Eduard Bernstein on Social Democracy and International Politics

The name Social Democracy for the party of modern socialism, which proceeds from the class struggle of the proletariat in capitalist society, was not coined by its founders themselves. It is the German translation of the name Demokratie socialiste [sic], which was chosen in 1848–1849 by a compromise party of petty-bourgeois democrats and socialistically thinking workers, whose programme amounted to bringing about harmony between capital and labour—whose name, Germanised as above, was then transplanted to Germany by people of a similar mindset. By contrast, it only became the party name for the liberation movement of the working class 15 years later during the Lassallean agitation, since that original meaning had already been half-forgotten. Marx and Engels, who still remembered it, thus made some quite disparaging remarks when they found out that the organ of the new movement was to be called Der Sozialdemokrat. However, that name stuck, and the name Social Democracy has become the term to describe the party of the modern proletariat to such an extent that this interpretation ultimately migrated back to France, where they now frequently refer to the workers’ party as la social-democratie as well.

At the start of the war, quite harsh words could be heard from bourgeois voices about our diplomacy, and in fact all the harsher the more emphatically the speaker declared his enthusiasm for the war. For these people’s rebukes did not refer to the fact that diplomats had not prevented the war but rather the opposite. In fact, we must beware of accepting the complaints levelled at diplomats at face value without distinction or hesitation. Our highly educated Europeans of the twentieth century are not much different in political matters from savages or half-savages, who remonstrate with their gods if they do not give them the weather they need or believe they need at that moment. Some time ago, in a session of the Reichstag Budget Committee, serious complaints were raised by the bourgeois side against the German diplomatic representative in some country or other, because major events that had taken place there had wholly escaped his notice, whereas a non-diplomatic representative of the Reich who happened to be there had observed them in time and drawn attention to them straightaway as well. But, would you believe it, in its answer to these reproaches, the Foreign Office was able to put forward reports about those events by the diplomat who was under attack which were more detailed, more precise, and dated significantly earlier than the reports of the non-diplomat who was supposedly more on the ball.

A question which social democrats have to become especially clear about when discussing the choices which the world war has put in front of us is shown in the juxtaposition of the politics of peoples [Völkerpolitik] and the politics of states [Staatenpolitik]. It contains just about the whole complex of the disputes about the war that today bring national sections of the International of the Working Class and parts of Social Democracy in individual countries into conflict with one another.

As uncertain as the picture still is today of the form the political map of Europe will take when it emerges from this war, the outlook for the future of the International of the working class still is as well for the time being. That the world war has struck a crippling blow to its organism is an open secret and was even unavoidable to a certain degree. However, the effect of this blow has far exceeded such an inevitable degree, because at an important juncture, the organism of the International did not unfold that power of resistance against the hostile influences encroaching from the outside that would have been possible and that many people also expected. But here, we are not concerned with what might have been but rather with what actually is, and here we must say that the various attempts to reconstitute the International have failed precisely at the point or points where the organs that are most important for remedying this apparent paralysis are located. But as long as healing has not begun at these points, or to put it concretely, as long as the prevailing ill-humour between German and French Social Democracy is not resolved, the International remains crippled as a political force in the face of this world war and its continued effects, and with the increasing malady at the centres I described, this paralysis cannot leave the other organs untouched in the long term either.

Preliminary Note

I published the following two essays in autumn 1915 in Neue Zeit, volume 34, issue I, books 8 and 9. They are a response to an article which my then-party colleague, Reichstag representative Wolfgang Heine, published in the Sozialistische Monatshefte under the title ‘The old and the new International’, and which in substance directed itself against the previous essay here ‘The value of the International’, which also appeared in Neue Zeit. It seemed and seems of importance to me to confront some very widespread myths about the socialist International.

The rows of dashes at various points in the essays stand for passages that were considered unprintable at the time.—Ed. B.

By means of a few examples, a question shall be illuminated here which even in socialist circles is still often evaluated under viewpoints that stand in contradiction with the socialist conception of the foundations of the life of peoples and the relations between peoples. Russia offers us the first example.

Not for the first time today, a difference of opinion reigns within Social Democracy about whether and in how far the class struggle of the modern proletariat, which it represents, can be reconciled with demands that are raised in the name of patriotism. Ever since a consciously proletarian workers’ movement has existed, this question has occupied people’s minds in one form or another, and it has repeatedly provoked very acute controversies. But it has never before affected the International of the struggling working classes in so immediately tangible and, at the same time, so intricate a shape, never before has it led to such sharply opposed interpretations and applications, as in the present world war. But also precisely for this reason, it was never so necessary to discuss its fundamental nature as dispassionately as possible.

Preliminary Note

I published the four essays that follow here under the same collected title in the Leipziger Volkszeitung of June/July 1916. They were substantively prompted by the proceedings in the sessions of the Reichstag of 5 and 6 June 1916 and the debates that preceded them in the Budget Committee of the Reichstag.—Ed. B.

If children fall out in an argument, we will regularly hear one say to the other: “I’m not playing with you again.” No adult takes that seriously; everyone knows that the little ones will already be playing merrily with each other the next day. Threats of a similar kind are being exchanged today between the great nations that are waging against one another the most murderous war that world history has ever had to record. Only that it is not a matter of playing together in future but rather the future exchange of goods. The more people’s feelings are embittered towards one another by the increasingly brutal manner of war conduct, the louder become the voices—and the more they multiply—that in one country or alliance preach excluding the other from their own markets in future.

For anyone who thinks about the end of this war and does not restrict himself to considering possible changes in borders and control, which the mere success of arms can have as a result, one of the main questions which he has to clarify in his mind is how should and how can Europe, seen as a whole, emerge from this war?

On 21–23 September 1916, in the largest committee chamber of the German Reichstag in Berlin, a party conference of German Social Democracy was held, which was attended by 445 participants. It had been convened by the party executive after the idea of organising a full party convention had met with strong opposition. The party convention is the highest legal authority for Social Democracy; its verdict decides the disputes that move the party, in the sense that its resolutions are binding for party members for so long until a later party convention either changes them or entirely rescinds them. For this, the precondition is that the party convention is preceded by an appropriate discussion of the questions to be decided at it within the memberships and press of the party and that the delegates are elected in a proper vote according to fundamental democratic principles. Both of these were not possible to the degree required under the condition of war, and so a party convention with the rights pertaining to it was out of the question for the party. And even less could the party conference claim the rights and authority of a party convention. Under the dispositions made for it by the party executive, it consisted of the members of various leading committees of the party (party executive, party committee, party inspectorate, the party’s Reichstag fraction) and delegates that were to be determined by the party’s constituency organisations, but in a number of these, they could not be elected even formally but rather were simply nominated by the local executives. And since, besides that, the mode of representation did not live up to the fundamental principle of proportionality, the Opposition disputed right at the opening the conference’s right to draw up resolutions about factual questions facing the party in a declaration read out by Reichstag delegate Ledebour. A procedural motion in this vein by the Opposition received 169 votes, of which 118 were those of delegates, with 276 votes against, of which 184 were from delegates. According to a calculation by the former deputy Lipinski, which is underpinned by the membership strength of constituencies on the eve of the world war, the Opposition represented almost exactly as many members of the party as the majority, namely 515,379 against 524,197 members. But also going by its headcount, its strength was much greater than we might have assumed beforehand.

The dreadful war in which we find ourselves at present has put on the agenda the question of forming a great League of Nations or Peoples [eines … Bundes der Nationen oder Völker] to safeguard peace. The idea of forming such a league, however, is not only a product of this war. It has already played a role in literature for centuries. Clerical and secular dignitaries, statesmen and scholars, and priests and laymen in various ages have composed tracts or drafts that expound the necessity or desirability of such a league and developed formulas for how it could be realised.

Today there is much talk about the law of peoples, but the number of those who have a clear concept of what actually constitutes the nature of the law of peoples, what its fundamental guiding ideas are, and what kind of provisions it encompasses, is proportionally small. Then again, among those who understand something of it, one finds very divergent conceptions of its meaning. On one particular occasion, I performed the experiment of asking three persons of more than an average level of education to write down for me separately from one another in a short statement what they understand by the law of peoples. I received three answers, of which admittedly two were similar, but still not fully congruent, while the third departed from both of these actually quite considerably. And I am quite sure that, wherever I repeat the experiment, the result would not be substantially otherwise.

The modern law of peoples is fundamentally built on international treaties and on traditional customary laws equated with them. It could develop as a law of contract only when the two great powers of the Middle Ages refrained, and had to refrain, from proclaiming binding laws to peoples about their behaviour as masters of the world. These powers were the Roman Church on the one side, and the Roman Empire of the German Nation on the other. That the Church felt itself called to prescribe for peoples such rules for their behaviour towards one another is understandable enough and was surely not a reprehensible idea, for it conformed fundamentally to the doctrines of Christianity which the Church wanted to safeguard. It clearly exercised a certain influence in worldly matters as well, in the interests of the cohesiveness of Christendom, and popes frequently acted as peacemakers. But the Church’s power over people’s minds was not strong enough to guide states in their struggles of power and interest, and besides, the Church soon became far too involved in worldly concerns and struggles of interest to be recognised as an impartial authority by the rising nations. For its part, the Empire was able to present itself as a lawgiver wherever it appeared or sought to appear as sovereign or overlord, but it could not take on the role of a contracting power [Vertragsmacht]. A treaty presupposes contracting parties with an autonomous will, which are independent of one another with regard to the object about which they are concluding a treaty. Hence, the Empire could prescribe laws for the peoples subjected to its power, but it could not by its own power create a law of peoples. The writers of the Late Middle Ages who address questions of international law thus take as their starting point either the jus gentium, constituted according to natural law, or they refer to customary laws that counted as generally recognised, as well as fundamental principles of Roman and Church, that is, canon law, which overlap with the domain of the intercourse of peoples and states. But natural right does not have the strength of obligating laws [verpflichtender Gesetze], but only binds those who recognise it morally, while canon law was not recognised as binding by states who had achieved their autonomy precisely for their intercourse with one another.

States are today, as we have seen, the recognised bearers—“subjects”—of the law of peoples. They mediate it, they bring about its changes and extensions, and they describe themselves as the appointed guardians of its observance and, as the case may be, avengers of its infringement. States are represented externally through their governments, depending on the nature of their constitutional organisation or political constitution. In monarchic and also in various republican states, their highest constitutional representation is granted to a single person (a prince or president). But in the intercourse of states with one another, this highest representation is more a formal one or concerns itself with their foreign policy. The intercourse of states under the law of peoples, meanwhile, is led through their foreign ministries and attended to by particular commissaries [Beauftragte] (agents) appointed for the purpose, who represent the principal commissioning [auftraggebenden] state on the basis of particular authorisations [Vollmachten]. One distinguishes with them between standing and extraordinary commissaries, and with the first among commissaries who represent their state in all its relations under the law of peoples, and those who only represent it in economic-political relations and some particular tasks.

The relationship of groups of people towards one another was first war, as we said in the first lecture, and in its historical emergence, the law of peoples was primarily in substance a law of war. It formulated the rules that tribes and states had to observe in their wars with one another, the infringement or non-observance of which marked whichever tribe or state was guilty of this infringement as dishonourable. Over time, these rules of war underwent changes of very different kinds, which one will understand if one remembers what great changes have taken place over time in the constitution of states, in the character of economic life, in the nature of weapons, and in concepts regarding the rights of the person and the disposition of individuals towards the state. Even the mere fact that all adult male citizens of the tribe or the people originally took part actively in war, that later particular parts of the male population, as warriors by profession after a fashion, became differentiated from the rest of the male population and formed warrior castes or suchlike, and that even later wars were waged with mercenary troops recruited from citizens of all kinds of countries, which turned war into an industry, had to lead to changes in the concepts of the law of war. Likewise, the rise of world religions, whose tendency was to regard and treat their adherents as belonging to a great family of peoples vis-à-vis those of other faiths, could not leave untouched the understandings of the rules of war that were meant to be observed, depending on whether one was dealing with believers or unbelievers. In practice, the law of peoples, as a law agreed between a greater number of states, first appeared as a special accord between Christian states. This is the treaty brought about in 1648 as the conclusion to the Thirty Years’ War under the name “The Peace of Westphalia”, which was preceded by negotiations between representatives of almost all the states of Christendom and which we usually describe as the agreement to found a Christian community of states. In this treaty was declared the equal status of Christian states, without distinction between their denomination or their system of government, and the idea of creating and securing a balance between European states for the purpose of preserving peace and general security received its sanction as a principle of the law of peoples. Each state was fundamentally granted the right to ward off the threat of being overpowered by individual states, either alone or in alliance with others. A principle whose deficiency we have gradually come to recognise, but which for a long time dominated the policy of the great powers like a dogma, and which, though not officially declared, still exerted its influence on governmental decisions on the eve of the current war. Even socialists accepted the preservation of the European balance as long as the whole state system of capitalism and feudalism was not replaced by an international association of socialist people’s communities [Volksgemeinschaften]. In Germany, at the start of the 1890s, the socialist Reichstag delegate Georg von Vollmar spoke out in favour of the Triple Alliance between Italy, Germany, and Austria-Hungary as a way of guaranteeing peace, and among the French, Jean Jaurès advised the Italian socialist Andrea Costa to abandon his opposition to Italy’s entry to the Triple Alliance, because strengthening the counterweight against potential warlike intentions by the Franco-Russian alliance could help preserve peace.

The purpose of war, as opposed to its goal, is to exercise coercion on a will [Willenszwangs]. That means that one wages war to move someone else to concessions—ceding territory, renouncing particular legal claims, granting sureties, and so on—which he does not want to make voluntarily, as well as in some circumstances to render him unable to exercise coercion according to his own will. Depending on the kind of goal aspired to and the power relation of the belligerents, war can take various forms. In one case, a few warlike acts can suffice to break the enemy’s will, whereas in another, unleashing and applying all kinds of military means becomes necessary to realise the coercion of their will. The law of peoples today only acknowledges states as belligerents. Violent uprisings or revolts by a state’s subjects against their government or against a foreign state are not regarded as war in the sense of this word under the law of peoples and thus also do not lead to the conferral of those rights and claims that the law of peoples grants to belligerents. Nevertheless, insurgents can, if they have in fact occupied part of a state’s territory and taken it into orderly administration, and insofar as they are in the position of sustaining regular ties to other states, be recognised by these as a belligerent power. Likewise, a state can transfer the right of waging war to parts of the state, like colonies, and certain groups of citizens, such as colonial companies, and semi-sovereign states have a claim to the right of war if a particular arrangement with their protector state (suzerain) for this exists and has been made known. States which have not joined the community of the law of peoples, and peoples that have not yet achieved state formation, do not count as belligerents in the sense prevalent under the law of peoples and thus have no claim to those considerations which, for example, are to be observed by belligerents towards neutrals.

As we have seen, the current war has led to all manner of breaches of the rules under the hitherto accepted law of peoples. They have mostly been justified by referring to changes in production technology, in weaponry, and in the nature of human intercourse, which brought previous provisions into conflict with the purpose that had been decisive for them, and nobody will dispute that the law of peoples has to take account of such changes. But it is thoroughly questionable here whether it should be left up to individual belligerent states to be judges in their own matter, and to decide for themselves which prescriptions of the law of peoples they still want to accept unchanged, and which they consider themselves justified in amending. Providing a remedy against this would be one of the first tasks of a new conference on reforming the law of peoples, insofar as one does not abandon the idea of regulating war under the law of peoples entirely. It is by no means impossible to create institutions that could put a stop to arbitrary distension of the law. A neutral court of experts, for example, which could settle disputes over the interpretation and scope of provisions of the law of peoples through expert opinions—possibly by majority and minority opinions—or at least substantially delimit them, is eminently conceivable. The need for a supra-state authority for these and similar disputes has at least been admitted officially, even by leading statesmen. Our times undoubtedly demand the further expansion and safeguarding of the law of peoples. At present, the law of peoples has got into a condition that one could perhaps best describe with the word disintegration. It is still there, and belligerents appeal to it if they have the option of accusing their enemies of infringing its provisions. And we have seen how often this has actually happened. But of course, nobody wants to be the guilty party. Thus, the former ambassador of the United States in Berlin, Mr. Gerard, recounts in his book My Four Years in Berlin, that the German Kaiser had lamented to him during a visit in 1915 that there was “no more international law”. But which government was the first to infringe the law of peoples in this war and thereby unravel it, Wilhelm II did not add.

After having seen in the preceding chapters what the concept of the law of people is, how this has developed, and how it has been applied in times of war and peace until recently, we want to occupy ourselves from now on with the questions of its theoretical justification and further practical expansion.

War is the oldest, but even in ancient times not the only method of deciding disputes between peoples and states. With the transition to sedentarism and the development of economic life through joining in trade, traffic, and all manner of heightened cultural requirements, there also had to come about a heightened valuation of the state of peace. War no longer seemed something to be taken lightly at any time but rather an undertaking that was not to be initiated without a weighty reason. And just as the norm took hold among tribal formations and later states that disputes between individuals would be resolved by calling on the advice and judgement of recognised higher authorities—priests, council of elders, chiefs, or judges—so too the idea of drawing on such advice or such judgement for disputes between states themselves had to emerge as well. The historical writers of antiquity know and tell of various occasions where something like that happened. The amphictyonic leagues of the Greeks regularly settled disputes through arbitration, and likewise we know of treaties concluded between individual Greek states with the aim of letting their disputes with one another be decided through arbitral judgement. The history of the Middle Ages, during which Emperor or Pope—one as the highest temporal, the other as the highest spiritual dignitary—were also called on repeatedly by states as arbitrators for disputes, recounts something similar. The expansion of state sovereignty at the time of the rise of modern capitalism resulted in both Pope and Emperor losing their authority still to be recognised as arbitrators for the greater of these states anymore. Therefore, some of the latter now themselves occasionally concluded treaties that provide for arbitral resolution of any disputes that should arise between them.

It has already been mentioned that, before this war, Social Democracy concerned itself extraordinarily little with the question of the law of peoples, perhaps least of all in Germany. Not that Social Democracy had ever been indifferent towards the questions that are to be governed by the law of peoples. But, as in other domains, here also it was strongly influenced by a point of view that a critic once characterised with the dictum: extremely pessimistic about the present, boundlessly optimistic about the future. It is the theory of immiseration transferred onto states’ relationships towards one another. According to it, in capitalist society, conditions develop increasingly for the worse, but in the coming socialist society, everything is to be arranged for the best. Wishing to abolish war or being able to impose limits on it, as long as capitalism calls the shots in state politics, was regarded as utopian. And so, all efforts directed towards this were dismissed more or less derisively as futile attempts at taming tigers. Indeed, it has happened that the fight against war was proclaimed and condemned by socialists as reactionary. As long as class struggle subsists in society, war between states would also not let itself be eradicated, and since the propagation of the peace movement has more hope of recognition in advanced than in backward countries, it would in fact very likely prove advantageous to absolutist powers. But while the economic theory of immiseration received its correction, whereby workers did not stop fighting for improvements in their working conditions, and the need to work for reforms impressed itself on their parliamentary representatives, Social Democracy lacked for a long time the occasion and opportunity for practical action crucial for a similar treatment of questions of the law of peoples. Here, it kept essentially to mere criticism of the behaviour of governments and bourgeois reformers. The old socialist International did not go further than this.

As we saw in the first section, before the war, Liszt described the community of states that recognise the law of peoples as binding for them as a purposive association of states. If one examines the legion of plans for a league of peoples [Völkerbund] or League of Nations [Bund der Nationen] that the war has brought forth somewhat more closely, they will prove almost without exception to be plans that simply have in mind the firmer consolidation of this purposive association and an extension of its tasks and competences.