Noah Smith, a New Reader?

Noah Smith:

“In other words, real socialist success has been of the gradual, incrementalist kind, more in line with the visions of thinkers like Eduard Bernstein than to the dramatic, violent prophecies of Marx. …

“So although Marx was far-sighted in identifying some of the problems of capitalism, he got the solution very wrong. Remembering this is the best way to commemorate his birthday.”

Let me paraphrase Brad DeLong, self-proclaimed neoliberal freak who flies his flag high on the benefits of globalisation, bona fide genius, central planner extraordinaire and greatest of all experts on Marx, whose authority Smith invokes (I'm not kidding, he really does: check DeLong's post,  particularly the third paragraph, and compare it to Smith's article): Anybody think that Noah Smith actually read Marx or Bernstein, and set out to fairly summarize their views to his readers? Anybody? Anybody? Matt?

Harrison: Socialism and Bernstein.

So far, most of the material I’ve employed to discuss Eduard Bernstein’s Preconditions of Socialism did not come from his supporters. Bernstein’s own memoirs of exile proved to be of little help: it only contains the most superficial account of his 1880 meeting with Engels and Marx.

Predictions About Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy.

“Professor Schumpeter, as many tart phrases reveal, has little love for socialism, and none at all for socialists.” Joan Robinson reviews Schumpeter’s 1943 Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy for the Economic Journal issue of December 1943.

I found plenty interesting stuff while searching for information on the Revisionist Debates. Among other things, four very different books.

Road to Serfdom in cartoons. [A]

For all of Eduard Bernstein’s conviction that capitalism and with it liberal democracy had won a decisive victory (or, as Francis Fukuyama put it a century later, humanity had reached the End of History), his fellow petty bourgeois intellectuals spent the next half-century -- at the very least -- worrying themselves sick about the survival of capitalism and/or liberal democracy. After its inevitable victory, capitalist democracy looked a lot like a greenhouse flower: unless heroic countermeasures were urgently taken, any deviation would lead as inevitably to chaos.

Three Social Democrats go Hiking …

[A]

It’s a funny story, of which I learned from the SPD Ravensburg website. It closes an article on Ignaz Auer and his son, Erhard. Its authors are Günther Biegert and Bodo Rudolf.

Apparently the descendants of Ignaz Auer kept this anecdote as an oral tradition. It’s set in the early 1890s. It was the time of the German version of carrots and stick.

I’ll explain. Conservative chancellor Otto von Bismarck pushed his Anti-Socialist Laws in 1878. That was the stick (you know how Germans are: they invert the order of the words in sentences)

Dissecting Bernstein: the Spirit of Socialism.

Matt never spelt out what the "spirit of socialism" was. That means we are left to discuss nothing. His “argument” is unassailable, because there’s no argument.

Eduard Bernstein was more forthcoming. Although he didn’t use that phrase himself, he defiantly put his attitude towards socialism this way:

“I frankly admit that I have extraordinarily little feeling for, or interest in, what is usually termed ‘the final goal of socialism’. This goal, whatever it may be, is nothing to me, the movement is everything.” (p. xxviii)

Again he repeated that, almost verbatim, ten years later in the Preface to the English edition (Evolutionary Socialism).

Dissecting Bernstein: Bernstein and the International.

In the previous posts of this series we've been commenting on a series of claims for the resurrection of Eduard Bernstein as anti-Marx champion for the left.

This is the third such claim. As payment for his selfless efforts to update Marxism, Matt says, poor Bernie was almost/fully “drummed out of the International”.

Is that right?

The short answer:
This one is doubly wrong, which in itself is a record: two howlers within a five-word phrase. Both the what and the where are wrong.

The where: International Working Men’s Association was not a big international party (just to be on the safe side, I probably should add that it wasn’t a shadowy, sinister conspiracy like the mythical Elders of Zion, either). It was founded by working men’s societies (trade unions, clubs, cooperatives, and such) and such societies could join it, leave it or be expelled from it.

During the 1890s there were many “mainstream Marxists” mad at Bernstein (less, however, than you’d imagine). They would have been a whole lot madder if they knew his story in detail, but they didn't. Some of them did demand Bernstein’s expulsion, but not from the International: from the SPD.

(By now, even readers sympathetic to Matt must be starting to see a pattern of sloppiness emerging: Marx = Engels, the International = SPD, dates don’t matter.)

The long answer:
What actually happened and why it happened, however, are more instructive.

Dissecting Bernstein: Bernstein in the 1910s.

Last week we examined one of Matt's claims for the resurrection of Eduard Bernstein. Today we'll consider another one. In Matt's gospel, Bernstein had been a Pharisee. He, however, had an epiphany and converted to Reformism. According to Matt, Bernstein heard the words "Eduard, Eduard, why persecutest thou me" as early as the "1910's".

Is Matt right?

Dissecting Bernstein: Was Bernstein Marx's Literary Executor?

According to Matt, Bernstein was one of Marx's literary executors. Is Matt right?

The short answer:
Wrong beard, Matt (Freudian slip?). Bernstein was one of Engels’ literary executors. Marx’s literary executor was … drum rolls, please … Engels!

I can, however, be generous to Matt. So, to save time, I'll put it plainly: that's just a brain fart, embarrassing, but by itself it doesn't demolish the whole of his argument. It does say something, however, of his and Bernstein's credibility.

I can afford generosity, because what's telling is how I learned the right answer. Rather funny, actually.

An Online Argument for Bernstein's Resurrection: a Dissection.

To critique something, one must first understand what we are critiquing: what does what, how things fit together, what goes where.

That's what we are going to do now with Matt's comments.

Taking a Stroll Down Memory Lane (iii).

I suspect one must be really interested in Marxist and socialist history for the name Eduard Bernstein to ring a bell. I am and I have already written about him, without focusing specifically on him.



The bottom line is that Bernstein has been forgotten, but he would be a case study in the unintended consequences of the kind of charlatanry the liberal/leftish intelligentsia mastered.