Postwar socialist governments prioritized survival over revolutionary aims, splitting the Left

Evidence

The Soviet leadership saw its task in terms more of survival than of realizing socialist aims - not an unrealistic appraisal under the circumstances, but one scarcely designed to placate socialists like Rosa Luxemburg who would have preferred no revolution at all to a betrayed one. Although from a very different perspective, the socialist leadership in the Weimar Republic also understood its most imperative goal to be the survival of the new government rather than the implementation of socialism. The trade union consciousness, which, as Carl Schorske has shown,’ permeated its ranks well before the end of the Second Reich, meant the squandering of what opportunities there might have been to revolutionize German society. The split that divided the working class movement in Weimar between a bolshevized Communist Party (KPD) and a nonrevolutionary Socialist Party (SPD) was a sorry spectacle to those who still maintained the purity of Marxist theory. Some attempted a rapprochement with one faction or another. But as demonstrated by the story of Georg Lukacs, who was forced to repudiate his most imaginative book, History and Class Consciousness, shortly after its appearance in 1923, this often meant sacrificing intellectual integrity on the altar of party solidarity. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 92

Categorization

• XREF: The SPD/KPD split and trade-union reformism echo the moderation thesis in The Defeat of the Spanish Armada about institutional preservation overriding revolutionary ideals; also connects to how exiles later navigated party loyalty. — connects to: The left’s defeat may have been a slow disintegration rather than a battle — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 276; Conflicting war-era pressures produced centrist ‘maximalism’ in Italian socialism

Broader Connections

• The left’s defeat may have been a slow disintegration rather than a battle #expands (0.75) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 276
• Conflicting war-era pressures produced centrist ‘maximalism’ in Italian socialism #exemplifies (0.72)