Political anti-Semitism in Germany, 1871-1914 (4 of 5): the SPD and anti-Semitism

Paul Massing, Rehearsal for Destruction: A Study of Political Anti-Semitism in Imperial Germany (1949)

Massing devotes several separate chapters to the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the labor movement and anti-Semitism. The SPD's outlook was secular. Socialist labor was deeply skeptical of both the Catholic and Protestant hierarchies, and the feeling was returned and more. Massing frames the basic position of the SPD on anti-Semitism this way:

The Social Democrats saw no reason for singling out the Jewish group, either for attack or protection. Jews would share the fate of the socioeconomic classes to which they happened to belong. The revolutionary workers would abolish capital regardless of its religious denomination. In matters of human relations they would be guided by the declaration of the First International which had stated that "this International Association and all societies and individuals adhering to it will acknowledge truth, justice, and morality as the bases of their conduct towards each other and towards all men without regard to color, creed or nationality." The class theory also governed the Social Democrats' appraisal of anti-Semitism. They were certain that the economic and psychological conditions necessary for anti-Semitism to flourish were to be found mainly in those intermediary classes which modem capitalism had thrown into a "prolonged but hopeless agony." (p. 160)



Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader August Bebel  (1840-1913)

As a practical matter, the "racial" anti-Semites were of more concern to the SPD than the Stoecker variety. Because, as Stoecker soon realized after launching his political activities, he was attracting support from independent tradespeople and shopkeepers, virtually none from the industrial working class which was his original target constituency. The "racial" anti-Semites did attempt to compete directly with the SPD for working-class votes, and their programs were tailored to appeal to not only urban middle-class voters who felt their positions endangered by economic developments, but also to peasants and to workers. By contrast, Stoecker for most of his political career focused more on pulling voters from the liberal (capitalist) parties to the Conservatives and allied forces. The SPD saw the "racial" anti-Semites as the more direct political threat, because they also denounced feudal reaction and struck a radical and even revolutionary tone against the existing authorities. The SPD prior to the First World War didn’t make much effort to win rural votes from the peasants.

Kaiser Bill, Wilhem II (1859-1941), who "improvised from one blunder to the next"

Massing credits the SPD, whose leaders mostly applied a Marxist outlook to their understanding of social and class dynamics, with recognizing the dangerous potential popularity of anti-Semitism in German politics:

The Marxists [SPD] were the first to emphasize the socioeconomic roots of modem anti-Semitism. They warned their followers not to belittle it as a mere product of demagogic agitation, not to ignore the social reality behind the manipulative aspects of anti-Semitic movements. "One cannot pass over phenomena which find a response among the masses," Bebel told the delegates to the Social Democratic Party convention in 1893, admonishing them not to repeat the stupidity of their own opponents who for a long time had regarded the socialist movement as nothing but an artificial bubble. "It is necessary to analyze the causes and, having found these causes, one must look out for the means with which to remedy the ills that have produced these phenomena." [my emphasis] (p. 161)

Massing doesn't go into detailed analyses of electoral results but rather describes the fortunes and influence of those groups that promoted anti-Semitism most actively and effectively. He has a good sense of the complexity of motivation on politics and the difficulties for an historian to make exact judgments about them. He also appreciates the role of plain old folly in politics; he writes of Kaiser Wilhelm II's general approach to forming foreign policy, "It was all-important to have the ear of the Kaiser who, unable to master the situation, relied on his 'intuition' and improvised from one blunder to the next."

"Racial" anti-Semite Ernst Henrici (1854-1915) strikes a colonial pose

He gives one of the best brief descriptions I’ve seen of how the reform and revolutionary wings of the SPD co-existed in the same Party from the mid-1890s to the First World War brought a split between supporters and opponents of the war, largely corresponding to the reform and revolutionary trends, respectively:

Intensive industrialization not only favored the growth of the Social Democratic organization but facilitated a compromise between the party's left and right wings. So long as such objective criteria as electoral victories, membership increases, and the rapid concentration of industrial and financial wealth supported the theory of a quasi-automatic evolution toward the day when labor would "take over," it did not matter too much how the party acted, as long as it remained "revolutionary." The Social Democratic leaders seemed justified in the belief that the revolutionary prospects would not suffer if the party confined itself to those legal methods of agitation which the government could not deny it. The radicals' desire for legality was, of course, wholeheartedly shared by the moderates who saw in the party's growing stature proof of the progress which Social Democracy could make under the constitutional government. In the early nineties, on the occasion of Bismarck's dismissal, and again at the time of the Kaiser's conflict with [Chancellor] Caprivi when the air was thick with rumors of an impending coup d'etat, the leaders of Social Democracy had agreed that the conditions of constitutional legality were preferable to a hazardous existence under a military dictatorship. (p, 191)

Concludes in Part 5

Tags: anti-semitism, deutsche politik, frankfurt school, frankfurter schule, german politics, paul massing, rehearsal for destruction