Abstract

This paper presents a comparative study of the development of democratic socialism in Germany and Great Britain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The prevailing opinion that the two major social democratic workers' parties, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Labour Party, represent different types of workers' parties is dismissed. Instead, many parallels and similarities are discussed and it is argued that different ideological and organizational developments must be contextualized according to situations instead of being attributed to inherently different character traits. Particular attention is paid to both parties' attitudes toward capitalism and in this context, it becomes clear that for a long time both parties preferred an abolition of capitalism to democratic political reforms, which led to democratic deficits.