ABSTRACT
Engels observed that by 1870 the German socialists “had made rapid advances amongst the urban working class, and grew in the measure that largescale industry proletarianised the mass of the people and consequently exacerbated the class contradictions between capitalists and workers”. 2 Eight years later the socialists had strengthened their position, having formed a united party which was now attracting support from certain trade unions and some former members of the Progressive Party and the People’s Party. But in 1878 the growth of the Social Democrat Party received a dramatic setback. The Reichstag passed an “Emergency Law against the publicly dangerous Endeavours of Social Democracy” and the Social Democrat Party was outlawed as an illegal organisation.
