Germany had been the cradle of Marxism. Both Marx and Engels spent a great amount of time educating and developing the German labour movement. The German Social Democratic Party (SPD) ever since its foundation had given its allegiance to Marxism and was seen as the embodiment of the German revolutionary tradition. It was the most powerful party of the Second International (the body which grouped together the main socialist parties before the First World War) and was the strongest workers’ party on a world scale. By 1912, the SPD had one million members, over 15,000 full time party workers, assets worth more than 21 million gold marks, 90 daily newspapers and 62 printing offices. It had numerous periodicals together with its own socialist news agency, and a massive Central Socialist School.
It had a parliamentary vote of 4.3 million, which was more than one third of the total electorate. Its affiliated trade union membership amounted to more than 2.5 million. Its strength as a party was incomparably greater than the Bolshevik Party’s on the eve of the October Revolution. It appeared that the German labour movement was on a sound footing and that the socialist revolution was assured. Unfortunately its strength and resources were not used to effect the overthrow of capitalism, but became a means of advancement for a developing labour bureaucracy.
The relative social peace which existed in Europe between the defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871 and the end of the upswing in 1912 resulted in the trade unions and social democratic parties becoming powerful mass organizations. But the development of the German social democracy within this framework of an organic upswing of capitalism infected its leaders and its officialdom with the habit of compromise and gradual progress. The pressure of the mass organizations in this period of upswing resulted in increased living standards for the workers. Such a situation instilled into the labour leadership illusions that reforms could be won indefinitely. As the trade unions expanded in membership, as their resources developed dramatically, then gradually the leaders at each level raised their income and conditions of life higher than the masses. In the words of Marx, “Social being determines social consciousness.”
The decades of peaceful gradual development transformed the character of social democracy. The labour leaders had bent under the sustained pressures of capitalism. For the developing careerists Marxist phrases were used at May Day processions, on workers’ holidays and other such occasions, whereas in day-to-day work they adapted themselves to bourgeois society. The trade unions and the SPD had become rich and powerful, and had begun to harbour careerists and place-seekers at every level. These privileged layers now had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, in effect becoming not an instrument for the overthrow of capitalism, but of mediation between the classes.