"[44]
This is a French view. Germany is naturally the stronghold of Marxism,
and the country where it has proved, up to a point, an unqualified
success. Although the Social Democratic Party was founded as an alliance
between the followers of Marx and of Lassalle, on terms to which Marx
himself violently objected, none the less the leadership of the party
fell to those who accepted the teaching of Marx, and on that basis by
far the greatest Socialist Party of the world has been built up.
Nowhere else did the ideas of Marx hold such unquestioned supremacy:
nowhere else had they such a body of loyal adherents, such a host of
teachers and interpreters. Only on the question of agricultural land in
the freer political atmosphere of South Germany was there even a breath
of dissent. The revolt came from England in the person of Edward
Bernstein, who, exiled by Bismarck, took refuge in London, and was for
years intimately acquainted with the Fabian Society and its leaders.
Soon after his return to Germany he published in 1899 a volume
criticising Marxism,[45] and thence grew up the Revisionist movement for
free thought in Socialism which has attracted all the younger men, and
before the war had virtually, if not actually, obtained control over the
Social Democratic Party.
In England, and in Germany through Bernstein, I think the Fabian Society
may claim to have led the revolt.
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