Chapter One: The Rise of German Social Democracy¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter traces the trajectory of German Social Democracy from its revolutionary origins to its catastrophic betrayal in 1914, examining the internal contradictions that transformed a mass workers' party into an instrument of bourgeois order. Marx and Engels developed scientific socialism in Germany, leading to the Communist League and the Communist Manifesto. Before 1860, no organised labour movement existed in the German states. Two socialist currents crystallised: one around Ferdinand Lassalle, the other—the Eisenach Party—around August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, who followed Marx and Engels. Their fusion at Gotha in 1875 created the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). Marx and Engels combated Lassalleanism and the revisionist ideas of Herr Dühring, prompting Engels’ Anti-Dühring.
The SPD became the most powerful section of the Second International, a mass party admired by Lenin. By 1912, it boasted one million members, four thousand full-time workers, assets exceeding twenty-one million gold marks, ninety daily newspapers, and 110 Reichstag deputies. Yet Germany remained a reactionary autocracy; the Reichstag was a "fig-leaf of absolutism". Bismarck’s Anti-Socialist Law of 1878 outlawed the SPD and unions for twelve years, imprisoning 1,500 activists and closing 150 papers. The law backfired spectacularly, strengthening the party; upon repeal in 1890, the SPD vote jumped to 1.5 million. German capitalism expanded massively after 1871, creating a militant working class, but the period of relative social peace fostered a conservative outlook in the leadership, who prioritised reforms over revolution. The growing party bureaucracy developed vested interests. The Erfurt Programme separated 'minimum' reforms from a 'maximum' socialist goal with no transitional bridge.
Marx and Engels sharply criticised this growing opportunism. In September 1879, their 'Circular Letter' attacked the Zürich editorial board of Höchberg, Schramm, and the young Bernstein, who demanded socialism become a movement of "humanity in general" and urged recruitment of the "enlightened bourgeois". Marx and Engels accused them of being "counter-revolutionaries". Engels later criticised the Erfurt Programme’s weaknesses and was angered when his 1895 'Introduction' to Marx’s The Class Struggles in France was censored by party leaders to present him as a "peace-loving proponent of legality". After Engels’ death, Bernstein launched a full revision of Marxism, arguing capitalism could avoid crises and class lines were blurring. His slogan was "the final goal is nothing; the movement is everything". Kautsky delayed eighteen months before replying, allowing Bernstein’s ideas to spread.
Rosa Luxemburg led the revolutionary left’s attack on Bernstein, recognising revisionism as the theoretical justification of existing opportunist currents. The SPD’s Centre, led by Kautsky and Bebel, controlled the party but bent opportunistically for unity. Kautsky’s eventual response reduced Marxism to a conservative icon. Congresses condemned revisionism in words but tolerated it in practice. The betrayal of 4 August 1914, when the SPD voted for war credits, exposed years of opportunist adaptation. The war marked the epoch of imperialism: capitalism’s productive forces had outgrown the nation-state and private ownership. The Second International split into hostile groups aligned with the warring powers. A tiny handful of revolutionary internationalists—Lenin, Trotsky, Liebknecht, Luxemburg—remained isolated. They gathered at Zimmerwald in autumn 1915, where Lenin’s proposals to turn imperialist war into civil war received only seven votes. The Spartacist group, led by Luxemburg, Liebknecht and Mehring, formed the anti-war opposition. Liebknecht broke party discipline in December 1914 to vote alone against war credits.
By 1917, hunger and war weariness engulfed Germany. The February and October Russian Revolutions inspired German workers. Rosa Luxemburg, imprisoned, praised the Bolsheviks for their revolutionary courage, writing that Lenin and Trotsky had "salvation of the honour of international Socialism". She concluded that the Bolsheviks performed an immortal historical service by conquering political power and placing the problem of realising socialism on the practical agenda. In this