Reformism dispute

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The reformism dispute was a debate within the SPD in the 1890s. The main points of contention were the approval of the parliamentary budgets and the agrarian question .

background

After the end of the Socialist Law, the background was the question of whether and how, in the medium term, voters from other sections of the population could also be won over to social democracy alongside industrial workers. In particular, the Bavarian SPD had intensified its efforts after the Reichstag elections of 1890 to win supporters among the rural population. Above all, because Georg von Vollmar did not address the demise of the small farmers predicted in the Erfurt program in meetings , this had a certain degree of success.

In southern Germany the SPD developed less into a class party of the working class. Rather, it wore the features of a people 's party . The reasons for this lay, on the one hand, in the less large-scale economic structure and, on the other hand, in a less pronounced anti-social-democratic attitude of the state and civil society. After the social democratic parliamentary group had succeeded in achieving success in some social issues, they had approved the state budget in Bavaria. In contrast to this, the North German-Prussian Social Democracy had decided against making funds available to the “class state”.

Positions

At the party congress in Frankfurt am Main in 1894 there were violent disputes over the party's reformist course in southern Germany. The party congress received numerous proposals on the budget issue. August Bebel represented the uncompromising north German line when he demanded: “ Don't let the opportunity, not the expediency, let the principle prevail. “There was no clear decision. This meant that the party basically adhered to the principle of the fundamental opposition, but did not block the parliamentary groups' scope for another path.

The agrarian question also remained controversial. After the debate, the Frankfurt party congress approved a resolution that did not rule out reforms based on the existing social order. A commission was set up to prepare an agricultural program. The reformist tendency, which also wanted to win over the small farmers for the party, seemed to have achieved success.

However, this decision subsequently triggered severe backlash. Last but not least, Bebel spoke out clearly against these resolutions. The ever increasing internal party dispute almost led to a break between the North German-dominated party and the South German reformists. Only threatened exceptional laws like the coup bill let the inner-party conflict take a back seat.

In the end, the Agricultural Commission worked intensively on proposals for an addition to the Erfurt program, which provided for various support measures for agriculture. The contradiction between the theory of a collapsing smallholder sector and the announcement of concrete aid measures could not be resolved. Eduard David , who was considered one of the party's most knowledgeable agricultural experts, argued that the theoretical assumption was not supported by empirical reality. “ A devouring of the smaller farms by the middle ones, the middle ones by the big ones and the big ones by the giant farms is nowhere to be observed as a mass phenomenon in agriculture. “This was contradicted by Karl Kautsky , who made the self-exploitation and the comparatively low market connection of the small owners responsible for the actually ascertainable survival of the small businesses . Regardless of the question of concentration in agriculture, Kautsky also criticized the agricultural program because it did not reinforce the desire for a change in class relationships among the rural population, but, on the contrary, increased the urge for agricultural property. “ Only the hopeless farmer becomes a social democrat, only someone who has won the conviction that he cannot be helped within the framework of the existing state and social order. “In principle, this position was shared by Eduard Bernstein and Friedrich Engels . These statements reinforced the negative attitude towards the agrarian reform program in large parts of the party. Kautsky was therefore able to push through the rejection of the reform plans at the party congress in Breslau in 1895 without major problems. However, Kautsky's ideological rigor went too far, even for Bebel. " The Wroclaw resolutions extend our waiting period by at least ten years, but we have saved the principle."

consequences

The abandonment of the agricultural program meant a rejection of southern German reformism at the Reich level and led to the SPD subsequently seeing itself more and more as a class party of the urban proletariat and not as a people's party. However, the reformism dispute was also of importance as the cause of the later revisionism dispute. Independent of the theory and decision-making of the party, the practical reform work on site also remained a widespread everyday practice of functionaries of the SPD and the free trade unions .

literature

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Lehnert, p. 88
  2. ↑ on the problem of small agricultural property with references to the positions in the SPD cf. Robert von Friedeburg: Heimgewerbliche entanglement, migrant work and land ownership in the rural society of the empire. In: Archive for Social History , vol. 1996 pp. 27–50
  3. ↑ On the agricultural debates of the SPD cf. Andreas Dornheim: Social Democracy and Farmers - Agricultural Policy Positions and Problems of the SPD between 1890 and 1948, in: Yearbook for Research on the History of the Labor Movement , Volume II / 2003.
  4. ↑ Lehnert, p. 89
  5. ↑ Lehnert, p. 90
  6. ↑ Lehnert, p. 91