Jones G.S., Claeys G. The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political Thought

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Vernon L. Lidtke

of ‘dictatorship’, to make it less offensive or even contend that it was

compatible with democracy, as some scholars have argued. But a political

party needed doctrines that did not require appeals to overly subtle or

paradoxical explanations. In this matter, Marx and Engels also were not

very helpful. They themselves used the phrase sparingly, and only in a

few instances offered brief explanations of what they meant (Hunt 1975, i,

pp. 284–336).

7 The socialist society of the future

Would a future socialist society have a place for liberal and democratic

institutions? What kind of political form was envisaged? Would there be

a state? A republic? On these issues the thinking of socialists was seldom

unambiguous, though they sometimes sought to give answers. The usual

place for Social Democrats to spell out the principles of a socialist society

was in the ofﬁcial party programme, a new version of which was adopted

at Erfurt (1891). But in a fundamental way the Erfurt programme itself

reﬂected the uncertainty of the Social Democrats as to the political form

of a socialist system. The Erfurt programme, drafted largely by Kautsky and

often viewed as evidence of the dominance of Marxism, made no mention

of the withering away of the state or of the political principles of a socialist

society. The ﬁrst part of the Erfurt programme summarises the widespread

understanding of Marx’s analysis of capitalism and of the outcome of class

conﬂicts. The second part is a list of current demands, many of which are

substantively the same as points that appeared in the earlier programmes of

1869 and 1875, though now universal suffrage was extended to everyone

over twenty years, including women. If one assumes that the second part

of the Erfurt programme included all of the fundamental economic, social

and political demands, one could interpret it to mean that Social Democrats

were implying that the Kaiserreich could be transformed into a democratic

state that would work for and achieve the emancipation of all humanity.

But that surmise, though logical, is incorrect. On crucial political princi-

ples the drafters of the programme were indecisive, or, at least not explicit.

The most notable lack was any mention of a republic as a political goal.

In 1891 this omission was more striking than the failure of the Gotha pro-

gramme (1875) to call explicitly for a republic. That earlier programme had

set forth the Volksstaat as its political ideal, and it was commonly assumed

that this meant a democratic and republican form of government. In 1891,

on reading in advance a draft of the Erfurt programme, Engels wrote an

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extensive critique which he sent to leaders in Germany – it was not pub-

lished until ten years later in DieneueZeit– and he speciﬁcally criticised

the omission of ‘republic’. But Engels’ recommendation created difﬁculties

of its own. He explained that socialists could only gain power by means

of a ‘democratic republic’, which, he elaborated, is the ‘speciﬁc form of

the dictatorship of the proletariat’ (Engels 1901/02,p.11). For Engels a

democratic republic was only an intermediate goal, not the ﬁnal politi-

cal form for a socialist society. Bebel and those around him explained to

Engels that it would be impossible under present conditions in Germany to

call explicitly for a republic, which likely would provoke severe repression

(Bebel 1965,p.424). But Engels’ suggestion posed still another difﬁculty

that Bebel did not mention. How could the Social Democrats advocate a

democratic republic if they had to explain to their followers and the public

that it was merely an intermediate goal and, moreover, that it would be the

instrument for establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat? If Engels had

proposed including ‘democratic republic’ in the programme as a genuine

goal of social democracy, it would have been easily comprehended, even if

it aroused hostility, and in the context of the Kaiserreich it would have been

perceived as an authentic revolutionary demand.

In order to get some notion of how socialists of Marxist persuasion under-

stood the Erfurt programme’s political implications for a socialist society, we

can turn to Kautsky’s widely circulated commentary. Although he included

a section on ‘The Structure of the Future State’, he offered few particulars.

Kautsky argued, wisely perhaps, that it would be foolish to try to describe

the socialist society of the future, and so he declined also to talk about the

place of democratic and liberal institutions. He grasped again for a deter-

ministinterpretation,afﬁrmingthat‘socialsciencehasproved...that...the

history of mankind is determined . . . by an economic development which

progresses irresistibly, obedient to certain underlying laws and not to any-

one’s wishes or whims’. Except for refuting the accusations by enemies of

social democracy that socialism would be oppressive, Kautsky always resisted

the temptation to give a picture of the future, except for general statements

about a classless society and improved welfare of all humanity (Kautsky

1910,pp.112–26).

Not so for Bebel. He claimed to know much about the future social-

ist society. We have seen above that Bebel, drawing directly on Engels’

writings, concluded that there would be no state and therefore nothing

onecouldcallapoliticalsystem:‘Togetherwiththestatewillvanish...the

whole political apparatus.’ Consistent with this argument, Bebel had little or

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nothing to say in Woman and Socialism on those topics that are conventionally

considered to be political. On other topics, however, he did not shy away

from providing a long list of the most detailed features of a future socialist

society.

The expositions of Kautsky and Bebel illustrate the degree to which those

inﬂuenced by Marx and Engels had abandoned, on the theoretical level,

the commitment to the political ideals and institutions of liberalism and

democracy. On the level of political practice, however, they were deeply

embedded in the work of liberal institutions, notably the Reichstag and

local representative bodies, and Bebel, ironically, more than almost any

other Social Democrat embodied the exceptional skill displayed by Social

Democrats engaged in parliamentary work.

8 Eduard Bernstein

Moderate and reformist socialists believed that the party should use all legal

means to bring about the kinds of economic, social and political reforms

that would gradually improve the lives, not only of workers, but of all

people who were disadvantaged by the unrestrained workings of capital-

ism. Although this reformist outlook had been widespread throughout the

history of the German socialist labour movement, it lacked a coherent and

forceful statement of its principles that could be deployed in internal debates

against orthodoxy’s revolutionary doctrines. Reformist sentiment had also

lacked an articulate and persuasive leader, one who understood Marxist the-

ory thoroughly and whose socialist credentials were beyond doubt. Eduard

Bernstein had excellent credentials when he began in the early 1890sto

harbour doubts about the validity of important parts of orthodox theory. As

editor of the party’s quasi-ofﬁcial newspaper, Der Sozialdemokrat (1879–90),

he belonged to the inner circle of Marxist-oriented leaders who immersed

themselves in socialist literature and corresponded regularly with Marx and

especially Engels. Upon moving the editorial ofﬁce of the newspaper to

London in 1888 – he was expelled from Switzerland – Bernstein became

a close and trusted friend of Engels, demonstrated by the fact that the

elder statesman of the Marxist movement chose the younger comrade to

be his literary executor. In London, ﬁrst through the close association with

Engels, and then on his own, Bernstein came in contact with a wide range

of English socialists, radicals and intellectuals. It is difﬁcult, if not impossible,

to sort out the speciﬁc inﬂuence that particular people or groups exerted

on Bernstein, but it is clear that his British experience contributed in some

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measure to a gradual change in his outlook. Some scholars have concluded

that the Fabians, with whom Bernstein associated despite initial misgiv-

ings, shaped much of his thinking. However, Bernstein always played down

the inﬂuence of the Fabians, though he particularly admired Sidney Webb.

He was present at the founding meeting of the Independent Labour Party

in 1893, and among others, his acquaintances and friends included Kier

Hardie, Ramsay MacDonald and William Morris. Contact with socialists

and intellectuals may have been less important for his later development

than his generally favourable impression of the British social and politi-

cal environment, particularly the effectiveness of parliamentary government

and the fact that compromise and collaboration between liberals and labour

was possible. In some signiﬁcant sense, Bernstein’s years in London, as well

as his appreciation of thinkers like John Stuart Mill, revived his youthful

attachment to liberalism (Carsten 1993,pp.47–80;Steger1997,pp.12,

66–71, 143).

As Bernstein examined the contemporary capitalist world, empirical evi-

dence suggested strongly that actual economic and social trends often con-

tradicted the expectations of Marx and Engels. After the death of Engels in

1895, Bernstein assembled his critical thinking in a series of articles in Die

neue Zeit under the general title ‘Problems of Socialism’. From that point

on he began to question central tenets of Marx’s theory. Bernstein made a

series of observations that contradicted the forecasts of Marx and Engels:

the internal contradictions of capitalism were being moderated rather than

intensiﬁed; the working class was not getting poorer but in numerous places

making headway; industrial societies were not being polarised, and the mid-

dle class was growing not decreasing. Then, with his rigorous questioning

of the claim that Marxism constituted a ‘scientiﬁc socialism’ he debunked

a major tenet of Marx and Engels and their orthodox followers (Bernstein

1901b, pp. 32–7).

According to Bernstein’s analysis, contemporary capitalism was proving

to be both more resilient and more ﬂexible than Marx and Engels had

believed. That led him to argue that it would not be necessary to abolish

capitalism totally in order to achieve working-class emancipation. On the

contrary, it had become apparent that capitalism could be changed gradually

through legal reforms. Where Marx and Engels made abolition of private

property a precondition for the achievement of socialism, Bernstein argued

that the total abolition of private property would be impossible in practice

and that, in any case, the right of ownership could be harmonised with the

basic principles of socialism.

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Vernon L. Lidtke

If the theory of capitalist collapse could not withstand critical scrutiny,

Bernstein reasoned, neither could most of the political conclusions that

assumed the truth of economic determinism. Bernstein based his own

political outlook on a deep and sustained commitment to democracy, and

indeed his view of how to achieve socialism emphasised the need to employ

all legal means to advance the cause of political democracy. Elections and

legislative action were keys. The labour movement should call insistently

for the introduction of universal suffrage in elections on all levels, not just

for the Reichstag. Although Bernstein did not in any one place elaborate a

full theory of democracy, certain principles were essential. He stressed that

democracy called for self-government of the people and left no room for the

dominance of privileged social groups. Democracy meant, he emphasised,

the abolition of class government, ‘a state of society in which no class has a

political privilege which is opposed to the community as a whole’ (Bern-

stein 1993,p.140). He would not embrace theories of direct democracy

which, he believed, were impracticable for large political units, but called for

the implementation of the will of the community through representation

in parliament, that is, in a parliamentary democracy. Democracy assumed

universal suffrage, a precondition for the possibility that all members of a

community could become participants in the fullest sense (Bernstein 1993,

pp. 142–4).

Most importantly, for Bernstein political democracy and socialism were

linked together in a tight reciprocal relationship. There could be no socialism

without democracy, and political democracy would not realise its fullest

development until it was combined with socialism. Democracy was an

unambiguous goal of socialism. ‘Democracy is both means and end. It

is a weapon in the struggle for socialism, and it is the form in which

socialism will be realised’ (Bernstein 1993,p.142). Bernstein thus rejected

completely Engels’ argument for the overlap between a democratic republic

and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Instead, Bernstein insisted that ‘the

dictatorship of the proletar iat’ was a totally outdated concept ‘at a time when

representatives of Social Democracy have in practice placed themselves

wherever possible in the arena of parliamentary work ...andinthestruggle

for popular participation in legislation, all of which is incompatible with

dictatorship. The phrase is nowadays so out of date that it can be reconciled

with reality only by stripping the word dictatorship of its actual meaning

and giving it some kind of diluted signiﬁcance’ (Bernstein 1993,p.145).

Parliament thus became a key institution for Bernstein, both in theory and

for socialist practice. As early as 1890,whilestilleditorofDer Sozialdemokrat,

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he distanced himself totally from the ambivalent parliamentarism of leaders

like Bebel. ‘The road to full political freedom’, he wrote, ‘goes by way

of parliament, not around it. Despite all of its weaknesses, parliamentarism

is still the most modern public institution in present-day Germany, and

no doctrinaire grounds should cause us to overlook that’ (Bernstein 1901a,

p. 25). He pointed repeatedly to the fact that Social Democratic participation

in the German parliament, for all of the Reichstag’s limitations, had been

the key to the party’s enormous growth and, he expected, would continue

to be in the future. The negative and intransigent posture of many socialist

Reichstag deputies in the early years had gradually given way to a realisation

that, as their numbers grew, they could become crucial shapers of legislation.

He went further and speculated on the possibility that in some countries

with strong labour movements and effective parliaments, socialist deputies

might have to face the uncomfortable choice of participating in coalition

governments. He did not shy away from that prospect but thought in fact

that it would be beneﬁcial for socialists to work together with left liberals

(Bernstein 1896,pp.44–55).

It followed that Bernstein strongly recommended that social democ-

racy should moderate its habitual battle against liberalism and attempt to

understand the positive historical and theoretical relationship between the

two movements. Socialism had in fact evolved from liberalism and should

still build on its fundamental principles, particularly on personal freedom

and civil rights. He emphasised the ﬂexibility and adaptability of liberal

institutions, making them excellent instruments for gradually introducing

socialism. It should be recognised, he stressed, that socialism was the ‘legit-

imate heir’ of liberalism, not just chronologically, but also in several matters

of principle and theory. To be sure, Bernstein rejected most of the principles

of classical liberal economic theory that were so closely intertwined with

capitalism. But as the heir to political liberalism, socialism had to complete

the tasks that liberals left unfulﬁlled, the ‘principled struggle against mili-

tarism, against the privileges of birth, and further the removal of corrupted

legal institutions – all things that ﬁrst imply an expansion of the power of

parliament, that is, of the Reichstag’ (Bernstein 1901a, p. 24).

Bernstein highlighted other links between liberalism and socialism. Both

wanted to see the development and secure position of the ‘free personality’.

Even liberal economic thinking had something to recommend it, namely,

because historically liberalism had the task of breaking economic chains.

‘Socialism will create no new bondage of any kind whatever. The individual

willbe...freefromanyeconomic compulsion in his actions and choice of

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vocation.’ Bernstein gave a great amount of attention to the value of self-

government on the regional and local level, for these were institutions that

also contributed to the advancement of democracy (Bernstein 1993,pp.147,

150, 155–6). Clearly, Bernstein intended to select from liberalism what he

found most valuable for the advancement of socialism and democracy.

It follows as well that Bernstein dispensed with Marxist notions of the

withering away of the state, but believed fervently that a socialist state should

take the form of a democratic republic. Moreover, in his optimism, Bern-

stein believed that even the German Kaiserreich, despite its authoritarian

features, still possessed institutions – for example, the Reichstag – through

which it could gradually be transformed into a system of liberal democracy.

Bernstein’s contemporaries and later scholars believed that he overestimated

the adaptability of the German imperial system, and that is probably true

(Steger 1997,p.142). Still, he ﬁrmly believed that once liberal socialists –

as against intransigent socialists – were in control of parliament they would

be able to abolish, gradually, the privileges of the dominant classes so that it

would no longer be possible to speak of the state as simply the instrument

of class rule. Although his contemporary orthodox Marxists colleagues in

the Social Democratic Party greeted Bernstein’s theories with dismay, anger

and bitterness, on balance historians at a later time, with the exception of

those in the former German Democratic Republic, have interpreted his

life’s work and his contributions to socialist political thought as a highly

positive heritage (Carsten 1993,pp.196–200;Steger1997,pp.253–60).

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Russian political thought of the

nineteenth century

andrezj wal ic k i

1 The epoch of Alexander I

The ﬁrst years of the nineteenth century in Russia were a time of great

hopes. The new emperor, Alexander I, hated the arbitrary despotism of his

assassinated father, Paul I, and vowed to make Russia a law-abiding state, a

legitimate representative of universal civilisation, playing an important part

in European affairs and realising thereby a universally signiﬁcant imperial

mission. The educated strata of the Russian society shared this mood. They

felt that a great historic change was imminent and wanted to participate in

it. Expectation of a new beginning united the old-fashioned rationalists of

the Enlightenment with the members of the mystical freemasonry, known

as Illuminati, or Martinists.

The ﬁrst group, represented by the Free Association of the Lovers of Lit-

erature, the Sciences and the Arts, included two thinkers greatly inﬂuenced

by the Scottish Enlightenment: Ivan Pnin, author of An Essay on Enlight-

enment Concerning Russia (1804) and Vasilii Popugaev whose main work

bears the self-explaining title On the Firmness of Constitution and Laws. They

developed the conception of a civil society (grazhdanskoe obshchestvo), based

upon private property and legally safeguarded rights of man, supporting

the constitutional ideas of the young emperor and urging him to complete

the transformation of Russia from a military to a commercial state. The

other group, the Martinists, expected a religious regeneration of humanity,

deriving this messianic hope from a universalist, supra-ecclesiastical inter-

pretation of Christianity. Both currents of thought, secular liberalism and

political mysticism, were interconnected in the ideas of Mikhail Speranskii

(1772–1839) who in the years 1807–12 played the role of Alexander’s prime

minister in fact. His constitutional project, submitted to the emperor in

1809, combined a liberal programme of introducing to Russia the rule of

law, the division of powers and the principles of self-government, with the

idea of the Christianisation of political and social life – the chief idea of the

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Andrezj Walicki

socially oriented, millenarian mysticism. Very characteristic of his time was

the fact that he drew his ideas from the most different sources, such as the

Napoleonic Code, on the one hand, and the occult mystics, especially Jacob

Boehme and Saint-Martin, on the other. He even consulted the legacy of

the Church Fathers.

Speranskii did not call for the formal abolition of autocracy; he preferred

to reinterpret the meaning of autocracy (the Russian samoderzhavye)inthe

spirit of true monarchy, combining the elevated position of the monarch

with his submission to the law. Neither did he envisage the immediate

abolition of serfdom, choosing to leave the solution of the peasant question

to a slow, gradual process. Nevertheless, the very idea of a legal limitation

of autocracy, as well as the acknowledgement of the need for the emanci-

pation and enfranchisement of the peasantry, aroused the ire of the gentry’s

conservatives. Their main spokesman became Nikolai Karamzin (1766–

1826), the well-known sentimental writer who had cleansed the Russian

language from Church-Slavonic archaism and the ofﬁcial historiographer of

the Russian state. In his conﬁdential Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia

(1811), given to Alexander to counteract Speranskii’s constitutional project,

he claimed that the absolute power of the monarch, together with the

historical rights of the gentry, is an inalienable part of Russia’s national

tradition. At the same time, however, he sharply distinguished between

absolutism and arbitrary despotism, arguing in particular that the Russian

monarch had absolute and indivisible power only in the political sphere, but

not over the social and private life of his subjects. This view enabled him

to combine a resolute rejection of political liberty with an equally resolute

defence of civil liberty, safeguarded by moral laws and unwritten rules of

tradition.

Soon afterwards Speranskii was attacked by conservative nationalists who

acccused him of a hidden support of Napoleon. As a result he was deprived

of his post and sent into exile. The year of his dismissal – 1812 – is usually

treated as the beginning of the second part of Alexander’s reign, charac-

terised by the g rowing inﬂuence of reactionary forces. In fact, however, the

change was not abrupt and the emperor, the true Hamlet on the throne,

continued to be exposed to inﬂuences from different quarters. After all,

at the Congress of Vienna (1815) he created under his rule a small but

autonomous Kingdom of Poland, giving it a liberal constitution and a par-

liamentary form of government which was to be a model for Russia proper.

The spectacular victory over Napoleon tremendously increased the inter-

national prestige of Russia, conferring on it the position of ﬁrst arbiter of

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Russian political thought of the nineteenth century

Europe’s destinies (Malia 1961). Alexander saw this as a step towards real-

isation of his larger vision of Russia’s mission – a vision formulated at the

beginning of his reign by his close Polish friend, Prince Adam Czartoryski

(who in the autumn of 1802 took the post of Deputy Minister of Foreign

Affairs and in January 1804 was given full control of this department, with

the rank of Acting Minister). In his extensive memorandum on the political

system to be adopted by Russia (1803), approved by the emperor, Czarto-

ryski endowed the Russian Empire with a mission of creating a society of

states, based upon the law of nations, adopting liberal institutions, and aim-

ing at the implementation of the idea of eternal peace. Similar ideas were

developed by Czartoryski’s close collaborator, Vasilii Malinovskii (1765–

1814), in his treatise Reﬂections on Peace and War (1803) and in an unpub-

lished memoir submitted to Russia’s Foreign Ministry. He postulated the

creation of a European Union, based upon the principle of national self-

determination, establishing rule of law in international relations, and com-

mitted to radical social reforms in the spirit of agrarian socialism. A part of

the European Union was to be a federation of Slavonic nations, liberated

from the Austrian and Turkish yoke.

Malinovskii was probably a Martinist and some of his liberal views on

Russia’s calling could be given a religious interpretation. This happened

in the case of the emperor who, in 1812, underwent a mystical, chilias-

tic conversion. Three years later – on 26 September 1815 – he signed

the proclamation of the Holy Alliance – a document heavily inﬂuenced

by the Russophile German mystics (Baroness von Kr

udener, Jung Stilling

and Franz von Baader), and only reluctantly accepted by the monarchs of

Austria and Prussia. It promised to treat the peoples of Europe as a single

Christian nation under the rule of the Saviour, to ignore denominational

boundaries dividing Christians, and to institutionalise Christian morality in

international relations.

In practice these lofty ideals were used to justify the policy of supporting

conservative legitimism in Europe and suppressing the movement for reform

within Russia. This resulted, of course, in the growing dissatisfaction among

the progressive Russians – especially among the ofﬁcers of the army, who

vividly remembered the glorious days of Russia’s triumph of 1814 and

did not want to see their country as a pillar of European reaction. They

organised themselves in secret societies and embarked on revolutionary

activities, resulting – after the death of Alexander – in the abortive military

uprising of December 1825. Hence, all participants of this movement were

named by historians as the Decembrists.

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