The Social Democratic Party of Germany: From Working-Class Movement to Modern Political Party

1965 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 907
Author(s):  
Donald D. Dalgleish ◽  
Douglas A. Chalmers
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social

Luxemburg on Popular Emancipation

2020 ◽  
pp. 168-183
Author(s):  
Camila Vergara
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
National Council ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Partial Control ◽  
German Government ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
Revolutionary Party

This chapter focuses on Rosa Luxemburg, who proposed to embrace workers' councils as a political infrastructure of emancipation at a moment when the modern party system had begun to consolidate. It explains the Social Democratic Party as a party in support of the interests of the working class, which had gained partial control of the German government. It discusses Luxemburg's realization that the liberty of the working class demanded a different political infrastructure. The chapter cites the betrayal of the revolutionary party that proved to Luxemburg the truth of Karl Marx's argument that the “working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes.” It highlights Luxemburg's proposal to alter the foundation and base of the social constitution by institutionalizing workers, soldiers, and peasant councils and establishing a national council of workers as part of a revolutionary constitutional political order.

The Changing Relations Between Trade Unions and the Social Democratic Party in West Germany

1978 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 399-415
Author(s):  
Klaus von Beyme
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Cooperative Movement ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western Democracies

In western democracies different patterns of cooperation among working class organizations have developed. The three ‘pillars’ of the working class movement in Britain, the trade unions, the party and the cooperative movement, have no equivalent in the history of Germany, for two reasons.

scholarly journals Mythen und Erfahrungen: die Einheit der deutschen Arbeiterklasse um 1900

2014 ◽  
Vol 44 (175) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorothea Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Working Hours ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social

In the last decades, farewell to the working class has been celebrated repeatedly. This perception normally goes hand in hand with the idea that in contrast to the socially fragmented present, a unified working class existed before 1914. I want to show that the German experience contradicts this. Two exemplary fields of ideological battles as well as concrete actions are presented: 1) the harsh rejection of specific demands of the proletarian women by the social democratic party, and 2) the struggles of the workers for higher wages and shorter working hours, where a coexistence of radically different strategies by workers in distinct branches, according especially to varying company sizes, could be observed. Even if the working class of this time was not unified in a way the left leaders wanted to see it, main parts of it achieved remarkable success. As a consequence, today’s over and over noticed weakness of the working class is not to be explained principally by a lack of unity, but by other circumstances.

scholarly journals The Demobilization of Class Politics in Denmark: The Social Democratic Party’s Group-Based Appeals 1961–2004

2018 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mads Thau
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
General Level ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
Specific Level ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
Social Democratic Parties

Abstract In Denmark, as in other Western European countries, the working class does not vote for social democratic parties to the same extent as before. Yet, what role did the social democratic parties themselves play in the demobilization of class politics? Building on core ideas from public opinion literature, this article differs from the focus on party policy positions in previous work and, instead, focuses on the group-based appeals of the Social Democratic Party in Denmark. Based on a quantitative content analysis of party programs between 1961 and 2004, I find that, at the general level, class-related appeals have been replaced by appeals targeting non-economic groups. At the specific level, the class-related appeals that remain have increasingly been targeting businesses at the expense of traditional left-wing groups such as wage earners, tenants and pensioners. These findings support a widespread hypothesis that party strategy was crucial in the decline of class politics, but also suggests that future work on class mobilization should adopt a group-centered perspective.

Czech Social Democracy and its “cohabitation” with the Communist Party: The story of a neglected affair

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lubomír Kopeček ◽  
Pavel Pšeja
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Unsuccessful Attempt ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship

This article attempts to analyze developments within the Czech Left after 1989. Primarily, the authors focus on two questions: (1) How did the Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD) achieve its dominance of the Left? (2)What is the relationship between the Social Democrats and the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM)? We conclude that the unsuccessful attempt to move the KSČM towards a moderate leftist identity opened up a space in which the Social Democrats could thrive, at the same time gradually assuming a pragmatic approach towards the Communists. Moreover, the ability of Miloš Zeman, the leader of the Social Democrats, to build a clear non-Communist Left alternative to the hegemony of the Right during the 1990s was also very important.

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