er as someone who earns the trust of themasses byresponding to their inner-
most feelingsand acting as“the chosen advocate of their demands, the transla-
tor of their longings,their hopes, and their wishes.”⁴On the other hand, he ques-
tioned the long-term prospects of social movements committed onlytothe
individual pursuit of happinessand denounced support for such positions by
fellow socialists as surrender to the cult of bourgeois individualism.“Ithink
very little of the saying thatmen are the masters of theirown happiness,”he ex-
plained,“Only‘happy circumstances’give individuals their‘proper’place in life.
Forthe great manywho are not giventhat proper place, the table of life is not
set.”⁵
The emotional cultureofnineteenth-century Social Democracy can be recon-
structed best through thevoices of its most fervent defenders and doubtful ob-
servers. Capturingthe mood of the earlysocialist movement,the utopian social-
ist WilhelmWeitling was one of the first to declare in 1842,“thatcold reason
alone has never producedarevolution.”⁶The anarchistRudolf Rockerrecalled,
“in the small circles of scholars, pure theories mayhaveplayedacertainrole;
they had no influencewhatsoever on the actual development of the movement.
The broad mass of Social Democratic supporters did not even understand the po-
litical jargonthat was spoken in those circles.”⁷Manyparty leaders openlyad-
mitted that proletarian identifications werenot formed on the basis of any
party programs or theoretical treatisesbut resulted primarily from the senti-
ments, moods, and sensibilitiesthat developedinthe social and cultural rituals
of associational life. Unsurprisingly,the power of emotions haunted the socialist
movement from thevery beginning.AlreadyinTheCommunist Manifesto,Marx
and Engels took issue with earlysocialists’preoccupation with working-class
suffering. The foundingfathers of Marxism accused their lesser-known rivals
“of caring chieflyfor the interests of the workingclass as being the most suffer-
ing class”and concluded that,“Onlyfrom the point of view of being the most
sufferingclass does the proletariat exist for them.”⁸Determined to establish
the scientific foundations of Marxism, Marx and Engels had no patience for
the“communism of starry-eyedlove, basedon‘love’ and overflowing with
Bebel,Ausmeinem Leben,2:122.
Bebel,Ausmeinem Leben,1:42.
WilhelmWeitling, quoted byFrankTrommler,Sozialistische Literatur in Deutschland:Ein his-
torischer Überblick(Stuttgart: Kröner,1976), 187.
Rudolf Rocker,Ausden Memoiren eines deutschen Anarchisten(Frankfurt am Main:Suhrkamp,
1974), 46.
Karl Marx andFriedrich Engels,“Manifestoofthe Communist Party,”MECW6: 515.
Emotional Socialism and Sentimental Masculinity 69