Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)
NGO | Active
1875 CE to 2215 CE
The Social Democratic Party of Germany (German: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands), or SPD, is a social-democratic political party in Germany.
Led by Andrea Nahles since 2018, the party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in Germany along with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
The Social Democrats have governed at the federal level in Germany as part of a grand coalition with the CDU and the Christian Social Union (CSU) since December 2013 following the results of the 2013 and 2017 federal elections.
The party participates in 14 state governments and 7 of them are governed by SPD Minister-Presidents.
The SPD is a member of the Party of European Socialists and initiated the founding of the Progressive Alliance international for social-democratic parties on May 22, 2013, after criticizing the Socialist International for its acceptance of authoritarian parties.
Established in 1863, the SPD is by far the oldest extant political party represented in the German Parliament and is one of the first Marxist-influenced parties in the world.
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Germany's two separate labor parties, both threatened by Bismarck's policies, unite to form the
Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (German: Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, SAPD) at a congress in Gotha from May 22-27, where fifty-five SDAP delegates have joined seventy-three ADAV delegates.
The resultant Gotha Program is a mixture of socialist and liberal capitalist ideas.
Though it largely satisfies the conventioneers, the new policies will be denounced by Karl Marx himself in the scathing essay Critique of the Gotha Program (1875).
Marx had sent programmatic suggestions to the Gotha Congress, but the newly united socialist party adopts an essentially Lassallean policy.
Wilhelm Liebknecht becomes one of the leaders of the SDAP and the leading publisher of the party organ, Der Volksstaat ("the People's State"), the first issue of which is published on October 1 in Leipzig, under the editorship of Liebknecht and Wilhelm Hasenclever (until 1878).
It will henceforth be published three times weekly, and will be the official newspaper of the SPD until the 1990s.
Wilhelm II of Germany opposes Otto von Bismarck's attempt to renew the law outlawing the Social Democratic Party.
Wilhelm forces Bismarck to resign as Chancellor in 1890.
The new emperor allows the Reinsurance Treaty between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia to fall apart.
The German Social Democratic party upholds revolutionary Marxism through the Erfurt program, much of it authored by Karl Kautsky.