ABSTRACT
The Social Democratic Party (SPD) was the pride of the Second International. Reformism, a disposition to compromise and a tendency to pull back from a full-scale confrontation with the capitalist order were all explicable in terms of the SPD’s pre-1914 experience. The integrative function of the Marxist tradition, which supplied the ideological basis of the SPD’s cohesion before 1914, was dubbed ‘Kautskyism’ by Erich Matthias, after Karl Kautsky’s role as the party’s official ideologist in the post-Erfurt era. Aside from the obvious facts of the Prussian three-class franchise and the limited powers of the Reichstag, and hence the limited significance of the SPD’s parliamentary representation, this took a powerful local form. The real substance of the movement was in the sensible pragmatism of the trade unions, the service activities of the labour secretariats and the moderate parliamentary socialism of the south German sections.
