Western Civilization - History Of European Society

Europe in the Belle Époque, 1871–1914523

the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new
one.” Democratic socialists rejected revolution and be-
lieved that they could achieve their objectives through
elections. The greatest philosophic rejection of
Marxism was advanced by a German socialist, Edouard
Bernstein. He was driven into exile by Bismarck’s
harassment of socialists in the 1880s and edited a news-
paper in Zürich where he developed his socialism in
contact with British democratic socialists. During the
1890s he lived in London and wrote Evolutionary Social-
ism(1899) to demonstrate the errors of The Communist
Manifestoand to advocate gradual, democratic socialism.
Marx’s theory of revolution, Bernstein wrote, was “a
mistake in every respect.”
Divisions within the socialist movement initially
produced competing socialist parties in many countries,
but political realism soon obliged socialists to contain
their disagreements within a unified party. Thus, French
evolutionary socialists (led by Jaurès) and French Marx-
ists (led by Jules Guesde) created a unified party,
known by the French initials SFIO, in 1905. British so-
cialists, from the Fabians to the Marxist Social Demo-
cratic Federation, combined to create the Labour Party
in 1906. Followers of Marx and Bernstein learned to
live together within the SPD (see illustration 26.5).
Collaboration allowed ideological debates at the con-
gresses of the international movement known as the
Second International (1889–1914), but it also led to
electoral success. Bismarck’s fears notwithstanding, few
socialists could be found in European parliaments in the
1880s, but they were among the largest parties in 1914.

The German SPD held more than 25 percent of the

seats in the Reichstag, making it the second largest

party; French socialists were the second largest block in

the fragmented Chamber of Deputies with 22 percent

of the seats. And in the 1914 elections the Swedish So-

cialist Party showed that evolutionary socialists might

be right: It became the largest party in Parliament with

eighty-seven seats against eighty-six conservatives.

The Growth of Women’s

Rights Movements

Industrialization stimulated other movements. None

had more far-reaching importance than the women’s

rights movement. Industrialization contributed to the

rise of feminism by transforming the roles of women in

Western societies. It broke down the traditional house-

hold economy in which women labored at home,

sharing in agricultural duties or the work of a family-

run shop, plus non-wage-paying work such as spinning

yarn or making candles. That economic model yielded

to a family wage economy in which women (and chil-

dren) provided less home labor and more wage-earning

labor. Families increasingly bought their yarn or ready-

made clothing, candles, or vegetables; women increas-

ingly worked outside the home to pay for them.

A study of women in the French labor force reveals

these momentous changes in the lives of women. In

Illustration 26.5

The Growth of Socialist Parties.By

the early twentieth century, socialist par-

ties such as the SFIO in France and the

SPD in Germany were winning dozens of

seats in Parliament and growing rapidly.

These parties contained an unresolved

conflict between their evolutionary, de-

mocratic wing and their revolutionary,

Marxist wing—a dichotomy well sym-

bolized in this photo of Rosa Luxemburg,

a leading militant in the SPD, giving a

public speech. Note that on her right is a

portrait of Ferdinand Lassalle, a pioneer

of moderation, and on her left is a por-

trait of Karl Marx, the strongest voice of

revolutionary socialism.