Democracy or Socialism? A Case Study of Vorwärts in the 1890s

1977 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 286-311
Author(s):  
Raymond Dominick
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Communist Society ◽  
Democratic Socialism ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Proletarian Revolution

Interpreters who would make Karl Marx a democrat argue that a correctly informed socialist agitation can combine with economic conditions to create majority support for a proletarian revolution and a communist society. When the agitators themselves disagree about socialist theory, however, a dilemma is created. Should party leaders pose as guardians of orthodoxy and muzzle intraparty dissent, to the obvious detriment of democracy, or should they tolerate criticism of socialist dogma, and thereby perhaps weaken the chance for a successful revolution? Before Lenin imposed his answer to these questions upon the communist movement, the world's first mass-based and avowedly Marxist party, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), grappled inconclusively with this intraparty dilemma of democratic socialism.

In the interest of peace and progress: Eduard Bernstein's socialist foreign policy

1983 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-93
Author(s):  
R. A. Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Democratic Socialism ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
Almost All

Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932) is now widely known as the father of revisionism and one of the more important progenitors of democratic socialism. What is often still overlooked is that almost all his theoretical work (an attempt to update the thought of Karl Marx in the light of the changed conditions of advanced capitalism) was done in England during his London exile (1888–1901) and that for the last three decades of his life he was a practising politician who manifested a close, informed and overriding interest in the major political issues of the era. Almost without interruption between 1902 and 1928 he served as a Social Democratic deputy in the German Reichstag, where he functioned as one of the SPD's principal foreign policy and taxation spokesmen. He was most influential within the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) before and during the First World War, increasingly less effective after 1914. An outline of Bernstein's views on German foreign policy during the period when he was at the height of his authority as an active socialist politician thus promises to fill a gap in existing scholarship and to shed new light on the father of revisionism and his progeny.

scholarly journals Social democratic representation and welfare spending: a quantitative case study

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 589-596
Author(s):  
Henning Finseraas
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Control Method ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Synthetic Control ◽  
Welfare Spending ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Voter Preferences ◽  
Quantitative Case Study

AbstractThe welfare state literature argues that Social Democratic party representation is of key importance for welfare state outcomes. However, few papers are able to separate the influence of parties from voter preferences, which implies that the partisan effects will be overstated. I study a natural experiment to identify a partisan effect. In 1995, the Labour Party (Ap) in the Norwegian municipality of Flå filed their candidate list too late and could not participate in the local election. Ap was the largest party in Flå in the entire post-World War period, but have not regained this position. I use the synthetic control method to study the effects on welfare spending priorities. I find small and insignificant partisan effects.

Optimal Electoral Strategies for Socialist Parties

1984 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK LICHBACH
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Electoral Strategies ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
Social Democratic Parties

A strategic dilemma confronts social democratic parties in postindustrial politics: whether to depend on the working class or on the middle class for electoral support. If a social democratic party becomes more heterogeneous (argue working-class strategists) or more homogeneous (argue the middle-class strategists) in class support, then it will also become more electorally successful. The controversy is addressed in two ways. First, a formal model of vote maximization offers a more complete explication of the strategic tradeoffs confronting party leaders than is offered by either the working-class or the middle-class strategists. Second, the alternative electoral strategies are also probed using aggregated survey data on social class and party fortunes. Data come from 41 elections in the postwar era contested by five social democratic parties. Findings come from regressing the total, working-class, and middle-class votes for each party on (lagged) Rose and Urwin's indexes of social cohesion of party alignments and on (lagged) Alford's indexes of class voting. Analytical results and empirical findings are interpreted in terms of their implications for party leaders.

scholarly journals Karl Marx

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 729-741
Author(s):  
Rosa Luxemburg
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
German Original ◽  
Rosa Luxemburg

Marx died on March 14, 1883. Exactly twenty years later, on March 14, 1903, Rosa Luxemburg’s reflections on Karl Marx were published in German in Vorwärts, the newspaper of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. tripleC publishes an English translation of Luxemburg’s essay on the occasion of Marx’s bicentenary. Christian Fuchs’ postface “Karl Marx and Rosa Luxemburg” asks the question of how we can make sense of Rosa Luxemburg’s reading of Marx in 2018. Source of the German original: Luxemburg, Rosa. 1903. Karl Marx. Vorwärts 62: 1-2.

scholarly journals The Origins and Myths of the Swedish Model of Workplace Democracy

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
ASTRID HEDIN
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Workplace Democracy ◽  
Democratic Socialism ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Swedish Model ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dominant Narratives

AbstractIn 1976 Sweden adopted a law on workplace democracy, presented by the Social Democratic government as the ‘reform of the century’. What can the reform tell us about the history of the Swedish Model and how it was revised during the early 1970s under the prime minister, Olof Palme? This article compares four grand narratives of the development of welfare states, viewing dominant narratives of the Swedish Model as influential myths in their own right. The article argues that despite its global reputation as a hallmark of ‘democratic socialism’, the Swedish workplace democracy reform was a broad cross-class compromise, in the wake of a pan-European wave of similarly labelled reforms. Furthermore, the reform served to protect workplaces against Communist activism. The argument builds on the internal meeting protocols of the board and executive committee of the Swedish Social Democratic Party.

Austrian Social Democratic Foreign Policy and the Bosnian Crisis of 1908

1981 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 104-123
Author(s):  
Ruth D. Roebke-Berens
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Universal Suffrage ◽  
Trade Union Organization

During the first decades after it came into existence the Austrian Social Democratic Party dedicated itself to preserving the multinational Austro-Hungarian empire as a state in which it could pursue socialist goals. The party leaders primarily concerned themselves with practical problems of party and trade-union organization, with devising a nationality program to resolve domestic tensions, and with winning the battle for universal suffrage. Before 1908 domestic issues clearly took precedence over international affairs.

scholarly journals The coup that flopped: Facebook as a platform for emotional protest

First Monday ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaroslav Švelch ◽  
Václav Štětka
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Movement Mobilization

This paper develops the idea that recent “networked” social movements are driven by emotions and provides an analysis of the role of emotions in movement mobilization. The case study focuses on the 2013 protests against a “coup” within the Czech Social Democratic Party. The protests had an immediate impact, resulting in a series of demonstrations, mainstream media attention and a successful overturning of the “coup”. The movement’s Facebook page served as an important catalyst for the protest. We argue that the movement’s success can be explained by its emphasis on perceived issues of morality. As people tend to gather on Facebook to express their feelings, social media become a primary conduit for emotional protest, which can be subsequently taken to the streets.

Merely a Landmark or a Change of Course: The Federal Constitutional Court Hears Arguments in the NATO Strategic Concept Case

2001 ◽  
Vol 2 (11) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Foreign Minister ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Democratic Socialism ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
Federal Constitutional

The Second Senate of the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court) heard oral arguments on June 19, 2001, in the “NATO Strategic Concept” case. The parliamentary fraction of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) in the Bundestag (Federal Parliament) brought the case to the Federal Constitutional Court as an Organstreitverfahren (dispute between federal organs), which permits one federal organ (in this case, the Federal Parliament as represented by one of its party fractions) to challenge the constitutionality of an action taken by another federal organ (in this case, the Bundesregierung [Federal Government - executive branch]). The Federal Government consists of a parliamentary coalition between the Social Democratic Party (SPD) headed by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, and the Alliance 90/the Greens (Greens), whose most prominent figure in the Federal Government is Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.

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