August Bebel

August Bebel , 1840-1913, German Socialist leader. A wood turner by trade, he became a Marxian Socialist under the influence of Wilhelm Liebknecht . At a congress at Eisenach (1869) he was instrumental in founding the German Social Democratic party, which he later represented in the Reichstag and which he led for many years. His antimilitarism and his social program earned him the hatred of Bismarck. In 1872, Bebel and Liebknecht, tried on charges of treason, were sentenced to two years' imprisonment, but this only solidified Bebel's control over the Social Democrats, and he was reelected to the Reichstag. In 1875 he helped to unite the Lassalle group with the Social Democrats. A moderate Marxist, he opposed either violent retaliation against repression or the gradualist, evolutionary socialism of Eduard Bernstein , condemning all deviation (right and left) at the Dresden Congress of 1903. By 1912 the Social Democrats, embodied by Bebel, were the largest German political party. Among his writings are Women and Socialism (1883, tr. 1910), which was highly influential among German workers, and his autobiography (1910-14, abr. tr. 1912, repr. 1973).

Bibliography: See biography by E. Schraepler (1966).

Social Democrat A member of a political party that supports social democracy. Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel in Germany first used the term in founding the German Social Democratic Labour Party (1869). In 1875 it was fused with the German Workers' Association, founded (1863) by Ferdinand Lasalle, to form the Social Democratic Party (SDP) of Germany. Other parties followed, for example in Denmark (1878), Britain (1883; Henry Hyndman's Social Democratic Federation), Norway (1887), Austria (1889), the USA (1897), and Russia (1898), where a split came in 1903 into BOLSHEVIK and Menshevik factions. In other countries, for example France, Italy, and Spain, the term Socialist Party was more common. The German SDP was the largest party in the Weimar Republic, governing the country until 1933, when it was banned. It was reformed in West Germany after World War II, with a new constitution (1959), ending all Marxist connections. It entered a coalition with the Christian Democrats in 1966, and headed a coalition with the Free Democrats between 1969 and 1982. In East Germany a revived SDP campaigned for office in 1990, following the collapse of the communist regime. In Sweden the SDP, socialist and constitutional in outlook, has been the dominant party since the 1930s, although it was out of office from 1976 to 1982 and from 1991 to 1994. In Britain four prominent members of the Labour Party resigned in 1981 to form a short-lived, moderate Social Democratic Party (see LIBERAL DEMOCRATS).