In the and social history literature of this century, few notions have pro ven more resilient than what might be termed the dichotomous standard of workers' political behavior. By this standard, the political activities of working people are situated between poles: workers are either revolutionary or nonrevolutionary; they establish political autonomy or are acculturated; they rebel or submit. If a working-class quorum is not found behind the barricades or organized into an independent party, workers' political behavior is labeled reformist, adaptive, or integrationist and regarded as wholly or largely dominated by the state and ruling elites. The dichotomous standard of behavior has not been restricted to the his tory of any one nation nor been the preserve of any one ideological perspec tive. The concept of a labor aristocracy in nineteenth-century British social history has been criticized as a search for a theoretical alibi where and when a revolutionary?that is to say, politicized, unified, and self-conscious? working class did not exist. In the historiography of the German Social Demo cratic party, one school of thought idealizes the limited, moderate na ture of German workers and depicts the party as an aberration wrought by Germany's authoritarian traditions and the connivance of doctrinaire intellec tuals.1 The history of French municipal socialism has largely associated the//? de si?cle surge in numbers of socialist municipalities with the success of re formist political strategies; municipal socialists' preoccupation with voting