Erler Says SDP Evicted Marx, Seeks German Education Reform

The German Social Democratic Party (SDP) today is "liberal in the American sense of the word," asserted Fritz Erler, deputy chairman of the SDP, in his third and final Jodidi lecture in Sanders Theatre last night.

Erler devoted the lecture to tracing the transformations his party has undergone over the last century and to outlining its role and policies as the present opposition party in Germany.

In its 1959 platform the SDP abandoned the last remnants of its Marxist political philosophy and emerged as a "party rather than a church," he said. Even in its earliest days, however, the SDP had a "flexible" practice separable from its Marxist theory and always desired revolution "not by power or force, but by conviction and election."

SDP Influence

He stressed the influence the Social Democrats have had in forming modern political Germany, especially in the field of social legislation. He cited as examples such measures as the institution of social security, legislation for war victims, and government co-management of the steel industry.

The SDP is now pressing for a nationwide across-the-board "crash program" for education in Germany today. German students are presently being taught by pre-1933 standards. "Automation requires intellectual mobility," Erler said, and unless Germany immediately reforms its educational system, it will not be able to compete in "material production or intellectual life" in the coming generation.

"New Bonds"

Erler's party also wants "new bonds between younger intellectuals and political life in Germany," a new orientation for city planning, an adjustment of agriculture to growing competition in the Common Market, and an intensified public health policy.

The deputy chairman described the parallel development of the political thought of the Roman Catholic Church through the years, citing the Papal encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891 and Quadragesimo Anno in 1931.

He explained that the division of Germany after World War II had changed the religious character of the country, leaving it almost 50 per cent Catholic. The Catholic Church then became an active partner as a political power in Germany, freely using its power to influence government policies.