Prior to the First World War and the subsequent collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, much of the Austromarxist body of thought was based upon the works of Karl Renner and Max Adler. In the later war years and especially after the foundation of the First Austrian Republic, the Austromarxist current rapidly began to shift into the orbit of Otto Bauer's political positions, particularly in regard to its negative relationship to the
Bolshevik current predominant in the
Third International and the concept of national identity abstracted from the territory. and sought to confront questions around the rise of the interventionist state and the changing class-structure of early 20th century capitalist societies.
Nationalism and imperialism Writing in the political treatise,
Social Democracy and the Nationalities Question (1907), Bauer defined the nation as "the totality of men bound together through a common destiny into a community of character." resurrected Karl Renner's notion of the "
personal principle" as a way of gathering the geographically divided members of the same nation. Bauer's position echoed earlier writings from Karl Renner, who expressed the importance of doing away with sub-national territorial identities as undemocratic and allowing for the oppression of non-majority populations within each nation. Bauer in particular, regarded the phenomena of imperialism to be an inevitable and inescapable consequence of the evolution of capitalism, stating that "[imperialism] results from the insatiable and uncontrolled drive of capital to realize itself". However, Bauer asserted in
Social Democracy and the Nationalities Question that a socialist society could rid itself of the possibility to be ruled by a foreign nation by democratizing the control of the military, which would necessarily entail wresting it from the hands of the controlling class.
Revolution Rejection of the Bolshevik model The Bolshevik model of revolution, while initially bearing some weight within the SDAP, quickly fell out of favor as several major Austromarxist thinkers, most prominently Bauer, became concerned with the feasibility of such a revolution in Austria. Between 1918 and 1920, Bolshevik-style revolutions and governments were staged in Germany (both the
German revolution and the
Bavarian Soviet Republic) and
Béla Kun's
Hungarian Soviet Republic, all of which were either crushed or otherwise fell apart within the first several months of existence. Alerted by the collapse of these radical movements, Bauer and the others in the SDAP distanced themselves as much as possible from radical communist agitators, treating them with suspicion and, when possible, bringing the force of the judicial system down upon would-be revolutionaries. Bauer specifically noted complications with the feasibility of the revolution in Austria that were not encountered by the Bolsheviks in 1917. The aggravation and consciousness of the peasants and the
proletariats were distinct in a manner that caused the two interest groups to be diametrically opposed to one another. Among the peasants, the mass outrage that had stirred up over the course of the war was not due to the perceived manipulation of their livelihoods by a corrupt and evil structure of capitalism insofar as it was the dearth in cattle ownership that resulted from requisition efforts by the military over the course of the war. Moreover, influence of the Catholic Church was far more substantial in the provincial Alpine hinterlands than it was in the industrial center of Vienna, and the predominant bulk of the peasant class did not share the highly anticlericalist attitude nor the predilection toward the dispossession of private property held by the urban working class. Additionally, unlike in the case of the October Revolution in Russia, the new
First Austrian Republic was under close watch by the victorious
Entente Powers that had dismantled the
Austro-Hungarian Empire, and would likewise pose a credible threat of militarily intervening in the event that they suspected a violent revolution in Austria to be likely. Thus, Bauer dismissed any interest in pursuing the Bolshevik model of revolution in Austria on the basis that any such movement would both fail to defend itself militarily against intervention by external parties and to capture the mass support of both the urban working class and the agrarian rural peasant class, whose reactionary nature would be exceedingly difficult to overcome with rash action. As an alternative, Bauer saw the path of social democracy to be the most feasible method for the success of socialism in Austria. The ability to grant major and permanent concessions to the proletariat while avoiding an open civil conflict, which may have involved the military power of the Entente, granted the Austromarxists safer and more numerous opportunities for generating lasting transformations in the social and economic structure of Austrian society.
Role of the Party Bauer rejected elitism as a method for the dissemination of class consciousness, straying away from normative Bolshevik notion of the party vanguard. The embodiment of the revolution in the Bauerian thought was an organic movement that developed from a groundswell of working-class awakening and gradual transition toward socialism. Bauer's assertions were grounded in earlier writings by other Austromarxists who had written before him, such as Max Adler, who posited that "the cultural interests of the intellectuals, and the mere interests of the working class, as a self-enclosed class, have little in common except the very general claim for a humanly decent existence." This departure from
international socialist norms had been the consequence of the Austromarxists' desire to avoid creating what Gruber describes as a "the dictatorship of a caste over the masses." Paradoxically, the more normative Marxist structure of the core inner circle of educated urban intellectuals within the party had also developed in the SDAP well before the end of the war and remained at the center of party politics, reflecting a gap between the ideological persuasions of SDAP leadership and the party's behavior in practice that often manifested in other circumstances, such as with the relative lack of concern toward insufficient housing until the housing crisis in postwar Vienna necessitated the introduction of substantial construction projects. == Relationship with the Internationals ==