"The Social Democrats continued all the longtime traditions of their party and sought support in essence from only one segment of the electorate: the "proletariat," i.e., the urban workers. The party's goal, in the words of one resolution, was "to unite the entire strength of the proletariat in the struggle against the common enemy, capitalism and reaction."1 The purpose of the struggle, Social Democratic leaders told the workers, is to achieve a single ideal: socialism. Socialism, they said, means public ownership of property; it means an end to rule by bourgeois greed; it means a selfless, egalitarian, classless society, in which all men live to serve the common good."