Bernstein’s empirical doubts sparked decades of socialist debate over capitalism’s collapse

Evidence

The question of capitalism’s inevitable collapse from within had been the center of controversy in socialist circles, ever since Eduard Bernstein’s articles in Die Neue Zeit in the 18go’s had raised empirical objections to the prophecy of increasing proletarian pauperization. During the next three decades, Rosa Luxemburg, Heinrich Cunow, Otto Bauer, M. J. Tugan-Baranovski, Rudolf Hilferding, and others wrestled with the issue.from a theoretical as well as an empirical vantage point. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 131