Although early socialists supported the idea of a popular revolution, the rise of evolutionary socialist ideas in the early twentieth century can be seen as an early sign of socialism straying from it’s traditional principles. With a multitude of institutions that worked in the interests of the working class, including trade unions and political parties, it seemed less logical that the working class would employ the violent revolution that revolutionary socialists had advocated. In Britain democracy was getting closer to achieving the goal of a universal franchise, and in reaction to this came the Fabian prophecy ‘the inevitability of gradualism’. This prophecy stated that once universal suffrage was embraced, that socialism would naturally prevail. Since the working class would always out number the upper class, and socialism was the natural home of the working class, as it fought against their exploitation, it was logical that the working class would elect a socialist government. The ideas of the Fabian society were considered to have much more on an impact on British socialism, that Marx’s traditional principles. British socialists were prepared to see the state as a neutral arbiter, whereas fundamentalist socialists would see it as a weapon of class oppression. Although it seemed bizarre to fundamentalist socialists that socialists were embracing a parliamentary road to socialism, and advocated legal and electoral methods to gain power.
With socialist academia sceptical about Marx’s false prophecy that capitalism would fall, they began to question Marx’s original doctrines. Eduard Bernstein produced a comprehensive criticism of Marx in his book ‘Evolutionary Socialism’, and his ideas were underlined by the fact that capitalism had proved itself to be stable and flexible, and had not fallen, like Marx had predicted. Bernstein also rejected Marx’s crude ‘two class’ analysis, considering it inappropriate for the twentieth century society with its complex class system. A rise in the number of skilled and technical professionals was presenting socialists with difficulties in allocating workers to both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
Although fundamentalist socialist has a clear and defined goal – the abolishment of the capitalist system – revisionist socials have often been more ambivalent with their goal of reforming capitalism. In the twentieth century, European social democratic parties including the British Labour government of the 1950’s, accepted capitalism as a reliable generator of wealth and began to accept its virtues as a means to creating the socialist aim of social justice. Social democrats advocated a mixed economy, this was evident in Britain with the Labour party’s selective nationalisation tactics – while choosing to nationalise the ‘commanding heights of industry’ including electricity, gas, coal and the railways, they were prepared to leave a great percentage of British industry in private hands. Although traditional socialists campaigned for common ownership of the economy, revisionist social democrats were less concerned with who owned the economy, but who benefited from it. Social democrats also saw the welfare state as a method of reforming capitalism to create a more ‘humane’ system. They believed the welfare state as a useful mechanism to prevent the economic inequalities that capitalism would breed, and achieve a sense of social justice. After the economic prosperity of the 1960’s, Labour’s social democracy seen to have abandoned the idea that socialist and capitalism were fundamentally opposites, and seemed to concentrate of incorporating socialist ideas into a capitalism system. Traditional socialists may see this abandonment of the principles of common ownership and the abolishment of capitalism as the Labour party merely responding to electoral pressures and to the interests of the upper classes of society.
In conclusion, the revisionary thinkers in socialism are united in their quest for social justice, but after seeing their predecessors attempts at achieving a commonly owned economy, and because of the influence of the rapidly changing economy, socialists have had to engineer their methods of reaching this goal to achieve success.
