SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND 'POSITIVE' FOREIGN POLICY: THE EVOLUTION OF EDUARD BERNSTEIN'S INTERNATIONAL THOUGHT, 1914-1920

In the early twentieth century, European Social Democracy was confronted with newly-salient problems of foreign and international policy thanks to rising tensions between the European 'great powers'. Eduard Bernstein, founder of 'revisionist' Marxism, played an increasingly central part in the ensuing debates within the socialist movement. Yet his position on questions of colonialism, antiimperialism, militarism, pacifism and diplomacy has-like much of his later workbeen hitherto inadequately explored and often misunderstood. This article reevaluates Bernstein's foreign policy thought, and argues that the First World War provoked a profound shift in his views-expressed in texts that deserve wider recognition in the canon of socialist internationalism.