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p But let us hark back to Herr Bernslein. The concluding chapter of his book is embellished with the epigraph: "Kant wider Cant”. In explaining the meaning of this epigraph, Herr Bernstein says that he has invoked the spirit of the Konigsberg philosopher for a struggle against the conventionality of outmoded views which are seeking to assert themselves in Social-Democracy, and present a great danger to it. "The fits of fury I have thereby evoked in Mr. P.” (Plekhanov) "have fortified me in the conviction that Social-Democracy needs a new Kant to subject the old doctrine to rigorous ethical winnowing and show wherein its ostensible materialism is the highest and therefore most easily misleading ideology, show that contempt for the ideal and elevation of the material factors to the level of omnipotent powers of development is self-deception, which has always in fact been seen as such by those who preach it" (p. 330). The reader is hard put to understand what he means by "ostensible materialism”, and “self-deception”— moreover, one that is "in fact" quite deliberate.  The explanation is quite simple: in Herr Bernstein’s opinion, self-deception is unavoidable wherever there are people who consider the economicfactors “omnipotent”, while, at the same time, they are "in fact" capable of harbouring ideals.  This alone is sufficient to show how close Herr Bernstein now stands to Mr. Kareyev, and therefore 368 how far removed he is from any serious criticism of Marxism. For conclusive proof of Ihal. one has only to read the pages devoted by llerr Bernstein to an assessment of the historical views of Marx and En gels. The reading of those pages makes one’s hair literally stand on end. For lack of space, we shall not analyse them here, but shall refer the curious reader to what has been said about them by Karl Kaulsky in his book Bernstein und dan sozial-demokratische I’rogramm, and by ns in the Preface to the new edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party.  [368•* ^^179^^ We shall only note here the following oddily, which incidentally refers, not to a philosophieo-historical but to a philosophical “criticism” of Marxism. I lerr Bernstein says: "In the expression ’the materialist understanding of history’ are contained, in advance, all the misunderstandings linked in general with the concept of materialism. Philosophical or natural-historical materialism is qnile deterministic, which cannot be said of the Marxist understanding of history, which does not award the economic foundation of the life of peoples any absolutely determining influence on its forms" (pp. 23–24). This is tantamount to asserting that a determinist is one that awards to the economic foundation of life an absolutely determining influence on the forms of life (?!). This must he the height of ignorance and ineptitude. But that is not all. Later, when Kaulsky remarked in Neue Zeit that no scientific explanation of phenomena is possible without determinism, our “critic” hastened to declare that he had rebelled only against materialist determinism, which consists in an explanation of psychological phenomena by the operation of matter, while he, Herr Bernstein, also recognises the operation of another principle. Herr Bernstein has thus safely put in at the peaceful haven of dualism, the entrance to which hears the edifying inscription: "Man is made up of body and soul.’" Again, this is the Kareyev doctrine the Russian reader is so well familiar with. But it is in poor accord even with Kantianism that Herr Bernstein wishes to “return” to. Kant asserts categorically that alle Ilandlungen der verniinftigen Wesen, sofern sie 369 Erscheinungen sind, in irgend einer Eiiahrnng angclroilen vverden, stehen unter der Naturnolhwendigkeit (all the acts of rational beings, inasmuch as they are phenomena and in one way or another are met by us in our experience, are subordinate to natural necessity) (Prolegomena, Paragraph fuS). Should this be taken to mean that phenomena obey natural necessity? It means just that they are to he explained materialistically (cf. Krltlk der Urtheilskraft, Paragraph 78). It appears, consequently, that llerr Bernstein has rebelled, not only against the materialists but also against Kant, and with the sole purpose of avoiding any threat to the bourgeoisie’s ideological interests, i.e.. to avoid attacking bourgeois cant. Cant wider Kant—such is the motto llerr Bernstein should choose.

p If Herr Bernstein has rejected materialism so as to avoid " threatening" one of the "ideological interests" of the bourgeoisie known as religion, his rejection of dialectics has resulted from his nondesire to frighten the selfsame bourgeoisie with the "horrors of violent revolution". We said above that he was himself probably not unwilling to condemn the "abstract either ... or”, which takes no account of conditions of place and time, which is why he himself unconsciously uses the dialectical method. That is true enough, but it should now be added that he unconsciously takes up a concretely dialectical stand only in those cases and only in the measure in which dialectics is a convenient weapon in the struggle against the imaginary radicalism of "revolutionaries’" whose thinking follows the "yes is yes, no is no" formula. These are the cases when any philistine turns into a dialectician.  But that selfsame Herr Bernstein is prepared—together with all pllilistines the world over—to utter any kind of balderdash against dialectics and level the most absurd accusations against it whenever he thinks it can help strengthen and develop revolutionary aspirations in the area of socialism. Mar.x says that in the good old times dialectics became the fashion with the German pllilistines when they knew it only in its mystified form and imagined that it could serve to justify their conservative aspirations, but they turned against it when they learnt its real nature and realised that it considers everything that exists in terms of its transience, that it stops at nothing and fears nothing, in short, that it is revolutionary in its essence.^^190^^ This same attitude towards dialectics is to be seen in llerr Bernstein, all of whose psychology reveals him as an offspring of German philistinism. That is why his “criticism” has been welcomed by the German pllilistines with loud and long outcries of joy, and why they have numbered him among the great. Birds of a feather__

p So as not to “threaten” the bourgeoisie with the "horrors of violent revolution”, Herr Bernstein has rebelled against dialectics and risen up in arms against the Znsammenbruchstheorie which

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370 he himself has invented. At the same time and with the same aim in view, he is acting as a Pindar of democracy.  "Democracy.” he says, "is, in principle, the destruction of class domination if not the actual destruction of classes themselves" (p. 225). We are well aware of all the advantages of democracy and of all the benefits it gives the working class in its struggle for liberation. However, we do not wish to distort the truth even for the sake of democracy, in just the same way as we do not wish to indulge in unseemly exaggeration. That democracy destroys class domination is nothing more than an invention of Herr Bernstein’s. Democracy allows that domination to exist in an area to which the notion of class, properly speaking, belongs, i.e., the sphere of the economy. It abolishes only the political privileges of the upper classes. It is for that reason that it does not destroy the economic supremacy of one class over another—the bourgeoisie over the proletariat—it does not eliminate either the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie or the need for the proletariat to wage that struggle employing all the means that may prove fitting at a given time. In reasonable terms, any man in his right mind will agree that the "horrors of violent revolution”, taken by themselves, contain nothing that is desirable, but any man who has not been blinded by anti-revolutionary trends must also acknowledgethat a democratic constitution does not preclude an exacerbation of the class struggle that can make a revolutionary explosion and a revolutionary dictatorship inevitable. Herr Bernstein had no grounds to frighten revolutionaries with the consideration that class dictatorship would be a sign of a lower level of culture. The great social question of our times—that of the abolition of the economic exploitation of man by man (can be solved—in just the same way as all great social questions of former times—only by force. True, force does not yet mean violence; violence is only one of the forms of the manifestation of force. However, the choice of the form in which the proletariat will have to display its revolutionary strength depends, not on its good will but on the circumstances. That form is better which leads to victory over the enemy more speedily and assuredly. If a "violent revolution" has proved the most suitable mode of action in a given country and in given circumstances then that man will prove a miserable doctrinaire—if not a traitor—who will bring to bear against it principled considerations like those we meet in Herr Bernstein’s writings: "a low level of culture”, "political atavism" and so on. Hand-to-hand fighting) is, if you wish, a zoological “atavism” wherever it takes place: two men locked in struggle remind one of two fighting beasts. But who, except the “Tolstoyans”, will in principle condemn any resistance to evil by means of hand-to-hand fighting? And will any serious man be found who will take in earnest the argumenls with 371 the aid of which the Tolstoyans condemn violence in principle? To any thinking man it is obvious that such arguments are an unintended caricature of thinking in accordance with the "yes is yes, and no is no" formula so beloved of Herr Bernstein, which, as we know, is quite identical to the Hegelian "abstract either... or" (violence is either evil or good). The "horrors of violent revolution" are always more or less “horrible”. That is so and nobody will question it. However, Herr Bernstein has chosen a very bad way of evading those horrors: he should address himself to the bourgeoisie and show those of its elements who have not yet sunk into the morass of class selfishness that trying to slow down the socialist movement of today means committing a heinous sin against humaneness and culture. In the measure of success attending his preachment, it would weaken the resistance offered by the bourgeoisie to the proletarian movement and thereby lessen the possibility of the "horrors of violent revolution”. Herr Bernstein has preferred to act differently. He has set about befogging the class consciousness of the workers by coming out with a preaching of a Marxism which he has “revised” with the special purpose of soothing the bourgeoisie. This device has proved effective in the sense that a considerable part of the educated bourgeoisie has very well realised all the advantage to it of the spread of a Marxism “revised” by Herr Bernstein at the expense ef the old and revolutionary theory of Marx. This part of the bourgeoisie has greeted Herr Bernstein as a kind of Messiah. However, he is dead as far as socialism is concerned, and, of course, will never rise from the dead, r,o matter how loud his outcries that the socialists have failed to understand him and that, in essence, he has changed very little in comparison with what he previously was. Surely, an excess of zeal that gets one nowhere!