Colonialism and culture

Bernstein's views on nationalism indicate that while he supported the establishment of class-transcending alliances with left-liberals, he had not abandoned a socialist “class politics.” He assigned the working class a leading role in modern society – not only on the basis of its enhanced economic productivity and increased social wealth, but also with regard to its crucial cultural task of refining ethical and spiritual dimensions in society. For Bernstein, the labor movement was both the bearer of “noble” forms of patriotism and the most appropriate evolutionary vehicle for the creation of a new “cultural philosophy,” responsible for uplifting “culturally stagnant civilizations” and educating them for their eventual independence. What he seems to have had in mind was the transformation of the Victorian “white man's burden” into the more class-oriented “burden of the proletariat.” Although Bernstein's perspective on colonialism appears to correspond to similar comments made by Marx, Engels, and Lassalle on topics such as British colonialism in India, the national awakening of the Balkans, and the Austrian–Italian wars, it clashed with the anti-colonialism of a younger generation of German socialists who saw things quite differently.

During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the orthodox party leadership had largely abandoned Marx's and Engels' culturally biased defense of “the right of civilization against barbarism.”