ABSTRACT
General party propaganda and meetings of the party membership were, even before 1914, increasingly concerned with pragmatic discussions of issues of contemporary relevance. The post-war statutes of the Social Democratic Party had decided that delegates to the party conference should be chosen on a proportional basis so that there was at least basic equality with regard to the votes of the membership. In 1898 all the Social Democratic trade unions together employed only 104 officials; by 1904, when the size of the membership had doubled, the number of officials had risen to 677. The analysis of leadership cadres over a period of time raises the wider question of the embourgeoisement of the Social Democratic leadership. Individual organisations gave expression to the political predilections of the active membership, who selected the leaders, who influenced events from the power base once created.
