Quotes About Social Democrats

Accordingly I had no feelings of antipathy towards the actual policy of the Social Democrats. That its avowed purpose was to raise the level of the working classes - which in my ignorance I then foolishly believed - was a further reason why I should speak in favor of Social Democracy rather than against it.

In this historic hour, we German Social Democrats solemnly profess our allegiance to the basic principles of humanity and justice, freedom and socialism. No Enabling Law gives you the right to annihilate ideas that are eternal

The Tasks of the Russian Social Democrats, a pamphlet written in Siberia in 1897 for uncensored publication abroad and, appropriately, the first of his writings to appear under the name "Lenin.

During the war, a faction of young Marxists had broken away from the Social Democrats, denouncing the party's pro-war policy as a betrayal of the class struggle. These youths soon formed themselves into the Spartacus League (named after the rebellious Roman slave), then, after the war, reorganized the group as the Communist party of Germany

I am very proud of the fact that many workers in my Gau, numerous former Communists and Social Democrats were won over by us and became local group leaders and Party functionaries.

Since the crash of 2008 and during the neoliberal retrenchment known as austerity, many commentators have muttered that the left is dead, watching social democrats in their timidity lose elections and respond by becoming ever more timid and neoliberal. They deserve their defeats.

The only opponents or rivals whom Hitler had to consider seriously and whom at times he had to fight in the domestic political arena between 1930 and 1934, were the conservatives. The liberals, the Centre people or the Social Democrats never gave him the least trouble, and neither did the communists.

I recently read—and I am not making this up—that members of Sörmland County Council had passed a motion, so to speak, to insist that men working for the local council should urinate sitting down, with the ultimate aim of making their public toilets genderless. Reading about all this you get a sense of the almost religious fervor with which the Social Democrats went about dreaming up and implementing their radical policies.

We are not jumping on the austerity bandwagon. A healthy economy is by far the most important thing for Social Democrats.

somewhat different. Many European countries have long practiced something resembling social democracy: but they have forgotten how to preach it. Social democrats today are defensive and apologetic. Critics who claim that the European model is too expensive or economically inefficient have been allowed to pass unchallenged. And yet, the welfare state is as popular as ever

He came to three conclusions which explained to him the success of the Social Democrats: They knew how to create a mass movement, without which any political party was useless; they had learned the art of propaganda among the masses; and, finally, they knew the value of using what he calls "spiritual and physical terror.

Drexler's principal aim was to build a political party which would be based on the masses of the working class but which, unlike the Social Democrats, would be strongly nationalist.

We German Social Democrats pledge ourselves solemnly in this historic hour to the principles of humanity and justice, of freedom and socialism. No enabling act can give you the power to destroy ideas which are eternal and indestructible.

They and the Army leaders, Ludendorff and Hindenburg, had pushed political power into the hands of the reluctant Social Democrats. In doing so they managed also to place on the shoulders of these democratic working-class leaders apparent responsibility for signing the surrender and ultimately the peace treaty, thus laying on them the blame for Germany's defeat and for whatever suffering a lost war and a dictated peace might bring upon the German people.

PARIS, February 15 The fighting in Vienna ended today, the dispatches say. Dollfuss finished off the last workers with artillery and then went off to pray. Well, at least the Austrian Social Democrats fought, which is more than their comrades in Germany did. Apparently Otto Bauer and Julius Deutsch got safely over the Czech frontier. A good thing, or Dollfuss would have hanged them.

Prior to January 22, 1905, the revolutionary party of Russia consisted of a small handful of people, and the reformists of those days, derisively called us a 'sect'. Within a few months, however, the picture completely changed. The hundreds of revolutionary Social Democrats 'suddenly' grew into thousands; the thousands became leaders of between two and three million proletarians.

Lenin should return to Russia, rally the Marxists, and organize a national Communist political party patterned after the highly successful Social Democrats in Germany.

Social democrats are characteristically modest - a political quality whose virtues are overestimated. We need to apologise a little less for our shortcomings and speak more assertively of achievements. That these were always incomplete should not trouble us.

It suffices here to say that the planned economy which the advocates of dictatorship wish to set up is precisely as socialistic as the Socialism propagated by the self-styled Social Democrats.

There are social democrats and others who are marching more in the direction of equality, whether you call them socialists or communists... Capitalism has only hurt Latin America.