>From: LeoCasey at aol.com
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Subject: On Bernstein and Historical Counterfactuals
>Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 10:40:54 EST
>
>Justin writes:
> > I have never had any credentials as an orthodox Marxist. I rather doubt
> > whether I am a Marxist, or whether there is any point in proclaiming
>that
> > one is today. My point was that Bernstein thought he was an orthodox
> > Marxist, which he did. So, indeed, did Kautsky, even after he was
>sidelined
> > by 1914, the war, and the Russian revolution. B differed with Luxemburg
>and
> > K with Lenin mainly about the means to achieve socialism and to keep it
>in
> > power. And given the firm commitment of both thinkers _to_ socialism,
> > understood as both of them understood it in classical Marxism terms
>(which
> > _I_ reject), it is inconceivable that either of them would ever have
> > supported a right wing bourgeois politician. Some historical
> > counterfactuals
> >
>
>At the risk of becoming Yoshie the Lesser, let me post just one example of
>what an Internet search for Eduard Bernstein produces under the subject
>heading of "Revisionism." [If I was home, I would be happy to get out a
>copy
>of Bernstein's opus and provide all the exact quotes for the accurate
>summary
>of his politics below.]
>
>In Marxist thought, originally the late 19th-century effort of Eduard
>Bernstein to revise Marxist doctrine. Rejecting the labour theory of value,
>economic determinism, and the significance of the class struggle, Bernstein
>argued that by that time German society had disproved some of Marx's
>predictions: he asserted that capitalism was not on the verge of collapse,
>capital was not being amassed by fewer and fewer persons, the middle class
>was not disappearing, and the working class was not afflicted by
>"increasing
>misery."The revisionism of Bernstein aroused considerable controversy among
>the German Social Democrats of his day. Led by Karl Kautsky, they
>officially
>rejected it (Hanover Congress, 1889). Nevertheless, revisionism had a great
>impact on the party's practical policies.
>
>Now surely is there is any core to Marxism, it involves the primacy of
>'class
>struggle,' and this was a theses which Bernstein clearly rejected. There
>was
>a reason why Kautsky, Luxemburg and Lenin went absolutely ballistic over
>Bernstein's "revisionism," and it most assuredly was not because of his
>fealty to Marxian socialism; the main thing that those three had in common
>was their claim to Marxist orthodoxy. Indeed, the notion that Bernstein was
>an "orthodox Marxian" is so unusual and strange a proposition that I can
>not
>think of any major interpreter of the Marxist and socialist traditions who
>would hold to it. This is probably only a question of the accuracy of
>interpretation, since the one point here that Justin and I agree on is that
>claims to Marxist orthodoxy are pretty much irrelevant in any practical
>political sense, but Justin is so far off base on it that I can't help but
>dissent, and hold to my position on Bernstein.
>
>The problem with Justin's historical counterfactual, as virtually all other
>counterfactuals, is that it suggests that it is possible to take a figure
>out
>of a historically and nationally specific context, and determine what he
>would do in an altogether different setting. Here we are talking about a
>time
>frame of almost 125 years, and a shift from Germany to the US. But unless
>one's political analysis is entirely formulaic, the historical and national
>context of one's action are very much determinative. When I was in Canada,
>I
>was a member, an active supporter and on the left of the social
>democratic/labor party, the New Democratic Party, because in the Canadian
>context, one can have a significant impact upon the direction of Canadian
>politics through such a vehicle. But all that changes when one crosses one
>national border. One can not call those conditions into being in the US,
>and
>simply find a social democratic/labor party which will have the same impact
>and efficacy. [And this does not even consider the ways in which one's
>views
>are formed by one's particular historical experience.] To suggest that
>because in late 19th century Germany, Bernstein was a leading Social
>Democrat, we can state with any certainty what he would have done in early
>21st century United States, is to engage in a form of science fiction, with
>H. G. Wells' time machines, as far as I am concerned.
>
>Leo Casey
>United Federation of Teachers
>260 Park Avenue South
>New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
>
>Power concedes nothing without a demand.
>It never has, and it never will.
>If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
>Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who
>want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
>lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
>-- Frederick Douglass --
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