Eduard Bernstein, a German socialist leader and…

Eduard Bernstein, a German socialist leader and theoretician writing from exile in England, notes that the class struggle is not intensifying as Marx said it would, that workers are not becoming poorer, that the middle class is not shrinking, and that the collapse of capitalism does not seem to be imminent.

Rejecting violent revolution as impossible and undesirable, Bernstein argues that socialists should exploit concrete opportunities for social improvement through the workers’ increased power at the ballot box, through accelerated trade union activism, and through cooperation with other democratic forces.