August Bebel

1914: how German socialism came to betray the workers

In 1914, the German Social-Democratic Party was the most powerful party of the Second International. With more than one million members, it was the largest single political party in Europe and the largest party in any European parliament. Socialists throughout the world, faced with the threat of war in the last days before that fateful 4th August, waited for the SPD to live up to its solemn commitments made at the International's congresses at Stuttgart and Basel, and oppose the war. Yet on 4th August, the SPD parliamentary fraction voted for the Imperial government's war credits, and the way to war was open.

How the German Party degenerated in the years leading up to 1914 to the point where it betrayed its most fundamental principles, and the struggle of the left in the party against this degeneration, is the subject of the article that follows.

The Free Association of German Trade Unions (FVdG) on the road to revolutionary syndicalism

In the first part of this article looked at the controversy within the German trade union movement and the SPD (Social Democratic Party) that led to the creation of the Free Association of German Trade Unions (Freie Vereinigung Deutscher Gewerkschaften, FVDG), the organization that would be the precursor of German revolutionary syndicalism.

The transformation of work according to revolutionaries of the late 19th Century

In the previous article in this series, we showed how the authentic socialists of the end of the 19th century had envisaged the way that a future communist society would tackle some of mankind's most pressing social problems: the relationship between man and woman, and between humankind and the nature from which it has sprung. In this issue, we examine how the late 19th century revolutionaries foresaw the most crucial of all social transformations - the transformation of "useless toil" into "useful work" - in other words, the practical overcoming of alienated labour. In doing so, we will answer the charge that these visions represent a relapse into pre-marxist utopianism.

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