Reformism Yesterday and Social Democracy Today

Abstract

It is now difficult to imagine that the term 'Social Democracy' once embodied socialism's greatest hopes. Shortly before the First World War, the German labour movement or German Social Democracy, which placed itself officially under the banner of Marxism, enjoyed a series of resounding successes that seemed to be full of promise. Within the space of a few years and despite the arsenal of laws and persecutory measures that were directed against it, it had become the major political force in the -most powerful state in continental Europe. A membership of one million, the masses who voted for it and the group of deputies who represented it in the Reichstag, where they formed by far the most important group, all testified to its political strength. Its trade union strength could be measured in terms of millions of members. In organisational terms it seemed to embody both the genius of a nation and the irresistible emergence of a class. Its intellectual strength found expression in the voices of Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Edouard Bernstein and Rudolf Hilferding, who were rarely in agreement but who were all prestigious figures. In his memoirs Trotsky pays retrospective tribute to its strength: "For us Russians, German Social Democracy was mother, teacher and living example."