Development of German Socialism 1890-1939

Apart from the works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Germany produced a disproportionate number of Socialist/Progressive theoreticians from the late 19th century up to the start of World War II. Some of these were involved in heated and substantial debates with VI Lenin as he was developing the revolutionary element of Marxism (which led, in 1917, to the victory of the October Revolution in Russia) whilst in German the emphasis was being placed upon what became Social Democracy.

Even one of the most revolutionary of the German Communists, Rosa Luxemburg, carried out a persistent polemic against Lenin on the need for an organised and structured revolutionary Party to lead the workers in the taking of state power. Whilst not the sole factory in the defeat of the Spartacist Revolution in 1918 the lack of such an ideologically organised Party certainly played its part in the failed insurrection.

The works presented below are all part of building up an extensive library of Socialist/Communist thought up to and following the October Revolution. The success in Russia in 1917 and the struggle for the building of Socialism subsequently certainly challenged the ideas of Social Democracy but the victory of revisionism following the death of JV Stalin has allowed these erroneous ideas to again establish a foothold in the anti-capitalist movement. The denigration of the achievements of Socialism in those countries which made efforts to construct a Socialist society from the 1945 onwards, principally the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – USSR, the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania, the People’s Republic of China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, also played its role in undermining revolutionary Marxism-Leninism. The ‘easy’ (though in reality the most difficult) road of Social Democracy has been, therefore, able to re-establish its sway in worker and peasant movements worldwide.

German Communism

Creating German Communism, 1890-1990 – from popular protests to Socialist State, Eric D. Weitz, Princeton University Press, 1997, 465 pages.

Rosa Luxemburg

On the National Question, Marxist Internet Archive edition, with internal hyperlinks as well as outside links to other documents on the MIA site, 146 pages.

The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions, English translation of 1906 German original, MIA edition.

The Crisis in the German Social-Democracy, (The Junius Pamphlet), The Socialist Publication Society, NY, 1919, 141 pages.

The Russian Revolution, Workers Age Publishers, NY, 1940, Marxist Internet Archive edition, 2020, 41 pages.

The Russian Revolution and Leninism or Marxism, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1961, 117 pages.

The Accumulation of Capital, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1951, translated by Agnes Schwarzschild, introduction by Joan Robinson, 474 pages.

The Accumulation of Capital, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 2003, translated by Agnes Schwarzschild, with a new introduction by Tadeusz Kowalik, 453 pages.

The Accumulation of Capital – an anti-critique and Imperialism and the Accumulation of Capital (by Nikolai Bukharin, written in 1924). Two separate works in one volume, edited with an Introduction by Kenneth Tarbuck, Monthly Review Press, NY, 1972, 289 pages. Luxemburg’s work is a reply to critics of her 1913 work (see above), while Bukharin’s work is another critique of Luxemburg which focuses on her 1915 Anti-Critique.

Letters to Karl and Luise Kautsky from 1896 to 1918, edited Luise Kautsky, translated from German by Louis P. Lochner, Robert M. McBride and Co., NY, 1925, 249 pages. Luise Kautsky’s introduction to this book is a good source for biographical information about Rosa Luxemburg.

Letters from Prison, Publishing House of the Young International, Berlin,1923, 79 pages.

Reform or Revolution, Vanguard Pamphlets, New Malden, 1951, 74 pages.

Leninism or Marxism, Independent Labour Party, London, 1971, 16 pages.

The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions, Young Socialist Publication, Colombo, 1970, 88 pages.

The Essential Rosa Luxemburg – Reform or Revolution and the Mass Strike, Helen Scott, ed., Haymarket, Chicago, 2008, 194 pages.

Selected political writings of Rosa Luxemburg, Dick Howard. ed., Monthly Review, NY, 1971, 441 pages.

The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, Peter Hudis and Kevin B. Anderson, ed., Monthly Review, NY, 2004, 447 pages.

The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, Volume 1, Economic Writings 1, Peter Hudis, ed., Verso, London, 2013, 559 pages.

Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution, Raya Dunayevskaya, Harvester Press, Sussex, 1981, 234 pages.

Rosa Luxemburg’s views on The Russian Revolution, Clara Zetkin, first published by the Communist International, 1922, reprint Red Star Publishers, 2017, 212 pages.

Karl Liebknecht

Militarism and Anti-Militarism, written in 1907, Rivers Press, Cambridge, 1973, Marxist Internet Archive version, 206 pages.

The future belongs to the People, speeches made since the beginning of the War, Macmillan, NY, November 1918, 148 pages.

Voices of Revolt – speeches of Karl Liebknecht, International, NY, 1927, 104 pages.

Karl Liebknecht – man without a country, Karl W. Meyer, Public Affairs Press, Washington, 1957, 191 pages.

In Memoriam to our Comrades Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, Martyrs to the German Revolution, Max Bedacht, Socialist Party of San Francisco, 1919, 16 pages.

During the Weimar Era

Communism in Germany under the Weimar Republic, Ben Fowkes, Macmillan, London, 1984), 134 pages.

Barricades in Berlin, Klaus Neukrantz, International/Martin Lawrence, NY/London, n.d. 1933?, 191 pages. This is a novel based closely on the actual events of the police attack on the 1929 May Day demonstrations in Berlin.

During the Nazi Era

The German Communist Resistance: 1933-1945, T. Derbent, Foreign Languages Press, Paris, 2021, 128 pages.

Ernst Thaelmann

Ernst Thaelmann, fighter against war and Fascism, International Labor Defense, NY, 1935, 16 pages.

German Social-Democracy in the Late 19th Century and Early 20th Century

General

German Social Democracy, six lectures, Bertrand Russell, with an appendix on the SDP and the Woman Question in Germany by Alys Russell, Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1896, 216 pages.

The German Social-Democratic Party: 1914-1921, Abraham Joseph Berlau, NY. Columbia University Ph.D. thesis, 1949, 373 pages.

The SDP and World War I

The Socialist Party in the Reichstag and the Declaration of War, P. G. La Chesnais, T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1915, 140 pages.

Otto Bauer

Otto Bauer (1881-1938): Thinker and Politician, Ewa Czerwinska-Schupp, Brill Open Access, Leiden. 2017, 442 pages.

August Bebel

Woman and Socialism, Jubilee 50th Edition, Socialist Literature Co., NY, 1910, 513 pages.

Speeches of August Bebel, International Publishers, NY, 1928, 104 pages.

My Life, by August Bebel, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, n.d. 1912?, 358 pages.

Karl Kautsky

The Class Struggle, written in 1892 about the 1891 Erfurt Program, Charles H. Kerr and Co., Chicago, 1910, 217 pages.

Communism in Central Europe in the time of the Reformation, T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1897, 298 pages.

Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History, n.d. but the original German book was written in 1906, 216 pages.

The Social Revolution, with 2 lectures presented by Karl Kautsky in Amsterdam in 1902: Reform and Revolution and The Day After the Revolution, Charles H. Kerr and Co., Chicago, 1910, 190 pages.

The High Cost of Living: Changes in Gold-Production and the Rise in Prices, Charles H. Kerr and Co., Chicago, 1914, 133 pages.

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, translated by H. J. Stenning, National Labour Press, Manchester, n.d. 1918 or 1919?, 158 pages.

Terrorism and Communism: A Contribution to the Natural History of Revolution, National Labour Press, Ltd., London, n.d. but first published in 1920, 245 pages.

The Guilt of William Hohenzollern, Skeffington and Son, Ltd., London, n.d. but late 1919 or early 1920, 270 pages.

Georgia – a Social-Democratic Peasant Republic: Impressions and Observations, translated by H. J. Stenning and revised by the Author, International Bookshops, Ltd., London,1921), 118 pages.

The twelve who are to die: The trial of the Socialists-Revolutionists in Moscow, with W. Woitinsky, published by the Delegation of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists (i.e., the Russian Social-Revolutionary Party), Berlin, 1922), 144 pages.

Foundations of Christianity – a study of Christian origins, International Publishers, NY, 1925, 488 pages.

The Labour Revolution, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1925, 293 pages.

The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx, A. and C. Black Ltd., London, 1925, 264 pages. Translated by H. J. Stenning.

Are the Jews a Race?, International, NY, English translation of 2nd German ed., 1926, 254 pages.

Thomas More and His Utopia, International Publishers, NY, 1927, 257 pages.

Academic and Historical Works on the Revolutionary Movement in Germany

General and Overall

The German Revolution, 1918-1919, Ralph Haswell Lutz, Stanford University, 1922, 187 pages.

The German Revolution and After, Heinrich Ströbel, Jarrolds, London, n.d. but circa 1923, 319 pages.

The November Revolution (of 1918) and the Overthrow of the Emperor

And the Kaiser abdicates – the story of the death of the German Empire and the birth of the Republic, told by an eyewitness, S. Miles Bouton, Yale University, New Haven, 1920, 280 pages.

Germany after the Armistice, Maurice Berger, Putnam, NY, 1920, 374 pages. About prevailing social conditions and attitudes.

Ebert and the German Republic, Robert George Brehmer, Jr., University of Wisconsin MA thesis, 1926, 172 pages. Supportive of Ebert’s bourgeois-democratic politics.

The Spartacist Revolt – the attempted Socialist Revolution following World War I

Failure of a Revolution: Germany 1918-1919, Sebastian Haffner, Banner Press, Chicago, 1986, 224 pages. Somewhat messy scan; our apologies.

The Forgotten Revolution – Germany, a conceptual map, by Gaard Kets and James Muldoon, 2019, 24 pages.

The Spartacist Uprising of 1919, and the crisis of the German Socialist Movement, Eric Waldman, Marquette Univ. Press, Milwaukee 1958, 269 pages.

On the KPD up until World War II

We are neither visionaries nor Utopian dreamers, Willi Münzenberg, the League Against Imperialism, and the Comintern, 1925-1933, Fredrik Petersson, Ph.D Thesis, 2013, 598 pages.