Since 1914 there has been a very clear picture of social democracy: it sees something in the German state that must be defended - whether against the external enemy in the World War or against the internal enemy in the form of communist or anarchist workers. Of course, she continues to quarrel with bourgeois parties on occasion; and of course she sees an enemy in the fascists too. But in the end she got settled and believes that the existing state is the one that offers her political project of gradual reforms the best leeway.

The proletarian has a fatherland

This move was preceded by a broad debate about the “revision” of Marxist theory in the 1890s. Eduard Bernstein, the most prominent theoretician of this trend, apparently succumbed with his concern to replace revolutionary Marxism with a theory of social reform - but many of his theses were in the air of the zeitgeist and gradually passed into the common sense of social democracy. Decades later, in 1964, the SPD functionary Carlo Schmid will rightly state: "Eduard Bernstein has triumphed across the board."

Bernstein's attack on Marxism has an inner stringency: He starts with Marx's analysis of the immanent contradictions of capitalism, rejects them in order to make way for his thesis that, within capitalism and under the rule of the bourgeois state, a gradual advance through reforms towards socialism is possible. While the objective interests of the proletariat in Marxism were irreconcilably opposed to that of capital and the bourgeois state, Bernstein's "location policy", which is still common today, enters the historical stage. When (capitalist) society as a whole becomes richer, the scope for reforms in the service of the working class becomes greater. "The richer the society, the easier and safer the socialist realizations", claims Bernstein.

The worker is now organically connected to “his” nation, which is why Bernstein has to declare the famous sentence of Karl Marx that the proletarian has no fatherland to be out of date. “However, this sentence could only apply to the workers of the forties who had no rights and who were excluded from public life, but today, despite the enormous increase in intercourse between nations, it has largely lost its truth and will lose it more and more through the influence of the social democracy the workers turn a proletarian into a citizen ”, he writes in The requirements of socialism and the tasks of the social democracy in 1899.

Colonies, wars, site security

It is not a monopoly of social democracy, but with the narrowing of class analysis to the “national” proletariat, the road to ruin is a done deal. The German proletarians are not primarily a segment of the world working class, but rather “citizens” of Germany who are also workers and therefore have to fight for reforms in their nation.

It is logical that from this point of view, colonies, for example, should not be fundamentally rejected. Bernstein occasionally advocates colonialism to elevate the “culture” of the “uncivilized” peoples, but at one point he also expresses the crux of the matter: “ The expansion of markets and international trade has been one of the most powerful levers of social progress. It has promoted the development of relations of production to an extraordinary degree and has proven itself as a factor in increasing the wealth of nations. But the workers also have an interest in this increase from the moment when the right of coalition, effective protective laws and political suffrage enable them to secure an increasing share in it. "Logo, if the nation is doing well, the workers are doing well, and for the nation to be doing well, the primitive countries must not oppose their integration into the world market.

From here on it is not far to the "defense of the fatherland", which remained in the DNA of German social democracy from Verdun to the Hindu Kush. Bernstein: Sure, one is for peace, but nothing commands the SPD "to renounce the protection of German interests of the present or future if or because English, French or Russian chauvinists take offense at the corresponding measures." nor: The "internationality [can] not be a reason for weak indulgence towards the pretensions of foreign interested parties."

Anyone who is a citizen of a nation that guarantees constant progress must, however, not only face threats from outside, but also against threats from within. And what Bernstein could not yet know, after the First World War, fueled by the SPD, were to become mainly communist workers.

It is entirely in line with the same theory when Gustav Noske proudly tells of the suppression of the uprising after the murder of hundreds of workers under his command in 1919, thanks the "brave troops" and boasts that " peace and security" have been restored have . He calls the workers "beasts in human form" and "shooters". The SPD politician justified his shooting order with the words: “The state's necessity dictated that we act in such a way that order and security were restored as quickly as possible. [...] I have done what was considered my duty to the kingdom and the people. "

From the “People's Party” to the party of neoliberalism

The change of the SPD from a class party to a “people's party” and pillar of the German nation continued unstoppably until it finally said goodbye to all remnants of a Marxist past in its Godesberg program of 1959. “Capitalism” no longer appears in the program, the addressees of the document are “the people” or “the German people”, not the working and unemployed. The term “democratic socialism” still occurs as a meaningless phrase, but the real points of reference are different: “The state” - completely class-neutral and overhistorical - which is supposed to guarantee all kinds of freedom rights and provision and “democracy”, which is also no more than "Bourgeois" or "socialist" is differentiated.The whole program is an oath of loyalty to the capitalist FRG and its interests.

As a party with workers' followers but a pro-capitalist program, the SPD will play an immensely important role in stabilizing capitalist conditions in the future. In particular, when, in the wake of the spin-off of large parts of industry in the Trikont since the 1970s, the collapse of Soviet socialism and the emergence of a new cycle of crises, the apparent class compromise of the “social partnership” was canceled by capital, the SPD fulfilled its role in an exemplary manner. It becomes the main driving force behind the neoliberal transformation.

The so-called Schröder-Blair paper marks the change towards a party that no longer clings to the illusion of helping the workers in capitalism to improve their living standards through reforms, but instead that of capitalism through reforms against the working people and their unemployed reserve army Wants to "save". The results are well known: an extensive dismantling of social security, the immense expansion of the low-wage sector, the proliferation of temporary work and work contract disorder.

The general tendency of many social democratic parties to become the mainstays of neoliberalism was one of the factors that triggered the transnational decline of the former “people's parties”. The SPD has lost more than half of its members in the past three decades, falling from 943,402 in 1990 to 419,300 last year. The development looked similarly dramatic in favor of voters. From 40.9 percent in 1998 to currently around 20 percent.