German Socialism drifted towards the whirlpool in 1914 in a vessel straining with contradictions. In internal matters the SPD paid lip service to Marxist doctrine but was, in its day to day operations, profoundly revisionist. It had long since effected a compromise with the Bismarckian state. In foreign affairs the party was pacifist but had no plan to preserve the peace. It cherished the international solidarity of the proletariat but would not use force to preserve it. It deplored the militarism of German foreign policy but did not see that the state, to which Socialists no less than Conservatives were deeply attached, could not be defended with pacifist gestures. Its ideology hobbled its patriotism, while its investments, other material interests and radiant political prospects made it a party of “irresolute Marxists.” The SPD was the Hamlet of international socialism.

England's first important socialist organization was the Social-Democratic Federation. During the eighteen-eighties this organisation was in the forefront of the socialist movement. It came to present an extreme and dogmatic socialism. But it is curious to recall that in origin the organization was not socialist. Although it had a few socialist members, it had no socialist program. The leader of the S.D.F., the wealthy Cambridge University graduate, the formerly pro-Tory journalist, H. M. Hyndman, is always associated with the growth and development of this organization. Yet it has not been recognized that in the very early days of the S.D.F. there was no certainty that Hyndman would hold the reins. Our aim in this essay is twofold: I. to detail the non-socialist beginnings of the S.D.F. and 2. to indicate Hyndman's connection with the new organization. The story of the formation of the S.D.F. – at first called the Democratic Federation – has never been told in its entirety. We will relate what happened at the first meetings. We will show how Hyndman came to gain control and how the Member of Parliament from Newcastle, Joseph Cowen, who could have been the leader, was superseded.

Beesly was not only friendly with Marx, but was well acquainted with his circle. He knew Lafargue, he got to know Engels, and there were mutual acquaintances, such as Eugene Oswald. Among workmen, he was not only the friend of Odger, Applegarth and Lucraft, but was on close terms with such working-class confidants of Marx as Jung and Eccarius, and to a lesser extent with Dupont. In the sixties he was a familiar figure, not only in the offices of the Carpenters and Joiners, the London Trades Council or the Bee-Hive, but was also at home in the “Golden Ball” where the most radical of London's workmen talked with continental revolutionaries over a clay pipe and a pot of beer. Here one could get the flavour of European proletarian politics: that other “World of Labour” in whose ideals Beesly was as deeply interested as he was in those of English trades unionism. Indeed, for many years he expressed his desire for the amalgamation of trade unionism – with its implicit recognition of the priority of social questions—, and proletarian republicanism – with its generous enthusiasm and its larger view.

Zahlreiche monographische Arbeiten zur sozialdemokratischen Parteigeschichte führen wohlbegründete Klage über das Fehlen einer modernen Gesamtdarstellung, die zu erarbeiten ein erstes Anliegen der Geschichtsschreibung der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung sein müsse. Dass es noch einer umfassenden Darstellung ermangelt, ist um so eigenartiger, als sich eine Fülle von historischen Zeugnissen und Dokumenten dem Historiker zur Bearbeitung anbietet. Gleich-wohl erschöpft sich die bisherige parteigeschichtliche Bibliographie in Einzeldarstellungen – abgesehen von einigen gedrängten, zu partei-politischen Zwecken geschriebenen übersichten—, und es gilt die etwas verfrühte Rüge Adolf Mengers über die mangelhafte Geschichtsschreibung des Sozialismus heute – trotz Mehring – in erhöhtem Masse für die Geschichtsschreibung der sozialdemokratischen Partei.

The survival of a concept is generally only secured at the price of an intellectual odyssey in the course of which it is transformed out of all recognition. The nineteenth century fortunes of the idea of solidarity exemplify this axiom only too strictly. It became the victim of a multiplicity of ingenious puns and metaphors as well as outright malicious distortions that rendered a simple, technical word, drawn from the sphere of jurisprudence, at once emotive and obscure, influential and diffuse. As the eminent and caustic critic of the twentieth century, Julien Benda, formulated this vital problem of the fate of concepts, “pour l'historien des idées des hommes, la réalité ce n'est point ce qu'ont été les idées dans l'esprit de ceux qui les ont inventées, mais ce qu'elles ont été dans l'esprit de ceux qui les ont trahies… car il est clair qu'une doctrine se propage d'autant plus largement qu'elle est apte à satisfaire un plus grand nombre de sentiments divers.” This pessimistic view has been all too frequently verified in human history.