ORIGINS OF THE SOCIALIST LABOR MOVEMENT 1848: The “General Brotherhood of German Workers” seeks...
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Transcript of ORIGINS OF THE SOCIALIST LABOR MOVEMENT 1848: The “General Brotherhood of German Workers” seeks...
ORIGINS OF THE SOCIALIST LABOR MOVEMENT
1848: The “General Brotherhood of German Workers” seeks “one big union” for all.1863: Rebuffed by the Progressive Party, a network of “workers’ educational clubs” invites Ferdinand Lassalle to found a party for them.1869: Admirers of Marx found the “Social Democratic Workers’ Party” in Eisenach, Saxony1875: Unification of the Lassalleans and Eisenachers1878-90: Anti-Socialist Law1890: Reconstitution of the “Social Democratic Party of Germany” as it exists today
Ferdinand Lassalle and the banner of his “German Workers Association”
(1863):“Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!
Unity makes us strong!”
Lassalle received
financing from Countess Sophie von
Hatzfeldt but died in a duel over a woman
in 1864….
August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht founded the Marxist “Social Democratic Workers Party” in Saxony
in 1869
Bebel and Liebknecht served two years in prison fortheir opposition in the Reichstag to the Franco-
Prussian War
“To honor our elders and guide the young!”
(poster to commemorate
the Gotha unification congress of
1875)
REPRESSION UNDER THE ANTI-SOCIALIST LAW IN THE 1880s:
The police dissolve a workers’ rally after
judging that the speaker had
advocated socialism.
The police search a worker’s apartment
for socialist pamphlets or
magazines, smuggled from
Switzerland.
“Revenge for our persecuted comrades,
1878-88. Long live Social Democracy”
“Only he deserves freedom and life who must conquer them
daily” (a “proletarian house blessing”)
Robert Koehler, “The Strike” (Munich, 1886)
The Social Democrat celebrates the SPD’s election
victory in March 1890
Delacroix, “Liberty Leading the People” (1830)
“Homage to Liberty” (those celebrating the SPD election success in 1893 include Lassalle, Marx, Danton, Darwin, &
Brutus)
Liberty summons
Progress to demolish the
Bastille of capitalism with the 8-Hour Day
(Der wahre Jacob, 1895)
August Bebel argued in Woman
and Socialism that women must be able to pursue careers to achieve genuine equality
Social Democratic women’s meeting (Berlin, 1891): By 1912 the SPD counted 150,000 women and 850,000 men
as members
“Thank you, dear wife. What’s the news?”
(Der Wahre Jacob, 1892)
But many workers yearned for wages high enough that their wives could stay at home and keep house….
The inevitable collapse of capitalism:“The Fateful Path” (Der wahre Jacob, 1891)
“Wasted Effort” (Der wahre
Jacob, 1902):The international
proletariat defeats all efforts by the Imperialist Powers to keep it
divided and weak.
EVIDENCE OF DISCRIMINATIONAGAINST WORKERS IN IMPERIAL
GERMANY
Under three-class suffrage (retained in most states and cities until November 1918), a worker’s vote counted for 1/30 as much as a rich man’s.
In 1900 only 1-2% of Prussian university students were children of workers, 0% of heads of large businesses, 1% of Protestant pastors, and 4% of Catholic priests.
In Hamburg’s cholera epidemic of 1892, working-class neighborhoods had mortality rates 5 to 10 times higher than those of middle-class neighborhoods.
According to the research of Hartmut Kaelble, in 1900 sons of skilled blue-collar workers were twice as likely to experience downward social mobility as upward.