Eduard Bernstein: Theoretical Father of Revisionism

Eduard Bernstein, born on January 6, 1850, in Berlin, Germany (then Schöneberg), was a social democratic politician and theorist who founded Marxist revisionism. Close to Engels during years of exile, Bernstein later challenged orthodox Marxist predictions regarding the inevitable collapse of capitalism and violent revolution. In Evolutionary Socialism (1899), he argued that social democracy should pursue gradual democratic reforms, labor protections, and parliamentary action to achieve socialist goals. His theoretical work laid the intellectual foundations for modern democratic socialism, shifting European social democratic strategy toward reformism, constitutionalism, and welfare state development.

Other languages