Katheder-Socialism

Also known as “socialism of the chair”. Bourgeois reformism preached by professors of the Younger Historical School in Germany in the 1860s and 1870s from university pulpits under the name of “socialism”. It was prevalent in Germany in the 1870s and 1890s, and later popularized in Britain, the United States, France and other countries. Its chief representatives were Wagner, von Schmoller, Brentano, and Sombart among others.

The emergence of Katheder-Socialism was closely related with the German Bismarck regime which feared from the wide spread of Marxism among the working class and the vigorous rise of the workers’ class movement. It was promoted as a new doctrine so as to control the working class, and its intention was to weaken the revolutionary will of the proletariat and make them obey the despotic Prussian rule. Katheder-Socialism advocated the view that the State was a supra-class organization and that social reform could reconcile the antagonisms and contradictions between the working class and the bourgeoisie. Under the principle of not touching the capitalist interests, the State could use legal means to implement reforms from above, thus gradually realize socialism. The well-organized trade unions supported by the State could replace the political struggle of the working class and working-class parties. Through state intervention in implementing socialist reforms such as social insurance, labor legislation, labor protection, shortening of working hours, adjustment of tax rates, etc., the working class could get rid of capitalist exploitation and radically improve its conditions of life. In this way, Katheder-Socialism attempted to induce workers to give up the class struggle, to moderate the class contradictions in the German society, and to defend the interests and rule of the Junker landlord class and the Prussian Junker bureaucracy. Katheder-Socialism was one of the ideological sources of the later revisionism.