1926: Linz Programme of the Social Democratic Workers' Party
On 3 November 1926 the Social Democratic Workers’ Party adopted a new party programme in Linz, a programme that remained in force until the party was banned in 1934. The programme is a key document of this phase of social democracy in Austria, known as Austro-Marxism. The programme was drawn up by Otto Bauer, Max Adler and Karl Renner and thus covered the party’s full ideological spectrum. It performed a balancing act: on the one hand its radical language reflected the slogans used during demonstrations (‘Democracy’s not much to ask—Socialism is the task’), while on the other hand, the party’s practical approach was reformist—it insisted on implementing its demands by democratic means via elections and a majority in parliament. The shared aim was to overcome the capitalist social order, which would be reshaped into a socialist order through the ‘liberation struggle of the working class’.
The Linz Programme became famous above all for the language it used. If the bourgeoisie ‘was to put up resistance through the planned suppression of economic life, through violent rebellion, through conspiracy with foreign counter-revolutionary forces, then the working class would be forced to break the resistance of the bourgeoisie by means of dictatorship.’ This sentence, despite being formulated as a defence, aggravated the climate of domestic politics in the First Republic and showed that even among Social Democrats, faith was waning in the ability to overcome conflict by democratic means.
These debates around the wording and around the visible divisions in the party pushed the party’s other central demands into the background. Yet with this party programme, for example with regard to women’s rights (co-education for boys and girls, equal pay for equal work, access to contraception), in its demand for the separation of church and state, in matters of asylum law for political refugees, in the development of a social security system, and in many other areas, Austrian Social Democracy was not just keeping pace with the times, but was often ahead of them.