The pamphlet was heavily influential in revolutionary socialist circles and along with Luxemburg's other work an important precursor to left communist theory.
Fearing that the strikes would "scare off" conservative members or that repression might return, SPD leaders renounced the more revolutionary aspects of their program.
At the 1891 Erfurt Congress, the party program enshrined Marxism—and the overthrow of capitalism—as the "official" thinking of the SPD, but argued for practical tasks appropriate for a time when revolution was not on the immediate agenda.
Revolutionary activist Alexander Parvus responded with a series of vehement criticisms in early 1898 that led the issue into open debate within the party.
[4] She responded to Bernstein with two series of articles in Leipziger Volkszeitung in September 1898 and April 1899, which were collected as Part I of Social Reform or Revolution in 1899.
The importance of trade unions, she argued, is not that they could end bourgeois ownership of capital, but that they are the body by which workers come together and understand that they are part of a class.
Luxemburg likened union struggles to the "labor of Sisyphus"—the mythical figure who was condemned to push a stone up a hill over and over again.