German Social Democracy Research Articles

Sanctioning Electoral Opposition: Repression and the Growth of German Social Democracy

Elections and repression are complements under authoritarian governments, not substitutes. However, we know relatively little about the effects of repression on political parties and electoral outcomes. I argue that parties are an example of a hierarchical network, and can sustain collective action when leaders are removed by targeted repression. I illustrate this logic in the case of Germany, where from 1878-1890 some local governments expelled social democratic leaders from their home districts. I estimate the effects of expulsions on electoral outcomes using a difference-in-difference research design which leverages variation in their timing and severity. I find they diminished the SPD's success at the polls. However, effects were restricted to the first election post-expulsions. I find only weak evidence that this is due to declining numbers of socialists expelled over time within districts. These findings show that authoritarian repression of leaders significantly impedes the electoral success of opposition parties. However, they also suggest the robustness of unified, hierarchical networks to targeted repression.

Workers and Nationalism: Czech and German Social Democracy in Habsburg Austria, 1890–1918. By Jakub S. Beneš. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. xvi, 268 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Figures. Tables. Maps. $90.00, hard bound.

Workers and Nationalism: Czech and German Social Democracy in Habsburg Austria, 1890–1918. By Jakub S. Beneš. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. xvi, 268 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Figures. Tables. Maps. $90.00, hard bound. - Volume 77 Issue 2

Политика большевистского руководства по отношению к Германии (1918—1919 гг.)

The Bolshevik toward Germany, the relationship between the Communist Party of Soviet Russia and the German Social Democracy, which came to power as a result of the First World War is analyzed in the article. The issue of the geopolitical interests and ideological orientations of the Bolshevik leadership and the German socialists is considered, and disagreements between various currents in Marxism on internal and foreign issues are examined. The problem of the dualism of the of the CPSU (b) in the first years of power, the contradiction between the theoretical attitudes to the revolution and the practical need of the Soviet state for carrying out a policy of peaceful coexistence is raised, and the strategy and tactics of the Bolsheviks are analyzed at a time when their government turned out the emerging Versailles system of international relations. The activity of the Communist International on the expansion of political influence in the world and the search for allies for Soviet Russia are traced. The topicality of the problem under investigation is conditioned by the need to develop long-standing historical ties between the Russian and German states, to study the mechanisms for establishing good-neighborly relations and the desirability of improving them at the present stage. The author concludes that, despite theoretical differences, the national interests of Germany and Russia forced both Marxist parties to converge, which ultimately contributed to the conclusion of the Rapallo Treaty and the transition to political and economic cooperation between the two countries.

Jakub S. Beneš, Workers and Nationalism: Czech and German Social Democracy in Habsburg Austria, 1890–1918

Jakub S. Beneš, <i>Workers and Nationalism: Czech and German Social Democracy in Habsburg Austria, 1890–1918</i>

Hilferdingʼs Economic Policy and the 1927 Agrarian Program

Abstract: In the late 1920s, R. Hilferding （1877―1941）, an intellectual leader of the German Social Democratic Party and prominent exponent of organised capitalism, played an important role in economic policy, especially for agrarian problems. However, his activities have not been completely explored from a historical point of view. In several international conferences in 1926, he argued against aggressive protectionism in favour of mutually beneficial trade agreements and economic regulation under the League of Nations. Then, during parliamenta-ry discussions, he opposed the general rise of agrarian customs, and insisted on promoting high-grade, intensified production by means of differentiated tariffs and financial aids. As for international cartels, he led the 1927 inter-parliamentary commercial conference to accepting his anti-monopolistic resolution. Within the party, Hilferding, as commission chairperson, drafted an agrarian program based on his own earlier ideas as well as on the Austrian program, and successfully persuad-ed the party congress to adopt it in 1927. This program included measures for land reform, productivity improvement, and social policy, among others, intending to cooperate with the rural working populace anew. As the financial situation worsened late in 1927 and the year after, he urged the tempo-rary introduction of foreign credits in order to maintain business prosperity. He criticised the budget for mass taxation and military expenditure, highlighting the structural defects of the fiscal transfer system, and tried to restore the balance through administrative reorganisation. Nonetheless, he supported the emergency assistance project for agriculture, and demanded individually granted loans as well as the control of commerce and even of production for sta-bilisation. Overall, his economic policy aimed to make progresses in international cooperative relationships, avoiding block economy, and cope with agrarian and financial difficulties through productivity measures, basically grounded on his peculiar view of organised econo-my. JEL classification numbers: B 24, B 31, P 16.

LANDSCAPES OF UNREST: HERBERT GIERSCH AND THE ORIGINS OF NEOLIBERAL ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

This article bridges the gap between the intellectual history and critical geography of neoliberalism through a study of the overlooked figure of the German economist Herbert Giersch. As a public economist and director of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy from 1969 to 1989, Giersch blended German traditions of location theory with liberal globalism to lay the foundation of a neoliberal economic geography. We show the origins of globalism at Kiel through the work of the institute's founder, Bernhard Harms, and Giersch's influences, including Johann Heinrich von Thünen, August Lösch, and Alfred Weber. We argue that Giersch's neoliberal economic geography emerged out of two perceived necessities in the 1970s. On the one hand, he saw a need to reorient German industry through import competition with the global South. On the other hand, he felt the need for an ethically defensible global imaginary to pose against both traditional German social democracy and the promise of the global South's New International Economic Order. In his metaphor of a landscape of so-called Schumpeterian volcanoes in which regions were locked in perpetual struggle for temporary monopoly positions against competitors, Giersch provided a powerful distillation of the geographic imaginary at the heart of the neoliberal movement since the 1970s.

Emotions, Cognition, and Collective Alignment: A Response to Collins

Emotions, Cognition, and Collective Alignment: A Response to Collins

Anxiety and Politics

The English version of this article was first published in 1957. The journal tripleC: Communication, Capitalism &amp; Critique republished it 60 years later in 2017. In this essay, Franz L. Neumann discusses the role of anxiety in politics. The article asks: How does it happen that the masses sell their souls to leaders and follow them blindly? On what does the power of attraction of leaders over masses rest? What are the historical situations in which this identification of leader and masses is successful, and what view of history do the men have who accept leaders? For answering these questions, the author suggests a combination of political economy, Freudian political psychology, and ideology critique. He sees anxiety in the context of alienation. Alienation is analysed as a multidimensional phenomenon consisting of economic, political, social and psychological alienation. Neumann introduces the notions of Caesaristic identification, institutionalised anxiety and persecutory anxiety. The essay shows that fascism remains an actual threat in capitalist societies.Acknowledgement: The editors of tripleC express their gratitude to the Neumann and Marcuse families for their support in republishing this essay, to Simon &amp; Schuster for granting us the rights, and to Denise Rose Hansen for her invaluable editorial assistance. Original source: From the book “The Democratic and the Authoritarian State” by Franz Neumann. Copyright © 1957 by the Free Press. Copyright renewed © 1985 by the Free Press, a division of Macmillan, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Free Press, a Division of Simon &amp; Schuster, Inc. Originally delivered as a lecture before the Free University of Berlin and published in the series “Recht und Staat,” Tübingen,1954. Translated by Professor Peter Gay. This article is published in tripleC without a CC licence.About the AuthorFranz Leopold Neumann (1900-1954) was a political theorist associated with the Frankfurt School. He obtained a doctoral degree in legal studies at the University of Frankfurt with the dissertation „Rechtsphilosophische Einleitung zu einer Abhandlung über das Verhältnis von Staat und Strafe“ (A Legal-Philosophical Introduction to A Treatise on the Relationship between the State and Punishment). Neumann became the German Social Democratic Party’s (SPD) main legal advisor at a time when the Nazis and Hitler gained strength in Germany. At the time when Hitler came to power in 1933, the legal office had to be closed and Neumann had to flee from Germany. In London, he in 1936 obtained his second doctoral degree from the London School of Economics with the work “The Governance of the Rule of Law” under the supervision of Harold Laski and Karl Mannheim. Neumann moved to New York in 1936, where he became a member of the Institute of Social Research (also known as the “Frankfurt School”) that was then in exile in the USA. In 1942, he started working for the Office of Strategic Service (OSS), where he together with Herbert Marcuse and Otto Kirchheimer analysed Nazi Germany. In 1942, Neumann published his main book is Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, 1933–1944 (2nd, updated edition published in 1944), one of the most profound analyses of Nazi Germany’s political economy and ideology. Franz L. Neumann died in 1954 in a car accident.

Georgien, die Bolschewiki und die deutsche Sozialdemokratie (1917–1921)

The contribution focuses on the fate of the First Republic of Georgia (1917-1921), from Karl Kautsky’s point of view, and on the German Social Democrats’ changing view of the October Revolution. Starting out from the dictum: “Who addresses Stalin, must also address Lenin, who speaks of Stalinist crimes, must also discuss the October Revolution”, Kautsky’s view of the “Menshevist” Social Democratic Workers Party, which ruled Georgia between 1917 and 1921 and was the German Social Democrats’ “brother party”, and of the “Social Democratic Farmers Republic of Georgia” and its sad end is presented. For Kautsky, the fate of Georgia was exemplary evidence for the correctness of his scathing criticism of the Bolshevik “October putsch” which, as he said, had annihilated the achievements of the February Revolution.

Schulz (The German Social Democracy of Schulz and the Bet on Social Justice)

Greek Abstract: Ανeξάρτητα από τις δημοσκοπήσeις οι οποίeς eίναι πολύ σχeτικές, η eποχή της αυταπάρνησης για την γeρμανική σοσιαλδημοκρατία φαίνeται να έχeι τeλeιώσeι από την στιγμή που ανέλαβe τα ηνία του SPD ο Martin Schulz ως υποψήφιος για την καγκeλαρία.. Μe τον Schulz oι Γeρμανοί σοσιαλδημοκράτeς φαίνeται να έχουν ανακτήσeι την κοινωνική γλώσσα η οποία του διέκρινe παραδοσιακά. Αυτό δeίχνeι τουλάχιστον η πρόθeση του να έρθeι σe ρήξη μe σημαντικά ζητήματα που αφορούν την eκσυγχρονιστική Ατζέντα 2010, προκαλώντας έντονeς διαμαρτυρίeς στο στρατόπeδο των eπιχeιρηματιών. H αξίωσή αυτή μαζί μe τις δηλώσeις Schulz ότι δeν προτίθeται παριστάνeι τον συνοδοιπόρο των σύγχρονων αφeντικών, αλλά να eίναι ένας φίλος για τους μικρούς ανθρώπους καθιστά πιο αξιόπιστη την διάθeση του για μeταρρυθμίσeις μe κοινωνικό πρόσημο. English Abstract: Irrespective of the polls that are very relative, the era of self-denial for German Social Democracy seems to have been over since the SPD was taken over by Martin Schulz as a candidate for the Chancellery. With Schulz, the German Social Democrats seem to have regain the social language that has traditionally distinguished him. This shows at least its intention to break with important issues concerning the modernizing Agenda 2010, causing strong protests in the entrepreneurs' camp. This claim, along with Schulz's statements that he does not intend to represent the Escort of modern bosses, but to be a friend for small people, makes his mood for social reforms more credible.

El socialismo español ante el cambio político posfranquista: apoyo internacional y federalización

Hasta las primeras elecciones democráticas en junio de 1977, un núcleo supercentralizado, compuesto básicamente por socialistas andaluces y vascos, con el apoyo de cuadros de la segunda generación del exilio, lograría reconstituir federaciones del PSOE y de UGT en la mayor parte de las provincias españolas. Pocos años después, lograría culminar la unidad socialista, con congresos refundacionales en el caso de Cataluña y de USO, o mediante la absorción de fracciones de otras formaciones socialistas y socialdemócratas de ámbito nacional o regional. Con el logro de la unidad socialista, la construcción del “partido de la transición” recibió un decisivo impulso, aunque la federalización del PSOE se demoraría hasta la década de los años ochenta, a la par que se construía el Estado de las Autonomías.El apoyo de los partidos y sindicatos socialistas europeos, sobre todo los que estaban en el gobierno, tuvo un peso notable en el realce de la imagen socialista. Sin embargo, resultan exageradas las visiones que minimizan el número de militantes en el momento de la muerte de Franco y que basan toda su interpretación en el apoyo político y económico de la socialdemocracia alemana. El apoyo de los alemanes, junto a la presión diplomática de los laboristas británicos y de otros gobernantes socialistas europeos, sí jugó un papel muy relevante hasta las primeras elecciones. Sin embargo, la influencia logística e ideológica de los socialistas franceses durante el tardofranquismo y de los intelectuales italianos a partir de las elecciones de 1977 fue más notable que la de los germanos o los británicos.

Echoes of the Marseillaise in German Social Democracy

Jean-Numa Ducange’s recent work, La Révolution française et la social-démocratie. Transmissions et usages politiques de l’histoire en Allemagne et Autriche 1889–1934, provides an ambitious and theoretically-sophisticated analysis of the ways in which German and Austrian socialists interpreted the French Revolution from 1889 to the 1930s. Ducange shows how the different strands of Second International socialism interpreted the revolution in their own ways, and shows the impact of the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 on this. His work does not only focus on leading theoreticians such as Karl Kautsky, but also documents very effectively the way in which the readings of the French Revolution were disseminated widely through Social Democracy’s rank-and-file membership. It is a valuable contribution to the literature on the culture of Marxism in Central Europe in this period, as well as a rich addition to the literature on the resonance and uses of the French Revolution: the ‘echoes of the Marseillaise’.

The Crisis of German Social Democracy Revisited

The Crisis of German Social Democracy Revisited

Socialist Visions of European Unity in Germany:Ostpolitiksince the 1920s?

This article reassesses Willy Brandt'sNeue Ostpolitikof the 1970s. It does so by linking Brandt's policy initiative to earlier German Social Democratic plans to integrate Europe that had existed since the 1920s. The analysis suggests that Brandt's attempt to mediate between the West and the East in the 1970s revived earlier SPD policies to integrate Central European societies that had been divided after the world wars. Continuities between Social Democratic thought and practice are therefore highlighted – continuities that are usually overlooked in narratives that have stressed how dramatically German Social Democracy shifted from the interwar to the Cold War eras.

The ‘third way’ and the politics of law and order: Explaining differences in law and order policies between Blair's New Labour and Schröder's SPD

AbstractAdvocating more repressive law and order policies along the slogan ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ in their election manifesto, Tony Blair in the United Kingdom and Gerhard Schröder in Germany were elected in the late 1990s. Once in power, however, only New Labour substantially toughened law and order policies, whereas the German Social Democrats did not change the legal status quo, to a similar extent, during their mandate. This article tackles this puzzle, arguing that the preferences of the ministers and the formal and informal rules shaping the balance of power in government are crucial to understanding why two governments that initially advocated similar policies adopted a rather different policy stance. The results are based on meticulous process tracing and a series of elite interviews concerning two major topics in the realm of law and order during the 1990s: policies directed at sexual offenders, and policies responding to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

The Rosa Luxemburg Myth: A Critique of Luxemburg’s Politics in Poland (1893–1919)

Abstract This article challenges widespread uncritical portrayals of Rosa Luxemburg. By examining the politics and practices of Luxemburg and her SDKPiL party in Poland, I show that their commitment to proletarian emancipation was undermined by sectarian and doctrinaire tendencies that contributed to the defeat of Poland’s workers’ revolutions in 1905 and 1918–19. A critical analysis of their approaches to the national question, the Polish Socialist Party, German Social Democracy, and the role of the revolutionary party, undermines the prevailing romanticisation of Luxemburg. I argue that the Polish Socialist Party, Luxemburg’s main political rival, posed a viable Marxist alternative for Poland’s revolutionary movement.

‘Today I offer you, and we offer the country a new vision’: The strategic use of first person pronouns in party conference speeches of the Third Way

This article aims to fill a gap in the existing research by analysing the construction of leadership and group identity in a corpus of 13 party conference speeches by the party leaders of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the British Labour Party between 1997 and 2003. The comparative approach chosen will demonstrate the context sensitivity and strategic use of the pronominal self-references. The article will demonstrate how changes of pronominal self-reference in party conference speeches can be understood as strategic changes of footing to foreground either the voice of the party leader or the voice of the party. It will conclude with the results of an analysis of the combination of pronominal self-references and verb forms construing competence and responsiveness, as suggested by Fetzer and Bull, and demonstrates that these verb forms are used differently in combination with the various forms of self-reference, a fact neglected in their analysis.

The global chancellor: Helmut Schmidt and the reshaping of the international order

In this book Kristina Spohr offers a major and long overdue reassessment of German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. She sets out to challenge dismissals of him as essentially a crisis manager whose achievements do not measure up to Konrad Adenauer, Willy Brandt and Helmut Kohl. Quite rightly, she assesses Schmidt in the bleak and difficult context of the 1970s: struggling with the aftermath of the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system, the oil crises and the tortuous politics of strategic imbalance. This book makes the case that Schmidt was Germany's first truly global chancellor, an architect of a new world economic order and a ‘double interpreter’ between the superpowers. He also emerges as an ‘intellectual statesman’, on a par with Henry Kissinger but possessing the resources of an elected political leader. The book's real value arises from Spohr's copious use of archives in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States and above all Schmidt's private archive in Hamburg. Its strengths are most evident in the four chapters dealing with Schmidt's major contributions in the field of defence and security: ‘The strategist of balance’, ‘Defusing the neutron bomb’, ‘Constructing the dual track’ and ‘The double interpreter’. Here Spohr is at her best, and the book's claims to be original, significant and rigorous and to stand as an essential reference are well founded. Each chapter can be read with great profit. In particular, Spohr's claim that Schmidt was a ‘defence intellectual’ is well substantiated. He had read and thought hard about strategic issues in a way no one else had in the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and published a major book which was internationally well received. It is here that the comparison with Kissinger stands.

From the Life of the National Museum Library in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

The aim of the paper is to show the situation of the National Museum Library (NML) in the period of 1939–1945 based on archival documents. Central changes made by the Nazis affected people as well as their work in the NML. It was not possible to continue as before – some employees had been arrested or executed by the Gestapo. Nevertheless, the number of the NML staff increased as a result of the transfer of officials from the closed Ministry of War and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Two employees of German nationality joined the NML based on the new rules concerning the relations between Czechs and Germans in public services. The operation of the library came under the supervision of Professor Carl Wehmer, who planned a cataloguing reform, was in charge of the book collections and ensured their later evacuation. The plans for a new NML exhibition were cancelled and replaced by propagandistic exhibitions imported from Germany, such as Deutsche Größe. The Nazi ideologists planned to return the National Museum and its library to the original idea of the land museum. Also Emil Franzel, a former leading member of the German Social Democracy in Czechoslovakia, a later member of the Sudeten German Party and in 1940–1941 an official in the NML, followed the idea of a land museum in his book History of the National Museum Library (Prague 1942), the first monograph on the history of the NML.

The Crisis of German Social Democracy Revisited

AbstractThis article analyses the dramatic electoral decline of German social democracy since 2003. It argues that the SPD's decision, under the leadership of former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, to engage in welfare state retrenchment and labour market deregulation during the ‘Hartz reforms’ (2003–05) demoralised the SPD electorate. The SPD subsequently lost half of its former electoral coalition, namely blue‐collar voters and socially disadvantaged groups, while efforts to gain access to centrist and middle‐class voters have failed to produce any compensating gains. While the SPD's decline from a large to a mid‐sized party is part of a larger transformation of the German party system, no political recovery is possible for social democracy without a fundamental change of strategy, namely efforts to regain former voters by offering credible social welfare and redistributive policies. The SPD will not be able to delegate such policies in a ‘convoy model’ to other parties, such as the Left Party; nor will a modest ‘correction’ of the earlier course, such as has been attempted since 2009 under the leadership of current party chairman Sigmar Gabriel, be sufficient to recover lost electoral ground.