Austromarxism
Beginning in 1904, the Austromarxist group organized around magazines such as the Blätter zur Theorie und Politik des wissenschaftlichen Sozialismus and the Marx-Studien.
[7] 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.
[6] It was also influenced by contemporaneous intellectual trends, including the prominence of neo-Kantianism and positivism in philosophy and the emergence of marginalism in economics,[8] and sought to confront questions around the rise of the interventionist state and the changing class-structure of early 20th century capitalist societies.
The delineation between the two resides within Bauer's assertion that the national identity is not necessarily obstructive toward class consciousness, existing as a useful praxis for the self-determination of the worker.
[12] Bauer's position echoed earlier writings from Karl Renner, who expressed the importance of doing way with sub-national territorial identities as undemocratic and allowing for the oppression of non-majority populations within each nation.
[10] Like other theorists operating within the Marxist umbrella, many of the prominent members of the Austromarxist current utilised a determinist perspective of history in the formation of their political critiques.
"[2] 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.
[2][5][6] The IWUSP represented a general alignment of social democratic parties that leaned away from the Bolshevik current, having grown initially out of a wartime pacifist bloc of the Second International.
[5] Other members of the Austromarxist movement, including Bauer and Hilferding, backed the IWUSP over the Third International, considering the Bolshevik model to be undesirable or unworkable in Austria.
[2] Despite general support from social democratic parties in Switzerland, France, Germany, and Italy (in addition to the Austromarxists' own SDAP), the IWUSP failed its objective of bridging the divide between the competing Internationals.
[5] Owing in part to the collapse of Austromarxism in Vienna was the inaction of SDAP leadership to counteract the growing forces of the Austrian right, paralleling failures by the SDP in Germany to likewise undermine the growth of the NSDAP.
[5] Consequently, Engelbert Dollfuss was awarded the Chancellorship in 1932, and by 1934 the Austromarxist project in Vienna had been fully unravelled, the SDAP banned nationwide in Austria, and most of the party's leadership and active membership had been placed either in exile or in prison.
