Conclusion

This book sought to offer a fresh approach to a programme, on which the existing array of commentaries would be enough to fill many library shelves. By focusing on a single programme, and by seeking not only the unambiguous, ‘true’ meaning of the text, but also by describing the practices and activities that brought it into existence, as well as paying attention to the people behind the programme, the circles in which they moved, and their tactics, this study has shifted our perspective. If the conventional meaning of Bad Godesberg is the acceptance of the capitalist order and the rejection of Marxism, this book has instead highlighted the logics that led to this interpretation gaining strength – which was only one of the possible meanings of an open text produced as a bricolage. It thus highlighted the way in which individuals constructed a text and its meanings. Starting from questioning the meaning of reformism, it went on to shed light on the transformation of the relationship between intellectuals and the party. Further, it highlighted major party technologies (the programme as a ‘literary’ genre with its own writing conventions, congresses, expert commissions, etc.). In this sense, Bad Godesberg is not only an event at one point in time, but also the effect of a groundswell of structural changes in the party milieu after 1945 and the very long-term effect of the invention of the party technologies on which our current democratic practices are still based. As a sociology of the SPD milieu and a socio-history of democratic techniques, this study has put the programme in its historical context. In so doing, it has also sought to provide keys for analysing the originality of the text adopted in 1959.