Socialist Alternative (SOAL)
The Socialist Alternative (SOAL), until 1986 the Revolutionary Marxist Group (GRM), is the Austrian section of the Trotskyist Fourth International .
History of SOAL / GRM
The GRM came into being in the autumn of 1972, when the minority of the university organization Marxist-Leninist Students (MLS) turned to Trotskyism and was subsequently expelled. When it was founded, the GRM saw itself as the Austrian section of the 4th International. As of March 1973, the GRM was the bi-weekly newspaper Red Front out from 1980 published in the same rhythm magazine the left , which appears only on the internet since of 2006. In the 1970s, the GRM was one of the strongest organizations of the radical left in Austria and around 1979 had around 90 mostly student cadre members and a mobilizable environment of several hundred close sympathizers. The GRM / SOAL had notable influence above all at the universities, where lists of the organization achieved higher results than the KPÖ's KSV in the elections to the ÖH , as well as in the new social movements such as the movements against the Zwentendorf nuclear power plant and against neo-Nazis in the university sector.
From the mid-1980s, members and sympathizers of the GRM / SOAL, which had shrunk over the years, took part in the Greens and Alternative Lists , while former members of the organization such as Peter Pilz played an important role in the Austrian Greens . Similar to other socialist organizations of the 1970s, well-known writers, publicists and teachers such as Raimund Löw , Georg Hoffmann-Ostenhof , Harald Walser and Siegfried Mattl were members of the GRM . Another former member of the organization is the left-wing publicist Robert Misik .
In 2004, on the occasion of the European elections, SOAL participated in the KPÖ-dominated electoral alliance Die Linke , but withdrew from the alliance in November 2004 due to the sale of the Ernst Kirchweger House by the KPÖ.
The main focus of the organization is in Vienna and Graz . In the past the GRM / SOAL also had groups in u. a. Linz , Salzburg and Innsbruck .
Election results
- National Council election 1975 - 1,024 votes (only run in Vienna)
literature
- Ulrich Angerer: Trotskyism in Austria: Part 1. From the 1920s until today. An analysis (Marxism. No. 9) . Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-901831-05-3 (on SOAL or GRM and forerunners v. A. Pp. 186–196 and 229–235)
- Wilhelm Svoboda : Sandbox Games: A History of Left Radicality in the 1970s , Vienna (Promedia) 1998 (mainly through the Austrian Communist League and the GRM)
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.sozialismus.net//content/view/860/49
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
