Wilhelm Werner -
’ . Vienna a a
In. view. of the ‘traditional stability of the. Austrian elector-_ ate, the: elections: of March © in Austria can be accounted a landslide for the. bourgeois: parties. yetes une
“The main: bourgeois: party, the. “Austrian People s party Loesterreichische Volkspartei -~ OVP] got 48.4% of the vote and an absolute — majority in parliament with 85 seats out of 165. This is the first — time since 1945 that it has registered such a success. The Socialistparty [SP] won 4e. 6%, a loss of. 1. 4%, its seats falling from 76 to 74.
‘The distance between the. two. big parties. is now the greatest — 269, 000 votes, 32% of the total -- since. the founding of the Second Austrian Republic. In 19095 the SP still had a higher vote than the OVP. oe ee be .
The results * were still. more negative in. view of the fact thatthe Communist party called .on, its supporters to vote for the SP throughout: ‘the country with the exception of a single district ain Vienna where it ran a candidate of its own. He got 18, 638 votes . (3,000 less than in the previous election) and lost out. _
The: -electoral defeat suffered by the Social. Democrats was due in particular to the appearance of a new party founded by the former trade-union leader and Social Democratic Minister of the Interior
Franz Olah. This organization, the Democratic Progress party, got 148,500 votes in its first, try, picking up more than one-half of (ats | votes from, the working-class districts. in Vienna. ,
fp. ‘Olah was expelled from “the ‘SP because he came. into. conflict with a wing of the reformist bureaucracy when he exposed some of their shady dealings although he was guilty himself of not léss shady transactions with trade-union funds. .He very. quickly. became a kind of Austrian Poujade. He runs.a sensationalist daily, the’ ‘Kronen-Zeitung, which he uses to expose the "corruption" of the Social Democratic: leadership... He is denigrating the labor movémént as a whole more and | more; and there appears to be little doubt. that he is getting money from big business. He did. not. hesitate to use. anti-Semitic: ‘language in his campaign to the great joy of the petty bourgeoisie whose ne o- Nazi nostalgia is well known.
The reformist apparatus. tried to fight by resorting to use of | the bourgeois state machinery. This succeeded only in antagonizing | a sector of the public who resent the. monopolistic claims" of the two big parties and their "infractions of our freedoms." This clumsy defense undoubtedly strengthened. Olah's. position still more.
In a historical sense, the Social Democratic defeat is due to the policy of coalition with the People's party for the past twenty years and more.
A vigorous debate over the causes of the defeat has begun in the labor movement. The systematic subordination of the interests of the working class and the needs of the struggle for socialism in Austria to the imperatives of the coalition provoked apathy and even hostility in larger and larger sectors of the working class. In large part, the vote against the SP was a vote against the coalition policy, still more so Since one of: the main themes in the electoral propaganda of the OVP was the promise to change the coalition's . .. "hackneyed" way of functioning. Thus impressionable layers of pettybourgeois voters’ and young workers, politically uneducated for twenty years, abandoned the workers parties for the People! s party and Olah" s party. ele
Nor did the Communist party understand the fundamental reason for the defeat. Thus, on the very eve of the Social Democratic defeat of March 6, the central CP organ continued to campaign for maintenance of the OVP-SP coalition. a
In the Social Democracy, the doubts and hesitations aroused : by, the electoral results have not led to reconsideration of the coalition policy as a fundamental question. The only preoccupation of the reformist leadership is that their weakened position in the | relationship of forces may be reflected by a marked worsening of the. bargaining conditions under which ‘the new cabinet will be constituted.
Furthermore, there are extreme right-wing reformists who are using the defeat to criticize the attitude of the leaders of the Socialist party as too "neutralist" and not "anti-Communist" enough !. :
; As for the socialist left, its position was: expressed particularly in a letter from the Socialist Students and the Association of Socialist High School Students demanding that the Socialist party leave the government and become an opposition party.
-..The victorious party is not inclined to eliminate the reformists. from the cabinet. The OVP wants to. maintain-the coalition but change the ‘balance in. its“own _ favor: ‘Its*prineipal demands include . abandonment of the post of. minister of “foreign: affairs ‘by the Socialist party (or rather the prime ‘minister assuming - “@kT yvésponsibilities in the area of, foreign affairs); changes in the law on nationalized enterprises; lower taxes on high incomes; rapprochement: with the Common Market; | control by the OVP over radio and television.
The bourgeoisie is trying to accelerate the process of returning the nationalized enterprises to private ownership by making them "autonomous ; "by. abolishing | the centralized management of the nationalized sector. f. industry. *
The capitalist victors in the election know no ‘Limit in their thirst for profits -- they are also demanding an increase in interest rates and in rent for apartments.
Will the electoral defeat of March 6 create enough of a shakeup to enable a larger. working-class vanguard to emerge from the lethargy: in which the working class has remained for so many years | in Austria? It is probably too early to say with assurance. But Bi Austrian revolutionary Marxists must work toward this end and try: ; to bring this vanguard into struggle against the fatal policy of. coalition with the bourgeois parties.
*Of all the capitalist countries in Europe, Austria has “the largest nationalized sector due to the nationalizations that took place in the former Soviet occupation zone (oil in particular) and the | nationalization of the property of German capitalists throughout the country after 1945. [Editor's note. ]
CAP AND GOWN