The Preconditions of Socialism: a Critical Review (and xi)

“Looks like she didn't have nobody to help her. I felt right sorry for her. She seemed...” Tom Robinson

In spite of the absolute lack of evidence against him, in spite of the best efforts of his defence attorney, Tom Robinson was found guilty. Those words sealed his fate. He was innocent of the crime he had been charged with, but he had to be convicted of a crime, any crime. The one at hand was that him, a black man, had felt sorry for a white woman.

The Preconditions of Socialism: a Critical Review (x)

“Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig; es ist nicht einmal falsch!” Wolfgang Pauli.

In the last two posts in this series we’ve introduced Thomas Piketty’s “capital” inequality data. As is well-known, Piketty and co-workers derive their findings largely from tax return data. Bernstein employed similar data.

Piketty’s results seem to corroborate Marxist views on distribution of wealth. Bernstein’s, however, contradict them. Someone has got to be wrong. It’s time to scrutinise Bernstein’s empirical argument.

No Post Last Week.

No post last Saturday (AEST), since I've been a little unwell. I should be able to resume my critical review of Preconditions next Saturday.

The Preconditions of Socialism: a Critical Review (ix)

It’s time to go back to Thomas Piketty’s data and their application to the assessment of Preconditions.

A first question about Piketty’s 1910s Europe “capital” data would be how representative of a particular, historical, observed national economy that data are?

At the World Inequality Database the only series (personal wealth distribution: analogue of “capital”) with data for the lowest 50%, the middle 40%, the upper 9% and the top 1% I could find for that general time period was the one for France, for the years 1902, 1903, 1904, 1905, 1907, 1909, and 1910.

The Preconditions of Socialism: a Critical Review (viii)

“The period of the first globalization is as fascinating as it was prodigiously inegalitarian”. Thomas Piketty (Capital in the 21st Century, 2014. Kindle Locations 595-597. Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.)

We finally made it to Chapter 3 of Preconditions (2 of Evolutionary). As the review will now deal with statistical data, this post contains an unusually large number of links to resources freely available over the Internet. Although readers may find the task daunting, I’ll invite them to carefully check those links. I personally visited each and every single one of those pages, and in my opinion they are educative.

Eduard Bernstein composed and published Preconditions during the late 1890s. The largest national capitalist economies had been experiencing a period of overall prosperity, punctuated by the usual downturns. In some places that bonanza started as early as the 1870s; in the US it would extend well into the Roaring Twenties.

Although there are more evocative names, Thomas Piketty, in his Capital refers to those times in general with the more neutral-sounding, but very appropriate, “‘first globalisation’ of finance and trade (1870-1914)” (Kindle Location 594).

And it’s not coincidental that Piketty mentioned Bernstein three times: both deal with some of the same subjects and variables, using tax return data [maybe other authors before Bernstein had studied tax returns, but Preconditions is the earliest example I could find (p. 60) and the most unfortunate].

But the usefulness of Capital to assess Preconditions goes far beyond periodisation or noticing that Bernstein and Piketty studied similar data for Europe, roughly during the same period.

The Preconditions of Socialism: a Critical Review (vii)

“There are few writers or thinkers in history whose every word and grunt has been examined by hostile critics so minutely as Marx’s has”. Hal Draper.

The usual reference Marxists give those asking about “historical materialism” (aka the “materialist conception of history”) is Marx’s 1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (example 1, example 2). If readers downloaded and printed it from the Marxists Internet Archive, depending on their printer settings, they’d get something like this:

Right-click to open a larger version in a different tab.

The Preconditions of Socialism: a Critical Review (vi)

“When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” Humpty Dumpty.

There’s a way to see Preconditions (or Evolutionary) that should help understand Eduard Bernstein’s argument: what goes where and why.

Imagine you are in Maycomb, Alabama. It’s the 1930s.

The Preconditions of Socialism: a Critical Review (v)

“For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” (Matthew 7:2 KJV)

By now anti-Marxist readers (openly right-wing or reformists, it makes no difference) must have felt something of what Marxist readers of Preconditions felt in the late 1890s. What’s sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander.

Unlike those Marxists, the more enterprising among anti-Marxists may even have discovered the trick I played them: unlike Bernstein, I explained it to them.

The Preconditions of Socialism: a Critical Review (iv)

“What’s sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander”. English proverb, 17th century.

After the last post, I think I am in position to offer a general -- impressionistic, if you like -- assessment of Preconditions, for those readers less than vitally interested in details. A real attempt to decipher his argument must of necessity take more time.

The Preconditions of Socialism: a Critical Review (iii)

After a week’s pause, it’s time to go back to Preconditions. Last time we examined that book’s general content and its Cold War re-discovery.

Suppose the reader, intent on saving him/herself a time-consuming engagement with Bernstein’s “scholastic” (his own term) argument decided instead to jump straight in Chapter 3 of Preconditions (2 of Evolutionary) where he makes his empirical argument.

Although perhaps unfamiliar with details, the reader is, of course, aware of Bernstein’s general intent, and particularly of what his final goal (pun intended) is: he is there to fell Marxism, much like a logger fells an old tree [“In principle, Marxism stands or falls with this theory” (p. 12)]

In section b of that chapter (P3§b E2§b) after presenting his statement of what Marxism explains, Bernstein asked himself the following question: “Now, is all this correct?” (p. 57, "Now, is all that right?" in Evolutionary).

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?

The Preconditions of Socialism: a Critical Review (ii)

“The importance of a work, however, cannot be judged solely on an absolute plane; one should also take into account its influence and its political function.” (Zeev Sternhell et al, The Birth of Fascist Ideology)

Below, side by side, are the tables of contents of Evolutionary Socialism (first Schocken Books paperback edition 1961, fourth printing 1967) and The Preconditions of Socialism (Cambridge University Press, 1993, reprinted 2004)

(right-click to open a larger version in a separate browser tab)

That of Evolutionary corresponds exactly to the version hosted by the Marxists Internet Archive. As reflected above, both tables show only what Bernstein wrote.

The Preconditions of Socialism: a Critical Review (i)

Well, a promise is a promise.

The initial idea behind this series of weekly posts on Eduard Bernstein’s Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus was to consider the book on its own merits; in other words, to write a critical review of the argument embodied in Voraussetzungen, not a denunciation of its author: I have already done that and I have little more to add. Moreover, originally I intended to limit this review to its empirical argument, which his modern admirers find so compelling.