The Social Democratic Party

The fly within the First International that claimed mass organization imagined that they would take place in the form of both unions and parties with voting turnout as a goal. They had the greatest success in the newly industrialized countries, Italy, the Nordic countries, Russia, and above all Germany.

Industrialization there was dominated by a large industry that quickly sucked in unskilled and raw labor into production. There appeared easily a gap between leaders and led that did not exist in the countries where there was a strong artisanal tradition.
These countries applied a harsh state-led industrialization policy where trade union organization was oppressed. It seemed as important to pursue a policy towards the state as towards the businesses. In Germany, the state even helped to make party organization attractive because voting was the only form of mobilization allowed.

So the party organization had the greatest success in Germany. As early as 1890, the SPD became the largest party in the Reichstag. In 1914, the party had one million members and four thousand employees. On the other hand, they were not as successful in organizing the unskilled workers in large-scale industry which the strategy was actually intended for – in 1914, only about one-fifth were unionized. But progress was also made with this; since 1900 the proportion had doubled. And Germany became the source of inspiration for the labor movements of all other NIC countries.

The strength of the organizational form quickly became apparent. At about this time, the standard of living of the workers began to improve in the industrialized countries. The centralized form of organization provided the opportunity for massive action and the strength to survive adversity and preserve an identity over time, which the alternative strategy, the anarchist one, did not.

The weaknesses were mainly two:

- The emphasis on parties tended to highlight voter turnout and future takeovers as the movement’s main form of action. This gave party leaders and ministerial candidates an enormous influence in the organization, while at the same time giving their disagreements about strategies and hypothetical possibilities an extremely overdramatized significance and opportunity to split the movement. These disagreements also tended to freeze as dissenting ideologies, due to the dominance of professional politicians. Instead of the social identity as a worker, ideological identities became more important.

- The gap between functionaries and members could be made permanent. Because the organization’s salaried employees had other interests than its members (job security in the organization and high salaries), conflicts arose. A dramatic conflict arose at the outbreak of war in 1914. Instead of announcing a general strike to save the members’ lives, they chose to keep the organization legal and save their own jobs, i.e to stand up for the war.

Reading
Walter Kendall: The Labor Movement in Europe, Allen Lane 1975
Dick Geary: European Labor Protest 1848-1939, St Martin's Press 1981
James Joll: The Second International, RKP 1974.