J.B. Askew February 1903

Revisionism in Germany


Source: The Social Democrat, Vol. VII No. 2, February, 1903, pp. 84-97;
Transcribed: by Ted Crawford.


I do not know how far I am justified in assuming that the name “Revisionism,” which obtained such a rapid currency in the ranks of our German friends, is familiar to English comrades. I think, anyway, it may interest them to know how it arose. The word in its present application to the Bernsteinianer, or Fabian element in the German party, owes its origin to a much advertised work called “The Revision of Socialism,” published by a firm who had gained notoriety as the publishers of all Bernstein’s recent works, and a miscellaneous medley of semi-Socialist as well as Socialist publications, mostly of very mediocre value. The book was absolutely worthless, but the title took on, and that, aided by the way in which it was advertised, gave rise to the term “Revisionism,” which was applied to all those who were seeking to revise the Socialist programme.

When we come to examine the position and the development of Socialist policy in the principal countries of the world, we find everywhere a tendency to the crystallisation of two groups, which represent roughly two main ideas on the question of Socialist tactic and theory. Put in their baldest form, which I do in order to get the issues clearer, the one, the revolutionary, lays greatest stress on the action of the proletariat; the other is inclined to allow more for the good feeling or the insight of the bourgeoisie. But it is only where you get a concrete issue, as in France with the question of Millerand’s co-operation in a bourgeois Ministry, that the issues become at all clear, otherwise the controversy is apt, as in Germany, to spread itself over a wide area. Still, the main issue always, remains the same. On the one hand, those who believe to a certain extent in the insight and goodwill of certain sections of the capitalist class, are apt to believe that the workers will never develop sufficient strength to win power off their own bat, so to speak. On the other hand, those who believe that classes – not individuals – are guided by their class interests, hold that the workers have nothing to hope from any section of the bourgeoisie, and they are for that very reason led to value, very highly all endeavours of the working classes to render themselves, as far as possible, independent of the bourgeoisie. Naturally it must be understood in all these cases that we are speaking of general rules, not of single cases – of classes, not of individuals. Individual cases and men will always form an exception to every rule. But when we wish to find out the general laws which govern any phenomenon, we have to ignore the exceptions; so it must be in the case of politics. The Marxist or revolutionary attitude is grounded in the materialist conception of history, which shows that class interests are the predominating or decisive element in politics, and consequently, according to that view it is hopeless to expect that the bourgeoisie will ever do anything for the proletariat which would in any way endanger their power of exploitation or their political supremacy. That, in short, is the centre around which the whole discussion turns. Those who take the opportunist view hold that a greater degree of co-operation with the bourgeoisie is either advisable or necessary, thus they are led to advocate a modification of the class war theory; we hear even of the solidarity of classes or some such phrase, if I mistake not, from Millerand; we are told that the patriotism of the bourgeoisie must be appealed to; revolutionary phrases must be dropped because they frighten people, especially the good bourgeoisie, whose heart, overflowing with the milk of human kindness, can only be drawn by sweet reasonableness. Having accepted that, the programme itself is felt to be too ambitious; if we want to unite as many people as possible into the movement, we must put aside all definite, far-reaching programmes and work only for the immediately practical. The aim, as it is commonly understood, becomes nothing to us, the movement everything. Then it becomes a great thing to get as many people into Parliament as possible, and the movement itself becomes neglected, partly because a movement itself can only flourish, so far as it has a definite aim in view; and secondly, because it proved very often inconvenient to the delicate negotiations of the statesmen in Parliament to be interrupted by the noisy clamour of the mass agitation. Big strikes spoil the prospects of a Parliamentary alliance. And without saying that the movement is in consequence consciously discouraged, or even neglected, still the tendency is that way, because the fact is that Parliamentary wire-pulling is hardly compatible with a big democratic movement as such. One disturbs the other. And the case becomes worse when you have a Socialist Minister.

Thus, you get it that a theory which sets out by laying stress on the movement, ends in practice by neglecting the movement itself in favour of wire-pulling.

To turn, however, to the German Party, this opportunist tendency has naturally always existed, and those who have read the autobiography of Kautsky, which I translated for the December number of the SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT, will know that even at the time when circumstances might have been considered to have been least favourable for the chances of such opinions being heard, when, if at any time, the desperate state of the political situation made unanimity desirable, an article appeared propounding the thesis that the Socialist Law, then being applied with all possible severity and arbitrariness, was to a certain extent the fault of the revolutionary attitude of the party. But at that time opportunism had no chance. Still, even under the Socialist Law, which lasted twelve years, there were considerable differences of opinion on many questions, which differences were, it may however be added, partly due to the difficulties put by the Socialist Law itself in the way of a free interchange of views between the members of the party and between them and the party leaders, and the misunderstandings which arose out of a lack of such free intercourse. However, with the fall of the anti-Socialist Law the different opinions had freer play, and now came the turn of the impossibilists, or the so-called Berlin Opposition. With them, much as with our own impossibilists, all sorts of absurd and ridiculous charges were made against the leaders of the party and the parliamentary representatives, charges of betraying the interests of the party being about the mildest of them, and finally certain of them, four or five in all, who were concerned with the issue of an anonymous leaflet, were requested to appear before a committee appointed by the Party Congress at Erfurt to inquire into the charges made by this leaflet; as they refused to appear or to justify their charges, and as it was proved that not only were these charges without foundation but the comrades in question were responsible for them, they were expelled the party. I have gone into these details because it is constantly being brought as a reproach against the German Party that they were more severe with the revolutionary dissenters from the party theory than they have been with the opportunists. Well, we have had now much the same experience in England, and we have seen that a certain order of revolutionary makes himself in more than one sense “impossible.” It only remains to be added that apart from these individuals practically no one left the party, and those who made themselves most conspicuous then by their ultra-revolutionaryism have been since no less conspicuous among the opportunists or Revisionists.[1] Now this phenomenon, though at first sight puzzling, is seen afterwards to be quite natural. Both ultra-revolutionaryism and opportunism, however much they may use Marxian phrases, rest in contra-distinction to Marxism on an ideological or quasi-ideological basis. According to Marx, ideas do not, as is commonly thought, determine history, but are on the contrary the outcome of the economic institutions and development. The economic structure and development of society determine history. But this theory it is which neither the one nor the other have ever grasped, or at least applied.

Vollmar’s State Socialism, which arose at the same time as the impossibilists and created a certain amount of stir, especially in the bourgeois press, never established any foothold in the party. The “new course,” of which the policy of Vollmar was largely the outcome, that period when the German Emperor was for a time filled with the idea of playing the part of the Emperor of the Poor, was too short-lived. The ruling classes were too powerful for any Emperor, however well-intentioned, and however determined – let alone a man of the present Emperor’s temperament. The German workers knew the German governing classes and the German Government too well to be misled by palaver, hence State Socialism never attracted them. But the opportunist idea cropped up again in the agrarian question. Here the problem was this: Germany is a land largely occupied by peasant proprietors. We Social-Democrats have established our hold as a party in the bulk of the industrial districts among the industrial workers, but the agricultural districts are largely in the hands of the reactionaries. Now the old idea that the peasants would soon be ruined had not fulfilled itself and did not seem likely to, and the question occurred – Had we anything we could offer the peasant so as to deprive the reactionary parties of their surest prop? Could we, consistently with our position as the party of the proletariat, put forward, for example, a programme which was calculated to strengthen the peasant proprietor in his position as proprietor? Curiously enough, I believe I am right in saying that the first agrarian Socialist programme based on such opportunist principles, was adopted by our ultra-Marxist friends of the Parti Ouvrier Francais, in France. The German Party appointed a commission to enquire into the question, and a so-called agrarian programme was drawn up, but at the next congress it was rejected. The question, as far as the entire party is concerned, was left there, though Bavaria has since adopted an agrarian programme, somewhat similar to that recommended to the entire party; but in this respect it is interesting that in Bavaria, despite the fact that this programme was adopted expressly to catch the peasant vote, our vote decreased so much among the peasants that the special peasant agitation was abandoned; while in the neighbouring kingdom of Wurtemberg, where we had no special programme for the peasants, our vote largely increased, and I may say that our old comrade Greulich told me that from his experience in Switzerland he had found it was hopeless to get hold of the peasants as such. The fact is, I take it, that in some very vital points, such as the education of children, the question of the protection of labourers, and so on, we cannot concede to the peasants what they want, viz., the freedom to unrestricted exploitation of the labour of their own children and that of their labourers; and that when they come to us they do so because they have trust in the one party which has stood firm to principle, and which has never gone out of its way to humbug them. Indeed, it is probable that the opposition of our party to militarism, the enlargement of the Fleet, and the high protective duties on corn, and that we are looked on as the only serious opponents of these measures, have done more to win us support in the agricultural districts than all our agrarian programmes. That the Socialist has any idea of expropriating the peasant, is, of course, absolutely false, and so far as their interests coincide with those of the proletariat we can help them, abolishing seignorial rights and feudal privileges of all kinds, & c., but the interests of society as a whole must be supreme, especially the interests of the children; they must be protected from exploitation.

Another question which has at various times attracted a great deal of attention in our party, has been the question of the so-called neutralisation of the trade unions. Now, this is not so much a question of principle as one of tactic. The German trade union world is, as is well known, divided up into three great sections. There are the so-called Social-Democratic trade unions, the Christian, and the Hirsch-Duncker or Radical Union. The last, which are the smallest, admit only those who declare that they are not members of the Social-Democratic Party. Then there are the Christian trade unions, chiefly under clerical control. These two together total up about 250,000 members. Then there are the Social-Democratic, with about 600,000 members. Now it may naturally be supposed that the organisers of the latter are very anxious to see the entire working-class movement united. In order to do this all the big unions of Germany have been organised on a so-called neutral basis, i.e., they demand no declaration from their members of subscription to any political programme, they are forbidden by law to give any money to any political association, and they generally accentuate their character, as neutral bodies, for the defence of their members. Besides them, however, there are a much smaller body of Socialist trade unions, properly so-called – those who are organised according to district and not according to trade; these make acceptance of the Socialist programme a sine quâ non of membership. Among those who favour neutralisation in the former sense is our comrade Bebel. It is no less opposed by Kautsky, who denies that the workers’ organisations can remain politically neutral. Kautsky agrees that no political tests should be demanded, but simply denies that it is possible for the trade unions to keep out of politics, and that being so, that the only party which can represent them is the Social-Democratic. Kautsky’s argument seems to me convincing, and speaking from my own experience at the International Textile Workers’ Congress I think that the German trade unions would do much better to say straight out that they are Social-Democratic unions, because they cannot be anything else, and consequently their protested neutrality only awakens suspicion among those they want to conciliate; in this case it was the English cotton spinners and weavers. Moreover, I may quote again, on this subject, our old friend Greulich, who may be considered the father of the neutralisation idea – an idea which he introduced into the Swiss trade union movement, but which he has practically abandoned after a few years’ trial, because he said that, in religious matters, neutrality was necessary, but in political impossible. Finally, the last year’s congress of trade unionists of Germany, held at Stuttgart, showed that the vast body of the German trade unions are in fact Social-Democratic, and even where they lay greatest stress on neutralisation, it was only neutral within a very clearly-defined limit. They were not indifferent, they knew the Social-Democratic Party was their political expression, and the Compositors’ Trade Union, who carry the idea of neutrality to the extent of attacking the Socialists, remained quite isolated. So far as the unity of the workingmen’s movement in Germany is concerned, the part played by our party in combatting the corn duties, and the reputation it has acquired as the genuine workers’ party, coupled with the duplicity of the Centre Party on all these questions (a duplicity which necessarily springs from the heterogeneous composition of this party), has done more to win us the support of the Catholic workers and to bring about the unity of the trade unions than all the protestations of neutrality. After all, it is the actions of a party more than its words which weigh, and actually taking part in the class struggles of our time is worth a lot of words – be they ever so eloquent.

I cannot avoid going shortly into the question of the relations of Bernstein and others to the German Party. The German Party in particular has been much blamed for weakness because they did not summarily kick out those who had denied the party doctrines. Now I have pointed out that the fight in Germany between the two sections never concentrated itself around any one point. There was no concrete issue. Bernstein’s book amounted to nothing more than a series of criticisms – criticisms of various points in our theory and programme, which could be confuted certainly, as they were by Kautsky, but which could only be formally condemned by the party by means of a rule which would forbid all criticism of the party programme and theory; in other words, we should have declared that we had achieved final truth in this direction – the party theory could under no circumstances require modification, while all the time implying that we had doubts on the matter and only feared they might be justified. Moreover, it would have been to absurdly overrate Bernstein’s influence. Among the German proletariat Bernstein never had any hold. That was admitted even by his keenest supporters. The German worker knows the class war too well in practice to be much impressed by criticism of it; and, indeed, so long as our theory is true to the facts of life, we need not bother who attacks it.

It is possibly, however, in Parliamentary matters that one sees the most dangerous side of opportunism, notably in a State like Bavaria, where the traditions are somewhat freer than in other parts of Germany. Here we saw the notorious Bavarian “cow-deal,” as old Liebknecht called it, a simile used to describe all sorts of curious bargains, by which arrangement the Socialists made an alliance with the Centre Party and helped them into the position of an absolute majority; certainly it enabled the Socialists to obtain double their old number of seats; but only at the cost of leaving themselves far weaker in reality than before in consequence of the much greater increase in the strength of the Clerical Party, a party they could criticise so much less effectively because they had put them into power; and later on they capped that by joining in a unanimous vote, by which the Government scheme of Suffrage Reform in Bavaria was carried in the Landtag. That a scheme should have been accepted by all the worst reactionaries in the chamber, was significant, and we need not wonder when we know that large numbers of working men were undoubtedly disfranchised by it, and the representation of the agricultural districts favoured at the expense of the towns. It may be said that, so far as I know, the policy of the Bavarian deputies met with practically unanimous disapproval, in the ranks of the party outside of Bavaria, and even so cautious an opportunist as Auer wrote a sarcastic article on the question. It would also seem that in Munich the opportunist theories of our friends have led them to neglect the movement outside, the organisation and agitation, in favour of their work inside the Landtag, and this opinion has been confirmed by reading the speech of Vollmar at the last Congress of Bavarian Socialists, in reply to the complaints as to neglect of the agitation in the industrial centres, especially of the Bavarian Palatinate, and it is easy to see how the tendency will almost inevitably arise – once our representatives lose sight of the essential fact that the main source of their strength lies in the people they represent, they are naturally led to think they can achieve much by wire-pulling, etc., in fact “statesmanship” comes in. In Baden, the same opportunism has come to expression, from time to time, in the Landtag, where our party voted for the State budget – a policy which met with the disapproval of the general German Party Congress, and has been discontinued. With the exception of Wurtemberg – where, though the political traditions are quite as liberal as the other South German States, a much more revolutionary spirit rules in the party, partly perhaps owing to the influence of that spirited champion of revolutionary Socialism, Clara Zetkin but with this one exception, South Germany has been the home, to a certain extent, of practical opportunism.

As an additional circumstance favouring the growth of Revisionism, we have the fact, that among certain sections of the cultivated bourgeoisie or rather the professional classes, prejudice against Socialism has much decreased. These sections have practically no influence on the course of legislation, in political matters they are the most impotent class in the community, but their influence is such that those members of the professional classes who join the Socialists no longer declass themselves entirely. Thus you find that, whereas formerly those of our comrades who had come to us from the professional classes had nothing further to lose, they had made the plunge, now a man can much more easily belong to both worlds. That has its advantages, it has also its disadvantages. Its advantages are clear. It renders it much easier for us to get a clear understanding of the position of our opponents. The better we understand our opponents, the more we recognise the limitations of their power, the less likely are we to be led away by illusions, e.g., of the possible results of an alliance with the bourgeoisie, and clear as to what extent we can rely on their co-operation for definite ends. Moreover, it gets rid of another illusion that class antagonism must express itself in the personal and social antagonism of the members of those classes. It gets rid of the idea that good manners are incompatible with antagonistic views. Its disadvantages are that we find a number of people who call themselves Socialists who have no idea what Socialism means or stands for. Many of these people who have never really cast off their bourgeois way of thinking, but by virtue of a university degree, think that they must know all about Socialism, these are the men who want to revise Socialism before they have grasped what it is. These people are very numerous among the Revisionists.

Another element which helps Revisionism is the general tendency to make means into ends. The trade unionist, the co-operator, the parliamentarian, the municipal deputy all have a tendency to magnify their own section, and in this they are encouraged by certain sections of the bourgeoisie who see in this a means of splitting up the working-class movement. Divide and rule must be the maxim of any ruling class. That tendency towards sectional movements was also favoured by the good trade era. The bourgeoisie is under such circumstances naturally inclined to purchase peace at the price of small concessions, small increases in wages, better labour conditions, & c., and the bourgeois representatives in Parliament are only too glad to acquire a cheap reputation for social reform tendencies. These tendencies on the part of the German bourgeoisie never got very far. The German capitalist never enjoyed – what his British competitor had at one time – a monopoly of the world market. The German capitalist always had to fight hard for his own hand, thus he has from the beginning been much more brutally disposed to his men, much more inclined to rely on the armed force of the Government, than the English, who not only had the monopoly but had not the same armed force to fall back on. Thus it might have been expected that England should have offered an even more favourable hunting ground than she has for the apostles of industrial harmony.

Between them a great deal of what the English workers did get they got from the antagonism between the capitalists and landlords, not from the far-sighted policy of the bourgeoisie; but the desire of the landlords to have a smack back at the capitalists resulted in one of the greatest improvements in the Factory Acts. And now what do we find in England at the present day? Do we hear of social reform any more? No, you have the Taff Vale decision instead. And as to political reaction, you even find Liberal papers encouraging Edward VII. to interfere in politics. Militarism is in the air, Clericalism more powerful than ever. How does the English bourgeoisie hold itself to this general tendency? Nobody can deny, I take it, that the English bourgeoisie is far less democratic than it was, far more favourable to the Church, militarism, & c. That can hardly be described as favourable to Revisionism or Fabianism.

In Germany, however, the case is far worse. Here, so far from any idea of achieving social reform by means of parliamentarism – no less a thing than Parliament itself is at stake. It is a question whether or not the ruling classes will attempt to abolish what they were obliged to grant to the proletariat theory years ago – namely universal suffrage. In the last few weeks the majority in the Reichstag has trodden all right under foot, the President has put aside all pretence at impartiality, and at the bidding of the Emperor, refused to the Socialists what he had the day before allowed his own party to do. Now it is conceivable that, had our friends voted, say, the military demands of the governments, had they become a so-called constitutional party, the suffrage might be safe. But they would have been going in the teeth of their own principles, and throwing them overboard. Better, far better to lose universal suffrage, than to enjoy it only on condition of not using it, and that is what such a state of affairs would amount to. Parliamentarism is valuable, only so long as it is the real thing, and not a sham, and moreover, a sham bought at the expense of our own principles. Our party would itself have become a sham.

Under the circumstances it may be readily understood that there is no room for Revisionism in Germany – at least at the present. Whether it will revive remains to be seen. I think not. The whole conditions of capitalist production are making for greater competition on the world market. The capitalist classes are likely to be less and less inclined to make concessions. Moreover, the limited liability company means that all personal relations everywhere between capitalists and workers are broken off. The employer may be inclined to generosity – but the company never. This in its turn influences legislation. The more widely shares are held the more strong is that body of people among the electors who are simply opposed to all factory legislation or social reform. The class war becomes really a class war. The individuals who come forward, do so not as representing their own interests – but those of a many-headed crowd behind them. Thus, the so-called democratising of industry through the company makes for the Social Revolution, and renders Revisionist Socialism impossible.

J. B. Askew.


1. I may also add that the resolution of expulsion in regard to the five men was finally abolished at the Munich Congress, so that they are free to join the party again, which some of them have done.