Social democracy started as a social movement in the factories, working men's clubs, coffee-houses, newsrooms and streets of European urban centres, but by the late nineteenth century it was “captured” by newly created social democratic parties which sought to take advantage of universal suffrage as the new tool to achieve socialist ends. Over the following 160 years or so, the actions and choices of social democratic parties shaped our understanding of social democracy. But that capture never meant “ownership”. Although the terms of doctrinal debates were largely set by social democratic parties, socialist intellectuals and activists developed the “set texts” of social democracy and closely monitored whether they were adhered to by the different parties. Occasionally intellectuals and activists were able to stop the pursuit of a certain path, or to force the inclusion of a policy goal. With the passing of time the tension in the relationship between political parties and intellectuals and activists became more acute, to the point where it is no longer certain whether social democratic parties practice social democracy.

The primacy of social democratic parties over activists and intellectuals does not mean the former controlled events and therefore their destinies. As Marx suggested in “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”, men make their own history but not in “circumstances they choose for themselves” (1996 [1875]: 38). In this constrained environment, social democratic parties had to work with the tools they encountered. In the late nineteenth century, those tools were male universal suffrage, and they too forced a course of action which was consequential. As Przeworski (1993) argued, choosing the parliamentary road to socialism meant prioritizing the short-term goal of winning elections over the long-term goal of overthrowing capitalism and developing a socialist society. This choice also meant that the socialist conquering of political power would be democratic.

Choosing this path to socialism was challenging. Universal male suffrage (and least of all universal suffrage) was not yet a reality across Europe and winning elections was fraught with difficulties. The working classes, in all their rich variety which included artisans, farm labourers, factory workers, office clerks and the new class of intellectuals who lived hand-to-mouth existences in the New Grub Streets of European cities, did not constitute a majority of the electorate. Even when they constituted a numerical majority, the working classes were not a political majority, because they were not a homogenous group.