Marx's critique of capitalism included a forecast of the inevitable breakdown of capitalism, leading to a period of social revolution out of which a classless, egalitarian, and communal society could emerge. Engels was later to call the process "historical materialism." The idea was that in the early days of capitalism the new "social relations" of capitalist and worker had freed the "forces of production" from the fetters of feudalism, leading to an era of growing abundance and freedom. But the contradictions and conflicts within capitalism—exploitation of workers, elimination of small enterprise, growth of big business, growing concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, and financial crises of increasing severity—would lead to both an end to economic growth and authoritarian suppression of dissent. The social relations of late capitalism once again would hinder further development of the forces of production. Conflict, crisis, and economic upheaval would follow. The working class could take command and build a communal, egalitarian society in which conflict would be eliminated and the forces of production would be free once more to usher in a new era of abundance and freedom for all.
Marx's great vision was not to be. Marx had urged his followers not merely to interpret the world, but to change it. Take action! As mass political parties emerged on the left in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly after the Russian revolution of 1917, historical materialism became not a theory of historical change but a rationale for revolutionary seizure of power. By the 1930s it had evolved into an apologetic for Stalinist authoritarianism in the Soviet Union.
Yet at the same time Marxist "revisionism" generated an entirely different strategy among more moderate socialists. The revisionists rejected Marx's theory of capitalist breakdown leading to a final crisis. Gradual reform and democratic elections rather than revolution and seizure of power characterized this outcome of the debates over Marxism after Marx.
The transformation of what came to be called "orthodox" Marxism started shortly after Marx's death in 1883. The German Social Democratic Party (SPD) was the largest socialist party in Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It organized a meeting of all socialist groups in Paris in 1889, and another at Erfurt, Germany, in 1891, to produce a socialist manifesto. The Erfurt Programme, as it was called, had two parts. The first part was theoretical, written by Karl Kautsky (1854-1938), whom we met earlier as the editor of the third volume of Capital. The second part
discussed policy, written by Eduard Bernstein (1850-1932), a journalist who became the chief spokesman for Marxist revisionism.
Kautsky's part of the Erfurt Programme was a simplified version of Marx s theory of capitalist breakdown. He wrote that society is breaking into two hostile groups: an ever-expanding working class and an ever-shrinking capitalist elite. The condition of the working class constantly deteriorates while the elite grow wealthier. Economic crises become increasingly severe. The goal of socialism moves closer as the final crisis of capitalism approaches.
Bernstein's statement of immediate objectives, however, said almost nothing about socialism or social ownership of the means of production. It was a list of political goals: extension to everyone—including women—of the right to vote; proportional representation in the legislature, referendums for direct votes by the public; popular election of judges; separation of church and state, particularly in education; control of foreign policy by the legislature; a bill of individual rights; freedom of association and press; and equal rights for men and women. There isn't much that is revolutionary here, at least to us more than a hundred years later. These political goals were supplemented by such measures as free medical care; legal aid programs; free burial; free education at all levels, including higher education; old age pensions; and full employment. Costs would be paid out of progressive income taxes, property taxes, and death duties. Indirect taxes, such as sales taxes, would be prohibited. There's not much here that's radical. All of Bernstein's practical program could be accomplished in a private-enterprise capitalist system—or by a communist party after a revolutionary seizure of power.
Orthodox Marxism took the latter path, despite the fact that both Marx and Engels recognized that England and the United States, for example, might avoid a revolutionary confrontation between capital and labor because of their democratic political institutions. Engels's later writings, however, emphasized Marx's theory of the breakdown of capitalism in an era of social revolution, leaving out, as Marx did not, the possibility of developments that might modify the trend toward breakdown, such as labor unions, welfare legislation, and parliamentary democracy.
Orthodox Marxists debated several strategies for seizing power in the name of the working class. Rosa Luxemburg (1870-1919) advocated mass action by the working class, using the general strike of all workers at a time of crisis to bring monopoly capitalism to its knees. In Social Reform or Revolution? (1900) she advocated revolution. In The General Strike (1907) she laid down her revolutionary strategy. In Accumulation of Capital (1913) she argued that the collapse of the capitalist system was imminent, carrying Kautsky's rigid version of Marx's historical materialsm to its logical conclusion. She was murdered by the military during the Spartacist revolt in Berlin in 1919, a failed effort to stimulate a general strike and seize power.
Although Marx had argued that the working class would develop a revolutionary consciousness, a program, and a strategy out of its experience in a capitalist society, the Russian, V. I. Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Mlyanov, 1870-1924) doubted that would happen. In a 1902 pamphlet. What Is To Be Done?—Burning
Questions of Our Movement, he called for the formation of a party of dedicated revolutionaries who could lead the masses during a time of crisis, seize power, and proceed to build the new society. Members of the party would work full time for the party and would be thoroughly trained in revolutionary strategy and tactics—professional revolutionaries. The party would maintain contact with other groups and organizations among the working class and other exploited groups, but its members would remain an elite and secret leadership.
Meanwhile, an important modification of the theory of the breakdown of capitalism, by Rudolph Hilferding (1877-1941) in Finance Capital (1910), gave added impetus to those Marxists arguing for revolutionary seizure of power. While Marx had analyzed the development of competitive capitalism, Hilferding argued that capitalism had evolved into monopoly capitalism dominated by a few great financial institutions. This was the final stage, and the social revolution was imminent, he argued. Orthodox Marxists, including Lenin, immediately seized upon Hilferding's analysis as further justification for a revolutionary seizure of power. Lenin, in particular, used Hilferding's argument in his theory of revolution and political action.
Lenin's revolutionary strategy developed during the tumult of events of the World War (there was only one at the time). In Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) he characterized the war as essentially an imperialist war for control of investment opportunities in underdeveloped parts of the world. He argued that as investment opportunities and rates of profit declined in the advanced capitalist nations, and concessions were made to the working class to avoid strife, colonies became essential as outlets for surplus goods and surplus capital. Furthermore, exploitation of labor in the colonies was intensified as unions grew at home and exploitation of labor was relaxed. This analysis helped answer those critics of Marxism who argued that, contrary to Marx and orthodox Marxism, exploitation of labor was not increasing and the working class was not being immiserated. It also served another purpose within Russia, where Lenin could argue that Russian workers, in an underdeveloped country, were subject to more intensive exploitation than workers in more advanced western European countries and would therefore be more ripe for revolt. Marxist theory was placed in the service of a political program.
The State and Revolution (1917) was even more important in the formation of Lenin's political strategy. The revolution against capitalism would lead to a "dictatorship of the proletariat." This phrase had been used by Marx, but its meaning was not clear. Did it mean simply a government dominated by workers, analogous to bourgeois dominance of the state under capitalism, or did it mean an authoritarian government headed by a small revolutionary political party? Marx himself was not clear on this point, sometimes using the term in one context and sometimes in the other, and Engels had once written that the United States might move to a dictatorship of the proletariat by democratic elections, whatever that might mean. Nor was Lenin clear on exactly what he meant (he used exactly one page to discuss the issue). In practice, however, after the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia in 1917, die
tatorship of the proletariat meant authoritarian rule by a small group of revolutionaries acting in the name of the working class as a whole.*
The State and Revolution also made a distinction between the lower stage of communism and a higher stage.** Lenin argued that after the revolution, during which the communist party comes to control the state, the powers of government would be used to move toward socialism. But only after the socialist system increased production to achieve abundance would it be possible, in the higher stage, for the state to wither away and the principle of "from each according to his work, to each according to his need" to be applied. In the first stage—socialism—incomes would not be equal, and the dictatorship of the proletariat would prevail.
With Lenin, orthodox Marxism developed into an economic and political ideology that served the needs of Soviet authoritarianism. Engels's and Kautsky's emphasis on the inevitable breakdown of capitalism, plus Lenin's strategy of a revolutionary party and dictatorship of the proletariat, combined with the concept of socialism as a lower stage of communism, produced a bastard Marxism perfectly suited to Stalin and the authoritarian Soviet regime.
While this development of orthodox Marxism was going on, an entirely different path was pioneered by the revisionists. After the death of Engels in 1895, Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein, the two authors of the Erfurt Programme of 1891, were widely considered to be the foremost Marxist theorists in Germany, where the Marxist tradition was strongest. Bernstein had been editor of one of the important socialist newspapers from 1881 to 1890, published first in Zurich and then in London because of Germany's laws banning socialism and socialist publications. While in London he became friendly with Engels and met some of the English socialist leaders. He served as co-executor of Engels's estate in 1895 and 1896. But Bernstein had already begun to question the theory of capitalist breakdown stated so forcefully by Engels. He returned to Germany when the antisocialism laws were repealed, and between 1896 and 1898 he published a series of articles on "Problems of Socialism" in the leading socialist newspaper Die Neue Zeit. They were later expanded into a book with the cumbersome title of The Presuppositions of Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy (1899). An abridged English version, Evolutionary Socialism: A Criticism and Affirmation, was published in 1931, at a time when the Great Depression and the rise of fascism revived interest in socialist alternatives.
*One of the early slogans of the Russian revolution of 1917 was "All power to the Soviets," which were local and factory governing bodies elected by workers. I once asked an economist from the Soviet Central Planning Commission, shortly after the death of Stalin, "What do you suppose the world would be like today if Lenin had placed power in the hands of the Soviets instead of in the Party?" I should have known better. His answer: "It was an historical necessity"—Marxist historical materialism as political ideology.
"Marx had made a similar distinction in an 1878 pamphlet. The Critique of the Gotha Programme, in which he pointed out that there would have to be an intermediate stage between capitalism and full communism. But he did not specify what that stage would be like, leaving that to be decided by those living and working at the time.
In his 1899 book Bernstein denied that he was rejecting the essential core of Marxism, while he sought to revise what he considered to be outdated, dogmatic, or ambiguous. In particular, he rejected the idea of an imminent collapse of capitalism. He disputed the Marxist predictions of increasing industrial concentration, the destruction of small business, and more acute economic crises (Germany had recovered quickly from the depression of the 1890s), as well as the theory of working-class immiseration. Instead, he argued that the working class was steadily advancing both economically and politically and a social reaction against capitalist exploitation was reforming economic life. There would be no catastrophic crash.
Bernstein called for the Social Democratic Party (SPD) to forego ideas of forcible revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat and become a party of reform. It should emphasize transforming the state "in the direction of democracy" through extension of political and economic rights. Ultimately, when the SPD gained power through a democratic election, it could move toward socialist reform. Bernstein rejected both revolutionary seizure of power and dictatorship of the proletariat.
Successive party congresses rejected Bernstein's views, although in practice it adopted them. Bernstein was elected to the Reichstag and served as a socialist delegate from 1902 to 1906,1912 to 1918, and 1920 to 1928. During World War I he called for a peace settlement and in 1915 voted against funds for the war effort. After the war he argued the case for democratic socialism on moral and ethical grounds.
Bernstein's evolutionary socialism of reform from within rather than revolution, of extending the scope of parliamentary democracy, of introducing the socialist program step by step thorough majority vote, was to become the program of socialist political parties in all of western Europe and North America in the twentieth century. After the Second World War socialist parties came to power everywhere in western Europe, usually in coalitions with other liberal groups, and were able to legislate a variety of socialist programs and economic reforms. Marxism after Marx took two paths. One led from Engels through Lenin to the ideology of the Soviet Union. The second, by way of Bernstein, evolved into the strategy of democratic socialism.
Marxism, as an idea, has been an important force in the modern world. It expresses a moral outrage at the condition of humanity. It holds up a grand vision of what the condition might be. It viewed modern capitalism as a dynamic system in which the very process of growth leads ultimately to a crisis in which the system as a whole could no longer sustain itself. Its class-oriented view of the social order provided a framework within which much of what happens in the modern world can be analyzed. It provided a basis for political action and an ideology around which dissent could rally. These aspects of Marxism are far more important than whether its analysis of individual issues is right or wrong. Wherever people feel oppressed, Marxism can express their outrage and hope and offer a path to something better. It is this characteristic of Marxism that made it a force to be reckoned with in the modern world.
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