The campaign of the left

The 1899 publication of Bernstein's The Preconditions of Socialism caused a predictable uproar among Marxist intellectuals united in their rejection of the book's “eclectic” theoretical foundations aimed at “the conversion of social-democratic ideas into bourgeois ones.” As a clear sign that they were not planning to relinquish their interpretive monopoly on the meaning of socialism, orthodox Marxists fiercely defended the teleological philosophical framework of Marxist-Hegelianism, making it the yardstick for judging the “correctness” and “philosophical sophistication” of any competing socialist conception. By 1900, the term “revisionism” had assumed a clearly pejorative meaning in many socialist circles.

However, in criticizing Bernstein's alleged “intellectual shallowness,” the guardians of Marxist orthodoxy soon ran into a number of serious practical problems. First, there was the question of what ought to be done to limit the damaging fallout of an ongoing, public discussion on the “meaning of Marxism,” which threatened to unsettle the SPD's “official” Marxist ideology. Second, how could the party's leaders attack and discredit Bernstein without offending the bosses of Germany's rising free trade union movement? Naturally, Bebel was aware of Bernstein's close ties to the unions and the last thing he wanted was to spread the fires of discontent even further. Finally, given Bernstein's prominence as one of Europe's leading socialist thinkers, how could Bebel and Kautsky convince the ordinary party membership of Bernstein's sudden “intellectual lapse?”