The publication of Bernstein’s Evolutionary Socialism in 1899 fueled a battle within the SPD that would define the key argument for socialist thinkers over the next century. Was capitalism to be accepted, and minor improvements won—or was it to be overthrown? At the heart of this debate was an argument over what happened in workers’ heads. For Marx, the working class would lead society into socialism once it realized its potential to do so. But in reality, “class consciousness”—awareness of class—had led not to revolutionary conclusions, but to workers voting, in increasing numbers, for a party that offered piecemeal reforms within the capitalist system.

  Bernstein proposed abandoning the idea that workers would come to revolutionary conclusions. Instead, socialists should examine workers’ existing beliefs about the world, and work outward from that point. This was the first theoretically robust case for a “reformist,” or gradualist, socialism.

  Orthodox Marxists responded ferociously, and Bernstein’s views were never formally adopted by the SPD in his lifetime. It was not until the Bad Godesburg conference of 1959 that the party formally renounced Marxism. Nonetheless, its actual political activity had long been following the lines Bernstein had advocated, whatever its declared intentions.

Workers in Germany have won the right to strike for better pay and conditions. Bernstein saw that the working class could win significant concessions within capitalism.