On the 50th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto in 1898 Plekhanov was horrified to read in Die Neue Zeit an article by Bernstein, the prominent German Social Democratic leader, which questioned the basic ideas of Marxism. “Why, this is a complete denial both of revolutionary tactics and of communism,” wrote Plekhanov. “Those articles nearly made me ill.” This was only the opening shot in a sustained campaign which Bernstein waged in the German party press in favour of ‘revising’ Marxism. Bernstein argued that Marxism was out of date. The supposedly ‘modern’ theories of the present-day labour leaders are only clumsy plagiarisms of notions far more ably expressed by Bernstein a hundred years ago.
Among other things, Bernstein argued that the concentration of industrial production was taking place at a much slower pace than had been foreseen by Marx; the great number of small businesses showed the vitality of private enterprise (‘small is beautiful’, as they say nowadays!); instead of polarisation between workers and capitalists, the presence of numerous intermediate strata means that society is much more complex (‘the new middle classes’); in place of ‘the anarchy of production’, capitalism was capable of being controlled to the extent that crises were less frequent and less severe (Keynesianism and ‘managed capitalism’); and the working class, apart from being a minority of society, was only interested in the immediate improvement of its material conditions of existence (‘upwardly mobile’).
Of course, these ideas did not drop from the sky. They reflected the pressure of a prolonged period of capitalist economic upswing which lasted for nearly two decades, coming to an end with the First World War. This period of relative social calm and also of relative improvements in the living standards of at least the upper layers of the proletariat in Germany, Britain, France, and Belgium gave rise to the illusion that capitalism was well on the way to solving its fundamental contradictions. The rapid growth in power and influence of the workers’ parties and trade unions also spawned a new caste of union officials, parliamentarians, town councillors and party bureaucrats who, in their living conditions and outlook, became progressively removed from the people they were supposed to represent. This stratum, reasonably well-off and lulled by the apparent success of capitalism, provided the social base for revisionism, a petty bourgeois reaction against the storm and stress of the class struggle, a yearning for the creature comforts and the desire for a peaceful and harmonious transition to socialism – in the dim and distant future.
Axelrod’s reaction to Bernstein’s articles in Die Neue Zeit (New Times) was initially more tolerant than Plekhanov, who was outraged by them. In fact, both Axelrod and Zasulich were shaken to the point of demoralisation by the controversy. The impressionable Vera Zasulich, in particular, was tormented by doubts. Only Plekhanov remained absolutely firm, rallying his colleagues and launching himself into the fray. His articles against Bernstein and Konrad Schmidt (on philosophy, in defence of dialectical materialism) show Plekhanov at his finest: an indefatigable fighter in defence of the fundamental ideas of Marxism. The most prominent representatives of the left wing of the SPD, Rosa Luxemburg and Parvus, launched a fierce counter-attack. But what shocked Plekhanov more than anything else was the reaction of Kautsky.
Generally regarded as the guardian of Marxist orthodoxy par excellence, Kautsky was also a personal friend of Plekhanov. But now he not only permitted the use of Die Neue Zeit – the journal of which he was editor – for this anti-Marxist diatribe, but also he initially refrained from criticising Bernstein in print. In the light of subsequent history, Kautsky’s silence was significant. For all his scholarly theses on revolution and the class struggle, Kautsky’s Marxism had an abstract, scholastic character. Whereas Plekhanov regarded Bernstein as an enemy to be attacked, unmasked and, if necessary, driven out, Kautsky still saw him as an erring companion, whose theoretical eccentricities ought not to spoil an agreeably friendly relationship. Kautsky’s attitude is clearly revealed in a letter he wrote to Axelrod on 9 March, 1898, congratulating him on his articles against Bernstein in the following terms:
I am most interested in your opinion of Eddie. Indeed, I’m afraid we’re losing him… However, I have still not given him up as a bad job and I hope that when he enters into personal – if only written – contact with us, then something of the old fighter will return to our Hamlet (sic), and he will once again direct his criticism against the enemy and not against us. (Perepiska G.V. Plekhanov i P.B. Aksel’roda, pp. 208-9.)
When finally pushed and prodded by Plekhanov to make a public reply, Kautsky was careful to invest this with the softest possible tone, almost apologising for taking him up: “Bernstein has obliged us to reconsider things and, for that, we should thank him.” Infuriated by this, Plekhanov wrote an open letter to Kautsky with the title Why Should We Thank Him? in which, among other things, he sharply posed the question: “Who will bury whom? Will Bernstein bury the Social Democracy, or the Social Democracy, Bernstein?” (SH Baron, Plekhanov, p. 238.)
While the members of the Emancipation of Labour Group reacted sharply to Bernstein’s attempt to water down the revolutionary teachings of Marx, he had his admirers among the Russians. Before this, the Economist deviations lacked a coherent theoretical content. Now, beginning with the exiles, they eagerly seized on Bernstein’s ideas as a justification for their opportunist tendencies. Although Rabochaya Mysl’ sought to avoid politics like the plague, nevertheless it had a very definite political line – a reformist and anti-revolutionary line:
The development of factory legislation, workers’ insurance, the participation of workers in profits, the development of trade unions will gradually transform capitalist society into socialist society… Not the aggravation of poverty of the proletariat, not the aggravation of the conflict between capital and labour, not the aggravation of the internal contradictions of capitalist production will lead to socialism, but rather the growth and development of the strength and influence of the proletariat. (Quoted in A.R. Wildman, The Making of a Worker’s Revolution – Russian Social Democracy 1891-1903, p. 141.)
The ideologues of Rabochaya Mysl’ were students and intellectuals through whom the pressure of the bourgeois-liberals was brought to bear upon the workers’ movement. Their open admiration for Bernstein was no accident. They represented a specific Russian variant of the international phenomenon of revisionism, which in turn was an expression of the interests of the middle-class ‘progressives’ in the West who had drawn close to the workers’ movement when it was clear that the latter had definitely established itself as a powerful social agency and therefore a potential source of jobs, prestige and income. Indeed, from the very earliest days of the German Social Democracy, Engels had continually warned against the pernicious influence of the university ‘Katheder Sozialisten’, people like Dühring who graciously deigned to offer their services to the labour movement with a view to prodding it along the road of reformist class collaboration.
However, the parallel holds good only within certain limits. The social context in which Economism arose was very different to that in which German revisionism was born and prospered. Just as the Russian bourgeoisie represented a feeble and anaemic growth in comparison to mighty German, French, and British capitalism, so the Russian Bernsteinists were very much the poor relations of international opportunism. They had no ideas of their own, other than the shifting fads, moods, and prejudices of the intellectuals. What ideological baggage they possessed was lifted from the Germans and British. Reformism has a material base. Capitalism in Britain, Germany, and France still had a progressive role to play in the development of the productive forces. The period of economic upswing which preceded the First World War, the amelioration of the lot of a section of the masses, and the consequent softening of relations between the classes was the social and economic premise for the rise of Bernsteinite revisionism. But the seeds which prospered in the soil of economic progress in the West proved virtually barren in the harsh and rocky terrain of Russia. Here there was no large labour aristocracy, but a mass of pauperised proletarians, slaving in large-scale industry. Only in one area did the ideas of Economism find the necessary raw material to get an echo in the working class.
With the most experienced leaders now almost all in jail, the level of the average member fell to an extremely low point. The ideas of Economism became widespread in the local committees. The practical consequences of this were seen as early as May Day 1899, when the young group in Petersburg put out a leaflet calling for a ten-hour working day, in contrast to the internationally accepted slogan of the eight-hour day, an action which was denounced in the first issue of Zarya as “a betrayal of international Social Democracy”. (Quoted in V. Akimov, On the Dilemmas of Russian Marxism 1895-1903, p. 262.)
In order to place the movement in Russia on a firm footing, it was necessary to put an end to this state of affairs. The pressing need for a united party with a stable leadership and, above all, an all-Russian Marxist newspaper, was felt by everyone. Only with the launching of Lenin’s Iskra did the unification of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party become a viable proposition. But before that an attempt was made to launch the Party through a founding congress.