August Bebel (1840-1913) was the best-known leader of the German Social-Democratic Party (SPD: "social-democratic" then meant "Marxist") and of the world workers' movement between Engels' death in 1895 and World War One.
After his father died young, Bebel had to work to support his family from the age of seven, but managed to train as a wood-turner.
He became politically active as a member of the German Workers' Association, led by Ferdinand Lassalle, in 1863. He was won over to Marxism by Wilhelm Liebknecht, a veteran of the revolutionary struggles of 1848-9 who had lived in London between 1850 and 1862, and known Marx and Engels well.
Bebel and Liebknecht founded a workers' party in 1869. In 1870 Bebel and Liebknecht were the only members of the North German parliament to not vote for war credits for Prussia's war with France (the followers of Lassalle voted for the credits). In 1871 Bebel boldly defended the Paris Commune in the parliament of newly-united Germany. He was jailed for "high treason" and "insulting the Emperor".
Between 1878 and 1890 the SPD was declared illegal, and Bebel himself was jailed again in 1886. But the party continued to grow. In 1879 Bebel published (illegally) the first edition of his book Woman and Socialism. As the SPD grew, this pioneer manifesto for women's liberation was the most popular book in its workers' libraries.
Spurred on by SPD members like pioneer lesbian and gay rights activist Magnus Hirschfeld, Bebel
was also the first person to speak in parliament against Germany's anti-gay "Paragraph 175" (not repealed until 1969), the only leader of a German political party ever to bother to find out at first hand about the life of homosexuals in that country, and the first person publicly to reveal the existence of "pink lists", on which the police recorded the names of homosexuals regardless of whether they had been convicted of sexual activities or not.
In old age Bebel was preoccupied with keeping the SPD together. When debates developed, he calmed them with compromises which seemed to give a lot to the left wing in words, but actually gave a power of veto to the right wing.
The SPD gradually lost its revolutionary edge, and in August 1914 capitulated dramatically by
supporting the German government in World War One. Whether, if Bebel had lived, he would have recalled his defiance in 1870, and stood with Rosa Luxemburg and Wilhelm Liebknecht's son Karl against the war, we can never know.
