Ferdinand Lassalle was a German socialist activist and politician who founded the first German workers' party, the General German Workers' Association (ADAV), in 1863. He is best remembered as the initiator of the country's social-democratic movement, which after his death led to the formation of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1875.
Eduard Bernstein was a German Marxist theorist and politician. A prominent member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Bernstein has been both condemned and praised as a "revisionist" who challenged major aspects of Karl Marx's thought. A key influence on the European social democratic movement, Bernstein argued for legal legislation over revolutionary action, and a gradual democratization and socialization of capitalist society.
Ferdinand August Bebel was a German socialist activist and politician. He is best remembered as one of the founders, with Wilhelm Liebknecht, of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (SDAP) in 1869, which in 1875 merged with the General German Workers' Association to form the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which became the leading party of the social-democratic movement in Germany. Bebel served as a member of the Reichstag from 1871 to his death in 1913, and as chairman of the SPD from 1892 to 1913.
Wilhelm Martin Philipp Christian Ludwig Liebknecht was a German socialist and one of the principal founders of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). His political career was a pioneering project combining Marxist revolutionary theory with practical legal political activity. Under his leadership, the SPD grew from a tiny sect to become Germany's largest political party. He was the father of Karl Liebknecht and Theodor Liebknecht.
Jean Baptista von Schweitzer was a German politician and dramatic poet and playwright.
The General German Workers' Association was a German political party founded on 23 May 1863 in Leipzig, Kingdom of Saxony by Ferdinand Lassalle. It was the first organized mass working-class party in history.
Franz Erdmann Mehring was a German communist historian, literary and art critic, philosopher, and revolutionary socialist politician who was a senior member of the Spartacus League during the German Revolution of 1918–1919.
The Anti-Socialist Laws or Socialist Laws were a series of acts of the parliament of the German Empire, the first of which was passed on 19 October 1878 by the Reichstag lasting until 31 March 1881 and extended four times.
Wilhelm Hasenclever was a German politician. He was originally a tanner by trade but later became a journalist and author. However, he is most known for his political work in the predecessors of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
The Saxon People's Party was a left-liberal and radical democratic party with socialist leanings in Germany, founded by Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel on 19 August 1866 in Chemnitz, and integrated into the newly-founded Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) on 8 August 1869. It was an alliance between liberal, anti-Prussian bourgeois and socialist workers' organizations in Saxony. It is considered one of the precursors to the Social Democratic Party of Germany.
Lassallism or Lassalleanism is the strategy of the pursuit of socialism through the use of the state. This school of thought developed from German jurist and socialist activist Ferdinand Lassalle.
The Critique of the Gotha Programme is a document based on a letter by Karl Marx written in early May 1875 to the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (SDAP), with whom Marx and Friedrich Engels were in close association.
Revolutionary socialism is a political philosophy, doctrine, and tradition within socialism that stresses the idea that a social revolution is necessary to bring about structural changes in society. More specifically, it is the view that revolution is a necessary precondition for transitioning from a capitalist to a socialist mode of production. Revolution is not necessarily defined as a violent insurrection; it is defined as a seizure of political power by mass movements of the working class so that the state is directly controlled or abolished by the working class as opposed to the capitalist class and its interests.
Friedrich Wilhelm Fritzsche, commonly known by his middle name, was a German trade unionist and socialist politician who was elected a member of the Reichstag. He was a founder and President of the General German Cigar Workers' Union (ADZV) in 1865. The subject of police persecution for his political views, in 1881 Fritzsche emigrated to the United States of America, where he edited the newspaper the Philadelphia Tageblatt for a time before retiring from politics.
The Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany was a short-lived political party in Germany during the German Empire and the Weimar Republic. The organization was established in 1917 as the result of a split of anti-war members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), from the left of the party as well as the centre and the right. The organization attempted to chart a course between electorally oriented reformism on the one hand and Bolshevist revolutionism on the other. After several splits and mergers, the last part of the organization was terminated in 1931 through merger with the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAPD).
Julius Motteler was a pioneering German Socialist and businessman.
Wilhelm Hasselmann was a German socialist politician, activist and editor of various social democratic newspapers.
Social democracy originated as an ideology within the labour movement whose goals have been a social revolution to promote socialism within democratic processes. In a nonviolent revolution as in the case of evolutionary socialism, or the establishment and support of a welfare state. Its origins lie in the 1860s as a revolutionary socialism associated with orthodox Marxism. Starting in the 1890s, there was a dispute between committed revolutionary social democrats such as Rosa Luxemburg and reformist social democrats. The latter sided with Marxist revisionists such as Eduard Bernstein, who supported a more gradual approach grounded in liberal democracy and cross-class cooperation. Karl Kautsky represented a centrist position. By the 1920s, social democracy became the dominant political tendency, along with communism, within the international socialist movement, representing a form of democratic socialism with the aim of achieving socialism peacefully. By the 1910s, social democracy had spread worldwide and transitioned towards advocating an evolutionary change from capitalism to socialism using established political processes such as the parliament. In the late 1910s, socialist parties committed to revolutionary socialism renamed themselves as communist parties, causing a split in the socialist movement between these supporting the October Revolution and those opposing it. Social democrats who were opposed to the Bolsheviks later renamed themselves as democratic socialists in order to highlight their differences from communists and later in the 1920s from Marxist–Leninists, disagreeing with the latter on topics such as their opposition to liberal democracy whilst sharing common ideological roots.
Max Kayser was a German Social Democratic political journalist-commentator and politician. Between 1878 and 1887 he served as an unusually youthful member of the German "Reichstag" . Nevertheless, between 1881 and 1884 - years during which, in parts of Germany, Bismarck's "Anti-Socialist Laws" were applied with particular enthusiasm - he was faced with a succession of court cases and excluded from a number of cities and towns, on account of his political record.
The Social-Democratic Workingmen's Party of North America was a Lassallist socialist party.
