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Eduard Bernstein - on social democracy

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Eduard Bernstein on social democracy and evolutionary socialism. Bernstein had been a close colleague of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels but later broke with them and their conception of communism in favour of a liberal evolutionary socialism that would pursue its aims gradually through political reforms in parliamentary democracy. The use of the term "social democracy" came to be become associated with the movement that stemmed from Bernstein's evolutionary socialism, and the contemporary social democratic movement descends from the ideas of Bernstein.

These quotes show Bernstein distinguishing his conception of social democracy and evolutionary socialism from communism. That it was not centred on proletarianization of society, that it opposed mass nationalization of industry as supported by other socialists, and support of a mixed economy of public, cooperative and private enterprise, with the belief that private enterprise will eventually evolve into cooperative enterprise.

Bernstein's support of reform through liberal parliamentary means were criticized by socialist opponents of him as promoting opportunism to gain concessions from the capitalist system that was diluting socialism through accepting the existing political institutions in capitalist societies. Over time supporters of social democracy eventually did seek to break with the standard Marxist-inspired definition of socialism as social ownership of the means of production as a replacement for the capitalist economic system, and instead accepted the capitalist economy with measures to prevent abuse of workers, support of collective bargaining rights for workers, and a social welfare system to protect vulnerable people especially during economic hard times.
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LIFE-IS-CHEMISTRY

Bernstein's views were far more nuanced than those of Marx. The fact is that the war resulting from Communists defending against anti-Communist states were bloody beyond anything, before or after. In particular the anti-Comintern (Nazis + Imperial Japan ) VS Russia + China + some other countries (the other 'Allies') was just awful. The question remains, whether a softer, kinder, more gentle Russia would have been able to repel the Nazis- and also the question of whether the Nazis would have attacked if Russia hadn't pursued Communism.


Regardless, Bernstein's form of bolstering an existing democracy or near-democracy (like the USA, which didn't allow women or "colored" people to vote in the 191X years) was genius. Once socialists helped the suffragettes out, often getting jailed in the process, many women's views of socialism softened. This led to some of them helping the civil rights movement (or telling their daughters it was ok/good), which eventually fomented *actual* democracy in the USA. After 1965, (and the elimination of some rather pathetic laws) all adults could by default vote. The blowback, however, wasn't great. We felt it in Reagan's Dirty War and Iran Contra, but also in the election of Trump as a reaction to Obama birther hysteria.


The best governments are non-extreme in their ideology, which means seeing the benefits of both a capitalist and socialist way of doing things. Compromises must be made, but I wouldn't have it any other way.