Michels and German Social Democracy

Abstract This chapter provides the most complete reconstruction to date of Robert Michels’ involvement with the German Social Democratic Party. It is this practical experience of a modern democratic mass party which is often seen as having informed Michels’ analysis in Political Parties. The chapter shows how Michels’ involvement in writing for the Social Democratic Party press came into conflict with his academic ambitions to a degree he had not anticipated. Drawing on largely overlooked archival and newspaper sources, the chapter goes on to reconstruct Michels’ participation as an activist in the Social Democratic Party in the atypical environment of the small university town of Marburg, and demonstrates that Michels held a view of his political work that was primarily ethical in its focus. The conviction of his superior ethical qualities and his experience of party organization in a quiet area with little industrial working-class population arguably coloured his view of the party. The chapter goes on to trace Michels’ sympathies with the left of the Social Democratic Party, even while he continued to hope for a university position and wrote for non-socialist journals, and it traces his progressive disillusionment with the party and estrangement from it.