Meanwhile, Karl Marx and his disciple, Frederic Engels, had been propagating their theories, and in 1848 the former published his famous work on the ideal social state.  At first Marx was a partizan of revolutionary methods, but he subsequently recanted this view and proclaimed that the Socialistic aim in future should be the “strengthening of the economic and political power of the workman so that the expropriation of private property could be obtained by legislation.”  The Marxian doctrine was adopted in Germany by Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel, who, at Eisenach in 1869, founded the Association of Social Democratic Workmen, to which the present German party owes its name.  The Eisenach programme declared “the economic dependence of the workmen on the monopolists of the tools of labour the foundation of servitude and social evil,” and demanded “the economic emancipation of the working classes.”  An attempt to get the Lassalle society to join the Eisenacher society on an international basis failed for the time, but the two associations finally coalesced at the Gotha Congress of 1875.

The attempt on the life of William I in 1878 by the anarchist Nobiling had an important effect on the fortunes of the party and the character of its programme.  The Socialist Laws were passed and the police began a campaign against the Socialists, of which the mildest features were the dissolution of societies, the searching of houses, the expulsion of suspected persons, and the interdiction of Socialist newspapers and periodicals.

For the next few years the party held its annual congresses in Switzerland or Denmark, but as the Socialist Laws ceased to have effect after three years, and were not then renewed, the party resumed its congresses in Germany.  The Congress at Erfurt in 1891 resulted in the issue of a new programme rejecting the Lassalle plan for the establishment of workmen’s societies for productive purposes and substituting for it the transfer of all capitalistic private property engaged in the means of production, such as lands, mines, raw material, tools, machinery, and means of transport, to the State.  The term used in the programme is “state,” not “society,” but the State is in fact nothing but the society armed with coercive powers.

Other objects are universal suffrage for both sexes over twenty, electoral reform, two-year parliaments, direct legislation “through the people,” some form of parliamentary government, autonomy of the people in Empire, State, Province, and Parish, conscription, national militia instead of standing army, international arbitration, abolition of State religion, free and compulsory education, abolition of capital punishment, free burial, free medical assistance, free legal advice and advocacy, progressive succession duties, inheritance tax, abolition of indirect taxation and customs, parliamentary decisions as to peace and war, and undenominationalism in schools.