• s_p_l_o_d_e [they/them,he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Luxemburg and Liebknecht were killed by social democrats, the SPD (essentially the same politics as AOC, Bernie, nordic countries, etc, typical Jacobin stans), who later enabled Hitler to take power or something like that (someone please correct me if I'm wrong)

    • AngusMcAnus [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      The killers were members of the Freikorps and proto-fascists, however they acted under orders from the succdems. The SPD voted against the Enabling Act that gave Hitler absolute power, but the votes from the Zentrum party (literally "Center" in English, mainly represented catholic interests and were, you know, centrists) allowed it to pass. Not trying to own you or absolve the SPD of guilt here (I still hate them for denying us a beatiful future), but yeah.

      • CoralMarks [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        4 years ago

        But they could have done much more, like for example in the early thirties the SPD basically held the leadership positions in a lot of unions but they stubbornly refused to call for general strikes(what the KPD wanted but couldn't achieve because they didn't hold much sway in unions) to bring capitalism to fall in Germany, but they rather clung to electoral politics to preserve their precious Weimar Republic and we know where that led us.

    • CoralMarks [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      Some more historical context on why the SPD is really really bad:

      The SPD, even before supporting the murdering of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, already had a good record of rather working with the right or at least not actively fighting them instead of allying with Communists or other leftists.
      One example of this is the so-called Burgfriedenspolitik by which they joined forces with the other parties in Germany in their patriotic support for World War 1.
      So they for example tried to make sure that the unions they led would hold the line, so they don't go on strikes or get otherwise rebellious against the war effort.
      This was what led to Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht leaving the party and founding the USPD(independent SPD).

      Another example from that time to further illustrate how rotten this party was/is:

      In the winter of 1917/18, at the height of WW1, a pretty strong left worker movement formed in Germany, which brought the war industry almost to a standstill by means of strikes at the end of January 1918. But they made one crucial mistake, they let people from the SPD onto the committees which organized the strikes. They in the end were the ones who were able to subvert these committees that thoroughly that because of the indecisiveness of other members, like some from the USPD, the strikes were over by the 4th of February, barely a week after they started.

      Here is a quote from one Philipp Scheidemann(later became German Chancellor): “If we wouldn’t have entered the committees, … then the war would’ve ended by January. … But through our work the strike was ended and everything was put back into orderly fashion.”

      As we all know the war went on until November of that year.

        • MagisterSinister [he/him,comrade/them]
          ·
          4 years ago

          They really don't. In the 70s, the same SPD led a purge against leftists employed in the public sector. In the 90s and early 00s, they dismantled large parts of the German welfare state, created one of the biggest precarious work sectors in Western Europe and were the first German government after WWII to send soldiers into a war.

      • MagisterSinister [he/him,comrade/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Today's socdems are neoliberals who call each other comrade. But relative to the general political climate of their time, they occupy a similar niche - they're supporters of bourgeoise democracy who pretend to be on the side of "the common man." It's just that back in Weimar Germany, you needed to offer much, much more for that to work - when you have a giant industrial workforce that's heavily unionized and on board with playing rough, when the October Revolution has just happened, when there's battles in the streets and people just bring actual machine guns, you have a situation were capital is really, really scared and that means you can get much more concessions out of them.

        So i agree with you that they cannot be equated with today's socdems, but there's still a certain continuity. They've always been left of center, it's just that where that center is has changed dramatically, and not in favor of us.