ABSTRACT
In the study of modern political institutions, the analysis of the role and operation of political parties occupies an ever-increasing place. For the study of the modern socialist movement and for the development of socialist ideology the German Social Democratic Party is also of seminal significance. The German Social Democratic Party was the first party cast in that role. The communist interpretation of the course which the German Social Democratic movement took and the reasons for its failure to effect its aim of transforming society rests in the last resort on the interpretation of capitalist development and all of its imperialist phase. The rise and decline of the German Social Democratic Party is intimately linked to the constitutional and to the economic development of the country and no historical analysis of its largest national political organisation – the avowed representative of half the economic nation — can avoid bringing these facts into the discussion.
