scholarly journals The Election of Hugo Haase to the Co-chairmanship of the SPD and the Crisis of Pre-war German Social Democracy

1968 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-188
Author(s):  
Kenneth R. Calkins
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Future

The election of Hugo Haase to the Co-Chairmanship of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1911 was an event of immense importance for the future of German Social Democracy. It was Haase who served as the principal spokesman of the opposition to the cooperationist policies of the majority during World War I. It was he who led that opposition out of the SPD in 1917. After the war, as co-chairman both of the revolutionary government and of the Independent Social Democratic Party, he helped to insure that the German movement would remain permanently divided.

Who Were the German Independent Socialists? The Leipzig City Council Election of 6 December 1917

1992 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Mckibben
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
City Council ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich

The emergence of the Independent Socialist party (USPD) in Germany during World War I had momentous and long-reaching consequences. Organized as a group of dissenters within the established German Social Democratic party (SPD), independent socialism grew into a movement that split Germany's working class into two, then three, warring factions. The result was a struggle for supremacy among socialist party factions to which subsequent writers have attributed the “failed” revolution of November 1918, a Weimar Constitution that alienated rather than satisfied German workers, and ultimately the inability of German Socialists to present a unified front against the ultimate threat to German democracy: Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich.

Social Continuity and Political Radicalization: Essen in the World War I Era

1985 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-69
Author(s):  
Eric D. Weitz
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Coal Mines ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
German Republic

In the reichstag election of June 1920, Germany’s Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) more than doubled its 1919 vote, while the Social Democratic Party (SPD) declined precipitously. Coming only nineteen months after the establishment of a German republic, the election indicated widespread discontent with the governments led by the Social Democrats, who had assumed power in November 1918. In Essen, located in the center of the Ruhr and dominated by coal mines and the giant Krupp works, the SPD was almost eliminated as a political force (Essen, Amt für Statistik und Wahlen, n.d.).

Bernstein, Eduard (1850–1932)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgiana Perlea
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
World War I ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Central Organ ◽  
Fabian Society

Eduard Bernstein was a prominent politician in the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), which in the late nineteenth century was the largest workers’ party in Europe. With August Bebel and Karl Kautsky, he wrote the SPD’s official platform, the Erfurt Program (1891), and also edited the SPD’s central organ, Vorwärts. However, he spent many years exiled in London: ties to the Fabian Society tinged his views with English practicality and moderation. Against the Marx-Engels party orthodoxy, which awaited the logical implosion of capitalism, Bernstein suggested in The Prerequisites for Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy (1899) that gradual changes, peacefully enacted within the existing order, are more likely to bring about social justice. He critiqued the theory of surplus value and argued for protectionism where Marx had favoured free trade as catalyst for the catastrophe. His is an evolutionary socialism, commending in all matters strategic compromise and piecemeal reforms. This rightist deviation from the party line was labelled ‘revisionism’ and sparked a vigorous debate. Bernstein was vilified. Before World War I, reformism nonetheless dented the standard doctrine of the SPD (embodied by Kautsky) at the same time as radicals (including Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, and Lenin) were challenging it from the left, preparing a revolution proper.

West European Social Democracy in the Early 21st Century

2010 ◽  
pp. 39-55
Author(s):  
N. Rabotyazhev
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Suitable Model ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
British Labour ◽  
West European

The article is devoted to the evolution of the West European social democracy in the late 20th and early 21st century. The author analyses the causes of the social democracy crisis in 1980-90s and considers its attempts to meet the challenges of globalization and the “new economy”. Modernization of the British Labour Party under Tony Blair's leadership and updating of the German Social Democratic Party initiated by Gerhard Schröder are thoroughly examined in the article. Political and ideological processes ongoing in such parties as the French Socialist Party, the Dutch Labour Party, the Swedish Social Democratic Party, the Austrian Social Democratic Party are also considered. The author comes to a conclusion that the radical shift towards social liberalism took place merely in the British Labour Party. Schröder’s attempt to modernize the German Social Democratic Party turned out to be unsuccessful, while other European social democratic parties did not regard Blair’s “Third Way” as a suitable model for them.

The Dimensions of Social Conflict at the End of World War I

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles S. Maier
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Conflict ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Polarization ◽  
Class Divisions

This chapter examines social conflict at the end of World War I in three dimensions: in terms of class, elite, and interest groups. Conservatives throughout Europe were preoccupied with class divisions and the vulnerability of their own favored stations in life, but their sense of vulnerability emerged in different language and day-to-day disputes. In France, social defensiveness was revealed directly by continuing justification and discussion of the bourgeoisie, while in Germany the fixation with the Social Democratic Party and in Italy the defense of “liberalism” disclosed underlying class malaise. The chapter explains how these differences emerged within a pervasive anxiety about social polarization. It also considers the ways in which the elites sought to utilize the opportunity to reassert their older social hegemony in the context of corporate capitalism.

‘The Business Had to March On’ De Arbeiderspers in Time of War

Quaerendo ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 40 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 256-283
Author(s):  
Frederike Doppenberg
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
World War ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
National Socialists ◽  
Party Press ◽  
Second World

AbstractDuring the Second World War the social-democratic publisher De Arbeiderspers [The Workers’ Press] was transferred into National Socialist hands. The National Socialists wanted to transform the party press of the SDAP, the social democratic party of the Netherlands, into a National Socialist platform. The publisher, however, had a secure circle of socialist customers whom the new management did not want to deter. This article is a study, based on a reconstruction of the list of publications during the period ’40 -’45, of how the National Socialist managers attempted to change the ideological foundation of De Arbeiderspers.

Gerd Callesen, Socialist Internationals: A Bibliography of Publications of the Social-Democratic and Socialist Internationals, 1914–2000. Bonn and Gent: Bibliothek der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2001. 167 pp. Free of charge.

2004 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 173-175
Author(s):  
Reiner Tosstorff
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
International Association ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
Social Democratic Parties

This is a very useful bibliographical tool produced by the efforts of the International Association of Labour History Institutions (IALHI). This association comprises more than one hundred archives, libraries and research centers all over the world, though the vast majority are located in Europe, and not all of them have the same importance, reflecting the geographical and political unevenness of socialism's history. This particular volume aims to list all the publications of the social-democratic internationals after 1914, i.e. from the time of the political split due to the support for World War I by most social-democratic parties. This means that the left-wing, beginning with the Kienthal-Zimmerwald movement during the war and leading to the “Communist International” from 1919 on, is not represented here. But also left-wing splits from social democracy in later years, as in the 1930s with the “London Bureau” of left-wing socialist parties (and also the Bureau's predecessors) are excluded here, as they openly campaigned against social democracy. Also, a few international workers' institutions (mainly in the cultural field) that had been founded before 1914, but tried to maintain their independence after 1914 faced with the political split, are therefore not listed as well.

Selling Social Democracy in the Netherlands: Activism and its Sources of Inspiration during the 1930s

2009 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
BERNARD RULOF
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
The World ◽  
Commercial Advertising ◽  
New Generation

AbstractDuring the 1930s the Dutch social democratic party changed into a party which sought to reform rather than to abolish capitalism. This transformation was accompanied by a change in tactics and strategy intended to meet the challenges of economic and political crises. Henceforth, the Sociaal-Democratische Arbeiderspartij tried to establish co-operation with social groupings well beyond its traditional rank and file of industrial labourers. A new generation of voluntarist politicians proposed to adopt the methods of propaganda, and turned for inspiration to activities undertaken by Belgian and German socialists, as well as the world of commercial advertising.

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