Marxism

Leszek Kolakowski has referred to 1889–1914, the period of the second Socialist International, as "the golden age" of Marxism. The Socialist International was an organization, founded at a congress in Paris in 1889, that aimed to encourage cooperation among the socialist parties of the different European countries. Admittedly, in this period Marxism began to acquire something of the rigid and schematic character of a catechism, but among both Marxists and people who were just interested in Marxism, serious discussion of unclear points nonetheless took place. These included such questions as the following: If there is a law of development of human history, how does it operate? Does an explicitly normative or ethical dimension need to be added to "scientific socialism"? How is the economic "base" related to the legal, political, and cultural "superstructure"? Is socialism the inevitable outcome of capitalist development, or is it only one possibility? Is reform a worthy goal, or should Marxists focus entirely on revolution? Should socialist parties form alliances with non-socialist parties? How violent will the revolution be? Can a socialist worldview legitimately make use of non-Marxian resources?

Most (perhaps all) exponents of Marxism agreed that the goal of human history is some sort of exploitation-free society without class or other kinds of divisions, with a full development of science and technology and true freedom. The disagreements were about how this goal was to be achieved.

Revisionism and antirevisionism.

Marx predicted that capitalism would collapse under the combined weight of its economic difficulties and the proletariat's uprising against it. But by the late nineteenth century it was clear that economic upswing and actual or anticipated gains from trade unions and socialist parties were keeping revolution on the back burner. Few workers were revolutionary. In spite of its official Marxism after 1891, the actual orientation of German Social Democracy was deeply reformist. In response to this reality, the party activist and journalist Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932) argued in Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie (1899; translated as Evolutionary Socialism [1909]) that the collapse of capitalism is neither imminent nor inevitable, that the number of property owners is increasing, and that socialism is more likely to be achieved by gradual reform within capitalism than by revolution. Although a large minority of German Social Democrats agreed with Bernstein, such party leaders as Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) and August Bebel (1840–1913), as well as theorists outside Germany, excoriated Bernstein's "revisionism." Bernstein's opponents rightly saw that revolution was central for Marx. They were anxious to maintain unity and commitment in the socialist movement. And Bernstein's claims did not have anything like apodictic certainty. Even much later than 1899 it remained plausible to believe that capitalism was doomed, as the flourishing of Marxism during the 1930s depression shows.

Marxist theorists and party leaders, as well as other interested observers, responded to Bernstein in various ways. Kautsky repeated the increasingly hackneyed claim that the necessary development of the historical process will lead to revolution, a position that relieved Social Democrats of any need to act to bring the revolution about. The French social theorist Georges Sorel (1847–1922) scorned both Bernstein and orthodox Marxists like Kautsky and contended for a revolutionary movement committed to what Sorel called "the myth of the general strike," that would see its goal as a total, apocalyptic transformation of the world. The Russian revolutionary V. I. Lenin (1870–1924) opted for a centralized, vanguard party that would guide the too-hesitant proletariat toward revolution. The German (also Jewish-Polish) Social Democrat Rosa Luxemburg (1870–1919) polemicized against party bureaucracy and against Leninist top-down centralism, and in the face of massive contrary evidence put her faith in spontaneous revolt by the proletariat. The French socialist leader Jean Jaurès (1859–1914) supported Kautsky against Bernstein, and held that socialism would come about by revolution. But at the same time he was a natural conciliator and a moralist, having none of the characteristics of a revolutionary.

Kantian Marxism.

Another type of Marxism in this period modified or even abandoned Marxist (actually Engelsian) historical theory. The Italian philosopher Antonio Labriola (1843–1904) anticipated a heterodox strand in post-1917 Marxism in his attempt to show that Marxism takes its point of departure from human praxis, or action, which he saw as including all aspects of human life, including intellectual activity. Other Marxist thinkers insisted (contra both Engels and Marx himself) that Marxism needs a normative dimension, the movement of history being irrelevant to what human beings ought to desire. The influential school of "Austro-Marxists," involving such figures as Max Adler (1873–1937), Otto Bauer (1881–1938), and Rudolf Hilferding (1877–1941), adopted this position.

The Austro-Marxists also argued against the Leninist tendency to reduce theoretical ideas to mere weapons in the class struggle: instead, they held that Marxist theory ought to appeal to all rational minds. They likewise linked Marxism to a Kantian moral universalism. Like other Kant-inclined Marxists elsewhere, they held that socialism and the Kantian ideal of a "kingdom of ends" are congruent. Individual human beings should never be treated as mere means toward the development of some higher good. Such views were far distant from the theory and practice of Leninism.