ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author supports his hypothesis that the rise of social democratic labor movements was a reaction to industrialization in times and places where the aristocracy remained powerful. He notes that socialist parties could retain their character as working-class parties only as long as they confronted a strong aristocracy and its ideology of inequality. But the only area with the necessary conditions for the development of social democratic labor movements that the author discusses is Western Europe, a quite small area of our globe and one that is culturally relatively homogeneous. Thus, unlike the Western European socialist parties, Japanese social democracy became a mass movement only as the occurred. Social democratic labor movements always encompass both socialist ideologists and trade unions, but in their origins the two elements are quite distinct. The first socialist thinkers show no interest in workers, the first trade unions have no use for socialism.
