Labor movement in Austria

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The Austrian labor movement describes the efforts of the workers towards political and social emancipation, first in Austria-Hungary , later in the Republic of Austria . It originated in the 1840s and initially comprised workers' and journeyman's associations, which later differentiated into parties and trade unions ( SPÖ , KPÖ , ÖGB ) and still shape the political landscape in Austria today. In its heyday, the labor movement was strongly shaped by socialism .

After the first beginnings in the revolution of 1848 , a new establishment took place with the Wiener Arbeiterbildungsverein from 1867. The delegates of the Vienna Association took part in the Eisenach party congress around 1869 . Only with the establishment of the German Empire in 1871 did the movement break down. After a phase of crises and divisions in 1889, a social democratic party was founded with the SDAP . The party came to power for the first time after the revolution of 1918 , which led to the collapse of the Habsburg state (1918–1920). Unlike in Germany, in Austria only a small communist party could stand alongside the social democracyclaim that the majority of the party left stayed with the SDAPDÖ. With the end of the First Republic and the establishment of the Austro-Fascist corporate state, socialist endeavors were banned, and a re-establishment took place in 1945. The SDAPÖ was now called the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) . She has been involved in numerous governments up to the present.

Revolution of 1848

In the revolution of 1848 the working class first stepped onto the stage of history, both unorganized through participation in the barricade struggles and organized in the form of a first workers' education association and the first trade union formation. An association for women workers was also founded in 1848. However, all organizational formations were put down in the course of the reaction after the failure of the revolution.

Viennese workers' education association 1867

The first workers' education associations were founded in Vienna in 1867 and - legalized with the December constitution of 1867 - contributed significantly to awakening the political awareness of the Austrian working class. The work of the functionaries from the very beginning was based on the ideas of Ferdinand Lassalle and his General German Workers' Association . His ideas were adopted by the Austrian labor movement activists who declared themselves part of the German labor movement at the Eisenach party congress in 1869.

This labor movement in the entire German-speaking area was faced with new facts with the establishment of the German Empire in 1871. The labor movement in the Austro-Hungarian Empire had to become independent and orient itself to the east, towards the non-German population of the empire. The plan to found a united Austrian social democratic party came about in 1874 at a meeting of delegates from trade union workers' associations in Neudörfl, then Hungarian, and now Burgenland . In the following years this project could not be realized due to differences between moderate and anarchist groups. The Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) was therefore only founded at the turn of the year 1888/89 at the party congress from December 30, 1888 to January 1, 1889 in Hainfeld , Lower Austria , after Viktor Adler had succeeded in reaching the groups across language barriers unite.

The new party felt connected to the German Social Democratic Workers 'Party (SDAP) of the same name before its merger with the General German Workers' Association ( ADAV ) not only through the same name. The Marxist Eisenach program of 1869 had also been adopted from her .

1889–1918: Victor Adler's Social Democracy

Victor Adler, party founder and chairman until 1918

After the unification congress in Hainfeld, Victor Adler swore the party on a compromise course loyal to the state and the emperor and thus capable of a majority, which did not reject parliamentarianism but described its scope as limited. The struggle for the right to vote was identified as the first intermediate goal on this path into the socialist future . This was the target of campaigns and demonstrations, but was not enforced until 1906, following the 1905 revolution in Russia.

With the first election under universal suffrage for men, the SDAP achieved a historic success in 1907. It was just behind the Christian Socials, the second strongest, and finally the strongest faction in the Reichsrat in 1911 . However, national blockades and boycotts of the various language groups meant that parliament was incapable of reform and was incapable of acting.

1892–1909: emergence and assertion of a social democratic women's movement

Although the Hainfeld program of 1889 condemned discrimination based on gender, not a single woman took part in the Hainfeld party congress; the delegate Anna Altmann from Pöltzental was rejected in favor of a male candidate. In the following year, therefore, a separate workers' education association was founded in Vienna , supposedly apolitical, in order to circumvent the association's legislation, which banned political association activities by women. Repressive laws and reservations by social democratic men were two hurdles that the social democratic women's movement fought against . Nevertheless, it grew rapidly, also with the help of the Arbeiterinnen-Zeitung , which appeared from 1892 under the editor Adelheid Popp . After a boycott of the SDAP party congresses in 1896 and 1897, its own Reichsfrauenkonferenz in 1898 and the establishment of its own women's unions from 1902, the social democratic women's movement was able to fight for its place in the party. In 1907, an empire-wide social democratic women's organization was founded and, with the Reichenberg Party Congress in 1909, was integrated into the SDAP as equivalent.

First World War

When the First World War broke out, there was initially hardly any criticism in the SPAP, on the other hand there was also no parliamentary approval as in Germany, because the Kaiser had suspended parliament. When in 1916 Friedrich Adler , son of the party chairman, shot and killed Prime Minister Stürgkh in an act of desperation , the attack was condemned on the one hand, and on the other hand it roused the opponents of the war in the labor movement. When the war situation turned against the Central Powers in 1917 , revolutionary demands grew louder and in 1918 the Habsburg monarchy collapsed. Karl Renner and Victor Adler , as the unifying representatives of the party, offered the peoples of Old Austria to remain in the existing state association until the end in order to be able to better realize the common social democratic future goals.

1918–1933: First Republic

Karl Renner, 1905 as a kk parliamentarian; In 1918 he was elected State Chancellor of German Austria

The SDAP of Austria also advocated annexation to Germany after the Treaty of Saint-Germain , which had banned Austria from using “German” in its name. The big state expected more strength for the socialist revolution . The wish to join was canceled at the party congress in 1933, after the Nazis came to power in the German Reich.

From 1918 to 1920 the Social Democrats - as the party with the strongest vote in the 1919 election of the constituent national assembly - formed a grand coalition with the Christian Socials. At that time, in addition to the constitution, significant social improvements were passed ( eight-hour day , establishment of the Chamber of Labor as a legal representative of interests, works council law, etc.). Karl Seitz (party chairman), Otto Bauer (deputy party chairman) and Karl Renner as State Chancellor managed to implement radical social reforms.

Otto Bauer's attempt, in the course of his Austromarxism with integral socialism, a reunification of the reformist II. International with the communist III. Reaching international , however, failed. The Austrian Social Democracy, which wanted to have such a calming effect on the rival left ideologies, was jokingly referred to as the Two and a Half International .

In the course of the revolution of 1918, the Communist Party of Austria was also founded . In the First Republic , however, the KPÖ, which was at times paralyzed by political disputes, remained little influential despite the transfer of a larger group of the “New Left” from the social democracy around Josef Frey in 1921. It did not win a mandate in any national council or state parliament elections, only in individual communities such as Salzburg did it win seats in local councils. The KPÖ played a bigger role in the unemployment movement and in the fight against the emerging fascism . Before the National Socialists came to power in Germany, the KPÖ, like the SPÖ and bourgeois parties, advocated unification of Austria with Germany. However, she named a successful revolution as a condition ( for annexation to Soviet Germany! ).

In 1933 the KPÖ was banned by the Austro-Fascist government under Engelbert Dollfuss , and the SDAP was banned after the February fighting in 1934.

Corporate state and affiliation

In February 1934 the labor movement, especially the SDAP, tried to prevent the establishment of an authoritarian state through an armed uprising. However, this Schutzbund uprising failed. All workers' organizations have now been smashed. Even before the establishment of the corporate state (1934–1938), the Dollfuss dictatorship established a union federation for Austrian workers on March 2, 1934 , after the social democratically oriented free unions had been banned. Its president, who was not democratically elected, was the Christian Socialist Johann Staud . The organization was to be seen as a sham representation of the working class in the dictatorship, as it did not emerge from free elections. The trade union federation in the corporate state did not develop any significant effectiveness and was not recognized as a forerunner by the ÖGB, which was founded in 1945 . In 1938 Austria, turned authoritarian, was annexed to the German Reich ruled by Hitler. The structures of the corporate state were thus dissolved.

Rebuilt in 1945

Austria was occupied by the four occupying powers in 1945 , and parties and unions were quickly re-admitted. In the first provisional government under Karl Renner, there were ten Social Democrats and nine Christian Socialists as well as seven Communists. The SDAP was reconstituted as the Socialist Party of Austria (SPÖ), the KPÖ kept the old party name. During the years of reconstruction, the KPÖ campaigned vehemently against “capitalist reconstruction at the expense of the working class” and strictly rejected the Marshall Plan . In the first free National Council elections on November 25, 1945 , the KPÖ was only able to achieve 174,257 votes (5.42%) and occupied four seats in the Austrian National Council. The SPÖ received 76 seats, but the winner was the conservative Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) with 85 seats. Immediately after the end of the Battle of Vienna on April 15, 1945, Lois Weinberger (ÖVP, first vice-president), Gottlieb Fiala (KPÖ) and Johann Böhm (SPÖ, first president) founded a new Austrian trade union federation as a union representation . Social democratic, communist and Christian trade unionists founded this unified, non-party-affiliated trade union organization, in contrast to the First Republic. Despite having the same name, it did not relate its tradition to the ÖGB of the corporate state (1934–1938). In 1947, the new works council law and a collective agreement law were passed, and the ÖGB was granted collective agreement. In 1947 the number of members of the ÖGB exceeded the million mark. In the course of the first ÖGB federal congress in 1948, 16 trade unions were founded. The number of sub-units known today as 'sub-unions' has been reduced to seven today through mergers.

1945 to the present

While the SPÖ was in government several times from 1970 to 1986 with the Bruno Kreisky government, the KPÖ only achieved regional successes. Unlike in the Federal Republic of Germany, however, the party was not banned, which also had to do with Austria's neutrality (non-alignment). The KPÖ became the unofficial mediator between East and West Germany, especially for the SED's financial transactions . After the collapse of the GDR, there was a long-term lawsuit over considerable assets of the Novum company , which was owned by the KPÖ as an asset reserve. In 2003, the German judiciary decided in the second instance against the contrary judgment of the first instance that the former company Novum had belonged to the SED. The KPÖ's assets were confiscated. As a result of the loss of assets as a result of the court ruling of around 100 million euros, the KPÖ was forced to terminate all employees and discontinue its weekly newspaper Volksstimme . The turning point of 1989 brought changes not only for the KPÖ, the SPÖ also distanced itself from socialism: under Franz Vranitzky's chairmanship, the party was renamed the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) at the federal party conference in Linz in 1991 .

literature

  • Martin van Amerongen: Kreisky and his unresolved present. Styria, Graz et al. 1977, ISBN 3-222-10995-8 .
  • Ralf Hoffrogge : Socialism and the labor movement in Germany and Austria. From the beginnings to 1914 , 2nd, expanded edition Stuttgart 2017 (first 2011).
  • Joseph Buttinger : Using Austria as an example. A historical contribution to the crisis of the socialist movement . Cologne 1952.
  • Ernst Glaser: In the context of Austromarxism . Vienna 1981.
  • Siegmund Kaff : Austrobolshevism as the guardian of "legality" . Amalthea Verlag, Vienna 1930.
  • Peter Kulemann: Using the example of Austromarxism. Social democratic labor movement in Austria from Hainfeld to the Dollfuss dictatorship. Hamburg 1979.
  • Norbert Leser : Between Reformism and Bolshevism. Austromarxism as theory and practice . Vienna 1968.
  • Herbert Steiner: Austrian Labor Movement, 1867–1889. Contributions to their history from the founding of the Viennese workers' education association to the unification party conference in Hainfeld. (= Publications of the Working Group for the History of the Labor Movement in Austria 2). Europa-Verlag, Vienna 1964

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ralf Hoffrogge : Socialism and the workers' movement in Germany and Austria. From the beginnings to 1914 , 2nd, expanded edition Stuttgart 2017.
  2. Wolfgang Häusler: From mass poverty to the labor movement. Democracy and Social Issues in the Vienna Revolution of 1848.
  3. ^ Ralf Hoffrogge, Socialism and the Workers' Movement in Germany and Austria. From the beginnings to 1914, 2nd, expanded edition Stuttgart 2017, pp. 209–211.
  4. ^ Social Democratic Workers' Party: SDAP: Eisenacher Program (1869). In: marxists.org. October 15, 2003, accessed February 28, 2015 .
  5. Peter Kulemann: Using the example of Austromarxism. Social democratic labor movement in Austria from Hainfeld to the Dollfuss dictatorship. Hamburg 1979.
  6. ^ Ralf Hoffrogge, Socialism and the Workers' Movement in Germany and Austria. From the beginnings to 1914, 2nd, expanded edition Stuttgart 2017, pp. 215–219; Women make politics. Austria 1848-1938, Innsbruck-Wien-Bozen 2009, 2nd edition 2010.
  7. Cf. Manfried Rauchsteiner "The First World War and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy 1914-1918" (2013), p. 1036.
  8. ^ Bauer: The Austrian Revolution. (1923)
  9. ^ Keller: Against the current , pp. 10 f., 19 f.
  10. ^ Communist Party of Austria: 4 ½ million working people in Germany (...) . Poster, 63 × 47.5. Printer: Adolf Blond, Vienna 1930. In: oeaw.ac.at , accessed on July 25, 2013.