ABSTRACT
The trade union’s tendency towards compromise with the existing social order was counteracted by extensive strikes. In political life the revolutionary tendency was brought to a head by the anti-socialist law and was but little attenuated by the introduction of state insurance. For the Unions were a link in the socialist movement turned against the other classes of society and against the state. The revolutionary element in the attitude of the unions was enhanced by squabbles with the Hirsch-Duncker Trade Associations, which were alien to the party and strove for a harmony of interests between capital and labour, as well as by the proceedings of the government against the unions in connexion with the anti-socialist law. The time immediately after the French War still bore the imprint of the victory and thus of an especially exaggerated nationalism. It was therefore not favourable to the political development of German socialism which was then anti-nationalist or at least predominantly economic in outlook.
