ABSTRACT
One key question of the Revisionist Controversy which had not arisen clearly in the theoretical and political debates of 1896 was whether Marx might have been mistaken in his earlier works--that is, not merely whether the SDP and Liebknecht wrongly appealed to outdated ideas but whether Marx himself had been wrong when he first had those ideas. The question appeared in essays which Bernstein published at the very end of 1896 or in 1897 but which grew directly out of the 1896 polemics. Again Bernstein sought to defend a mature Marxism from what he considered to be misinterpretations; and since the latter utilized Marx's writings and especially those from around the middle of the century, the question of their correctness was unavoidable. Bernstein confessed that on some issues Marx had erred; but Bernstein emphasized that both Marx and Engels had admitted their mistakes. Bernstein believed that one should use historical materialism as further improved by the two, not cling to opinions they later abandoned. Por Bernstein, their method of analysis still held true, despite inaccurate conclusions they had at one time drawn using the method. The theory correctly understood was a method of analysis, not a set of results.
