A survey of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) from 1969 to 1982 must be preceded by an account of its development since its inception in the middle of the nineteenth century. The plight of exploited factory workers and their families in the aftermath of the nineteenth century industrial revolution precipitated the rise of socialist parties and trade unions throughout Europe. The new organization, representing the beginning of the social democratic movement, sought first to extend the limited suffrage and then to build socialism by creating a network of producers’ cooperatives that would eventually supplant capitalist enterprises. In May 1875, at a conference in Gotha, they merged forces and founded the Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany. The party’s reformist wing was strengthened at the time by the emergence of a socialist trade union movement. The SPD organization, a model for many other European socialist parties, consisted of a hierarchical structure of national, regional, and local organs.