Overview
- Aims to bring an underexplored part of Bernstein’s thought to the awareness of Anglophone audiences
- Focuses on the later period of Bernstein’s thought, which has occasionally been neglected relative to his earlier works
- Presents Bernstein as an important social and political theorist in his own right, rather than just ‘one among many’ contributors to the emergence of social-democratic thought
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About this book
This book presents two major texts and selected shorter writings by the social-democratic thinker and politician Eduard Bernstein, translated into English in full for the first time: The German Revolution: A History of the Emergence and First Working Period of the German Republic; How A Revolution Perished; and articles from Vorwärts and other socialist periodicals. Written in the aftermath of the 1918 German Revolution and the end of WWI, they address the overthrow of autocratic rule in Germany, and provide a live chronicle and retrospective assessment of the Weimar Republic’s foundation. Bernstein gives a detailed chronology of the German Revolution and its intellectual, economic, and political context, and offers a historical analogy in his account of the 1848 French Revolution, which differs in key respects from that of Karl Marx in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. Drawing on his own experience of the events he describes, he revisits the socialist debate over ‘reform or revolution’ that he himself had provoked at the turn of the 20th century, and consciously seeks to wrest ownership of the Revolution’s legacy away from the Spartacist and communist left. In these works, Bernstein exhorts social democrats to rally behind the nascent Republic and resist the siren-calls of its militant opponents on radical left and right, and he engages with themes of party unity, political violence, democracy, and the role of ideology that have echoed through left theory and strategy ever since.
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Keywords
- Eduard Bernstein
- Vorwärts
- 1918 German Revolution
- autocratic rule
- Germany
- Weimar Republic
- 1848 French Revolution
- reform or revolution
- Spartacist left
- communist left
- social democrats
- party unity
- political violence
- democracy
- role of ideology
- Social Democracy
- Marxist revisionism
- Die Deutsche Revolution
- Wie eine Revolution Zugrunde Ging
- German history
Table of contents (35 chapters)
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Front Matter
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The German Revolution: History of the Emergence and First Working Period of the German Republic
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Front Matter
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How a Revolution Perished
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Front Matter
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Reviews
“At a time when the German Revolution of 1918-19 is the subject of renewed scholarly interest, the near-contemporaneous reflections of leading Social Democrat and political theorist Eduard Bernstein on the significance of these events make for compelling reading. In this volume, Marius Ostrowski has expertly selected, translated and contextualised key texts by Bernstein that shed new and surprisingly prescient light on the emerging historiography of the revolution. Essential reading for historians of the First World War and Weimar Germany.” (Professor Ingrid Sharp, University of Leeds, UK)
“Students of twentieth-century German and European history will undoubtedly find this volume of great historical and theoretical interest. Marius Ostrowski has given us an excellent and highly readable translation of Eduard Bernstein’s The German Revolution. In addition, the detailed introduction and illuminating explanatory notes provide readers with a very vivid picture of the background to the events leading up to the founding of the Weimar Republic. It is to Ostrowski’s great credit that we now have a much better understanding of these events and Bernstein’s ongoing significance as a preeminent thinker of early Social Democracy.” (Professor Darrow Schecter, University of Sussex, UK)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Marius S. Ostrowski is Examination Fellow in Politics at All Souls College, University of Oxford, UK. He has written Eduard Bernstein on Social Democracy and International Politics: Essays and Other Writings (2018) and Left Unity: Manifesto for a Progressive Alliance (2019).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Eduard Bernstein on the German Revolution
Book Subtitle: Selected Historical Writings
Authors: Marius S. Ostrowski
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27719-2
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-27718-5Published: 13 November 2019
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-27721-5Published: 13 November 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-27719-2Published: 01 November 2019
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VII, 429
Topics: Political Theory, Political History, German Politics, Intellectual Studies