How well is the "Welfare State"? (1957)

From the July 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from the June Socialist Standard).

Health in the Welfare State

Those who sing the praises of the European Welfare States and of the land of the highest wages and greatest prosperity—the U.S. A.—seem to be quite unaware of or to deliberately ignore the ugly, cruel, stupid and tragic features which the model states in both hemispheres have in common. In the totalitarian countries behind the Iron Curtain where Press and platform do not often dwell on the ugly side of things at their end, and where, therefore, information and statistical data on social affairs are not so easily accessible, ignorance may be excusable, but this cannot be said of the peoples of countries where books and Press supply the damning facts and figures with critical comment.

The 1955 report of the largest Austrian Health Service, with close on one million insured persons, provides perhaps the clearest picture of the state of health of the people. In that year the service had to deal with half a million cases of illness. Three million sickness certificates had to be issued.

Prescriptions totalled 8,700,000, which works out at 10 per person per year. In each 1,000 insured persons 193 insured persons or members of the family were treated in hospital. 375,000 bills for spectacles, foot supports, artificial limbs, bandages and other accessories had to be paid, 9 million days of illness were registered, and 3 million days in hospitals. There were 672,000 cases of dental treatment.

These are the records of only ONE, though the largest, Health Insurance Fund to which other sick clubs and the private practitioners have to be added. The city’s many hospitals and clinics are woefully short of beds and are invariably overcrowded. So are the institutions for the mentally sick. The number of inmates in the Vienna mental institutions and lunatic asylums has trebled since 1950. In that year the largest institution took in 735 persons and in 1955 the number rose to 1192. Even if it is true that alcoholism has a lot to do with it, it must be pointed out that frustration and the hard and nerve-racking conditions under which the mass of people have to live and work are in very large measure responsible for people taking to drink and driving them mad.

In a budget debate it was disclosed that in Austria no less than 4,200 million schillings were spent on alcohol, which is half a milliard more than the year before, and two milliards on tobacco. In Germany the situation is even worse, with nearly 50 per cent more on both items. How hopeless the problem is for the reformer or the apostle of anti-alcoholism is clear from the fact that prohibition, or even curtailment of the production of beer, wine and Schnapps would involve the loss of 348 million schillings for the government's tax collectors, not to speak of the serious effect on employment. An increase of alcoholism is noticeable in almost the whole world. Sweden has had to take drastic steps to restrict the rapidly increasing consumption of alcoholic drinks. A report says that since the abolition of rationing in 1915, offences and crimes have frightfully increased. If the number of unfortunates who have been and are being driven mad by the iron heel behind the iron curtain, is probably incalculable, the number of persons in mental institutions in the “free world” countries is no secret—it is, for example, 750,000 in the U.S.A.

Crime

This chapter is not intended to deal with such deeds (perpetuated by governments) as training young people in the use of instruments of mass murder and destruction. Whatever can be said about war in the jungle and in the wild and woolly past of the human race it is now and has been for a century already—a crime. True, it is so regarded not only by Socialists, but unless you are consistent in your condemnation and earnestly concerned with the all-important question of the real cause of the dastardly deed and prepared to work, as Socialists do, towards the elimination of that cause, the mere expression of your moral or sentimental indignation remain ineffectual and futile. Thus, with all their professions of peace and desire for disarmament, the welfare states and the totalitarian regimes continue the status quo, with all its contradictions and imbecilities—poverty and misery in die midst of ever-increasing accumulation of wealth and possibilities of enjoyment of life for everybody—in other words: with Demon Capital in the saddle. Whilst chewing platitudes about peace, freedom, sovereignty and social justice, the Labour Government of the United Kingdom brought in the atom-bomb, and in another welfare state—Austria—it is the very leaders of the “Socialist Party of Austria” who are the chief promoters of a new army. And in order to imbue the young recruits with the necessary fighting spirt, welfare statesmen and writers continue as in pre-welfare days, to give to historical events the bias required by the national (read capitalist) interests. So important is the fostering of that spirit to the powers that be that if for example, there was no “Südtirol question," both Rome and Vienna would have to invent one.

Our purpose in this chapter was, however, to deal with the crimes committed not by order or at the behest of governments, but by individuals driven to desperation and anti-social acts by an anti-social and insane system of society. It is to show that in the welfare state most of the evils inseparable from the money system flourish as abundantly as ever before. Burglaries, robberies with violence, theft and larceny, shocking murders and assaults, cruelties to children, etc., are on the order of the day. In January the leading article in a Vienna newspaper wrote: “With great alarm the public learns that the number of murders and general crimes with violence have for weeks again sharply increased. The excitement about the brutal assault on a postman last Saturday has hardly abated when news comes of a new far more terrible crime. In their tumble-down barracks an old couple was found battered to death and robbed of what little savings they possessed. A youth of 17 was afterwards arrested for the murder." The same paper reported the murder of a 25-year-old wife by her husband. Two boys of 17 and 18 raped and murdered a girl of 15 on her way home. A one-arm invalid killed his wife and six children with an axe. Another man murdered his wife and four children. Six boys stole within a short time 31 autos. “Christmas is the time"—another paper wrote—“in which the number of suicides and attempted suicides is far above the average. Among the many “tireds-of-life" this Christmas was the 40-year-old A. H., who gassed herself and her two children."

It is interesting that within a few days of one paper boasting that Austria was a land without gangsters, there occurred no fewer than three bank robberies in classical gangster style, with autos and the rest (two in the country and one in Vienna), in one of which two young robbers perished. And so one could go on ad infinitum, every day bringing new reports of crime and tragedies. Rarely are they reported in the foreign press, since every country has more than enough locally to fill their own regular columns of police and court reports.

In these unholy and unblessed orgies of crime, cruelty and fraud which, by the way, give employment to whole armies of policemen, gendarmes, prison guards, and wardens and executioners, lawyers and judges, reporters and printers and photographers, detectives and special transporters, in addition to experts in safety devices, safe-makers, etc., etc., the annual number of convictions of all kinds over recent years is invariably just over 100,000 in this country, 20 per cent. of which are for criminal killing and assault; the rest are for fraud, embezzlement, blackmail, insurance swindles and other “scandals."

With the Socialist's preference for quoting his enemies confirming the truth of his statements and criticism, here is what the Austrian Sozialminister Proksch said at a conference of the “Aktion Jugend am Werk” (7/11/1956): It is the tragic fate of the young about to start a profession, to be faced with unsettled problems. The advisory committee tries to help them in making a decision, but what good is this to them when there are no suitable openings and nobody wants them. It is hypocrisy to accuse youth of being spoiled and depraved when nothing is being done for their professional education. What is to become of a youth who has to wait months and sometimes longer for a chance of an apprenticeship? One must not be surprised if young people eventually become criminals." Remarkable, is it not? that this same Sozialminister should only a few months earlier have declared: “The Welfare State brings welfare to everybody, and with it assures well-being to every citizen”

If it will console British readers that things are said to be worse in America, here is what Sir Basil Henriques, former chairman of East London Juvenile Court, said after he had spent 51 days in the U.SA discussing juvenile delinquency in 20 cities and 14 States: "Every court where I sat I heard cases which were more serious than any I have heard in my 33 years on the bench.” On the television, he said: “I saw nothing but murder, divorce and prison scenes.” And if you should happen to get hold of a book “Never Come Morning," by Nelson Algren, you may come to the conclusion that really Sir Basil could hardly have exaggerated.

Accidents at work

The number of accidents at work is rising from year to year. From 1953 with 129,449 accidents, with 422 killed, it rose to 162,500, with 670 killed, in 1956. They do not only bring physical pain for the worker and mental depression (fear of losing his job) of the injured, but also distress to wives and children left behind after the death of their breadwinner. Almost unnoticed in the sensational revolt in Hungary and the Suez conflict, there occurred (in October 1956) the terrible tragedy when a bridge under construction and serving in the building of a dam at the Ottenstein power stations collapsed burying 10 workers under huge blocks of concrete. The accident, coming after the previous year's catastrophe at the Kapron dam, added its tragic quota to the already great number of widows and to the 25 orphans left behind after the previous disaster. Twelve more children were orphaned on 19th and 20th March when their parents lost their lives in a cycling accident near Salzburg.

So is the tragedy of accidents aggravated under capitalism by an individual having to provide for a number of others (wife, children, old folks) who are, through the breadwinner's death, deprived of the wherewithal to live. Under Socialism, when no individual will be dependent on another individual for his means of sustenance, but when every man, woman and child will be the responsibility of the whole community, any unfortunate accident to an individual will then not involve such tragic consequences to others. (This aspect will be dealt with more fully later in this series of articles.) 

Rudolf Frank

(To  be continued.)

How well is the "Welfare State" (1957)

From the June 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from March Socialist Standard).

Housing in Vienna

In the face of the general poverty of the mass of the people, any assertion that the workers are supposed to be the owners of nationalized industries is not only a mockery; it is a downright fraud and an insult to their intelligence. Even the assertion of house-owning by the workers is for the overwhelming majority nothing but an illusion. Of the 100,000 flats built by the Municipality of Vienna since 1922, not one can be claimed by the occupier to be his property. They all are owned and controlled by the share and bondholders of the Municipality and the Banks. The occupiers are there on sufferance; i.e., on condition that, and as long as they can pay the rent, the same as in all the houses belonging to private landlords or the State. Failure to meet this obligation involves the loss of the accommodation. No, "welfare" does not go so far as to make you the owner of "your" flat. While this municipal building activity may be said to be a bright spot in the jungle of the housing market, the problem remains really and truly a terrifying one.

Dr. Nuna Sailer, speaking on the social background of the problem of youth, said the whole question is marked by the indescribable housing conditions in Austria. In Vienna more than two-thirds of all flats still consist of only one room and kitchen. The larger part of the flats have not even their own water supply. There are no statistics on the number of beds in the individual households. Inspectors see appalling conditions when visiting homes. Children of four still sleep in cradles, prams or boxes, chests of drawers, trunks; two or three little stools and similar makeshifts serve as “beds.” As a result of a comprehensive investigation, it was found that 12 per cent of all children shared their parents' bed. About a tenth of them are from 14 to 18 years old.

It is obvious that apart from a lot of other evils due to such lack of dwelling space, the child cannot learn or do its homework. Bad housing conditions also lead not only to quarrels, but to a complication of the problem of youth in the family. Out of 72,000 marriages in 1949 there were 18,000 divorces. Today almost 40 per cent of all children have no father, 20 per cent. are illegitimate, a large number come from unmarried couples, the remainder are orphans.

167,044 flats are needed in the whole of Austria, according to the latest statistical records. Behind this dreary figure there are hundreds of thousands of human tragedies. Not included in this figure are the many thousands of families which must dwell in old, derelict, insanitary places; those 167,044 families are looking for accommodation and have no home of their own at all. They live herded together with relatives or as sub-tenants. The sorry record is held by Vienna, where in spite of all municipal building, there is a lack of 62,741 flats. "On the question of how the shocking balance sheet of Austria's housing misery could be remedied," said a reporter, “the statistical office can, of course, give no information."

Even the various homes for the homeless (cases of ejection, etc.) in Vienna have 200 family applicants on their waiting lists, although they offer only temporary abodes of some sort.

One must read the columns in the newspapers describing the housing conditions and the awful ordeals of all those thousands of families in quest of a home, to realize the amount of human suffering and degradation.

Just the same in Paris and London and Brussels

And those interested in conditions in other countries will learn that housing conditions there are even worse. According to official statistics, there are 1,180,000 dwellings in Paris, 260,000 of which have no water, 250,000 no gas, and 60,000 no electric current The action of a priest, the Abbé Pierre, who undertook to arouse the public conscience after more and more people had been found frozen to death in the streets of Paris, would indeed seem to fully bear out what has been said about Paris on that score.

After reading a report of conditions in a working class district in Brussels ("one of the most chromium- plated capitals in Europe"), the young king of Belgium made a secret six-hour tour of the district and “got a shock.” The priest who accompanied him said afterwards: "The king was distressed at what he saw," and said that "it is a tragedy that humans should have to live in such conditions." He visited 30 tenements. One housewife mistook the bespectacled, studious-looking king for a sanitary inspector. She showed him a broken-down lavatory shared by 17 families. “Look at that," she told the king, "and to think the landlord has one in marble."

What a correspondent (an estate agent) in the London Times (12.6.1956) said on the housing problem in another Welfare State, England, literally fits the situation in this country when he writes: “. . . several of the 50 families we have had to deal with in the last three months have been on a council list for anything between five and 12 years." After describing the impossibility of wage-earners being able to buy a house, the correspondent says: "We have tried lately not to make our small society known, from despair at coping with any more cases of most cruel hardship; young couples turned out of their lodgings on arrival of a baby; husbands separated from their wives and children; families living crowded in one room, others in L.C.C. hostels for as much as three years. Every council in and around London sees the problem as of overwhelming urgency."

There is probably not one of the “fair cities of the world" where the mass of the inhabitants are not herded together often in what can only be described as slums and suffer the physical and mental torment which such atrocious housing conditions bring in their train.

“Get children and lose your job"

It is not only the housing question that terrifies many women at the prospect of having children; it is the fear of losing their jobs or the difficulty of getting one, apart from numerous other considerations—all due to the fact of poverty. In their despair they resort to illegal operations, imploring doctors to perform them, with the result that when eventually found out, physicians and patients go to prison. In February this year a trial took place at the Vienna Court when no fewer than 300 women and a number of doctors had to stand trial for such illegal action. Under the heading: “Weeping women, grinning listeners,” the Arbeiter Zeitung reported how people outside the court fought with fists for seats. One can only imagine the ordeal of women having before the judge to answer embarrassing questions about the most intimate particulars of their married life. One has to bear in mind that there are women who have no parents, no home and no jobs and who threaten to commit suicide unless the doctor helps them. Again and again women bring children into the world in the open, because they have no homes, no money, no work. After reporting on one of these cases, the paper says: “Now the woman is in hospital. She gets food and has a bed. Then she will move with her child to a Central Children's Home. But What then? She has no home.”

Child mortality

Dr. H. Czermak, of the Vienna University Clinic for Children, declared before the Society for Children's Welfare that Austria showed the highest infantile mortality in West and Northern Europe. In this country, Dr. Czermak revealed, eight healthily born children die every day. One might ask what sense there is in preaching the increase of births and to punish women and doctors for interfering with the growth and development of new life when the economic conditions of the family make it impossible for the woman to do without the earnings from a job? Even the inveterate apologists for wage-slavery, such as the Arbeiter Zeitung, have to confess that the low wage earned by the husbands absolutely forces women to go to work. What to do with the children while the mother is at work, that is the problem. And what does the “Socialist” Party of Austria propose as a remedy for this and the other social problems? Socialism? Not on your life! Create more children's hostels, where the poor things can be deposited while the mother is at work! And setting up a marriage and family advisory committee and service to repair broken and ill marriages!

“Our welfare workers can sing a very nasty song indeed of the conditions which they find in such marriages in which there are children. Most of the 5,000 children in the municipal institutions come from such marriages” “The shocking fact,” said the deputy mayor, “induced us to set up a committee.”

That these conditions are not confined to Austria, but prevail all over the capitalist world, was confirmed by the International Youth Aid Society, which stated that of 900 million children, 600 million are undernourished, badly clothed, insufficiently housed and not properly protected against illness.

Suicides in Austria

In a leading article under the heading “Died on the Welfare State,” Die Presse (19.4.1956) wrote:

  "In the city of Vienna suicides are on the order of the day. In the last decades they have increased to such a frightful extent that the public scarcely takes notice of them. Two or three lines in the papers, often not even so much, coolly report that X, Y, Z could no longer cope with their conditions of existence mid saw no other way out than death.  . . . Also, yesterday, one could read that a 65-year-old war invalid hanged himself in a room of the Health Insurance Premises. He had been sent from one department to another until he could no longer stand it and decided to end it all.  . . . This case is sad proof that even the finest National Insurance Law, however cleverly it may be conceived and well meant, can never provide a solution of the social problems of our days, but brings the danger, like the innumerable other welfare, health-insurance and old age protection laws, to become a soulless mechanism, which in the end crushes those Whom they were intended to help."

And under the heading: “Many suicides in Austria,” the Arbeiter Zeitung reported that in 25 countries, with a total of 400 million people, about 72,000 persons commit suicide every year. Austria is always found among the group topping the list, with Japan, Denmark and Switzerland. Whatever the reports say

about causes, there is no doubt whatever that the overwhelming majority drift to suicide, just as they do to crime through poverty. And who does not know by now that the cause of poverty is Capitalism.

At the time of writing, a local theatre produces the drama “Poverty,” by Anton Wildgans, in which, among other working class catastrophies, a small postal clerk (another nationalized industry said to belong to the people) dies after an illness which was for his family an almost greater catastrophe than his death. Said a theatre critic: “The play verily has lost nothing of its poignant actuality.”

Rudolf Frank

(To be continued).

How well is the "Welfare State" (1957)

From the March 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

A number of European countries which have or had Pseudo-Socialist Governments (the kingdoms of Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Holland, or where Labour and Social Democratic Parties are in coalition governments with avowed Capitalist parties as in Austria) are styled "Welfare States.” The term is not used for Russia and her satellites behind the iron curtain; they style themselves Communist but, as the Socialist Party of Great Britain has pointed out ever since the Russian upheaval in 1917 (see summary of articles collected in the pamphlet "Russia since 1917”), Russia with all the basic features of a Capitalist mode of production and with the workers' lack of understanding Socialism, cannot be a Socialist state. Events have not only proved the correctness of our contention, but revealed the sorry fact that the tyranny which the 1917 upheaval overthrew was replaced by another variety in many respects even more hideous.

If in the course of social development even Capitalism has to be considered as a step in man’s march forward to a classless, moneyless, frontieriess and povertyless society, future generations will nevertheless stand aghast at the gruesomeness of the episodes by which that stage is marked. Cruel as the French Revolution of 1798 was. which, like Russia in 1917, also marked the end of Feudalism and the advent of Capitalism it was almost a parlour affair in comparison with Russia. As if their past orgies of massacres and deportations of millions to forced labour, and as if last year’s Treaty with Austria (after 10 years of military occupation and loot), by which the Russian Government secured, as the price for their withdrawal from this country, such important industrial and territorial concessions, rights of mineral exploitation, control of installations extending over 10 and more years, in addition to a payment of 150 million dollars ransom, had not been enough to show their Capitalist character, we have now to witness the bloody slaughter of Hungarian workers, showing still more glaringly the hideous face of the Russian variety of the Capitalist monster.

Just as Great Britain and France are fighting to regain control of the Suez Canal, Russia is fighting to keep control of Hungary’s factories, rich mines and mineral Springs, chemical industry, Uranium deposits, and of the mass of exploitable cheap Hungarian labour, yielding huge profits with which to finance Russia’s gigantic armament programme. The strategic importance of Hungary is another asset in the Russian scheme of things.

But lest the reader thinks of the Western "Welfare States” as holding the key to peace in the world and to the solution of the social problems, or to be on the road to Socialism, the following should enlighten him.

The "Welfare State” continues the status quo, i.e. the private and State ownership of the means and instruments of wealth production, exploitation of man by man through the wages system, and production of the means of life for sale and profit. The Socialist attitude is uncompromising hostility to Capitalism in all its forms and variations, since Socialists are only interested in, and stand for a fundamental change of the economic basis of society and of the status of the workers of the world.

The reader can judge the conditions in one of the typical “Welfare-States"—Austria—and form his own opinion on the merits of this latest description.

Austria as it really is

Centred as it really is it would not be surprising if the foreign visitor and tourist who comes to Austria, bent on sightseeing and enjoyment during a holiday, learns and sees no more of the country than its scenic beauty of mountains and valleys, forests and lakes, some of its historic monuments, medieval castles and ruins of ancient strongholds, its palaces, monasteries, abbeys with their centuries old libraries and other cultural treasures. Visitors to Vienna may also see the extensive municipal tenement houses, the great building activity, the huge blocks of fiats in process of construction, as for example opposite the Opera House to replace the Henrichshof burned down in 1945 with all its hundreds of luxurious apartments. Close by, huge business premises are arising from the ashes of the de Luxe Hotel Bristol, whilst other luxury hotels on the Ringstrasse which had been occupied by Russian military personnel, are now considered uninhabitable by their international clientele of parasites. Visitors may learn too that only after 10 years of repair work was it possible to reopen last November the two national theatres. The venerable St. Stephen’s Cathedral is still surrounded by scaffolding, and visitors can see right opposite it the plain and not so beautiful new buildings as glaring proof of how near the famous old church itself was to total destruction through bombing and fighting during the war.

Visitors coming for purposes of trade, and Trade Union and other delegations, may, in addition see or be shown over some of the more important industrial enterprises, dams and power stations, social welfare centres and institutions, etc., etc.

Those who had been to Vienna some years before, will be struck by the sight of new and resplendant railway stations. Of the six stations three were bombed out of existence, but out of the ruins of the others there have arisen the new Westbahnhof and the Südost station.

Visitors will note too the shops stocked with commodities of every imaginable kind from the four corners of the earth, and the streets swarming with vehicles of every description, from Cadillacs to Volkswagen.

The average visitor accustomed to judging by appearances cannot but be impressed by what he must consider as evidence of prosperity of the country’, until his attention is drawn to the reverse side of the medal. It is indeed when one looks beneath the surface of things and enquires under what conditions the people live and do all this work and operate all these services, that to talk of welfare and prosperity is not only a very superficial description but utterly untrue as far as the lot of the mass of the people is concerned.

It cannot be denied that there is prosperity—in some quarters. There are about 600 Austrians who state their taxable annual income to be more than one million schillings which even at only one million works out at 3,000 Austrian schillings per DAY, but 47 per cent. of the social insured persons have to exist on an income that does not rise above S1,100 per MONTH (about £15), whilst tens of thousands have no more than a few hundred schillings for a whole month to live on.

Among the prosperous ones are also the managers and administrators of the State, the Welfare-State—its Presidents, Ministers, State-Secretaries, Professional Politicians, the President and functionaries of the Federation of Trade Unions, the Directors of the Banks including the Workers Bank, of the Mineral Oil Administration (nine directors chosen from the “Socialist" Party of Austria and 11 from the Volkspartei), the Directors of the National Bank (four from each of the parties), and the rest of the managers of the foul exploiting system of Capitalism, which for all these leaders of the two big political parties is indeed a veritable “welfare state.”

While business is booming and bringing millions of extra profits to shareholders of the industrial enterprises like the Steyr-Daimler-Puch-Werke, the Voest, the Veitscher Magnesit, the Alpine Montan A.G., the Socony Vacuum Petroleum Co., the Fiat, Elin, Böhler, and the others, the workers of practically every industry have been forced to strike or threaten to strike within the last 12 month, starting with the municipal tramwaymen early in the year. One of the last industries to follow in the series were the bakers who, after a week’s strike, succeeded in getting their wages increased by a miserable few shillings, whilst the bosses are now making extra profits to the tune of more than 40 million S per year out of the promptly raised prices of all bread products. The civil servants who, before the election in May, had been promised wage adjustments, could only enforce them by the threat of a strike.

The fact alone that the wealth-producers are forced to constantly fight, threaten and eventually resort, to strikes to prevent their standard of living, low as it is, from sinking still deeper, and that they can be locked out and victimized for propagating and taking protective action, should long have taught them and roused them to a realisation that they are a downtrodden and humiliated class. Here is concrete evidence that the “Welfare State” has not altered their degrading position.

To begin with, in order to live at all, a property-less person—and they are 90 per cent. of the people—must have a job with some property-owner, an employer. Since the workers have not even the right to work, they find themselves thrown upon the labour market, reduced to begging the chance to work, degraded to the level of a mere commodity like chalk or cheese, exposed to all the insecurity and the general vicissitudes of a market, and, when employed, they are robbed through the wages system. If the word “robbed” is considered to be an exaggeration or an unscientific term, the question must be asked and answered: Since value and wealth is produced ONLY by the application of human labour power to nature-given material, where does the accumulated wraith, and where do the profits come from, if not from the unpaid labour of the workers? And why does the working-class, in spite of all their labour and 100 years of the most astounding technical progress, remain poor?

Winter Unemployment reaches 100,000

“It is incorrect,” said the Austrian Sozialminister Proksch “to speak of full employment in this country. We have no full employment as long as we have the problem of unemployment in winter.” Whilst unemployment is highest in winter, the figures for. the other seasons are invariably around the 100,000 mark. So that the constant talk by the rest of die politicians and the Arbeiter Zeitung that there is full employment, is not only incorrect, but downright deceiving humbug, especially when it is well known that considerable parts of the country have been “depressed areas’' for years. In Berndorf where the Austrian Krupp Works before the war employed some 5,000 workers in the production of high-class metal goods, but are now practically at a standstill, all hopes of the building up of a new industry have been dashed, just as there is now bitter disappointment in other parts where the signing of the State Treaty in May, 1955, had been expected to bring relief. “If help is not soon forthcoming, the situation will become catastrophic,” declared the report after the conference of the Socialist Party of Austria. Most of the workers there have been on the dole for years. All the other towns in the area, the largest of which is Neustadt, are sending appeal after appeal to the Government in Vienna for help in their appalling plight. “Ominously looms over the town the question what is to be done when, in a few years, the reconstruction work has been completed?” Thus the Labour politicians and the Arbeiter-Zeitung, who are always telling the workers of “our” oil, “our” iron, and “our" magnesit. and who refer to “our” nationalized industries as being the property of the people, clearly admit this talk to be so many lies and so much humbug. For, if the workers owned these things, or even a fraction of the country’s wealth produced by them (and by them alone), there could not arise such a problem as “what is to become of the workers when the work has been completed.” It can arise only where the mass of the people, the working-class, are IN this society, but not OF it, where they are just so many hands to do the work and make Profit for those who DO own the land and the factories and the means of transport, and do it all for just the bare necessities of life and to pro-create their kind, In other words where the name worker is synonimous with poor. It would seem that catastrophes such as earthquakes, tornadoes and wars bringing destruction and devastation, are welcomed by the workers since they provide work—reconstruction work—and make for full employment, which is all the Labour politicians seem to be concerned with in the Welfare State.

Imagine also the incongruity of the Minister for nationalized industries, i.e. for the industries that have become the “property of the people,” sending out circulars appealing to the managers of those industries to do their utmost to “provide jobs for workers old and infirm who are hit by misfortune of physical disabilities or unemployment.” In other words: here are people said to be the owners of the chief industries in this “one of the richest countries in Europe,” living nevertheless in dire poverty, still compelled to go, cap in hand, humbly begging the chance of a job—in their own industry! You might well ask: How come that—as even the Arbeiter-Zeitung has to confess—“if in a working-class family husband and wife do not both earn, there is hardly enough money for the most necessary things, and if there is a child, the purchase of a suit or even a pair of shoes is a problem.”

Rudolf Frank

(To be continued.)

Liberation and Loot in Austria (1955)

From the July 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

Austria has had another liberation—the fifth in this generation, i.e. since the Austro-Hungarian Empire (which in its time and turn had itself played the role of “liberator” of other nations) became the simple Republic Austria. That was in 1918 when it was liberated from the Hapsburg Dynasty. In 1934 the country was liberated from the “Reds,” in 1938 from the Dollfus-Schuschnigg dictatorship, in 1945 from Hitler-Germany’s “national Socialism” and in 1955 we record the liberation from the Four-Power occupation. Although every one of these previous “revolutions” had at the time been declared by the respective engineers and managers and their Press as decisive and final (at least for a thousand years), who would have the temerity in the face of the almost general acclamation to assert that the present (1955) liberation was not a more outstanding event than the others? Does it not only bring final “freedom, independence, sovereignty, peace and social justice” to Austria, but also augur well as an example of good will and pacification returning to a greatly troubled world in general? In hundreds of articles and broadcasts this was impressed upon the people. The Vienna Press this time was unanimous. Nationalistic Press hysteria celebrated veritable orgies. After more than 260 futile conferences in these last 10 years, and another 9-day conclave behind locked doors this month of May, the foreign Ambassadors finally arrived at an agreement to be submitted to and signed by the proxies of the Four Big Concerns concerned, plus Austria. At long last, freedom and independence had been secured.

The ceremonies which included of course receptions and banquets took place in the Palace of Belvedere and the Castle of Schönbrunn (which latter had seen within its walls such other one time liberators as Napoleon, and subsequently housed the famous Vienna Congress in 1815). Workers had to work overtime to give an extra shine to the historic places for the occasion. The delegates were feted and profusely photographed—their pictures must have gone round the whole world. Crowds called for the repeated appearance of the ministers on the balcony, just as they had done at the Hotel Imperial in 1938 after the entry of yet another liberator in Vienna. All the church bells rang out; a special thanksgiving service was celebrated in St. Stephen’s Cathedral by H.E. Cardinal lnnitzer himself, who, like the late great “Socialist” statesman Dr. Renner, had in 1938 voted for Hitler and the Anschluss. If the Holy Trinity of Press, Radio and Pulpit, were unanimous in jubilation, it cannot be said that the people as a whole justified the exuberant enthusiasm with which they were credited by the publicity directors. Not only cynics, jesters and sceptics, but earnest and thoughtful folk generally) many doubtless pondering over the distressing and uncertain fate of their husbands, sons and brothers still behind the iron curtain, did not seem to be able to forget their cares and worries or get themselves to believe in the bright future that was said to be ahead.

Was it that after all these boasted achievements of freedom and independence the mass of the people discovered that, as a witty Frenchman said: “The more it changes, the more it is the same thing”; was it that people's thoughts turned to the Monday morning when those who were dependent on an employer or, worse still, dependent on the dole or public assistance, would start the “new era” of freedom and independence not in abundance and security, but in the same penury as yesterday? Or was it that when Austria's minister showed from the balcony of the castle the signed document to a waiting crowd, another historic episode sprang to people's minds—the picture of Mr. Chamberlain (back from a conference with Hitler—flourishing the "Peace in our Time” document from another balcony a twelve-month only before the outbreak of World-war II? Or was it the knowledge that the liberators did not give freedom and independence as a free gift, but exacted a high price for it and imposed a heavy burden to meet? Was it that the people could already hear the well-known call for increased production, and sacrifices to be brought for the blessing of freedom and sovereignty? Was it the constant consciousness of all these wretched, harassing and depressing things that did not allow the people as a whole to justify the universal enthusiasm alleged to stir one and all?

The fact is that, though there certainly is general and well justified relief here at the prospective departure of not only the Muscovite, but of all the other occupation elements from Austria, the working-class have become more or less tired of promises and sceptical of Treaties and Pacts made by statesmen and politicians on behalf of their masters. Socialists hope that the truth we keep hammering in, namely that all the freedoms in capitalism put together still leave the mass of mankind shackled and unfree, will soon be realized in wider circles and that the workers will at last strive for the ONE FREEDOM which is not a farce: the emancipation of the working-class of the world from the thralldom of the exploiters of labour.

Now what credentials had and have all these liberators, past and present, for their actions? What cause have they served? Have they served the all-important cause of ridding the world from poverty, insecurity, class-conflict and war? What problem have the 45 wars and “revolutions” in the last 100 years solved for the mass of the people—the working-class? Have the unspeakable tragedies, the untold ruins and rivers of blood and tears been justified that accompanied “liberations” down to this day? Has the fundamental status of the world's wealth-producers as mere objects of exploitation been altered or even advanced one iota towards one of free men? Is it no longer a condition of the workers’ very existence that they have a job in some profit-making enterprise? Have they even secured the miserable enough right to work? Ask the young who left school, or those whom Capitalism calls old, too old at 45 or even at 35, and they will tell you heartrending tales of woe of their difficulties in securing that indispensable thing: a job with some employer, i.e. with some exploiter! “Collier's Magazine” (7.1.1955) brought a revealing picture of a queue of “old people” lined up at a Chicago Labour-Exchange with an article headed: “Shocking as it is, people in the prime of life are denied jobs because of their age.” And what was the solution offered by secretary Mitchell of the Department of Labour in this “freedom and independence” enjoying U.S.A.? “Find places for old workers and MAKE PROFITS from their production, or be taxed much more heavily than now in order to sustain them as non-workers.” (As if you helped a man by sustaining him in idleness and casting him out of society.) No sentimentalities here about human dignity. “The only solution,” says Mitchell bluntly, “is to HIRE the older worker and MAKE A PROFIT from his production.” Just about the same time a debate is raging in a Vienna Trade-Union paper (Solidaritat) on the very same subject of the “too old for a job.” Among a number of letters reproduced in the paper was a mournful but otherwise courageous epistle from a woman saying, among other things:

  “Science endeavours to prolong man's life. What for? You are hardly 40 years of age—willing to work, with sense of duty and with much experience in life, but practically cast out of human society."

We are often told that we must wait for Socialism because of the lack of understanding and of human dignity of the millions of workers in the "backward” countries. Well, since Capitalist spokesmen in advanced and cultured countries can insult the workers by, for instance, distinguishing between them and “intellectuals,” and telling them to their face with brutal bluntness that they are nothing but HIRED objects to make profit from, and since these spokesmen can get away with it with impunity, we ask, where is the difference between the cultured and the uncultured slaves, as far as enlightenment on their social position and a sense of human dignity is concerned? With all your greater experience and opportunities, you have not yet learned that it is the damnable system of Capitalist exploitation that is the cause of your and their misery and degradation! Indeed, in Russia and in China the need of repressive measures and an all-penetrating secret police, the terror the purges and forced labour camps (not to speak of the massacres) by which the Bolsheviks established and maintain their regime of State-Capitalism, would show that there was and is as much opposition in these backward countries as in the Western World. Neither the frequent frank and outspoken confessions in avowed Capitalist publications of the shocking features of modern society, nor the evident humbug and hypocrisy, the lying, deceit and cant of “Socialist” and “Communist’’ leaders seem to stir you to intelligent action in opposition to the horrible system they all serve and want to perpetuate.

But to revert to our latest “world sensation.” In order to illustrate by concrete example the difference between facts and fiction (which differences are often blurred these times), here is what one of the actors in this sensation, the Soviet Union, pretends to stand for, as stated in the organs of the Russian occupation forces and the Communist party in Austria:

  “All that oppressed humanity has ever dreamt, all that the founders of scientific socialism had predicted in their works, has here (on one-sixth of the earth) been realized. A new era in the history of mankind began in 1917."

Now many of the Baltic and Balkan countries, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, half of Berlin and part of Austria, have had the “new era,” the Soviet dream of humanity brought to them.

Speaking for Austria, most people here will, when the “new era” apostles are gone, think of their experience with the latter as a nightmare rather than as a dream of paradise. And this even though this country has not seen the Bolshevik’s blessings on the same scale as their own people and others have. Some people even speak of a Soviet “weak spot” for Austria and point to the “sudden” (after ten years!) decision to let the Austrian government take a turn in establishing their own “new era.”

No more convincing proof of the Russian liberators’ disinterestedness and generosity could be given than this “sensational” State-Treaty. After having for ten years had the onerous job of controlling and collecting the profits from no fewer than 454 large and small Concerns (including the Danube Steamship Co.) with some 63,000 workers, the Russian liberators will hand them back to Austria on payment of a paltry 150 million dollars, plus delivery of one million tons of crude oil annually for ten years, plus the right to seek for oil in various parts of Austria during eight years and in the event of the discovery of new sources to exploit them for 25 years, and plus other trifles. Then there is the renunciation of the further use of the prisoner-of-war labour-force. Considering the loss of profits which this entails for the Soviet government, they insist that Austria should make compensation by at least paying henceforth for the prisoners’ keep and eventual return home. Further proof of Soviet “chivalry” is also provided by their readiness to readmit into the paradise the 30,000 to 40,000 people who had for incomprehensible reasons forsaken the land where the age-long dream of humanity had been realized. (For equally incomprehensible reasons these refugees have declined the noble offer).

Why then, you may ask, were the negotiations conducted behind locked doors, and why this delay in releasing the full text of the Treaty? Could it be that, after all, the delegates had misgivings or pricks of conscience? Were they afraid that if all the articles were published unvarnished, people might discover discrepancies and disparity between professions and reality before the Press had done their preliminary doctoring and explaining away? (The Arbeiter Zeitung for example did their share of sugaring the pill by assuring the public that though the ransom Austria has to pay was no small amount, it was by no means too high a price for the full economic independence. . . .) Could it be that the delegates were ashamed of finding themselves in the same position as all their forerunners:—the negotiators of treaties after all the 45 odd wars of liberation in the last 100 years, of which the world now knows that it never was a question of liberation or lofty ideals, but of grab and loot? Had the hitherto fact of the grab of the goldmines in S. Africa by the British Capitalists, or the Treaty of Versailles (or any other of the dozens of liberation cum grab-crusades) been present in the delegates' minds? Did they perhaps become aware—as they studied the instructions received from their masters for the negotiations—of the manifest analogy of their position with that of thieves (having fallen out over the division of the loot) trying to come to at least a partial and temporary understanding after a ten year quarrel between themselves? Anyway, since another party of burglars, the German Capitalists, are now bitterly protesting against the confiscation of all their loot from the war, and with the thieves’ quarrels continuing unabated elsewhere, anything beyond registering with relief the withdrawal of occupation forces from this theatre of operations—Austria— would be misplaced and unwarranted. For, getting rid of foreign occupation Powers does not mean getting rid of oppression as the people also of many other lands in Europe in Asia and Africa must have learned to their bitter disappointment. So far liberations and revolutions have always meant the exchange of one bunch of exploiters for another, while native rulers of backward countries have often proved worse tyrants even than the foreign exploiters and oppressors they ousted.

The fact is that rulers and leaders all stand for the appropriation and accumulation of wealth by a world privileged class, wealth that is produced by and filched from the mass of the people through the modem wages-system. Asiatic and African leaders have not studied for nothing at the European and American universities.

If war is loot for all to see, it is not so dear and evident in peace-time, though loot is the pivot of the whole mechanism of Capitalism in war and peace. In peace, the robbery taking place, as it does, in the complex process of production, is obscured by the wages-system. Glaring proof of this legalized robbery is. however, the fact that a 100 years of marvellous technical achievements and tremendous increase of wealth produced by the working-class, have left them in a condition of poverty and insecurity. Once the worker comes to understand this crucial fact and recognizes it as the cause of his predicament, he will realize that all these fine words about “liberation. freedom and independence, peace and social justice” are but so many bourgeois slogans and illusions to hide the brutal facts of their thieving system. Already in the French Revolution which put the Bourgeoisie into power, it was “Liberté, égalité, fraternité ” which gulled the destitute masses into fighting the feudal enemies of their enemies, the rising Capitalist class, with the result that down to this day the above mentioned fine words mock the poverty-stricken French workers from every public building. It is certainly remarkable that it should still be possible for politicians to dispense and find listeners to these old outworn hollow phrases.

Enough has been said on the preposterous Nazi—and Bolshevik claim of having inaugurated a new social order, a “people’s democracy’’—this swindle is now too obvious and well known. But how little “freedom, independence and democracy” etc., mean to the working-class under Capitalism even in the “free world” countries: the U.S., Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, is shown by the fact that the status of the workers there is likewise that of property-less wage-slaves, dependent for their very means of existence, on the precarious chance of securing a job with some employer. Such a status does not and cannot make for the enjoyment of life. Work under such circumstances can never be identified, as it ought to and will be under Socialism, with real satisfaction and pleasure; it is only done to keep the wolf from the door. And wherever people have to work for wages, to make profit for an employer, any accident, illness, or other physical or mental disability—not to mention the factor of age—becomes something akin to a family catastrophe. The employers, even of the Welfare State, will quickly make you understand that they are not a welfare institution; but mean to make the Concern for which they have hired you, pay—the shareholders want their loot all the time.

Unfortunately, in so far as workers have not become altogether apathetic towards politics, they are, despite all disillusions), failures and frustrations still putting their trust in leaders and falling for the day to day affairs that invariably are only concerns of their enemies: the Capitalist class. It is a commentary on the policy and activity of the so-called “Socialist Party of Austria,” the “Communist” party and their fellow travellers everywhere that so far from getting the workers interested in, and educated to Socialism, they are busy assisting the Capitalistic state in building up still more devastating armaments. Not to be left behind by their big brother in England, who is all for the production of A-H-bombs, the Austrian Socialist Party and Communist Party, are now debating the form of the new army with at least ’‘conventional weapons.” No doubt, the S.P., having a quarter of a century ago organized the Schutzbund with a view to opposing by force of arms the power of the state, and thus invited the disaster and terrible fate it met in 1934. have learned a lesson. It is. however, not a lesson Socialists teach, but a lesson for leaders how to keep their jobs. The red colour of the banners carried by the ill-fated Schutzbund, with the inscriptions Freiheit, Gleichheit, Bruderlidikeit, Freundschaft,” etc., will be replaced by different dyes and inscriptions. It will be the red-white-red variety and perhaps the Double-Eagle. Sure, it will warm the cockles of the hearts of many an old Austrian soldier and general, though other people will contemplate the spectacle of trooping the colour, philosophically saying to themselves : Well, the more it changes, the more it is the same thing.

Rudolf Frank

From an Austrian Comrade (1961)

Party News from the May 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Friends,

During my work as professor of scholastic philosophy in Innsbruck I could not but dwell when occasion arose on my findings in Das Kapital in the course of my lectures. Certain students raised objections to my views and reported me to the authorities and I was eventually called to account for it. It should be remembered that no more than about 5 per cent of the students come from the working class; the bulk come from the propertied class with a more pronounced orthodox, bourgeois outlook than the sons and daughters of workers.

The former could not stomach my explanation of social phenomena and problems. I was asked to send in the manuscript of a brochure The Social Question—Its Being, Origin and Solution, which I had prepared. Soon afterwards, without warning or getting a chance of answering the charges, I was ordered forthwith to stop lecturing and publishing my writings, and suspended from service. It meant that 1 had to give up my living at Innsbruck and move to Vienna, where I was “graciously” given a small job and a pension many times less than would have been my due. As these gentlemen had it in their power to dismiss me uncermoniously, without any pension at all; I had to submit to these strictures and even be grateful for such "generosity and forbearance.” 1 am now atoning for my sins.

All this happened in this boasted democratic welfare state Austria, while the “great socialist leader” Dr. Karl Renner was president of the country. (By the way, under his parliamentary presidency, there occurred in February 1934 the greatest defeat and disaster the Socialist Party of Austria ever suffered in the whole of its 60 year existence! The unsoundness of that party's policy is also glaringly demonstrated by Dr. Renner having voted for Hitler, as did also the catholic cardinal Dr. Innitzer!).

As a result of Press reports of a conference of “socialist catholics” in November 1959, at which I gave a lecture on Marxism, I received a letter from comrade Frank, expressing a desire to meet me. We subsequently had some talks, and I also had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of his son on a visit to Vienna, when we had a most interesting and heartening discussion. 

Through comrade Frank I learned of the existence of the Socialist Party of Great Britain and its companion parties in the U.S.A., Canada, Australia, Ireland, and the great work they are doing to spread the glorious message of socialism throughout the world against terrific odds. Not the smallest obstacle is the dull apathy of the masses of the working class, who seem to use their undoubted talents for nothing but making profit for, and increasing the wealth of, their masters.

Comrade Frank has also made available to me copies of your publications and those of the companion parties, which I am assiduously studying and tremendously enjoying. Let me express my deep admiration for the fine work of so many devoted comrades. A group of workers in the English-speaking world saw through the monstrous nature of capitalism and saw the way out of its quagmire years before the first world-war, and started, in the S.P.G.B., a revolutionary movement. It does not speak well for the political intelligence of the workers of this Continent that even after two world-wars, a number of smaller wars, civil wars, and other appalling human tragedies brought about by the mercenary commercial rivalry between the workers' exploiters, only so few have so far realized that nothing but the overthrow of the imbecile system of capitalism, and its replacement by a system of production for USE (instead of for profit) can save mankind from further and even greater disasters.

And now a word on the false friends and the betrayal of the Marxian teaching.

If the bankruptcy of the big self- styled “socialist" parties and their betrayal of scientific socialism were already clear when Dr. Karl Renner declared that two of the largest world-empires, namely the Russian and the British Empire, were under the leadership of the working-class and that socialism was close at hand, the leaders of these pseudo-socialist/communist parties have now sunk the last vestige of the revolutionary content of Marxist theory by finally and completely identifying themselves everywhere with the avowed capitalist parties. These parties have been absorbed by the State, and their leaders are only vying with one another for the well-paid jobs in the government and administration. I remember that the well known English labour leader Attlee, when his party held power in 1947, declared that there was no coherent alternative policy to that of the Labour Party and that the opposition was bankrupt in ideas. Just as Attlee and the Labour Party, after suffering three successive defeats and seeing power being taken over by the Conservatives, must eat their words, so Dr. Renner lived to see his ridiculous assertion belied, for it must be evident to even the politically little informed that the Russian workers are today unfortunately as far away from socialism as their English brothers.

Anybody looking at the Socialist Party of Austria today will discover hardly a remnant of revolutionary spirit. What it really does can at best be described as a kind of leftist bourgeois reform politics—no more. Anybody observing the attitude of their leaders must come to this conclusion. At three successive presidential elections the “socialist” candidate was elected President of Austria, and he is at the same time Commander-in-Chief of the Army!

There is also its position to the various Church organisations. The early Party always laid it down that “religion is a private matter". Now it has made peace with the churches. It now even recognizes the Dollfus Concordat (concluded on May 1st 1934 between Austria and the Vatican), although it had previously refused to do so. Even the financial claims of the Church are being recognised (church property and estate confiscated under Josef II returned to the Catholic church, plus hundred million schillings annually). It does this in the hope of getting votes. Whether this hope will materialise is more than doubtful, as despite its readiness to make these concessions, the Socialist Party of Austria is now as in the past turned down by the church.

On the occasion of the annual Conference of your party I send fraternal greetings to all delegates and other participants, and hearty wishes that your great efforts for the spreading of revolutionary socialism may bear further good fruit. We here shall continue to add our bit to the furtherance of the great cause.

Yours for Socialism,

J. K.

Vienna

To All Exploited. (1921)

From the June 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

  We have received from an Austrian Comrade the following ‘Call to the Workers of Austria’ issued by the Austrian Communist Party. It will be observed that it is in marked contrast to the utterances of the British Communists – eds.

On the 24th April you will choose your representatives for the Provisional Parliament. The Conservatives and the Nationalists are appealing for your votes – parties which, under the cloak of Christianity and Nationalism, are working for the moneybags of the industrial magnates, the landlords and the big estate proprietors.

You, the exploited, are the overwhelming majority. And yet the exploiters have the power and dominate you ! Wherein lies their power ?

It is rooted in their ownership of the greater part of the land, of the forests, the mines, the factories, the railroads – in one word, in their ownership of the means of life.

It is maintained through their control of and command over the armed forces, the police, the gendarmes, the Courts, and the whole coercive machinery, with which they keep you down.

It is rooted in their ability – thanks to their command over Church and School, Press and Platform – to stupefy you.

It is rooted, finally, in your allowing yourselves to be befogged and mocked by their sham democracy.

They have given you the right to vote, but the right to the sources of wealth, the right to the mines, to the factories, to the great estates, to the forests, they keep for themselves.

Yours the voting power; theirs the wealth, the profits; such is their democracy – a democracy of exploiters !

Never will the exploiters willingly renounce their mines, their factories, their large estates, and their forests !

Never will they voluntarily decide on such a renunciation !

Never will they peaceably acquiesce in such a measure and reform !

Every law made in that Parliament is destined to serve the interests of the exploiters only ! To you they throw a few bones, some crumbs, in order to hide their policy of roguery.

And the Social Democrats ?  They demand from them somewhat bigger – crumbs; they praise Socialism to you in fine phrase, but the mines, the factories, the large estates – they leave to the bloodsuckers ! Take an example.

Your sick dear ones are dying. No hospital, no nursing home to be found in the land for your sick children, your mothers, your infirm old people. The Social Democrats know all this. But they tell you: the country has no money; patience, patience, patience !

Open your eyes, ye poor and downtrodden ! Look to the Semmering ! Can you see there the great hotels and sanatoriums ? Can you see on the mountain slopes the hundreds of magnificent villas ? There they live, those who suck million profits out of the arduous toil of your busy hands ! There the drones live a life of ease and pleasure !

Away with the exploiters ! Away with the drones of life !

In with your sick children, your sick mothers, your infirm old people !

Do you think that this parliament will ever put down such laws ? Never, never ! Neither would the Social Democrats if they had the majority there. In fact, they already had the majority in the old Assembly ! And yet you have remained the exploited ! This Parliament has been created by the exploiters; it can have no other policy but that of a party of exploiters ! Those who tell you different are swindlers, or they deceive themselves and you. And yet –

WE COMMUNISTS WANT TO GET INTO THIS PARLIAMENT !

We Communists want to show you, on every question or measure which comes before that House for consideration, that the Conservatives and the Nationalists care for nothing except the moneybags of the exploiters. We want to show you that they deceive you at every turn, that the very crumbs they throw at you are merely so much dust in your eyes, and – that the Social Democrats are favouring this policy of exploitation.

We want to show you, by practical example, that only an administration can be of any real USE TO YOU wherein the exploiters have nothing to say and nothing to decide – in a word, from which the exploiters have been driven once and for all.

But only as a majority will a Council of the REVOLUTIONARY working class – elected into the present Parliament by really class-conscious workers – be able to snatch the power from the exploiters and place at your disposal the army, the gendarms, the legal machinery, the administration , the school and the press.

Only such a Council of the REVOLUTIONARY workers will be able to take from the exploiters the mines, the factories, the large estates, the forests, the railways, and the ships, and place them in YOUR HANDS – in the hands of those who work – that they may wield them for the benefit of the whole community instead of for the benefit of a few idlers.

Only a Socialist Government will lay the foundations for a community of workers, by first  of all breaking the opposition of the exploiters and holding them down until their acquiescence in the new order of things has been secured and assured.

Only by sending men into this Parliament who will have no other aim but the ABOLOTION OF THE WHOLE SYSTEM OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN THE MEANS OF LIFE, will your interests be served, and will you be able to organise production on a new basis, in the interest of all who work, evolving order out of chaos, and bringing about a social order wherein poverty, privilege, and oppression will find no place, and wherein all may lead a full, free, and joyous existence.

Workers in field and factory, Workers of all grades, if you want to free yourselves from the oppression of capitalism, then you must break the power of the exploiters by common revolutionary action !

Victorious revolutionary action presupposes a CLASS-CONSCIOUS working class. You will therefore have to remove the blinkers from your eyes ! It is for the purpose of making you see, in order to expose the daily practices in the political arena – the lies, the deceit, the humbug, and the misleading ways and intricacies of this sham democracy – that we want to get into this Assembly. To this end preliminarily

WE COMMUNISTS DEMAND YOUR VOTES.

MAKE AN END TO THE POLITICAL BARTER OF YOUR LIVES !

AND END TO THE POLICY OF CRUMBS !

ALL VOTES FOR SOCIALISM! ALL POWER TO THE WORKERS !

THE MINES, THE FACTORIES, THE BIG ESTATES, THE FORESTS, THE RAILWAYS, in one word, THE MEANS OF WEALTH PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION TO THE ORGANISED COMMUNITY OF THOSE WHO WORK.

Austrian reformist (2019)

Book Review from the April 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Otto Bauer (1881-1938). Thinker and Politician’. By Ewa Czerwinska-Schupp. (Haymarket Books paperback. 2018. 350 pages)

The inter-world-war European Social Democrats were a stage in the transformation of the pre-WW1 Social Democrat parties, which proclaimed Marxism, to the post-WW2 parties, which openly presented themselves as alternative managers of capitalism. They participated in governments of capitalism while still retaining some knowledge of Marxism.

Otto Bauer, who was the leader of the Austrian Social Democrats after WW1, was in this position. While involved in parliamentary politics and for a short while Austria’s Foreign Minister, he continued to write pamphlets and articles with a Marxist flavour. He is mainly known amongst English-speaking critics of capitalism for the polemics against his theory of nationalism in the writings of Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin and Pannekoek. He justified working-class nationalism (and so supported Austria in WW1, though he did practise what he preached and joined the army but ended up spending three years in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp, where he continued to write on Marxism). He was in fact a pan-German nationalist who advocated the incorporation of the German-speaking parts of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire into Germany.

The Austrian Social Democrats controlled Vienna city council and used this to improve the housing conditions of workers there but they never achieved a majority in parliament. The state remained under the control of conservative and reactionary parties and in 1934, egged on by Mussolini, the government sent in the army to suppress the Social Democratic party and its trade unions. Perhaps surprisingly for Social Democrats, some of its members, against the advice of the party’s leaders, tried to defend by force of arms working class districts from the assault. But their rifles and machine guns were no match for the big guns of the army, and they were crushed. Executions, jailings and repression followed.

According to the author, Bauer blamed himself for this tragedy, regretting not having sought a deal with the democratic wing of the Christian Democrats instead of relying on the eventual election of a Social Democrat parliamentary majority. Her book, originally a PhD thesis, provides a comprehensive account of Bauer’s life, activities and views.

Adam Buick

In Name only: “Socialist” Party of Austria (1961)

From the September 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received the following letter from a sympathiser in Vienna, which gives a critical look at the 1961 Annual Conference of the Socialist Party of Austria.

With an impressive show, as befits a government party, the annual conference of the S.P.A was held in Vienna from June 6 to 9, 1961. Among others, the British Labour Party had also sent a delegate. From the reports of the proceedings and speeches published in the Arbeiter Zeitung, the central organ of the S.P.A. one could gather how much Socialism there is left in the "Socialist" Party of Austria.

"Democracy's big chance," said the chairman and vice-chancellor Dr Bruno Pittermann. "Would be in the further progress on the road to securing for the workers a voice in the management of industry, and of participation in the government, corresponding to the election result. Because, for the working people of our times, the ownership of the means of production is no longer the only question which is decisive. To this must he added the right of a voice in the planning of industry and in the distribution of the proceeds! This right of participation, which raises man to a factor of equality, side by side with dead capital, is being refused by both reactionary capitalism, and by the communists."

Thus, Pittermann is satisfied if the workers become “a factor" with equal rights beside "dead capital." He is no longer concerned with the abolition of capital (private ownership). Pittermann seems to be quite oblivious of the fact that capital is not a thing, not some dead object, but a peculiar social relationship between man and man. Did not a certain Karl Marx once scientifically analyse and explain it all?

“Besides the factor capital, the factor labour must at last find recognition" a delegate urged. Thus, despite the S.P.A.’s boasted many decades of activity, the “factor labour" has so far not yet found recognition. This delegate was moreover of remarkable modesty. He demanded for labour no more than a place beside capital. The latter can safely keep its hitherto held position. It would seem that this representative of “Socialism" too had never heard of capitalist conditions and of the capitalist mode of production.

“I should like to once more emphasize," said another leading light, the Sozialminister Proksch, “that over the present questions of the day our social policy must not relegate to a back seat our big fundamental tasks, to which belongs the fresh formulation of the old obsolete labour charter." Proksch distinguishes between the present questions of the day and the fundamental issue, i.e., the essential aim of Socialism. No person of common sense will quarrel with this. Strange it is, however, that a Socialist—and Proksch claims to be one—sees in the new formulation of labour rights a fundamental task of Socialism. Is not the "right of labour" the “right" of those dependent on, and exploited by, capital? Is it not by its very nature committed to perpetuate the existing relationship between wage labour and capital? Even if it be admitted that reforms have brought to labour some alleviation of hardships, it stands in question whether the benefit to the workers outweighs the harm done to the working class movement by this day-to-day reform policy. After all, the “fundamental task" of a Socialist Party consists not in perpetuating, but in abolishing the exploitation of the workers by capital. The watchword must ever be revolution —not reform. But apparently such is no longer Pittermann, Proksch and consorts' concept, if ever it has been.

It will be understood that at a party conference questions of the day, and measures for dealing with them, are discussed. It may be argued that one cannot always and exclusively concentrate on the all-important supreme aim. But in dealing with pressing temporary problems, as well as with proposals and plans in cases of emergencies, the genuine great Socialist principle must ever he all-present and all-transcending. It must never be lost sight of. This, however, was sadly missing in the speeches and discussions at the said party conference. Rather had one the impression that any allusion to the real aim being the abolition of the exploitation of man by man through the wages and money system, was designedly shunned in order not to give offence in any quarter. This, however, means nothing less than abandoning the supreme principle, which cannot but please its adversaries.

All demands and decisions made at the S.P.A.'s conference will only serve to consolidate the present constitution of society and, if possible, perpetuate it. The “Socialist Party of Austria” is therefore not entitled to call itself Socialist, if the word is to keep its true meaning.

Dr. Johannes Kleinhappl