Eduard Bernstein
Eduard Bernstein was a German social democratic political theorist and politician, a member of the Social Democratic Party , and the founder of evolutionary socialism, social democracy, and revisionism. Bernstein had held close association to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but he saw flaws in Marxist thinking and began to criticize views held by Marxism when he investigated and challenged the Marxist materialist theory of history. He rejected significant parts of Marxist theory that were based upon Hegelian metaphysics he rejected the Hegelian dialectical perspective.
Bernstein was born in Schneberg , to Jewish parents, who were active in the Reform Temple on the Johannistrasse where services were performed on Sunday. His father was a locomotive driver. From 1866 to 1878, after leaving school, he was employed in banks as a bankers clerk. His political career began in 1872, when he joined a socialist party with Marxist tendencies, known formally as the Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Eisenacher Programms160 a proponent of the Eisenach type of German socialism160 and soon became known as an activist. Bernsteins party contested two elections against a rival socialist party, the Lassalleans , but in both elections neither party was able to win a significant majority of the leftist vote. Consequently, Bernstein, together with August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, prepared the Einigungsparteitag with the Lassalleans in Gotha in 1875. Karl Marxs famous Critique of the Gotha Program criticized what he saw as a Lassallean victory over the Eisenachers who
Source: Wikipedia