long in England, inaugurated the "Revisionist" movement which at last conquered the bulk of the party. His criticisms of Marxian orthodoxy are set forth in his "Evolutionary Socialism."[1] Bernstein's work, as is common in Broad Church writers, consists largely in showing that the Founders did not hold their doctrines so rigidly as their followers have done. There is much in the writings of Marx and Engels that cannot be fitted into the rigid orthodoxy which grew up among their disciples. Bernstein's main criticisms of these disciples, apart from such as we have already mentioned, consist in a defence of piecemeal action as against revolution. He protests against the attitude of undue hostility to Liberalism which is common among Socialists, and he blunts the edge of the internationalism which undoubtedly is part of the teaching of Marx. The workers, he says, have a Fatherland as soon as they become citizens, and on this basis he defends that degree of nationalism which the war has since shown to be prevalent in the ranks of Socialists. He even goes so far as to maintain that European nations have a right to tropical territory owing to their higher civilization. Such doctrines diminish revolutionary ardour and tend to transform Socialists into, a left wing of the Liberal Party. But the increasing prosperity of wage-earners before the war made these developments inevitable.
- ↑ "Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozial-Demokratie."
In March 1914 Bernstein delivered a lecture in Budapest, in which he withdrew from several of the positions he had taken up (vide Budapest Volkstimme, March 19, 1914).
