page_title: Social Democratic Party of Switzerland
section_title: Interwar period
hierarchical_section_title: Social Democratic Party of Switzerland / History / Interwar period
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Plakat des «Schweizerischen Actions-Comités für den Nationalrats-Proporz» von 1918
context_page_description: The Social Democratic Party of Switzerland, also rendered as the Swiss Socialist Party, is a political party in Switzerland. The SP has had two representatives on the Swiss Federal Council since 1960 and received the second highest total number of votes in the 2019 Swiss federal election.
  The SP was founded on 21 October 1888 and is currently the second largest of the four leading coalition political parties in Switzerland. It is the only party on the left with representatives on the Swiss Federal Council, currently Alain Berset and Simonetta Sommaruga. As of September 2019, the SP is the second largest political party in the Swiss parliament.
  Unlike most other Swiss parties, the SP is the largest pro-European party in Switzerland and supports Swiss membership of the European Union. Additionally, it is strongly opposed to capitalism and maintains a long-term goal of "overcoming capitalism". The party is a member of the Progressive Alliance and an associate member of the Party of European Socialists.
context_section_description: Although Switzerland remained neutral in the First World War, it did not avoid the spiralling economic crisis that accompanied it. The resulting social tension was unleashed in 1918 by the labour unions and the SP who organised the Landesstreik. The goal of the strike was a fundamental reorganisation of society. The Federal Council issued an ultimatum to the strikers and allowed the military occupation of central points. In this way the strike was ended after four days. Political action was quickly taken to conciliate the strikers with the introduction of a 48-hour working week and a popular initiative on proportional elections to the National Council in the 1918 Swiss referendums which passed on 13 October 1918. In the 1919 Swiss federal election, the SP doubled its mandate from 20 to 41 members.
  With the third party platform, which was adopted in 1920, disagreement within the party grew ever greater. In particular the fact that the platform called for the foundation of a dictatorship of the proletariat during the transitional phase from a capitalist class-based society to a socialist commune sparked violent dispute within the party. In 1921, the party decided not to join the Communist International. The left-wing of the party then split from the SP and founded the Communist Party of Switzerland. In 1926, the SP joined the Labour and Socialist International and continued to be a member of until 1940.
  With increasing power in parliament, the party now also demanded membership of the government, but their candidate in 1929 was not elected to the Federal Council. On the other hand, the party managed to enter the executive at a cantonal level in 1933. Genf was the first canton to have a socialist government, with Léon Nicole as president. In the fourth party platform, promulgated in 1935, the SP rejected the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat, but supporting the creation of a socialist society on "free and consensual foundations" remained the party's goal.
caption: Postcard from the referendum campaign on the 1918 Swiss referendums about introduction of proportional representation
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