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Tudor H. and Tudor J. (1988), Marxism and Social Democracy: The Revisionist Debate, 1896-1898, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

For those interested in understanding the history of Marxist economics, socialism, and / or the intellectual history of political economy, Marxism and Social Democracy: The Revisionist Debate, 1896-1898 is an essential reference. The editors and translators, Tudor and Tudor, provide English translations of the central texts concerning the reform vs. revision debates that came to define both the successes and failures of socialism in Germany. From 1871 (the year of the Commune in Paris and the unification of Germany) to 1889, socialism struggled to unite two contending factions of German working-class politics (the Eisenachers and the Lasalleans). The Gotha Program of 1875 provided the fundamental platform around which both parties gathered. At the heart of the debate was the question of internationalism and nationalism. Should socialism pursue the liberation of the working-class nationally? Or, must it pursue liberation internationally? It was a question without easy answers and one that ultimately came to define the history of socialism in the 20th century. From 1871 to 1889, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) [SPD], which was strongly influenced directed by Karl Marx (until his death in 1883) and Friedrich Engels (until his death in 1895), struggled to survive the oppression of emperor Wilhelm I and the repression of his “iron” chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. After the failed assasination attempt of the king, Bismarck passed the Anti-socialist laws in 1878. The future of “revolutionary” road looked bleak. It was largely left to Friedrich Engels and a small circle of revolutionary socialists to forge a plan for the future. 

In the fin de siècle, revolutionary socialism turned to the tactic of parliamentary politics. Since the introduction of the parliament (Reichstag) and universal male suffrage in 1871, it was possible in Germany to achieve power through the vote. The popularity of the socialist party among urban working-class men lead to the shocking 1890 parliamentary election in which the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) [SPD] won the majority of total votes and 35 representative seats in the parliament. This brought the revolutionary socialist party to power in Germany; it also forced Otto von Bismarck out of power and the repeal of the Anti-socialist laws.

Outside of the study of German political history, it is little known that a Marxist, revolutionary socialist party held direct parliamentary power in Germany from 1890 to 1919. A poor understanding of this history has enabled propagandists on the far right to equate socialism with the rise of Nazism. In order to understand the roots of working-class support for fascism, however, it is necessary to understand how the split between internationalist and nationalist socialism lead to the great fracture of socialism at the end of World War I between the revolutionary socialists who sought to build international working-class solidarity and the reform socialists who sought unification with capitalist and military nationalism. Socialism did not create fascism. Reform socialism was crushed by the unholy alliance it made with the liberal capitalists and far-right military nationalist who in turn let nazism come to power under Hitler in the 1930s. Nationalism, and its central ideological concern with the “culture struggle” (kulturkampf), destroyed revolutionary socialism in the early 20th century. It is impossible to understand the history of Marxism, capitalism, or fascism without a rudimentary understanding of the two central political questions of German socialism: reform or revolution? Nationalism or internationalism? 

This book centers on the debates within the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) [SPD] in the years 1896-1897. The two sides of the debate consist of different coalitions of Marxist political theorists and politicians. 

The central figure in the debate is Eduard Bernstein. With Karl Kautsky, Bernstein held a central place in the early years of the socialist party. From 1880, he worked directly with Marx and Engels to articulate the strategy and theory of Marxism in Germany. In the 1890s, however, his political and theoretical understanding of Marxist strategy came to define a new approach to political power: progressive change which focused on (A) the extension of the rights and (B) better material conditions for the working-class. The central problem, for Bernstein, became the failure of Marx’s prediction of capitalist collapse. With the rise of (1) cartel capitalism, (2) technological productivity in direct production, the means of communication, and the means of transportation, and (3) the development of the international financial market, it now appeared that capitalism had discovered ways to survive the crises it engenders. Last, the expansion of the global market appeared to show that capitalism was far from exhausting its ability to produce profit. These factors lead Bernstein ultimately to support nationalism, colonialism, and capitalist production on the grounds that they advanced the German working-class. [For the economics history, it is also very important to note that Bernstein was influenced and appears to have ultimately accepted the Marginalist theory of value in place of the classical labor theory of value. Without the labor theory of value, it is impossible to defend Marx’s own “socially necessary labor time” theory of value and thus his general theory of capitalism qua class war]. 

Rosa Luxemburg’s “Reform or Revolution” provides the most famous reply to Bernstein’s revisionist program. She was, however, preceded by the English Marxist Belfort Bax and Parvus. In their essays in this volume, we are able to see the counter-view to the theory of parliamentary, state-sponsored, reform socialism. Luxemburg, for instance, disagreed with Bernstein on every account listed above. She believed that the goal of revolutionary socialism was (A) the direct control of the government by the masses, and (B)  the ownership of the fundamental material means of social reproduction by the masses. She sought to explain the extension of capitalism within the framework of colonial domination and exploitation, arguing that capitalism could only sustain its production of profits to the extent the masses allowed its global extension. Furthermore, she contended that global capitalism would not serve the working-class in the end because it still functioned in the basic way outlined by Marx in Capital. [In order to produce surplus value, it must increase production. Technological production, however, lowers the cost of labor power leading ultimately to the necessary impoverishment of the working-class to the limit of reproduction. When capitalism moves production to colonial territories, it merely uses cheaper labor (especially labor that can be kept from organizing). The extraordinary rate of profit possible within capitalism is only capable of using labor within the dominant nation as long as its profits are able to exploit the fundamental difference between both populations (i.e. the socially necessary labor time). It is, as Marx clarified, a Faustian bargain. The extent to which one determines whether or not she or Bernstein were correct largely depends on how one views the crisis of World War One and the Great Depression.]

These are extremely timely and important questions for the capitalist crises we face today. It is hard to ignore the fact that they look similar in broad outline to the crises that came in the early 1900s. It is telling then that these are also the years generally taken to mark the beginning of the discipline of historical economics. Since Karl Polanyi’s 1960 work, City Invincible, it has become a trope in the study of pre-capitalist economics to begin a debate called the “Bucher-Meyer” debate (1893-1902). It is telling that Karl Polanyi, the Christian, reform socialist who advocated for the modern European and American state-sponsored socialism we call the “welfare state” would have chosen to ignore the debate from which his own views were ultimately drawn. For the scholarship of ancient economic history, the influence of Polanyi has unfortunately further effaced the work and ideas of Rosa Luxemburg.