The Power of Myth

"Yet even here the role of the revolutionary would be severely limited; there would only be a need for revolutionary violence if the dwindling class of capitalists were themselves prepared to use violence to defend their own political supremacy. This explains why Marx, toward the end of his life, argued that in the United States, which he regarded as the most progressive nation in the world, the transition from capitalism to socialism could in fact take place without any need for violent revolution at all--the whole process, he said, could be brought about democratically and without bloodshed.
"The school of Marxism represented by Eduard Bernstein adapted this approach in regard to all the advanced capitalist nations of Europe, especially Germany. Known as 'revisionism,' this form of Marxism came to dominate the socialist parties of Europe before the First World War, and, in particular, the German Social Democrats who demonstrated their repudiation of revolutionary violence by taking part in the German Parliament, of which they made up an enormous bloc. For them, there was a peaceful and democratic path to socialism. Not only would socialism itself be rational; it would also emerge rationally, and without any need for anyone to man the barricades or to seize by violence the state apparatus.
"It was this approach that [Georges] Sorel entirely rejected."

In TCS Daily, Lee Harris asks why revolutionary socialism is not yet dead and finds the answer in myth.