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.

Marius S. Ostrowski is Examination Fellow in Politics at All Souls College, University of Oxford, UK. His publications include Eduard Bernstein on Social Democracy and International Politics: Essays and Other Writings (2018) and Left Unity: Lessons from Left History (2019).

Autorentext

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).

Inhalt

1. Introduction (by Marius S. Ostrowski)
   Part I The German Revolution: History of the Emergence and First Working Period of the German Republic
2. Foreword
3. Prologue
4. The Reich leadership before the Revolution
5. The dawning of the Revolution
6. Government and Social Democracy from the start of October to 9 November 1918
7. 9 November 1918 in Berlin
8. The initial form of the German Republic
9. The Revolution in the individual states
10. Struggles of socialists against socialists
11. The first Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils in Germany
12. The sailors' uprising in Berlin, Christmas 1918
13. The Independent Social Democrats' departure from the Rat der Volksbeauftragten
14. The communist uprising in Berlin, January 1919
15. The murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg
16. The general situation in the first months of the Republic
17. The Nationalversammlung elections, conclusion of the first stage of the Revolution
    Part II How a Revolution Perished
18. Foreword
19. Why the Second French Republic perished
20. A users' guide for the present
    Part III Selected articles
21. Eduard Bernstein for Unity
22. Bernstein's Return to the Party
23. The Independents' Attempt at Mediation
24. On the Question of Unity
25. Auf Wiedersehen! A Parting Word to Independent Social Democracy
26. Lassalle and Bolshevism
27. The Timescale of the Revolution
28. An Easter of Hope
29. Eduard Bernstein against the USPD
30. The Bankruptcy of Bolshevism
31. The Communists
32. The Election Campaign
33. The Decision
34. 20 February and the Revolution
35. Four Years On