Before the Revisionist Controversy (RLE Marxism): Kautsky, Bernstein, and the Meaning of Marxism, 1895-1898

by H. Kendall Rogers

Overview

In this book, first published in 1992, the author examines the polemic fought by German Social-Democratic Party leaders and intellectuals Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein against what they perceived to be misunderstandings of Marxism propagated by members of the Social-Democratic Federation (SDF) in England and by the socialist leader Wilhelm Liebknecht in Germany. The debate raised basic questions of socialist theory, including whether the program of Marx and Engels called for scholarly study, parliamentary democracy, and gradual social evolution, or for Utopian speculation, economic collapse, and violent rebellion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138890985
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	04/08/2015
Series:	Routledge Library Editions: Marxism , #1
Pages:	498
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 1.1. The Legacy of Friedrich Engels 1.2. Learning About Marxism 1.3. The Erfurt Program and Wilhelm Liebknecht 1.4. Economic Determinism and Revolutionary Consciousness 1.5. The Democratic Republic 1.6. Worker Impoverishment, Capital Concentration, and the Catastrophe 1.7. Socialization, Reforms, and Political Cooperation 1.8. Violence and Revolution 1.9. Revolution in England 2. The Agrarian Question (1895) 2.1. Earlier Social-Democratic Views on the Agrarian Question 2.2. The Frankfurt Party Congress 2.3. Reactions to the Frankfurt Party Congress 2.4. Engels’s ‘The Peasant Question’ 2.5. The Agrarian Commission 2.6. Kautsky and the Agrarian Program 2.7. The Breslau Party Congress 2.8. The Agrarian Question After Breslau 2.9. Persecution 3. British Politics (Autumn 1895) 3.1. Engels, Liebknecht, and the SDF, 1881-1895 3.2. The Fabian Essays, 1889 3.3. The Fabians and German Marxism 3.4. The Parliamentary Elections of 1895 3.5. Fabian Arguments Against the SDF 4. The Political Crises of 1896 4.1. South Africa 4.2. Saxony 4.3. Poland 4.4. London 4.5. Turkey 5. The Theory Debates of 1896 (Summer and Fall) 5.1. Kanner and the ‘Bourgeois Ideologists’ 5.2. Ernest Belfort-Bax and the Meaning of Marxism 5.3. Social Democracy and the Fabians 5.4. The ‘Problems of Socialism’ Series Begins 5.5. Belfort-Bax’s Reply 6. The Turning Point (Winter 1897) 6.1. Bertrand Russell and Social Democracy 6.2. Bernstein’s Fabian Speech 6.3. The Addendum to Héritier 6.4. The ‘Problems of Socialism’ Series Continued 6.5. Shaw and the ‘Illusions of Socialism’ 7. Crete and Prussia (Spring and Summer 1897) 7.1. Crete 7.2. Prussia 8. The Last Months Before the Controversy 8.1. Strict Marxism (Late August) 8.2. Youth Labour (September) 8.3. The Review of Sighele (November) 8.4. The ‘Final-Goal Article’ (December) 9. Conclusion