Austro-Marxism

A Reappraisal

Bibliographic Data

ID10072950
AuthorsNorbert Leser (corresponding author)
Year1976
Volume11
Issue2
Pages133-148
Publication date1976-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Contemporary History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-0094 • E-ISSN: 1461-7250
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/002200947601100208
OpenAlexW2061514089
LanguageEN
Citations received9

Although generally associated with the emerging Austrian Republic, Austro-Marxism was actually rooted in and formed by the conditions prevailing in the pre-1914 days of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Indeed, only under the aegis of the last Habsburgs were its most forceful and eminent exponents still agreed on the principles and application of Marxist thought. Later, when confronted with a world war, and then under the Republic, when faced with the strains and inevitable compromise of decision-making, the group lost its former cohesion and members began to go their own separate ways. Among those who put Austro-Marxism on the map and maintained its reputation for decades, Otto Bauer, whose epoch-making Die Nationalitatenfrage und die Sozialdemokratie appeared in 1907, is perhaps the best-known figure. Other members of this brilliant circle were Karl Renner, later Austrian Chancellor, and authority on government, constitutional law, administration, and similar subjects; Rudolf Hilferding, later Minister of Finance in the Weimar Republic, whose Das Finanzkapital reappraised and extended Marxian economic thought; Max Adler, a truly original interpreter of Marxian dialectics, whose sadly neglected writings, deserve a revival; and Julius Deutsch, later Defence Minister and organiser of the socialist defence league, the Republikanischer Schutzbund. He contributed a fundamental study of the Austrian trade union movement and a number of sociological and military monographs to the socialist literature of the day. The meeting of such exceptionally talented minds gave AustroMarxism its specific edge and flavour. It became an historically identi

Political science · Central European national history · European history and politics · German Social Sciences and History · History · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism

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