848 which led to some democratic reformseditors note.
53
If liberalism as such is now absolutely useless to bourgeois society,

it has become, on the other hand, a direct impediment to capitalism
from other standpoints. Two factors dominate completely the political
life of contemporary states: world politics and the labour movement.
Each is only a different aspect of the present phase of capitalist development. As a result of the development of the world economy and the
aggravation and generalisation of competition on the world market,
militarism and the policy of big navies have become, as instruments of
world politics, a decisive factor in the interior as well as in the exterior
life of the great states. If it is true that world politics and militarism
represent a rising tendency in the present phase of capitalism, then
bourgeois democracy must logically move in a descending line.
In Germany the era of great armaments began in 1893, and the
policy of world politics, inaugurated with the seizure of Tsingtao,26
were paid for immediately with the following sacrificial victim: the
decomposition of liberalism, the shift of the Centre Party from
opposition to government. The recent elections to the Reichstag of
1907, fought under the sign of German colonial policy, were, at the
same time, the historical burial of German liberalism.
If foreign politics push the bourgeoisie into the arms of reaction
this is no less true of domestic politicsthanks to the rise of the working class. Bernstein shows that he recognises this when he makes the
social democracy that wants to swallow everything responsible for
the desertion of the liberal bourgeoisie. He advises the proletariat to
disavow its socialist aim so that the mortally frightened liberals might
come out of the mousehole of reaction. Making the suppression of
the socialist labour movement an essential condition for the preservation of bourgeois democracy, he proves in a striking manner that
this democracy is in complete contradiction with the inner tendency
of development of the present society. He proves, at the same time,
that the socialist movement is itself adirect productof this tendency.
But he proves still another thing. By making the renunciation
of the socialist aim an essential condition of the resurrection of
26: A Chinese port seized by the German military in 1898editors note.
54
ourgeois democracy he shows how inexact is the claim that bourb

geois democracy is an indispensable condition of the socialist movement and the victory of socialism. Bernsteins reasoning exhausts
itself in a vicious circle. His conclusion swallows his premises.
The way out of this circle is simple: in view of that fact that bourgeois liberalism has given up the ghost from fear of the growing labour
movement and its final aim, we conclude that the socialist labour
movement is today the only support for democracy. We must conclude that the socialist movement is not bound to bourgeois democracy but that, on the contrary, the fate of democracy is bound up with
the socialist movement. Democracy does not acquire greater chances
of survival to the extent that the socialist movement renounces the
struggle for its emancipation; on the contrary, democracy acquires
greater chances of survival as the socialist movement becomes sufficiently strong to struggle against the reactionary consequences of
world politics and the bourgeois desertion of democracy. He who
would strengthen democracy must also want to strengthen and not
weaken the socialist movement. He who renounces the struggle for
socialism renounces both the labour movement and democracy.
The Conquest of Political Power

The fate of democracy is bound up, we have seen, with the fate
of the labour movement. But does the development of democracy
render superfluous or impossible a proletarian revolution, that is,
the conquest of political power by the workers?
Bernstein settles the question by weighing minutely the good and
bad sides of social reform and social revolution. He does it almost in
the same manner in which cinnamon or pepper is weighed out in a
cooperative store. He sees the legislative course of historic development as the action of intelligence, while the revolutionary course
is, for him, the action of feeling. Reformist activity he recognises
as a slow method of historic progress, revolution as a rapid method
of progress. In legislation he sees a methodical force; in revolution,
a spontaneous force.
It is now an old story, that the petty bourgeois reformer finds
good and bad sides in everything, and nibbles a bit at all
55
flowerbeds. But in the real course of events the carefully gathered

little pile of the good sides of all things collapses at the first fillip of history. Historically, legislative reform and the revolutionary
method function in accordance with influences that are much more
profound than the consideration of the advantages or inconveniences of one method or another.
In the history of bourgeois society, legislative reform served to
strengthen progressively the rising class till the latter was sufficiently
strong to seize political power, to suppress the existing juridical system and to construct itself a new one. Bernstein, thundering against
the conquest of political power as a theory of Blanquist violence,
has the misfortune of labelling as a Blanquist error that which has
always been the pivot and the motive force of human history. From
the first appearance of class societies, in which class struggle is the
essential content of their history, the conquest of political power has
been the aim of all rising classes. Here is the starting point and end
of every historic period. This can be seen in the long struggle of the
Latin peasantry against the financiers and nobility of ancient Rome,
in the struggle of the medieval nobility against the bishops and the
struggle of the artisans against the nobles in the cities of the Middle
Ages. In modern times, we see it in the struggle of the bourgeoisie
against feudalism.
Legislative reform and revolution are not different methods of
historic development that can be picked out at the pleasure from
the counter of history, just as one chooses hot or cold sausages. Legislative reform and revolution are different factorsin the development of class society. They condition and complement each other,
and are at the same time reciprocally exclusive, as are the north and
south poles, the bourgeoisie and proletariat.
Every constitution is theproductof a revolution. In the history
of classes, revolution is the act of political creation, while legislation
is the political expression of the life of a society that has already
come into being. Work for reform does not contain its own force,
independent of revolution. During every historic period, the work
for reform is carried on only in the direction given to it by the impetus of the previous revolution and continues as long as the impulse
56
from that revolution continues to make itself felt. Or, to put it more
concretely, in each historic period work for reforms is carried on
only in the framework of the social form created by the previous
revolution. That is the kernel of the problem.
It is contrary to history to represent work for reforms as a long,
drawn out revolution and revolution as a condensed series of
reforms. A social transformation and a legislative reform do not differ according to their duration but according to their content. The
secret of historic change through the utilisation of political power
resides precisely in the transformation of simple quantitative modification into a new quality, or to speak more concretely, in the passage of a historic period from one given form of society to another.
That is why those who pronounce themselves in favour of the
method of legislative reformin place of, and in contrast to,the conquest of political power and social revolution, do not really choose
a more tranquil, calmer and slower road to thesamegoal, but adifferentgoal. Instead of taking a stand for the establishment of a new
society, they take a stand for the minor modification of the old society.
From the political conceptions of revisionism we arrive at the same
conclusion that is reached when we follow the economic theories of
revisionism. Our programme becomes not the realisation ofsocialism,
but the reform ofcapitalism; not the suppression of the wage labour
system, but the diminution of exploitation, that is, the suppression
of the abuses of capitalism instead of suppression of capitalism itself.
Does the reciprocal role of legislative reform and revolution apply
only to the class struggle of the past? Is it possible that now, as a result
of the development of the bourgeois juridical system, the function of
moving society from one historic phase to another belongs to legislative reform and that the conquest of state power by the proletariat
has really become an empty phrase, as Bernstein puts it?
The very opposite is true. What distinguishes bourgeois society
from other class societiesfrom ancient society and from the social
order of the Middle Ages? Precisely the fact that class domination
does not rest on acquired rights but on real economic relations
the fact that wage labour is not a juridical relation, but purely an
economic relation. In our juridical system there is not a single legal
57
formula for the class domination of today. The few remaining traces
of such formulas of class domination (such as those laws concerning
servants) are survivals of feudal society.
How can wage slavery be suppressed in a legislative way if wage
slavery is not expressed in laws? Bernstein, who would do away with
capitalism by means of legislative reforms, finds himself in the same
situation as Uspenskys Russian policeman who said, Quickly I
seized the rascal by the collar! But what do I see? The confounded
fellow had no collar! And that is precisely Bernsteins difficulty.
All previous societies were based on an antagonism between an
oppressing class and an oppressed class (Communist Manifesto). But
in the preceding phases of modern society, this antagonism was
expressed in distinctly determined juridical relations and could,
especially because of that, accord, to a certain extent, a place to new
relations within the framework of the old. In the midst of serfdom,
the serf raised himself to the rank of a member of the town community (Communist Manifesto). How was that made possible? It was
made possible by the progressive suppression of all feudal privileges
in the environs of the citythe corve, the right to special dress,
the inheritance tax, the lords claim to the best cattle, the personal
levy, marriage under duress, the right to succession, etc, which all
together constituted serfdom.
In the same way, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, the petty
bourgeois raised himself to the rank of bourgeoisie (Communist
Manifesto). By what means? By means of the formal partial suppression or actual loosening of the bonds of the guild, by the progressive
transformation of the fiscal administration and of the army.
Consequently, when we consider the question from the abstract
viewpoint, not from the historic viewpoint, we can imagine (in
view of the former class relations) a legal passage, according to the
reformist method, from feudal society to bourgeois society. But what
do we see in reality? In reality, we see that legal reforms not only
do not obviate the need for the seizure of political power by the
bourgeoisie but have, on the contrary, prepared for it and led to it. A
formal social-political transformation was indispensable for the abolition of slavery as well as for the complete suppression of feudalism.
58
But the situation is entirely different now. No law obliges the proletariat to submit itself to the yoke of capitalism. Poverty, the lack of
means of production, obliges the proletariat to submit itself to the
yoke of capitalism. And no law in the world can give to the proletariat the means of production while it remains in the framework
of bourgeois society, for not laws, but economic development, have
torn the means of production from the producers possession.
And neither is the exploitation within the system of wage labour
based on laws. The level of wages is not fixed by legislation but by economic factors. The phenomenon of capitalist exploitation does not
rest on a legal disposition but on the purely economic fact that labour
power plays in this exploitation the role of a commodity possessing, among other characteristics, the agreeable quality of producing
valuemorethan the value it consumes in the form of the labourers means of subsistence. In short, the fundamental relations of the
domination of the capitalist class cannot be transformed by means
of legislative reforms, on the basis of capitalist society, because these
relations have not been introduced by bourgeois laws, nor have they
received the form of such laws. Apparently Bernstein is not aware of
this for he speaks of socialist reforms. On the other hand, he seems
to implicitly recognise it when he writes, on page ten of his book,
The economic motive acts freely today, while formerly it was masked
by all kinds of relations of domination by all sorts of ideology.
It is one of the peculiarities of the capitalist order that, within it, all
the elements of the future society first assume, in their development,
a form not approaching socialism but, on the contrary, a form moving
more and more away from socialism. Production takes on a progressively increasing social character. But under what form is the social
character of capitalist production expressed? It is expressed in the
form of the large enterprise, in the form of the shareholding concern,
the cartel, within which capitalist antagonisms, capitalist exploitation,
the oppression of labour power, are augmented to the extreme.
In the army, capitalist development leads to the extension of
obligatory military service, to the reduction of the time of service;
consequently it approaches a popular militia. But all of this takes
place under the form of modern militarism in which the domination
59
of the people by the militarist state and the class character of the
state manifest themselves most clearly.
In the field of political relations, the development of democracy
bringsin the measure that it finds favourable soilthe participation of all popular strata in political life and, consequently, some sort
of peoples state. But this participation takes the form of bourgeois
parliamentarism, in which class antagonisms and class domination
are not done away with but are, on the contrary, displayed in the
open. Precisely because capitalist development moves through these
contradictions it is necessary to extract the kernel of socialist society
from its capitalist shell. Precisely for this reason must the proletariat
seize political power and suppress completely the capitalist system.
Of course, Bernstein draws other conclusions. If the development of democracy leads to the aggravation and not to the lessening of capitalist antagonisms, Social democracy, he answers us, in
order not to render its task more difficult, must by all means try to
stop social reforms and the extension of democratic institutions.
Indeed, that would be the right thing to do if social democracy
found to its taste, in the petty bourgeois manner, the futile task of
picking out all the good sides of history and rejecting the bad sides
of history. However, in that case, it should at the same time try to
stop capitalism in general, for there is no doubt that latter is the
rascal placing all these obstacles in the way of socialism. But capitalism furnishes besides theobstaclesalso the onlypossibilitiesof realising the socialist programme. The same can be said of democracy.
If democracy has become superfluous or annoying to the bourgeoisie, it is on the contrary necessary and indispensable to the
working class. It is necessary to the working class because it creates
the political forms (autonomous administration, electoral rights, etc)
which will serve the proletariat as fulcrums in its task of transforming bourgeois society. Democracy is indispensable to the working
class because only through the exercise of its democratic rights, in
the struggle for democracy, can the proletariat become aware of its
class interests and its historic task.
In a word, democracy is indispensable not because it renders
superfluous the conquest of political power by the proletariat, but
60
because it renders this conquest of power bothnecessaryandpossible. When Engels, in his preface to The Class Struggles in France,
revised the tactics of the modern labour movement and urged the
legal struggle as opposed to the barricades, he did not have in
mindthis comes out of every line of the prefacethe question of
a definite conquest of political power, but the contemporary daily
struggle. He did not have in mind the attitude that the proletariat
must take toward the capitalist state at the time of the seizure of
power but the attitude of the proletariat while within the bounds
of the capitalist state. Engels was giving directions to the proletariatoppressed and not to the proletariat victorious.
On the other hand, Marxs well-known declaration on the agrarian question in England (Bernstein leans on it heavily), in which he
says, We shall probably succeed easier by buying the estates of the
landlords, does not refer to the stand of the proletariatbefore, but
after, its victory. For there evidently can be a question of buying the
property of the old dominant class only when the workers are in
power. The possibility envisaged by Marx is that of thepeaceful exercise of the dictatorship of the proletariatand not the replacement of
the dictatorship with capitalist social reforms. There was no doubt
for Marx and Engels about the necessity of having the proletariat
conquer political power. It is left to Bernstein to consider the chicken
coop of bourgeois parliamentarism as the organ by means of which
we are to realise the most formidable social transformation of historythe passage from capitalist society to socialism.
Bernstein introduces his theory by warning the proletariat
against the danger of acquiring power too early. That is, according
to Bernstein, the proletariat ought to leave bourgeois society in its
present condition and itself suffer a frightful defeat. If the proletariat came to power, it could draw from Bernsteins theory the following practical conclusion: to go to sleep. His theory condemns the
proletariat at the most decisive moments of the struggle to inactivity,
to a passive betrayal of its own cause.
Our programme would be a miserable scrap of paper if it could
not serve us inalleventualities, atallmoments of the struggle, and
if it did not serve us by itsapplicationand not by its non-application.
61
If our programme contains the formula of the historical development of society from capitalism to socialism, it must also formulate,
in all its characteristic fundamentals, all the transitional phases of
this development and it should, consequently, be able to indicate to
the proletariat what ought to be its corresponding action at every
moment on the road toward socialism. There can be no time for the
proletariat when it will be obliged to abandon its programme or be
abandoned by it.
Practically, this is manifested in the fact that there can be no time
when the proletariat, placed in power by the force of events, is not
in the condition or is not morally obliged to take certain measures
for the realisation of its programme, that is, take transitional measures in the direction of socialism. Behind the belief that the socialist
programme can collapse completely at any point of the dictatorship
of the proletariat lurks the other belief that thesocialist programme
is generally, and at all times, unrealisable.
And what if the transitional measures are premature? The question hides a great number of mistaken ideas concerning the real
course of a social transformation.
In the first place, the seizure of political power by the proletariat,
that is to say by a large popular class, is not produced artificially.
It presupposes (with the exception of such cases as the Paris Commune, when the proletariat did not obtain power after a conscious
struggle but had it fall into its hands like an object discarded by
everybody else) a definite degree of maturity of economic and political relations. Here we have the essential difference between coups
dtat conceived by Blanqui, which are accomplished by an active
minority and burst out like pistol shot, always inopportunely, and
the conquest of political power by a great, conscious popular mass,
which can only be the product of the decomposition of bourgeois
society and therefore bears in itself the economic and political legitimation of its opportune appearance.
If, therefore, considered from the angle of political effect the
conquest of political power by the working class cannot materialise
itself too early then from the angle of conservation of power, the
premature revolution, the thought of which keeps Bernstein awake,
62
menaces us like a sword of Damocles. Against that neither prayers

nor supplication, neither scares nor any amount of anguish, are of
any avail. And this for two very simple reasons.
In the first place, it is impossible to imagine that a transformation
as formidable as the passage from a capitalist society to a socialist
society can be realised in one happy act. To consider that as possible
is, again, to lend colour to conceptions that are clearly Blanquist.
The socialist transformation supposes a long and stubborn struggle,
in the course of which it is quite probable the proletariat will be
repulsed more than once, so that for the first time, from the viewpoint of the final outcome of the struggle, it will have necessarily
come to power too early.
In the second place, it will be impossible to avoid the premature conquest of state power by the proletariat precisely because
these premature attacks of the proletariat constitute a factor, and
indeed a very important factor, creating the political conditions for
the final victory. In the course of the political crisis accompanying its
seizure of power, in the course of the long and stubborn struggles,
the proletariat will acquire the degree of political maturity permitting it to obtain in time a definitive victory of the revolution. Thus
these premature attacks of the proletariat against the state power
are in themselves important historic factors helping to provoke and
determine the point of the definite victory. Considered from this
viewpoint, the idea of a premature conquest of political power by
the labouring class appears to be a polemic absurdity derived from
a mechanical conception of the development of society, and positing
for the victory of the class struggle a point fixed outside and independent of the class struggle.
Since the proletariat is not in the position to seize power in any
other way than prematurely, since the proletariat is absolutely
obliged to seize power once or several times too early before it
can maintain itself in power for good, the objection to the premature conquest of power is at bottom nothing more than ageneral
opposition to the aspiration of the proletariat to possess itself of state
power. Just as all roads lead to Rome, so too do we logically arrive at
the conclusion that the revisionist proposal to slight the final aim of
63
the socialist movement is really a recommendation to renounce the

socialist movement itself.
The Collapse
Bernstein began his revision of social democracy by abandoning the
theory of capitalist collapse. The latter, however, is the cornerstone
of scientific socialism. By rejecting it, Bernstein also rejects the whole
doctrine of socialism. In the course of his discussion he abandons
one after another of the positions of socialism in order to be able to
maintain his first affirmation. Without the collapse of capitalism, the
expropriation of the capitalist class is impossible. Bernstein therefore renounces expropriation and chooses a progressive realisation
of the cooperative principle as the aim of the labour movement.
But cooperation cannot be realised without capitalist production.
Bernstein, therefore, renounces the socialisation of production and
merely proposes to reform commerce and to develop consumers
cooperatives.
But the transformation of society through consumers cooperatives, even by means of trade unions, is incompatible with the real
material development of capitalist society. Therefore, Bernstein
abandons the materialist conception of history.
But his conception of the march of economic development is
incompatible with the Marxist labour theory of value. Therefore,
Bernstein abandons the theory of value and, in this way, the whole
economic system of Karl Marx.
But the struggle of the proletariat cannot be carried on without a
given final aim and without an economic basis found in the existing
society. Bernstein, therefore, abandons the class struggle and speaks
of reconciliation with bourgeois liberalism.
But in a class society the class struggle is a natural and unavoidable phenomenon. Bernstein, therefore, contests even the existence
of classes in society. The working class is for him a mass of individuals, divided politically and intellectually but also economically. And
the bourgeoisie, according to him, does not group itself politically
in accordance with its inner economic interest but only because of
exterior pressure from above and below.
64
But if there is no economic basis for the class struggle and if,
consequently, there are no classes in our society, not only the future
but even the past struggles of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie
appear to be impossible and social democracy and its successes seem
absolutely incomprehensible, or they can be understood only as the
results of political pressure by the government, that is, not as the
natural consequence of historic development but as the fortuitous
consequences of the policy of theHohenzollern;27not as the legitimate offspring of capitalist society, but as the bastard children of
reaction. Rigorously logical, in this respect, Bernstein passes from
the materialist conception of history to the outlook of theFrankfurter
Zeitungand theVossische Zeitung.28
After rejecting socialist criticism of capitalist society, it is easy for
Bernstein to find the present state of affairs satisfactoryat least in
a general way. Bernstein does not hesitate. He discovers that at the
present time reaction is not very strong in Germany, that we cannot speak of political reaction in the countries of western Europe,
and that in all the countries of the west the attitude of the bourgeois
classes toward the socialist movement is at most an attitude of defence
and not one of oppression. Far from becoming worse, the situation
of the workers is getting better. Indeed, the bourgeoisie is politically
progressive and morally sane. We cannot speak either of reaction or
oppression. All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds29
Bernstein thus travels in logical sequence from A to Z. He began
by abandoning the final aim and supposedly keeping the movement. But as there can be no socialist movement without a socialist
aim he ends by renouncing themovement.
And thus Bernsteins conception of socialism collapses entirely.
The proud, symmetrical, wonderful construction of socialist
thought becomes, for him, a pile of rubbish in which the debris of
all systems, the pieces of thought of various great and small minds,
27: The family that produced Prussian monarchyeditors note.

28: The names of two well-known liberal periodicalseditors note.
29: The line is from the character Doctor Pangloss in Voltaires Candide, portrayed as an unremitting optimist despite the horrors of his timeeditors note.
65
find a common resting place. Marx andProudhon, Leon von Buch

and Franz Oppenheimer, Friedrich Albert Lange and Kant, Herr
Prokopovich and R Ritter von Neupauer, Herkner, and SchulzeGvernitz,Lassalle and Professor Julius Wolff: all contribute something to Bernsteins system. From each he takes a little. And no
wonder! When he abandoned the standpoint of the working class
he lost his political compass; when he abandoned scientific socialism
he lost the intellectual axis about which isolated facts group crystallised into the organic whole of a coherent conception of the world.
His doctrine, composed of bits of all possible systems, seems
upon first consideration to be completely free from prejudices. For
Bernstein does not like talk of party science or, to be more exact,
class science, any more than he likes to talk of class liberalism or
class morality. He thinks he succeeds in expressing human, general, abstract science, abstract liberalism, abstract morality. But since
the society reality is made up of classes, which have diametrically
opposed interests, aspirations and conceptions, a general human
science in social questions, an abstract liberalism, an abstract morality, are at present illusions, pure utopia. The science, democracy,
morality considered by Bernstein as general and human are merely
the dominant science, dominant democracy and dominant morality,
that is, bourgeois science, bourgeois democracy, bourgeois morality.
When Bernstein rejects the economic doctrine of Marx in order
to swear by the teachings of Bretano, Bhm-Bawerk, Jevons, Say
and Julius Wolff, he exchanges the scientific basis of the emancipation of the working class for the apologetics of the bourgeoisie.
When he speaks of the general human character of liberalism, and
transforms socialism into a variety of liberalism, he deprives the
socialist movement of its class character and consequently of its historic content, consequently of all content; conversely, he recognises
the class representing liberalism in history, the bourgeoisie, as the
champion of the general interests of humanity.
And when he condemns raising material factors to the rank of
an all-powerful force of development, when he protests against the
so-called contempt for the ideal that is supposed to rule social
democracy, when he presumes to talk for idealism, for morals,
66
ronouncing himself at the same time against the only source of the
p
moral rebirth of the proletariat, a revolutionary class strugglehe
does no more than the following: preach to the working class the
quintessence of the morality of the bourgeoisie, that is, reconciliation with the existing social order and the transfer of the hopes of
the proletariat to the limbo of ethical illusions.
When he directs his keenest arrows against our dialectical system
he is really attacking the specific mode of thought employed by the
conscious proletariat in its struggle for liberation. It is an attempt to
break the sword that has helped the proletariat to pierce the darkness of its future. It is an attempt to shatter the intellectual arm with
the aid of which the proletariat, though materially under the yoke
of the bourgeoisie, is yet enabled to triumph over the bourgeoisie.
For it is our dialectical system that shows to the working class the
transitory nature of this yoke, proving to workers the inevitability
of their victory, and is already realising a revolution in the domain
of thought.
Saying goodbye to our system of dialectics and resorting instead
to the intellectual seesaw of the well-known on the one handon
the other hand, yesbut, althoughhowever, moreless,
etc, he quite logically lapses into a mode of thought that belongs
historically to the bourgeoisie in decline, being the faithful intellectual reflection of the social existence and political activity of the
bourgeoisie at that stage. The political on the one handon the
other hand, yesbut of the bourgeoisie today resembles, in a
marked degree, Bernsteins manner of thinking which is the sharpest and surest proof of the bourgeois nature of his conception of
the world.
But, as it is used by Bernstein, the word bourgeois itself is not
a class expression but a general social notion. Logical to the end, he
has exchanged, together with his science, politics, morals and mode
of thinking, the historic language of the proletariat for that of the
bourgeoisie. When he uses, without distinction, the term citizen
in reference to the bourgeois as well as to the proletarian intending,
thereby, to refer to man in general, he identifies man in general
with the bourgeois and human society with bourgeois society.
67
Opportunism in Theory and Practice

Bernsteins book is of great importance to the German and the international labour movement. It is the first attempt to give a theoretical basis to the opportunist currents common in social democracy.
These currents may be said to have existed for a long time in our
movement, if we take into consideration such sporadic manifestations of opportunism as the question of subsidisation of steamers.30
But it is only since about 1890, with the suppression of the antisocialist laws, that we have had a trend of opportunism of a clearly
defined character.Vollmars state socialism, the vote on the Bavarian budget, the agrarian socialism of south Germany, Heines policy of compensation,Schippels stand on tariffs and militarism, are
the high points in the development of our opportunist practice.31
What appears to characterise this practice above all? A certain hostility to theory. This is quite natural, for our theory, that is, the
principles of scientific socialism, impose clearly marked limitations
to practical activityin so far as it concerns the aims of this activity,
the means used in attaining these aims and the method employed in
this activity. It is quite natural for people who run after immediate
practical results to want to free themselves from such limitations
and to render their practice independent of our theory.
However, this outlook is refuted by every attempt to apply it in
reality. State socialism, agrarian socialism, the policy of compensation, the question of the army, all constituted defeats to our opportunism. It is clear that, if this current is to maintain itself, it must
try to destroy the principles of our theory and elaborate a theory
of its own. Bernsteins book is precisely an effort in that direction.
That is why at Stuttgart32 all the opportunist elements in our party
immediately grouped themselves around Bernsteins banner. If the
30: In the mid-1880s this issue split the SPD deputies in parliament. The
proposed subsidies would have aided companies connecting Germany to its
colonieseditors note.
31: Luxemburg here refers to a series of controversies within the SPD. Vollmar,
Heine and Schippel each put forwards arguments that were to be expressed in
more coherent and generalised form by Bernsteineditors note.
32: The reference is to the 1898 SPD congresseditors note.
68
opportunist currents in the practical activity of our party are an

entirely natural phenomenon, which can be explained in the light
of the special conditions of our activity and its development, Bernsteins theory is no less natural an attempt to group these currents
into a general theoretical expression, an attempt to elaborate its
own theoretical conditions and the break with scientific socialism.
That is why the published expression of Bernsteins ideas should
be recognised as a theoretical test for opportunism and as its first
scientific legitimation.
What was the result of this test? We have seen the result. Opportunism is not in a position to elaborate a positive theory capable
of withstanding criticism. All it can do is to attack various isolated
theses of Marxist theory and, just because Marxist doctrine constitutes one solidly constructed edifice, hope by this means to shake
the entire system from the top to its foundation.
This shows that opportunist practice is essentially irreconcilable
with Marxism. But it also proves that opportunism is incompatible
with socialism in general, that its internal tendency is to push the
labour movement into bourgeois paths, that it tends to paralyse
completely the proletarian class struggle. The latter, considered historically, is not identical with Marxist doctrine. For, before Marx and
independently from him, there were labour movements and various socialist doctrines, each of which, in its way, was the theoretical
expression corresponding to the conditions of the time of the struggle of the working class for emancipation. The theory of basing socialism on the moral notion of justice, on a struggle against the mode
of distribution, of class antagonism as an antagonism between the
poor and the rich, the effort to graft the cooperative principle on
to capitalist economyall the nice notions found in Bernsteins doctrinealready existed before him. And these theories were,in their
time, in spite of their insufficiency, effective theories of the proletarian
class struggle. They were the childrens seven-league boots thanks to
which the proletariat learned to walk upon the scene of history.
But after the development of the class struggle and its reflex in its
social conditions had led to the abandonment of these theories and
to the elaboration of the principles of scientific socialism, there could
69
be no socialismat least in Germanyoutside of Marxist socialism

and there could be no socialist class struggle outside of social democracy. From then on socialism and Marxism, the proletarian struggle
for emancipation and social democracy, were identical. That is why
the return to pre-Marxist socialist theories no longer signifies today
a return to the seven-league boots of the childhood of the proletariat, but a return to the puny worn-out slippers of the bourgeoisie.
Bernsteins theory is thefirst and at the same time lastattempt
to give a theoretical basis to opportunism. It is the last because, in
Bernsteins system, opportunism has gonenegatively through its
renunciation of scientific socialism, positively through its marshalling of every bit of theoretical confusion possibleas far as it can. In
Bernsteins book, opportunism has crowned its theoretical development and has reached its ultimate conclusion.
Not only can Marxist doctrine refute opportunism theoretically.
It alone can explain opportunism as a historic phenomenon in the
development of the party. The forward march of the proletariat, on
a world-historic scale, to its final victory is not, indeed, so simple
a thing. The peculiar character of this movement resides precisely
in the fact that here, for the first time in history, the popular masses
themselves,in oppositionto the ruling classes, are to impose their
will. The masses can only form thiswillin a constant struggle against
the existing order. The union of the broad popular masses with an
aim reaching beyond the existing social order, the union of the daily
struggle with the great world transformation, that is the task of the
social democratic movement, which must logically grope on its road
of development between the following two reefs: abandoning the
mass character of the party or abandoning its final aim, falling into
sectarianism or bourgeois reformism, anarchism or opportunism.
In its theoretical arsenal, Marxist doctrine furnished, more than
half a century ago, arms that are effective against both of these two
extremes. But because our movement is a mass movement and
because the dangers menacing it are not derived from the human
brain but from social conditions, Marxist doctrine could not assure
us, in advance and once for always, against anarchist and opportunist tendencies. The latter can be overcome only as we pass from the
70
domain of theory to the domain of practice but only with the help
of the arms furnished us by Marx. Marx wrote, half a century ago:
Bourgeois revolutions, like those of the 18th century, rush
onward rapidly from success to success, their stage effects outbid one another, men and things seem to be set in flaming diamonds, ecstasy is the prevailing spirit; but they are short-lived,
they reach their climax speedily and then society relapses into
a long fit of nervous reaction before it learns how to appropriate the fruits of its period of feverish excitement. Proletarian
revolutions, on the contrary, such as those of the 19th century,
criticise themselves constantly; constantly interrupt themselves
in their own course; come back to what seems to have been
accomplished, in order to start anew; scorn with cruel thoroughness the half-measures, weakness and meanness of their
first attempts; seem to throw down their adversary only to
enable him to draw fresh strength from the earth and again to
rise up against them in more gigantic stature; constantly recoil
in fear before the undefined enormity of their own objects
until finally that situation is created which renders all retreats
impossible and conditions themselves cry out: Hic Rhodus, hic
salta! Here is the rose. Dance here!33
This has remained true even after the elaboration of the doctrine of scientific socialism. The proletarian movement has not as
yet, all at once, become social democratic, even in Germany. But it
is becoming more social democratic, surmounting continually the
extreme deviations of anarchism and opportunism, both of which
are only determining phases of the development of social democracy, considered as a process.
For these reasons, we must say that the surprising thing here is not
the appearance of an opportunist current but rather its feebleness.
As long as it showed itself in isolated cases of the practical activity of
33: The passage is from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleoneditors note.
71
the party, one could suppose that it had a serious political base. But
now that it has shown its face in Bernsteins book, one cannot help
exclaim with astonishment, What? Is that all you have to say? Not
the shadow of an original thought! Not a single idea that was not
refuted, crushed, reduced into dust by Marxism several decades ago!
It was enough for opportunism to speak out to prove it had nothing to say. In the history of our party that is the only importance of
Bernsteins book.
Thus saying goodbye to the mode of thought of the revolutionary
proletariat, to dialectics and to the materialist conception of history,
Bernstein can thank them for the attenuating circumstances they
provide for his conversion. For only dialectics and the materialist
conception of history, magnanimous as they are, could make Bernstein appear as an unconscious predestined instrument, by means
of which the rising working class expresses its momentary weakness
but which, upon closer inspection, it throws aside contemptuously
and with pride.
72
Sample questions for discussion

What does Rosa Luxemburg mean by the theory of collapse?
And is she right about this theory?
The Labour government after the Second World War introduced genuine reforms such as the NHS. Socialists should support politicians who introduce changes like these which help the
working class. How would you respond to this argument?
Why do most class-conscious workers still vote for parties such
as Labour? And what can revolutionaries do to win them over?
Should revolutionaries ever enter a government coalition?
Further reading
The Marxists Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) has an extensive
collection of writings by Rosa Luxemburg and there are various
print editions of her selected works. Most English translations of
her writings are quite poor. However, Verso is currently undertaking the translation and production of the collected works of Luxemburg, volumes of which have started appearing.
The best known biography, Rosa Luxemburg: Her Life and Work,
was written by her comrade Paul Frlich. Bookmarks have recently
published A Rebels Guide to Rosa Luxemburg by Sally Campbell, which
is an excellent introduction. Another work, by Socialist Workers
Party founder Tony Cliff, entitled simply Rosa Luxemburg, looks in
detail at both her life and her theoretical contribution, and includes
a chapter on Reform or Revolution. It appears in the first volume of
Cliff s selected works, published by Bookmarks and entitled International Struggle and the Marxist Tradition. It is also available from the
Marxists Internet Archive.
On the same website are Chris Harmans article, From Bernstein
to Blair: One Hundred Years of Revisionism, which places Luxemburgs polemic in historical perspective, and the book Marxism and the
Party by John Molyneux, which contains a chapter highlighting the
strengths and weaknesses of Luxemburgs views on organisation.

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Education For Socialists

Education for Socialists

The Challenge of

Rosa Luxemburgs classic pamphlet Reform or Revolution (also

Education for Socialists

workers living standards, and the strengthening of trade unions

2: This work pre-dates the historic division between reformist organisations,

Education for Socialists

The Opportunist Method

Education for Socialists

The scientific basis of socialism rests, as is well known, on three

than the conditions, or even in part the germs, of the socialisation of

Education for Socialists

The Adaptation of Capital

the exchange of commodities and therefore the return of capital

Education for Socialists

Education for Socialists

in certain branches of production. What method do cartels employ

regulation, it is certainly not the capitalist class which is fitted

Education for Socialists

inAnti-Dhringand by Marx in the first and third volumes ofCapital

Education for Socialists

progressive disappearance of the medium sized enterprisein the

The Realisation of Socialism through Social Reforms

6: Schmidt was another member of the SPDeditors note.

Education for Socialists

Education for Socialists

reform measures are not an application of social control. They

Education for Socialists

(that is to say, private property) became reciprocally stronger. Since

Also from this point of view, social control appears in reality

Capitalism and the State

Education for Socialists

measure that, these interests and social developments coincide, in

production. They are now used by one national group of capitalists

Education for Socialists

evolution of the state in society. They constitute, to that extent, a

Education for Socialists

of the ruling class. The state, that is to say thepoliticalorganisation

surely a fantastic idea.9 But Bernstein, proposing to change the sea

The General Nature of Reformism

At present the trade union struggle and parliamentary practice

Education for Socialists

work for socialism. From the viewpoint of a movement for socialism,

practical results of our struggle, that is, social reforms? As soon as

Education for Socialists

11: Scattered fragmentseditors note.

Education for Socialists

are derangements without which capitalist economy could not

on him, the single capitalist. He therefore considers these facts to

Economic Development and Socialism12

Education for Socialists

Bernstein denies the existence of the economic conditions for

13: The investment in the company at its foundationeditors note.

Education for Socialists

an isolated individual. The industrial capitalist of today is a collective

of the movement for socialism. Bernstein, on the other hand, sees

Education for Socialists

represented a socialist and revolutionary tendency, the possibility of