Any recommendations? I've always used the lives Luxemburg and Bebel as a key to unlock the secrets of the pre-war SPD (Nettl's biography Rosa Luxemburg comes to mind). And to a lesser extent the lives of Kautsky and W. Liebknecht. I've also learnt a lot from the debate about Lenin's attitude to the SPD (Lih's Lenin Rediscovered for example.), and that of Engels. And then there are the books about Belgian social democracy of course. Maybe we could form a list for current and future members.
The German Social Democratic Party 1890-1914 as a Political Model. The proletariat into a class: The process of class formation from Karl Kautsky's the Class Struggle to recent controversies.
I haven't read most of these, but these are some books I've found which touch on the subject (also some of these are about the second international as well): Kevin J. Callahan - Demonstration Culture Carl E. Schorske - German Social Democracy, 1905-1917: The Development of the Great Schism Massimo Salvadori - Karl Kautsky and the Socialist Revolution, 1880-1938 Gary P. Steenson - After Marx, Before Lenin: Marxism And Socialist Working-Class Parties In Europe, 1884-1914 Gary P.Steenson - Not one man! Not one penny! Alex Hall - Scandal, Sensation and Social-Democracy: The SPD Press and Wilhelmine Germany 1890 - 1914 Nicholas Stargardt - The German Idea of Militarism: Radical And Socialist Critics 1866-1914 Stefan Berger - Social Democracy and the Working Class in Nineteenth and Twentieth-century Germany Eric D. Weitz - Creating German Communism, 1890-1990 Helga Grebing - The History of the German Labour Movement Roger Morgan - The German Social Democrats and the First International Stanley Pierson - Marxist Intellectuals And The Working-Class Mentality In Germany, 1887-1912 Dick Geary - Labour and Socialist Movements in Europe Before 1914
Changes in the theory and tactics of the (German) Social Democracy.
It's not completely about the SPD, but revolutionary strategy gives some contextual knowledge about the early Marxist movement and the SPD, plus goes into some detail on a few areas.
Moira Donald - Marxism and Revolution: Karl Kautsky and the Russian Marxists, 1900-1924
On the question of the SPD during and before the war. German social democracy during the war: http://archive.org/stream/germansocialdemo00bevarich#page/n0/mode/2up The socialist party in the Recihstag and the declaration of war: http://archive.org/stream/socialistp...ge/n7/mode/2up
There was a book I tried to order last year about the Social Democratic Party, whose author was supposed to be an authority on the party history... Found it on AbeBooks.com, can't remember anymore now. Thanks for all the links though.
Georges Haupt - Socialism and the Great war. The collapse of the second international
The opinion of some guys called Marx and Engels The Struggle of Marx and Engels Against the Opportunism of German Social Democracy (by G. VasilkovskyIn The Communist, March 1933, pp. 301-307)
This is a direct link to the PDF Comrade Noa posted.
All the reports from the SPD congress are online. I can read Fraktur (and German). If you need something specific, give me a sign.
