"BACK TO LANGE" - BERNSTEIN'S NATURAL LAW BASIS "BACK TO LANGE" - THE NATURAL LAW BASIS FOR EDUARD BERNSTEIN'S "EVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM" By TERENCE WILLIAM BARKER, B.A. A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree i>1aster of Arts McMaster University February, 1986 MASTER OF ARTS (1986) MCMASTER UNIVERSITY (Political Science) Hamilton, Ontario TITLE: "Back to Lange" - The Natural Law Basis for Eduard Bernsteinrs "Evolutionary Socialism" AUTHOR: Terence William Barker, B.A. SUPERVISOR: Professor Derry Novak NUMBER OF PAGES: vi , 264 ii ABSTRACT Bernstein scholarship has not clearly identified the philosophical intentions of the "arch-Revisionist", but has confined itself to noting general characteristics of his mode of thought and possible influences upon it, as well as situating it vaguely or negatively in terms of contemporary "schools." Justification for not proceeding further with analysis has been sought in the ci.rcumstances that Bernstein was self-taught, that he had an enormous range of intellectual contacts, that the Marxism of the Second International was incoherent, and that Marxism is, itself, a protean doctrine. This thesis attempts to illuminate Bernstein's philosophical intentions by reviewing his development against a much broader intellectual background than has been customary. Following the methods of IIcomparative philosophy" of Henry Corbin, Hans Jonas, Eric Voegelin and Ernest Tuveson, it outlines several stages in the process of the gradual supplant- ing of Middle Platonism by the Hermetic gnosis in the modern period, and notes the distinctive attitudes to being character- istic of them. It examines the roots of the Hegelian dia- lectic, and those of itsmmrephilosophically conservative rival., German Romanticism, and points out the affinity__ .9.f. ... , .. ,.... .•• • ..-,e' Bernstein's structure of consciousness with the latter movement. iii The philosophical content of Bernsteinian Revisionism is presented a.s the result of the outworking of an essentially Romantic cast of mind, accelerated by Bernstein's period of "socialist scholarship" and close association with Christian Socialists and unorthodox philosophical Naturalists during his years of exile in London. Bernstein1s "evolutionary socialism" is distinguished from the nationalist-socialism of the Blochian Revisionists, the panpsychic evolutionism popular with the German working­ class, Anarchist thought, and monistic Naturalism generally. It is shown to be structurally analogous to the pluralistic notion of progress of the "common sense" component of German Romanticism (a residue of Middle Platonic noetic experience), derived from the Scottish Enlightenment. The call to go "back to Lange" thus appears to have been little more than a groping attempt, on Bernstein's part, to focus his return to what was, in effect, a Pragmatic version of the Aristotelian "natural law" world-view. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank the chairman of my supervi:sory committee, Professor Derry Novak, out of whose graduate course in political theories of Socialism and Anarchism this thesis grew, for his patience, kindness, and constructive counsel. Dr. Marshall Goldstein, who served as the second member of the committee, offered himself unstintingly as a critical sounding-board for my (often rather strained) attempts to take Eduard Bernstein seriously as a philosopher. Dr. Cyril Levitt of the Department of Sociology, provided me with many valuable research clues, and encouraged me to broaden my knowledge of the literature related to Bernstein and the Second International, as well as wisely insisting that I learn to read German. I also wish to thank Dr. Howard Aster, of the Department of Political Science, for his advice, encouragement, and interest in the project . •• Benito Muller of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Andreas Stockhecke assisted me by checking the translations from German, and Linda Pygiel executed the arduous task of preparing the final typescript. During much of the time I have been working on this thesis, I have received generous financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Ontario Public School Teachers' Federation. v CONTENTS Abstract iii Acknowledgements v Introduction 1 Chapter 1: The Romantic Critique of the Dialectic 32 Chapter 2: From Romantic Radical to Common-Sense Communist 77 Chapter 3: "The movement is everything"-­ Bernsteinian Revisionism in Practice 135 Conclusion 220 Appendix A Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und. die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie, chapter 2, part a, "Der Marxismus und Hegelsche Dialektik" "a) Die Fallstricke der hegelianisch-dialektischen Methode" English translation by T. Barker and B. MULler, Magdalen College, Oxford 230 Appendix B Marxismus und Revisionismus: Eduard Bernsteins Kritik des Marxismus und ihre ideengeschichlichen Voraussetzungen by Bo Gustafsson, Translation of vol. 1, ("Bernsteins Philosophie") by T. Barker and Andreas Stockhecke 244 Bibliography 256 vi INTRODUCTION Towards the end of his pioneering study of Bernsteinian Revisionism, published in 1952, Peter Gay concludes that "he who would revise Revisionism, therefore, ought to begin with its philosophic basis."l This he identifies as "Naturalism", which, he avers, "is difficult to define . 'Naturalists' . share a temper, a way of looking at the world. "2 He does not specify what this temper is, but refers the reader to a collection of essays published in 1944 under the editorship of Yervant H. Krikorian of the City College of New York, Naturalism and the Human Spirit, which confirms his assessment that "Naturalism . • • has been given widely different inter­ 3 pretations". The "temper" linking these philosophers (and thus, one would suspect, their admirers) is a suspicion of what might be called extramundane claims; in short, the "Naturalist" appears, to a greater or lesser degree, to be at base simply the non- or anti- Supernaturalist. Such a broad classification does not really help the analyst, let alone the neo-Revisionist, to identify Bernstein's "philosophic basis" with any degree of precision, and, indeed, Gay himself is able to tell us only what this basis was not: The core of the Revisionist philosophy has now begun to emerge. We know that Bernstein aband­ oned dialectical materialism and approached, but did not adopt, neo-Kantianism. He stood between these two major schools and really belongs to a third: Naturalism. 4 1 2. As, on Gay's own account, no such modern "school ll of philosophy as "Naturalism" exists, and, in fact, both dialectical materialism and neo-Kantianism are anti-Super­ naturalist and hence "Naturalist" schools themselves, the reader is not encouraged to take the exhortation to examine Bernstein's "philosophic basis" very seriously. Clearly, Gay does not himself do so, for while he admires Bernstein's honesty and perspicacity, and defends him against the charge that his lack of formal training in philosophy made him an intellectual light-weight, he~ nevertheless, states his belief that had Bernstein "been a metaphysician, he would probably have written off the errors [in Marx's predictions] in detail but [would have] retained the original method." S It is thus not Bernstein's philosophy per se, Gay thinks, that effectively challenged Marxism, but his "common sense" and "powerful skeptical and empiricist sympathies.,,6 Subsequent Bernstein scholarship in both English and German has continued to assume that although he may have been an admirable fe.llow personally, who made a number of astute observations concerning Marxist theory and actual experience, the arch-Revisionist was fundamentally an eclectic whose theory (and its underlying thought) was a pastiche of "influences" that offered no coherent challenge to Marxism. Roger Fletcher, for example, writes: 3. One is obliged to conclude, with Gerhard A. Ritter, Hans Mornmsen, J.P. Nettl, Gary Steenson and others, that Bernstein, as he himself readily admitted, was not, after all, a theoretician. 7 Bo Gustafsson sums up his assessment of Bernstein's relationship with the neo-Kantian thinkers amongst the German Social Democrats and with his philosophical mentors in general in the following un£lattering terms: Bernstein war in diesem Punkt nicht nur vom Neukantianismus, sondern auch von Croce (der jedoch seinerseits an die zeitgenossische deutsche Philo sophie anknupfte) beeinflusst. Aber der Neukantianismus scheint doch die Hauptquelle gewesen zu seine Das darf nicht zu anspruchtsvoll interpretiert werden. Bernstein war kein Philosoph. Als er in den Jahren 1898 und 1899 Kontakt zu beiden fuhrenden Neukantienern der deutschen Sozialdemokratie Ludwig Woltmann und Karl Vorlander aufnahm, wurden diese seine 'Helfer und Schildknappen.' Bernstein brauchte namlich aIle philosoBhische Hilfe, die er bekommen konnte • • . Thus, after over thirty years of Bernstein scholarship in both English and German (Fletcher's book combines the current results of both), we have been told, in effect, that although Bernsteinian Revisionism seemed, and may still seem, to offer a serious challenge to Marxism, that challenge cannot be identified as philosophical or theoretical at heart. In one sense this is obviously true. Bernstein had no pretensions to being a philosopher, and he thought of his theory as a modification of Marxism and of himself as a Marxist. It is thus pointless to attempt to attach him to another contemporary "school" of political theory or of philosophy as his