German Social Democracy, 1905–1917

The Development of the Great Schism

Paperback

ISBN 9780674351257

Publication date: 01/01/1983

No political parties of present-day Germany are separated by a wider gulf than the two parties of labor, one democratic and reformist, the other totalitarian and socialist-revolutionary. Social Democrats and Communists today face each other as bitter political enemies across the front lines of the Cold War; yet they share a common origin in the Social Democratic Party of Imperial Germany. How did they come to go separate ways? By what process did the old party break apart? How did the prewar party prepare the ground for the dissolution of the labor movement in World War I, and for the subsequent extension of Leninism into Germany? To answer these questions is the purpose of Carl Schorske’s study.

Praise

A masterful study! Professor Schorske’s book combines the methodological thoroughness of a scholarly monograph with the breadth of political insight needed to investigate and explain Social Democratic history.

—Journal of Central European Affairs
A brilliant and formidable analysis of the SDP in the period immediately following its formal rejection of revisionism… An extraordinary synthesis of intellectual, political and sociological history. [Schorske] succeeds in placing the story of the SDP in the general framework of German internal and foreign politics. He has a special flair for the lucid statement of difficult ideas, and combines this with a patience when dealing with endless materials concerning the institutional structures on both the national and the local level, of the party and the trade union movement alike.

—World Politics