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Bronx-born, New York City congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has broken through the dull haze of complacency that has characterized Democratic Party politics for decades. She delivers “A message from the future,” where massive social investment has fixed failing public infrastructure and transformed the economy; she leverages her up-from-the-people bona fides (“I just got health insurance a month ago”) to excoriate the elite accoutrements of Congress and the broader political system; she uses Twitter and Instagram to break down the barrier between representative and represented, serving up doses of political education and withering bon mots alike. But far from a new style, her approach is about as old as the original democratic socialist party: the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Long shots of history, these early socialists became the world’s first and ultimately largest mass political party. They mobilized disenfranchised voters, articulated unconventional policy ideas, made innovative use of new media, and most of all, used their bully pulpits to denounce and expose the depredations of capitalism. The cries from these orphans and stepchildren of modernity (“free love,” “women and girls out of the shadows”) offered workers and their families a vision of a world free of grinding poverty and stunted dreams. The activists and parliamentarians of the SPD came from modest backgrounds, with little formal education. Their parliament, the Reichstag, stood more for the idea of democracy than its reality, and despite support from a broad swath of the German working class, the party had no influence over the formation of government. Figuratively flipping the building on its head, they transformed the Reichstag into a forum to go toe to toe with the powerful, giving workers a sense of being avenged and providing a model of courage through a canny strategy of political education, media distribution, and biting speeches. At her best, Ocasio-Cortez and some of her fellow leftist freshmen — Rashida Tlaib in particular — do something similar. Their speeches bring the spirit of moral indignation into the suffocating, oligarchic halls of power. They hail from backgrounds and professions much humbler than the average congressional leader. They issue statements of protest that take on a heightened currency when launched from the platform of parliament (or Congress). Most critically, AOC and the early German socialists share an underlying supposition: that there is a struggle of class afoot — and that for too many, this struggle is literally one of survival.

The German socialists initially resisted entering parliament. While they knew they had the hearts of workers, they feared that taking positions in the parliament would be seen as a tacit endorsement of the German state’s repression and imperialism. SPD leader Wilhelm Liebknecht questioned whether anything could be accomplished in the Reichstag — where, he worried, socialists could only be led to treason or blindness. Others, like Johann Jacoby, counseled members to refuse to accept duly elected seats, holding that a parliamentary voice would not transform a militarist state into a democratic one. But despite such reservations, a strategy emerged: instead of retreat from the parliament, the SPD would use its seats to issue protest lectures and signal opposition as often as possible in this era of “blood and iron” politics. Beginning with its fierce criticism of the war credits that fueled Germany’s invasion of France in 1870, the SPD stood staunchly against the country’s dominant brand of politics, which enriched landowners and employers while stoking a feverish nationalism. Though at the time they needed, on average, seven times more votes than other parties to obtain a Reichstag seat (due to skewed districting), the SPD took their places in parliament and drafted a platform calling for the enfranchisement of workers, reductions in working hours, and freedom of association. From the floor of the Reichstag, Liebknecht denounced the growing arms race and nationalist saber rattling as fueling a coming global war. He exposed corporate and industrial malfeasance, backed up by massive evidence from an SPD intelligence outfit. Party leader August Bebel insisted that workers would find pride in representatives that did not give way to adversaries but instead battled them in the nation’s political institutions. Victims of their own success, the SPD’s early gains spurred a reaction from elites, who scrambled to forestall their growth. By 1878, the SPD’s media and organizational apparatus had been outlawed. But there was a loophole: individual members could still run for federal office. The party that had hesitated to enter parliament now saw it as a lifeline. Their votes doubled in the period of illegality (1878–1890) to over 20 percent. Tested under such adversity, campaigns proved to be among the most effective means of disseminating socialist politics and advancing the cause of the oppressed. On January 26, 1889, with the party still banned, Bebel rose to challenge the country’s headlong rush into colonialism. Contrary to the other parliamentarians’ pronouncements, he thundered, German workers did not support colonial conquest: Just now, these gentlemen based their views on the fact that a particular enthusiasm for colonial policy can supposedly be found in the German Reich …. Today, the colonial question leaves the vast majority of the German people cold to the very core. I will take this one step further by saying that if the overwhelming majority of the Reichstag approves the demands of the government, as will undoubtedly happen, you will not be able to say that you are in agreement with the majority of the people. More than just a bully pulpit, these early German socialists used the Reichstag as a canvas to paint a picture of the society they were fighting for. In 1893, after a Catholic Center deputy demanded that the Social Democrats explain what a future socialist society would look like, the SPD turned the parliament into a forum for radical debate. All of the heavy hitters took turns expounding their views in this Zukunftsstaatsdebatte (debate about the future state). Bebel confidently proclaimed: once the obstacles to progress erected by the inherent irrationality of capitalism have been overcome there is virtually no limit to what can be accomplished. Industrial and agricultural production will be radically increased while the length of the work day is significantly reduced; a higher quality of goods will be produced and their distribution will be simplified and made more efficient; new kinds of foods will be developed which will be more appetizing, more healthful and easier to prepare; and solar energy will be harnessed to produce the electrical power needed by an increasingly mechanized society. Clara Zetkin emphasized the feminist promise of a socialist future: “Unhindered by social influences, feminine talent will be able to unfold freely … with the emergence of a higher more harmonious structuring of family life.” Covered extensively in the press, the five-day debate was also excerpted for a bestselling pamphlet edition. Engels could hardly contain himself. This “new victory,” he enthused, had made “the German parliament … occupy itself for a few days with the reorganization of society according to our ideas.”

The SPD’s parliamentarians were skilled debaters and orators for a reason. The party consciously built up the capacities of its membership, imparting education and preparing its future parliamentarians and officials for elocution. Itinerant teachers were sent to the most remote corners of the country, where they proved their mettle and taught the basics of socialism. The party refused to accept these oft-forgotten rural areas as conservative strongholds. For those even younger, the party fostered pen pal exchanges with youngsters in different economic circumstances, frequently outside of Germany. The written exchanges would culminate in in-person student exchanges. The goal was to bring education to a working class deprived of it. The SPD’s membership was largely barred from higher education, for reasons financial and otherwise. Likewise, even though they were thinkers and wordsmiths, the SPD parliamentary cohort had the lowest proportion of university educated. The transformation of budding elocutionists into skilled orators was the linchpin of the SPD’s effort to develop capable party organizers. The party set up speaker classes to train would-be officials in debate and extemporaneous speech-making, in a variety of situations. Once they got to the Reichstag, parliamentarians made great use of their right to speak, countering every aggressive speech from anti-socialist deputies with countless questions and follow ups. Often parliamentarians took their speeches outside of the Reichstag (frequently derided as the “center for lying”). Due in no small part to their efforts, places of protest migrated from the royal palaces and buildings to outside parliament. They also inaugurated the mass gatherings on May Day. At the heart of both were radical speeches, inevitably delivered with great élan. But it was from within the parliament itself that the SPD introduced another crucial innovation: the press office. Bringing the force of a free press right inside the halls of power, the party developed a tightly woven matrix of media distribution. Observers from London marveled: “the social democratic party executive could sit on the top floor of the Vorwärts building [the flagship party newspaper], pass a manifesto paragraph by paragraph, have it put into type and circulated to every tenement in the city of Berlin by the next morning. ” The media became one of the party’s prime assets, with printed papers available for every section of the movement, from intellectual and satirical journals to papers for women, young people, and the blind. At its height the party oversaw 169 different publications, distributing up to 113 million copies, and even helped sister movements in other countries get their media apparatus off the ground. These Social Democrats were no “parliamentary cretins.” Through their path-breaking party organs and their impassioned addresses on the floor of the Reichstag, the early German socialists used parliament both as a training ground and an essential site for realizing a better tomorrow.