Abstract

The German Social Democracy

The German Social Democracy has become an antiquated party. Not only are its acts in open conflict with its original program, but they often conflict with a constantly rejuvenating social life. They no longer express the requirements of social conditions, and they collide more and more frequently with a realist policy which must be directed beyond the small or petty advantages of every day to the great goal of creating a new future for the world. The road that lies behind the Social Democracy is a long one. Its founding took place in the period of the establishment of the German Reich under Otto von Bismarck, in the heyday of the creation of the new German Empire. With the revolutionary objectives it then had it seemed to the wielders of power like a dangerous creation, damaging and dishonoring the greatness of the Reich, and Bismarck made a bold attempt to annihilate it with his special laws, an attempt on which he himself foundered at the end of his rule. The years of the anti-socialist laws were the fire in which the Social Democracy forged its weapons for the struggle in the coming decades.