Page - 6 - in Otto Bauer (1881–1938) - Thinker and Politician

6 chapter 1 Bauer’sphilosophicalandsocialworldviewbecamemoresophisticatedafter he joined the educational society Die Zukunft, the first workers’ school of Vienna founded in 1903. Its co-foundersMaxAdler, Karl Renner andRudolf Hilferding (whowere some 10 years Bauer’s senior), and its later members Gustav Eckstein, Friedrich Adler, Wilhelm Ellenbogen, Robert Dannenberg, AntonHannak and Bauer created the intellectual and ideological tendency that later became known asAustromarxism.Most of themwere frombour- geois families,mainlywithintheJewish intelligentsia,whileRennerandHan- nakhailedfrompeasantbackgrounds.Activelyparticipatinginworkers’school andparty organisations, they also intended toovercome theworkers’ scepti- cismtowards intellectuals in the socialistmovement.18Their aimwas to fuse theoriginal ideasofMarxismwithphilosophical, sociological, economicand legal theories andpolitical positionswhichweredominantwithinbourgeois ideology:positivism,naturalism,socialDarwinism,legalnormativism,theher- itageoftheAustrianschoolofnationaleconomics,reformism,andsyndicalism. Germannationalismplayeda role in their attempts tomerge these concepts toadegree. Itwasmostevident in their reluctance to integrateany scientific andpolitical systems thathadoriginated fromoutside the remits ofGerman culture. At least, not without first melting them in the polemical fires and then remoulding them to suit Germannational consciousness. Their stand- point,whichbecamethecornerstoneof Social-Democraticpoliticalpractice, was in fact a collection of theories linked solely through the affirmation of socialism,whichwas conceived abstractly as a synthesis of general human- istvalues.Thefact that thefoundersof thisschoolactivelyparticipatedinthe strugglesof theworkers’movement influenced the theoretical concepts they adhered to. Amongst Austromarxists, therewas a certain division of labour, which affected the subject of research.MaxAdler focused onphilosophical, ideological and ethicalmatters; Hilferding attended to economic problems; Renner concentratedon law, the stateorder and sociology; andBauerdedic- ated himself to sociological, historical and socio-political aspects, aswell as 18 TheyrepresentedthethirdgenerationofMarxists,whowere immersed intheclassicsof Marxism, aswell as thepopularisingworksofKautsky. It is questionable as towhether Kautsky really belonged to theAustromarxist tradition, asTrotsky argued– seeTrotsky 2011,pp.229–30.KautskywasamemberoftheAustrianSocialDemocratsuntilhedepar- tedforZurichin1880,yetheneverabandonedhiscloseco-operationwithVictorAdler.His evaluationofBolshevism, sympathy for theMensheviks, andconceptof socialist revolu- tionmetwiththefullrecognitionoftheViennagroup,althoughhehadnoorganisational tiesto it.