Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

Hinge Points Episode 1: Social Democratic Party Poopers (Patreon)

Published:
2021-11-05 20:16:45
Imported:
2026-06

Downloads

Content

Welcome to our new mini-series Hinge Points, a tour of historical “what-ifs.” We’re publishing the first episode free to all. Subsequent episodes will post on Fridays exclusively to subscribers on patreon.com/chapotraphouse.

Matt and Danny Bessner, from the American Prestige podcast, take you on a tour of the history of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and explore the importance of the party's decision to vote to fight World War I. They examine the party's structure and history, the clash between party elites and workers, and the importance of nationalism, exploring why World War I represented such a devastating blow against international socialism.

Files

Comments

Mack Gallagher

I know there are no ancaps on the Internet unless we post our credit card info, but I plead amnesty in order to say: this episode convinced me to actually give Marx a chance.

Mack Gallagher

Marx just explained to me that the reason why my factory wages can keep me alive but not pay for any further leisure or education is that the price of commodities (eg labor) tends to fall to their cost of production. Chapo has won at least 1 clean victory.

take5™

matt finally gets to be as much of a nerd as he always wanted to be. so happy for him <3

Kamran Husain

Hinge, point, and shoot a hawt load of leftist propaganda down me brain stem

theSmokingGun

I hate to be a merch nag, but is there anyway to get more of the Zapata oil hats at some point in the future? I will pay almost anything. I have no dignity.

Greg

Let's play ball !

Zachary Serrins

I simply cannot get enough Cushbomb! I’m full up, folks! Still HONGRY.

Kasz

*unzips pants*

Dddd

Will there be an rss link to put the podcast in my normal podcast app?

T

Matt Christman, our Hairy Turtledove

T

They placed a 1000 hat order after they sold out, so there will be more hats.

chapotraphouse

we just put in an order for 1000 more hats, should be in stock before end of year

Kevin C

Hell yeah

helvetica.hottie

So can we talk a little more about exactly what "war credits" are and what it means to that system? I know a lot of the history about what happens in the war and the lead up from an allied Tuchman perspective, but not as much from the German side of the events. Thx.

T

War credits = war bonds, like the war bonds that the US sold most famously during WWII. By voting for (the creation of and selling of) war credits, the SPD was voting to fund the war. Ordinary people were supposed to use war credits as an investment. You loan the government money by buying war credits, then the government is supposed to give you back what you loaned them + interest. Germany got BTFO in WWI, so I assume no one got their money back, but I don't know.

T

Who made the song? 🤩

Ben L

We are so spoiled oink oink oink

miltonic

I like the more theoretical discussions produced here! Good idea for a show.

Anxiety

Disappointed. Thought this was a dating episode

Patricius

im german and appreciate the ernst busch song snippets

AKorgar

Apparently Germany finished paying off its debt from WWI in 2010. Most of that was probably payments from the Treaty of Versailles but I'm sure a fair amount of it applied to outstanding war bonds. I guess it would depend on whether or not the Imperial government's debts carried over to the Weimar Republic, to the Third Reich and then to West Germany

Yacobum

I love this

Greg

Great stuff- I especially love the opening/closing MUSIC

Nobody

No world war 1 no Lenin returning to Russia

helvetica.hottie

Thanks for the info y'all. There's so much history I have to lean on others to tell me what I don't know. Much appreciated.

etienne

so happy that they finally found how to monetize cushvlogs. we stan a content producing king

Ian Fletcher

pretty sure he meant to say 1919. good shit tho.

Michael S. Judge

As for the question of class identity alongside other forms of identity formation, I think you could argue that Marx didn't get one or the other specific factor wrong, he just underestimated the extent to which any and all categories of identity are malleable, especially when there's a massively powerful incentive to commodify them not just in or under capitalism, but as a form of capital unto themselves

Kinetics Video

You guys going to put some further reading links for these? I love that nerd shit

David Andrews

Very informative. I wish you guys had given a bit more background on the German social democrats at the time. That would have helped me follow the discussion. For example: what were War Credits?

Patrick Holt

The assassination of the leader of the French party, who was committed to preventing the war on internationalist grounds and had the support of most of the parliamentary group, was also a factor in whether the Socialist parties of the beligerent states could or couldn't take the risk of voting against it. I think that for the revolution to have successfully spread from Russia the working class movement in each country would have had to remain united, and in addition to the careerists breaking international unity, working class unity within the countries was also broken, in most cases, as a result of what Lenin did by seizing power by and on behalf of one party against the other revolutionary parties. That gave the careerists in Germany and elsewhere after October 1917 the additional ideological excuse of being confronted with new Leninist parties which were demanding not just insurrection, but insurrection for the purpose of creating a dictatorship. That created a permanent split in the working class and socialist movements of Europe which broke Marx's plan and made further revolution in Europe impossible. Thereafter revolutions have only been possible where dictatorships or imperialist occupation already existed, and even then when given any form of public choice, the populations of Portugal and South Africa for instance, chose liberal democracy over Leninist technocracy. Today it seems to me that the first objective of socialist politics must be to rebuild socialist mass parties to represent poor and working people, and to destroy or retrieve existing neo-liberalised social democratic parties.

Patrick Holt

Massive loans to be taken by the state to pay for the full scale military mobilisation and ongoing costs for ammunition etc. Outbreak of war meant expenditures massively exceeding the annual military budgets/appropriations/defence estimates, and therefore enormous new funding suddenly needing to be agreed to in each parliament. The sums asked for were such that they exceeded the annual tax revenue of anyone, and therefore loans would also have to taken (mostly from Wall Street because bank money creation was limited by the Gold Standard), and issued by central banks, and that amount became open-ended as the war continued.

Euan Innes

Great episode. Would you consider doing one on; what if Zapata had moved to support Villa and the Conventionistas won? Plan of Ayala is implemented in full? What happens then to Mexican-American relations?

Of course

Everyone knows it was the Reichstag parliamentarian who made it impossible for the SPD to do the right thing.

Budget Hireling

Or if Villa had listened to Felipe Angeles before the battle of Celaya and cut Obregon's supply lines... what might have been...

James Browning

Anyone got good reading recommendations for this topic? Fascinating episode.

Steff

What do you think Matt and Dan’s primary sources are for the analysis re pre-war nationalism vs class consciousness and the professional take over of worker’s movements?

Steff

Other than Benedict Anderson lol

Harry

Very cool ep. Looking forward to more of these.

Sebastian Wittekindt

Amazing episode and I’m so happy that you guys are finally going fully into stuff like this. I’m a bit confused by your final takeaway though and I’m curious what you’ll say about the Russian revolution because I would say that if Rosa Luxembourg had managed to build the apparatus in Germany that Lenin and the Bolsheviks managed to build in Russia over the same time period, the German working class would have taken power in the 1918 revolution. The reformist SDP were discredited by event after event but there was no Marxist party that could patiently explain and offer an alternative to the workers and so they sat around until the counter revolution crushed them. The same thing happened in 1923 for gods sake! Also, it was not the RSDLP that led the Russian workers to power but the Bolsheviks! The Mensheviks and SR’s would’ve sat around and done nothing until the counter revolution crushed them as well. These events are absolutely hinge points and what makes the decisive difference in such a moment is a disciplined revolutionary organization! We need to build such an organization RIGHT NOW for the revolutionary period that lies ahead of us.

Sebastian Wittekindt

Anyway if ya’ll are interested in getting involved check out socialistrevolution.org in the US or Marxist.ca in Canada or the IMT wherever else you are! ✊🚩

David BS

Wer hat uns verraten?

Karl Childers

held off on listening to this til i had time to really absorb it and god damn this is some fine marxist podcast. yall have outdone yourselves, really excited to see where this series goes

Øystein Monsen

The Brothers' war and the Franco-Prussian war were both very bloody conflicts. Not on the scale of the Great War, but the idea that there had been only limited engagements in western Europe between the end of Napoleon and the Great War is a very dubious one. I'm also not too keen on the podcast's very German focus - the big name in antimilitarist internationalism at the time was Jean Jaurès, who was assassinated at a very inconvenient time. He was the guy who people took seriously and who might have been able to credibly promise peace - more than any other single event, his assassination doomed the antimilitarist cause.

Øystein Monsen

Also, there's several moderate-to-serious mistakes of Marxist jargon, which is not normally a problem but which which becomes relevant when specifically discussing Marxist movements in explicitly Marxist terms. E.g. the bourgeoisie is defined by its relationship to the means of production (that is, they own them), the term is not applicable to a general sort of middle-class comfort. One can make a reasonable case that the attitudes of party elites as they become disloyal to the movement is a manifestation bourgeois ideology, but bourgeois ideology does not a bourgeoisie make. That said, I do think that Christman is right to follow Lenin's thesis of imperial hyper-exploitation combined with elite co-option as the main objective factors behind the betrayal of the second international.

zaxm

Weak opening, underresearched. Just throwaway of interesting concept. Too moich focus on the "actual history absolutely had to happen, SPD was bad in general", instead of consequences and alternatives. Also never touched difficult issues like "how to achieve similar scale of movement without professional revolutionaries or fatcats", or the issue of scalling up and stabilizing anarchists political movements. In result episode contributed to closing the imaginaries rather than opening them. Work more on script, avoid repetitions, provide more step-by-step analysis of the internal SPD decision processes, if you want to keep my burgie coin. Currently Mike Duncan or Frantz Walter provide better dopes on this issues. This is like a liberal remake, I prefer the raw versions.

zaxm

Franz Walter is a solid all-round introductory history of SPD. Bit tolerant for them and mild, but frames nice before and after and sets up whole Bebel vs. Marks debate.

Jackson Pratt

Very excited to hear y’all talk about Rosa Luxemburg’s assassination by the friekorps who were hired by the SPD!!! I wrote about that for my final in my German History class and I’m so excited to hear y’all talk about this era, it’s so fascinating!!! Keep up the good work comrades!!

Ll

When you dislike something, you can just turn it off instead of posting a multi-paragraph essay on why Diet Rite is far superior to Diet Coke. Hope this helps you post less cringe, god bless.

Matt

This mf said too moich

Julie Baxter

German liberals sold out the working class in the 1848 revolution, then again in 1914. Is it any wonder that liberals in this country continue to sell out workers?

Sebastian Wittekindt

Imagine thinking Mike Duncan’s podcast is less liberal. Fuckin anarchists man

Matt Crossin

Matt is entirely wrong that elections ‘build capacity’, and it’s astounding that he doesn’t see that they *necessarily* build organisations (and shape individuals) which are *structurally* (and psychologically) not fit for purpose; i.e., the confrontation he recognises needs to happen to transform relations in production.

Matt Crossin

I agree they use jargon in incorrect ways on Chapo, but arguably there is some merit to this use in the sense that (aside from being a privileged position of power in itself) power within the state constitutes a structural position in the management of capital, and sometimes direct control over means of production. Certainly politicians are no longer proletarians! Which is a big part of why the notion of ‘the proletariat in power’ via representatives is such a misguided one. There’s also then the complexity of unions which play the role of mediator between capital and labour, and the privilege of organisational leadership within that kind of organisation.

Matt Crossin

Probably not a source of theirs, but another major work on this topic is Nationalism and Culture by Rudolf Rocker.

Matt Crossin

Similarly Danny claims there’s ‘no operating outside the beast’ ?! Says who? Why is direct action against capital and the state not an option? I feel like some of the things that will be considered ‘overdetermined’ will be in the narrow sense that they were overdetermined by anyone seeking to manage the capitalist state (parliamentary party) or mediate between labour and capital (union)

Øystein Monsen

I don't understand how replies work in this app and cannot be bothered to find out, so I'm replying to myself to respond to Matt Crossin above. I do not agree that party elites or bureaucrats can function as a bourgeoisie. Administrative states do have a power of their own which Marx does not, to my knowledge, adequately explore, but that power is not the power of private property. Even at its latest, lowest points the Soviet Union did not have a bourgeoisie organised for itself: arguably this is what doomed the whole endeavour, since a great many members of the Nomenklatura decided that becoming a bourgeoisie was a good deal and were willing to end the Soviet project to do it, causing another case of elite defection. The distinction in the Soviet case has a very dramatic effect, and the Chinese have been keen in trying to learn from the Soviet example: they've allowed the emergence of a bourgeoisie, but seem very wary of allowing them to become a class in and for themselves: the Chinese national bourgeoisie is kept under very tight discipline these days. I also disagree that politicians cannot be proletarian: a long line of successful shop stewards and actionists have had proletarian backgrounds and lived proletarian lives. Even parliamentarians can arguably be proletarians: before British MPs were given salaries, many proletarian Labour representatives lives on very tight stipends, mostly donated from their constituents. This had the double function of keeping the number of proletarian politicians low and of keeping them tied very closely to their constituencies. That said, there's a strong case to be made that having non-proletarian cadres is both useful and necessary. The problem of elite loyalty is a very big and important one, and as we can see it's very difficult to pull off: on this, we can certainly agree.

Emmanuel Arce

It depends on what one means by “limited engagements” the Franco Prussian War lasted two months (if we exclude the four month siege of Paris that followed the Battle of Sedan) ditto the Austro Prussian War. The entire conflict of 1870 created roughly the same amount of battlefield casualties as the first battle of the Marne by itself. So I think the point that many thought WWI would follow the general contours of the two great wars of the late 19th century and that this would mean a quickly decided outcome holds some merit. I agree that it would be hard to quantify either 19th century war as a “limited engagement” in an abstract sense but if one compares them to WWI they most certainly are. The German plan was to knock out France in six weeks after all. That said not everyone thought the war would be quick. More people than is generally acknowledged envisioned if not the probability at the very least the possibility of a protracted engagement lasting years not months including Moltke the Younger himself. It is why one of the many changes he made to the Schlieffen plan was to not include the Netherlands in the oath of invasion so they could remain neutral and provide a “windpipe” for Germany to continue importing goods in case the war turned long. Kitchener also planned for and envisioned a long war that’s why he began campaigning for as much enlistment as possible from the British citizenry almost immediately.

Emmanuel Arce

While I agree with Matt that Bismarck’s WWI prediction was indeed impressive (iirc he also called the year and was off by only months) it is still baby shit when you compare it to Engels’ chillingly accurate prediction which he made in 1887: “. . . No war is any longer possible for Prussia-Germany except a world war and a world war indeed of an extent and violence hitherto undreamt of. Eight to ten millions of soldiers will massacre one another and in doing so devour the whole of Europe until they have stripped it barer than any swarm of locusts has ever done. The devastations of the Thirty Years’ War compressed into three or four years, and spread over the whole Continent; famine, pestilence, general demoralisation both of the armies and of the mass of the people produced by acute distress; hopeless confusion of our artificial machinery in trade, industry and credit, ending in general bankruptcy; collapse of the old states and their traditional state wisdom to such an extent that crowns will roll by dozens on the pavement and there will be no body to pick them up”

Øystein Monsen

The Franco-Prussian war ended with the dissolution of the Second Empire as a polity, which is not congruent with the idea of the war as a basically low-cost, low-stakes affair. The German war was less cataclysmic, but it still basically sealed the fate of the Habsburg empire. My point is that the risk of the losing regime outright ceasing to exist was established by 1914 and will have been very present on everyone's political evaluation, which is contrary to the episode's premise. Even if they were both certain that they would win it fairly quickly, the stakes were very high. I agree that the idea of a short war is rather overstated - there were plenty of clear reasons why the Third Republic would be more resilient than the Second Empire, and they *were* allied with the somewhat humbled but still huge power of Russia. It was prominent in the propaganda, but as you say many commentators and strategists saw the possibility of it not working out that way. I'd argue that this is not that central to the Zimmerwald opposition, though: the attitude from the resolutions there is that this is simply an imperialist war and must be opposed as a matter of principle, cost it half a million lives or a hundred (I may be misremembering this: I leafed through those documents in a sort of organised way many years ago and am left with general impressions).

Comedy News

I was just listening to Chris Hedges and mentioned this about Engels, it's astounding

Sammi

Maybe in places outside the immediate gaze of the Eye of Sauron, man, but the UStates’s vice grip on itself probably isn’t even capable of a ceiling on the violence it can commit on itself. Consider how much violence it commits against people not threatening it just to subdue them, then imagine the amplification if that violence if it even suspected a tangible existential threat to it.

Matt Crossin

People do this in much more dangerous places than America. And even if that weren’t the case, this is the grim reality: nothing - absolutely nothing - else works. Reform, let alone revolution, requires direct action by workers against capital and a willingness to fight back against the state. That’s how it’s always been. It’s how the labour movement was first built and how all social progress was made. That hasn’t changed and won’t change.

Jessica S

👏 new favorite series. Thanks for the addition.

Ll

More and more teenagers are saying this!

Emmanuel Arce

I don’t think the statesmen who thought in the summer of 1914 that the war would be over by the Spring of 1915 (with the possible exception of the ones in Russia ) felt a loss would lead to the “dissolution of their state as a polity”. I think they did feel the stakes were incredibly high so I agree with you completely that no one considered the conflict a low stakes one. Clearly some believed the future of their states depended on the outcome but in my opinion more because of the weakened position a loss would place them in going forward after the end of the conflict. The idea that it was an *immediate* life and death proposition for the European powers does not square with the mercenary attitude Italy applied when it decided what side to take. Not to mention Romania towards the end of the war. Many of these decision makers appear to have been fixated more on the possible upside in territorial gains for choosing the winning side than concerned with the permanent end of their political orders by choosing the losing side. I am not well read on the second French Empire so I am reluctant to opine too much because I am on shaky ground here but my understanding has always been that Napoleon III was already losing control of that state before the Franco Prussian War. To my mind the consequences most who thought a quick war was likely envisioned in case of a loss fit more with the consequences that Austria faced at the end of the Austro Prussian War you mentioned. Bad for sure and ones that should be avoided at all costs possibly state ending down the line but not immediately and permanently destructive.

Mark

This was excellent. It was both deeply insightful and accessible. As a GED kid, I sometimes struggle with academic discussions, but this felt like it was right in the sweet spot. Great job, and thank you.

Isaac Jones

Lotta gay ass paragraphs in these comments

A RQ

This is extremely The Good Stuff.

Adam H.

I came to the comments just to try to find out who did the music. It's awesome.

TheTempleSynthetic

After listening to this episode I had to become a patron. I've been looking for a more "theory involved" podcast and I think this is coming at a perfect time for me. Thanks, boys

James

Great show, simply awful comments. That's the Chapo guarantee!

Matt Crossin

You’ve literally just repeated what you’re criticising though? You’re obscuring material positions within relations of production and talking about ‘backgrounds’, ‘lifestyles’, proximity to ‘constituents’, and whether a class is ‘controlled’ or not. Politicians are objectively not proletarians. Won’t even go into the China/Soviet stuff. Too complicated. I think they were demonstrably developmental states constructing capitalism, and that the Chinese Communist Party clearly managed a system built on capital accumulation/exploitation of the proletariat.

Matt Crossin

read some Malatesta man, you’ll enjoy it

Matt Crossin

i am just a humble poster sir

Yup

very great

Philip Schär

Great concept! I could listen to Matt's insights forever! And Daniel's there too, I guess.

Bella Belluscio

For those interested in this kind of thing, should listen to Duncan’s “Revolutions”

Lord-Admiral of the Pyrenees

I agree that they should have treated this better. Hell of Presidents was a fantastic listen but it was much more structured. I think they needed to do more with the script here - it felt like they barley had one — introduce the SPD more than they did, more details about the SPD history, more details about the specific war credits debate, and who were the main figures involved? Some specific names would be good. Just needs more fleshing out in my opinion, it felt like too much of an informal talk. They did all this better with Hell of Presidents

Of course

Twenty years from now, while we're sifting through the irradiated ruins, we'll be debating the final hinge point: did Bernie really have to endorse Joe in 2020, just for a Senate committee chair and a not-going-out-like-Nader guarantee?

The Children of Jack Acid

I think it's funny that we're all fighting for solidarity, for shedding our mutual alienation in brotherhood and fraternity, for making people power work... but then somehow we get mad at Bernie for doing something we didn't want him to do. But seriously, Noam was right: what the FUCK would it have achieved if Bernie did NOT endorse Biden? Biden wouldn't have changed one goddam thing about his platform, and yet we'd lose tons of potential recruits to fighting capitalism. How could I look my DREAMer friends in the eye and say "Socialism is good! But the only way to PROVE one's socialist credentials is to allow Trump to maybe win again. You know, the guy who put your dad in jail for THREE MONTHS because he was born in Mexico and had a reckless driving felony in 1991. The guy who kills kids who look like your nieces and nephews. By not endorsing Biden, Bernie might ensure Trump's second term. But it's worth the potential death of thousands of brown people just so Bernie can stay 'pure!'?"

The Children of Jack Acid

(And yeah, Biden is only a LITTLE bit better than Trump. But that little bit better means thousands of lives that could have been ruined won't be. Should Bernie have thrown those lives under the bus to maybe get a WINK from Biden about not being a capitalist stooge? How would that possibly ever work?)

Yacobum

Will there be another hinge point today? I’ve been hoping all week.

Alex Conover

I felt very dumb being confused by like 75% of this

Wilko

Karl Marx = Hari Seldon?

Kyle Petty

Does anyone know a good book on the German revolution of 1918? If any of the Chapo guys actually read these or any commenters know then please post