On August 4, 1914, the Social Democrats stood in the Reichstag and, to a man, voted the kaiser’s war credits, joining the orgy of patriotism as the armies of the Reich smashed into Belgium. Marxists were stunned. The long-anticipated European war was to be their time. “Workers of the world, unite!” Marx had thundered in the closing line of his Communist Manifesto. Marxists had confidently predicted that when war came, the workers would rise up and rebel against their rulers rather than fight fellow workers of neighboring nations. But it had not happened. The greatest socialist party in Europe
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