Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany
|
Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany
Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands |
|
|---|---|
| Founded | 1869 |
| Dissolved | 1875 |
| Ideology |
Social democracy Marxist socialism |
The Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (German: Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, abbreviated as SDAP) was a Marxist socialist political party in the North German Confederation during the period of unification. Founded in Eisenach in 1869, the SDAP endured through the early years of the German Empire. Often termed the Eisenachers, the SDAP was one of the first political organizations established among the nascent German labor unions of the nineteenth century. It officially existed under the name SDAP for only six years (1869–1875), but through name changes and political partnerships its lineage can be traced to the present-day Social Democratic Party of Germany.
The SDAP was one of the earliest organizations to arise from German workers' unionizing activity, but it was not the first. At the group's founding in 1869, the fast-growing working class of the Industrial Revolution had already established several notable associations for workers' advocacy. Chief among these were Leopold Sonnemann's Assembly of German Worker Associations (Verband Deutscher Arbeiterverein, or VDAV) and Ferdinand Lassalle's General German Workers' Association (Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein, or ADAV).
The largest group by far was the VDAV. Through the 1860s it remained mostly apolitical, dedicated to pocketbook matters and fully integrated with the paradigms of liberal economic interests. The VDAV did its best to ignore the political agitation of Lassalle's much smaller but more active ADAV. The Lassalleans were seen as insufficiently committed to basic economic matters: much of their political appeal was based on what socialists considered to be an alarming militancy in support of German nationalism and the question of "Greater Germany", and they displayed a discomfiting closeness to the militaristic Kingdom of Prussia. Eventually, however, the sundry turmoil created by the wars of German unification helped politicize large elements of the previously unmoved VDAV. Some followed Sonnemann to the new moderately socialist German People's Party, founded in 1868, while others were ready to abandon the VDAV structure altogether and establish a more radical political party.
...
Wikipedia