The German Social Democratic Party, 1875-1933

From Ghetto to Government

W. L. Guttsman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000007794
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: History

Originally published in 1981, this book covers the development of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) from its inception to the end of the Weimar republic. Within a historical framework it analyses the role and operation of the SPD in the changing social and political climate of Germany and describes the party's internal struggles throughout the period. The party continually debated its aims and the means to achieve them. Conducted by people such as Kautsky, Bernsteina dn Rosa Luxemburg, with close links to Marx, Engels and other leaders of the international socialist movement, this debate within the party was one of the most fundamental socialist controversies, whose relevance remains today.

1

Industrialisation and the entry of the German working class into politics

Industrialisation and protest

It is of the greatest significance for the development of political working-class protest in Germany that it first occurred at a comparatively early stage of industrialisation and that the protest was not principally directed at industrialisation itself.¹ There was thus little of the protest from below which we encounter in Britain, the inchoate and generally violent expression of workers’ discontent which led to mass unrest, spontaneous and often violent, but powerful in its long-term effects. We have in Germany comparatively little that can be compared to the machine-breaking, rick-burning, bread riots and spontaneous strikes and the pitched battles between the armies of the poor and the ‘forces of order’ which are characteristic of Britain in the first phases of the industrial revolution.²

The multifarious strands composed of the economic suffering of the poor, resistance to the factory system felt to be tyrannical and degrading, ‘primitive’ communitarian beliefs, general libertarian notions fuelled by the flames of the French Revolution, and dissatisfaction at the denial of civic rights, all combined in Britain to create the strong working-class protest which was to find a massive expression in Chartism and trade unionism.

The German working class knew little of this kind of experience. At the onset of industrialisation in the early part of the nineteenth century, the pauperised section of the population probably formed a smaller part of the population than in Britain. Their pauperisation, it has been suggested, arose less from low wages than from the inability of the economy, as yet little expanded, to absorb and find work for some of the fast-growing population who, in consequence, sank quickly below the subsistence level (Conze, 1970). Also, it is possible that a predominantly rural and agricultural society in a not very densely populated country gave rise to fewer social problems and less political solidarity than among the rapidly urbanised British working class.³

When in the second half of the nineteenth century millions of Germans were uprooted from the countryside and deposited in the vast tenements of the expanding towns, when handicraft workers moved from the closer human relationship of the small workshop to the large-scale factory system of production, there was undoubtedly a psychic loss though often a material gain.⁴ Thorsten Veblen has drawn our attention to the relatively smaller degree of physical impairment suffered by the German working class in the process of industrialisation (Veblen, 1966 [1915], p. 196.) It is likewise significant that this process took place at a period when a political labour movement was already in existence. Germany, unlike Britain, did not experience the early development of trade unionism and the pre-eminence of the industrial over the political struggle. The German working class had to exchange the prospect of a just future society for the possibly more tangible benefits which the British workers derived from their vigorous industrial pressure.

Although craft-type trade unionism arose in Germany in the early 1860s, the effects of its activities on the conditions of working-class life were for many years minimal. In an economy which was still largely bound by the restrictive rules which we associate with governmental paternalism and with the guild system, labour had to break down legal barriers before it could hope to organise effectively and utilise the trade union organisation for economic ends. Thus the early struggles of the trade unions were more political than industrial and were concerned with securing civic rights and economic liberties. Before the movement acquired its own political representation, the early labour unions initially utilised the strength of political liberalism. This pressure culminated in the Gewerbeordnung (law relating to enterprises) of 1869 which gave the unions among other rights that of combining in pursuit of their industrial demands, but this freedom was regularly challenged by the authorities (Engelhardt, 1976).

In Germany social democracy was thus for a long period the principal vehicle for the expression of working-class protest. It was strongly ideological in content, basically political and electoral in its mode of operation, and democratic in its organisation.

The rise of working-class organisations

None of the emerging working-class socialist parties in Europe could initially exert much political influence or succeed in implementing social or economic policies or even operate as an effective pressure group. Their struggles were restricted by limited franchises, and by other obstacles in the exercise of their political functions. The stripling parties of a rising and expanding working class needed some time to become giants in the political forest. Industrialisation, the numerical expansion of the working class and the increase in the number of socialist voters, stand in direct and positive relationship. And the pattern of this advance in various European countries with strong socialist parties shows great similarity once one allows for different starting dates and different patterns in the nature and expansion of the electoral system and the right to vote. Figure 1.1 illustrates the pace of the advance in the socialist vote on a common diachronic scale, starting with the introduction of manhood suffrage or the foundation of the parties, whichever is later.

Figure 1.1 Voting for socialist parties: scale of advance with different starting dates. (Dates given on right are starting dates.)

If industrialisation is not the sole progenitor of the political expression of working-class opinion and of socialist views through the vehicle of the respective political parties it is clearly a concomitant phenomenon and probably the main causative factor in their development.

Marx was the first to draw our attention unambiguously to the significance of the process of industrialisation as the prime factor in the operation of social change. He likewise saw in the industrial worker the principal agent of the political changes that were to follow such a process. And as Britain had led the world in the field of capitalist production and was thus ‘holding up the mirror’ for the less developed countries to see themselves in, so the experience of the British working class in uniting and mobilising the masses for effective political action showed the way which other nations would follow.⁵ The uprooted worker, herded into large urban working-class ghettos, depersonalised in his work as the manipulator of increasingly repetitive processes, the anonymous member of a large labour force, thrown at regular intervals out of work, receiving the minimum possible wage, degraded as a person, as a family man and as a producer, provided fertile ground for a social revolution. The man who had experienced for himself all the evils and contradictions of the capitalist system would gradually, through combination and organisation, overthrow the existing order. Beginning as acts of self-help and economic self-defence the struggle would become a political struggle.

If the original aim of workers’ resistance was that of maintaining wages to the extent that the capitalists, in their turn, unite with the aim of repressive measures, the combinations of workers, at first isolated, become organised into groups, and in the face of the unity of the capitalists their maintenance becomes more important than upholding the level of wages … In this struggle – a veritable civil war – all the elements for a future battle are brought together and developed. Once arrived at this point the association takes on a political character (Marx, 1847, pp. 226–7).

When these words were written, Germany was as yet some decades away from the situation when the economic antagonism between an incipient but soon rapidly growing industrial capitalism and a small though growing industrial wage-earning class was to turn into the organisation of two hostile camps. On the eve of its bourgeois revolution in 1848 the country was still semi-feudal in character. 72 per cent of its population was rural, over half was engaged in agriculture and less than a quarter of the active population were employed in handicraft and industry (Clapham, 1945, p. 82; Hoffmann, 1965, p. 204).

Industrial production was still carried out largely in small craft enterprises, indeed, one-quarter of all ‘masters’ were working on their own without the help of either journeymen or apprentices. Even the typical ironwork or coalmine was a small undertaking employing less than fifty men, and the total annual output of coal in the 1840s was about equal to that which London consumed in a year.⁶

Thus even in its widest definition the ‘factory system’ comprised only one in six of all employed. Moreover, included under the term ‘enterprise’ were not only those who worked in a single workshop under the immediate direction of the entrepreneur or his manager but also those dispersed workers, such as handloom weavers, toy-makers, clothing workers, who worked for a ‘putter-out’ who provided the raw material and bought the product. We can thus contrast 421,000 weavers who worked looms in their own homes (some doing so as a secondary occupation) with only 228,000 employed in ‘factories’ making all kinds of textiles.⁷ In any case, there were on average only just over eight workers per ‘enterprise’ and while there were some industries with comparatively large units (especially in the metal-working industries) we find that in other areas the number of employees was not much larger than that of the number of workshops. Thus there were over 70,000 mills, using mainly wind, water and animal power employing a total of 109,000 workers. Brewing and distilling likewise were small-scale if not one-man enterprises (cf. Neuhaus, 1913, pp. 363–72). During the early phase of industrialisation in Germany the old handicraft system was taken over to some extent by the factory system. This meant that the career pattern of the craftsmen, extending in theory from apprenticeship to mastership, was broken, with a growing number of journeymen working under one master or possibly in an even more industrial organisation. But it also meant that the stress on manual skills, perfectionism and the ethos of craftsmanship permeated the early factory system, acting at times as an obstacle to the introduction of more rational methods of mass production.

The size of the actual factory proletariat, that is those who were working in small or large enterprises outside the handicraft system, whether with craft training or with a training on the job, was by the middle of the nineteenth century still small. In Prussia it had only just surpassed 4 per cent and in the other states it was below that figure, except, significantly, in view of the later strength of the socialist movement, in Saxony where it reached nearly 12 per cent (Neuhaus, 1926, p. 370).

Thus by the mid-nineteenth century Germany was not a country in which the capitalist mode of production predominated. But even if the typical form of economic activity outside the vast area of agriculture – partly peasant farming, partly large estate farming in character – was that of the handicraft organisation we must not overlook the fact that there were many strata of workers below the level and status of the artisans, namely the groups of unskilled and semi-skilled workers who were employed as navvies, woodmen, as manual workers in inns, hotels or who, as mere ‘daily labourers’ earned their living in a variety of changing jobs if they were not entirely dependent on charity.⁸

The latter groups were, however, to remain in a political limbo and the organisation of the German working-class relied on the various groups of skilled workers. The organisations of the first half of the nineteenth century were vocational not political in their foundation, local rather than national in character. They reflected the economic structure of a country which was still based essentially on handicraft. Local associations of journeymen or artisans were only gradually, and mainly after 1850, superseded by craft unions on a regional or national basis. They were almost entirely societies for mutual support in case of illness or death. Apart from these, there arose societies which aimed at the mutual education or enlightenment of their members. Founded in part at least from benevolent motives by their ‘betters’ and subject to the inevitable surveillance of the police, they provided scope for the inculcation of general democratic sentiments, but they were hardly seedbeds for any class-conscious movement seeking radical political change.

The only popular protest movement of any size which flourished in Germany during the revolutionary period was the Arbeiterverbrüderung (Workers’ Brotherhood) founded by Stefan Born, a collaborator of Marx with whom he had returned from exile in Paris at the advent of the 1848 Revolution. The movement was composed almost entirely of artisans – including some skilled workers in factories – and in its politics it was radical not communist, emphasising the peaceful integration of workers into the existing society rather than class conflict. Under the direction of its Berlin ‘Central Committee’, which was essentially appointed by Born rather than formally elected, the Arbeiterverbrüderung operated for a short time as a loose federation of local associations which went under the name of Arbeitervereine or Handwerkervereine and which had come into existence throughout Germany.⁹ Their primary purpose was to give support to the Frankfurt National Assembly which sought to establish a united and democratic German state. The name ‘Workers’ Brotherhood’ may conjure up the idea of a united working class but the movement saw workers less as a separate class than as ‘partners in state and society’. As a form of address it used the word ‘Herr’ and in its documents it referred to ‘citizens’ not to proletarians, who should be seen as part of ‘a living community, like a politically inspired corporation among the rest of the citizens’ (Balser, 1962, p. 54). The association was anxious to bring about the removal of all laws and regulations which had hampered working-class organisation and to secure the full rights of citizenship. But the means to this end could only be peaceful, the appeal a moral one: ‘We do not band together against the existing government, we only wish to be given a place in the common fatherland’ (Balser, 1962, p. 57). Following its inaugural congress in Berlin in 1848 the Central Committee issued a circular in which it stated that

Germany’s workers must strive to become a moral force in the state. They must form themselves into a vigorous organisation which, weathering all storms, would push further and further forward and which in its progress would remove all obstacles and hindrances to a freer and better order of things. An organisation which will welcome everyone whose heart beats for the suffering of the oppressed but who is himself bound to the power of Capital…. (Balser, 1962, p. 57).

Hardly a clarion call to social revolution, but still an indication that largely...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Preface
• Introduction: Models and methods
• 1 Industrialisation and the entry of the German working class into politics
• 2 The role of the working-class party in the pseudo-democratic state
• 3 The political mobilisation of the German working class and the SPD
• 4 Social milieu, political control and the grass roots of social democracy
• 5 The elective fatherland: Socialist subculture from ghetto to republic
• 6 The structure of a democratic party in action: Mass membership, leadership and bureaucracy
• 7 A revolutionary but not a revolution-making party? Theory and tactics from Erfurt to Weimar
• 8 Conclusions
• Abbreviations
• Sources
• Index