Rarely talked about topic: Austromarxism
Hello and Freundschaft fellow colleagues,
I know that my party, the SPÖ (Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs - Socialdemocratic Party of Austria), rarely gets any attention in this subreddit - same goes for our famous members and party leaders like Otto Bauer, Karl Renner and Bruno Kreisky.
That is why I want to bring up an interesting direction that our party took in the interwar period: Austromarxism.
It was developed by Otto Bauer, Max Adler and Rudolf Hilferding in the early 1900s, Bauer then declared it to be the main party line of the SDAPÖ (Social Democratic Workers Party of Austria) from 1918 up until February 1934, it survived in exile only for a few years. Some in the party (like Karl Renner) were against it. After 1945 it was replaced by the reformist ideas of Renner and others.
The idea relied on achieving the majority in a parliamentary democracy to establish social revolution and in the end the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Some even claim, that every writing of Austrian socialists in the time between 1900-1945 should be subsumidsed to Austromarxism. Its biggest failure was that it didn't prevent Dollfuß and his henchmen to establish a fascist-corporate dictatorship in Austria as Austromarxism was viewed by many as Marxism in sheeps clothing. In February 1934, some members of the Republican Protection League (Republikanischer Schutzbund) - the paramilitary of the SDAPÖ - resisted weapon searches of police and army, leading to the "February Uprising" or "Austrian Civil War" (which really wasn't a civil war in the classic sense).
While being quite radical in their idea, Austromarxism never had a real revolutionary ideal like communism but instead relied on the idea of achieving the majority of the electorate to reason/justify their approach and signal so to speak the start of their work. It showed a compromise between reformers and revolutionaries.
And although the idea would today be too radical for us SocDems, it was in an abridged way almost exactly what Bruno Kreisky did when he achieved his direct majorities from 1971-1983. A social "revolution" (via Parliament) and huge reforms, that we Austrians still live off today.
I hope this short post made you curious.
What do you think about the idea. Is it still modern? Should it be reformed? Can we learn from it?
Please write your answers, ideas and questions in the comments.