1890–1914: Germany’s socialists argue over elections & revolution

A banned movement keeps winning votes

In imperial Germany, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s Anti-Socialist Law of 1878 outlawed many socialist organizations and publications. It did not prevent socialist candidates from contesting Reichstag elections. Workers formed associations and maintained political networks while the authorities prosecuted activists. The law expired in 1890, the year Bismarck left office. The movement reorganized under the name Social Democratic Party of Germany, or SPD.

August Bebel, a prominent socialist leader, gave the party a parliamentary voice. The SPD defended expanded political rights, worker organization and changes in economic ownership. Germany’s industrial growth brought new employment but also harsh bargaining over work, safety and pay. By 1912, the SPD had become the largest party group in the Reichstag. That achievement did not give it control of the imperial government, whose ministers answered to the emperor rather than to a parliamentary majority.

An argument inside the party

Eduard Bernstein believed socialism could be advanced through unions, elections and laws rather than by waiting for capitalism to collapse. In the late 1890s he challenged predictions that economic crisis would inevitably produce revolution. Other party figures, including Karl Kautsky, defended the more orthodox Marxist position. Their disagreement was about more than words: a party that accepted compromise would vote on budgets and gradual reforms; one expecting revolutionary confrontation might reject those bargains.

The imperial government also pursued social insurance. Bismarck had introduced sickness, accident and old-age protections in the 1880s, partly to weaken socialist appeal. Workers therefore gained protections through policies associated with both conservative state-building and socialist organizing. No single party can claim every reform as its exclusive creation.

The war exposed a deep split

In August 1914, the SPD parliamentary group supported war credits despite its internationalist language. Many workers supported national defense; opponents regarded the vote as a betrayal of solidarity across borders. The decision split socialist politics and later helped create separate communist parties. The German case shows a movement that achieved mass representation while remaining divided over the methods and limits of political change.