German Social Democracy, 1905-1917: The Development of the Great Schism

✍ Scribed by Carl E. Schorske

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 1983
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 374
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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.

✦ Table of Contents

Preface
Contents
Abbreviations
Part I. The Reform Tactic Challenged, 1905-1907
I. Background: The Erfurt Synthesis and the Rise of Reformism
II. The Impact of the Russian Revolution of 1905
III. The Elections of 1907 and the “National Question”
Part II. The Consolidation of the Right, 1906-1909
IV. The Extension of Trade-Union Influence
V. Party Structure and Factional Power
Part III. Two Tactics For Constitutional Reform, 1909-1910
VI. The Break-Up of the Bülow Bloc: Reformist Possibilities
VII. The Constitutional Crisis: The Swing to the Left and the Division of the Radicals
Part IV. The Deepening Crisis and the Reconsolidation of the Radicals, 1911-1914
VIII. The Morocco Crisis and Party Reform
IX. The Electoral Alliance of 1912 and the Left Radical Offensive
X. The Sense of Sickness and the Reconsolidation of the Radicals
Part V. The Breakdown
XI. War and Schism
XII. Conclusion: The Great Transformation
Bibliographical Essay
Index