Page - 7 - in Otto Bauer (1881–1938) - Thinker and Politician

otto bauer andhis time 7 philosophy and economy. After Adler’s death in 1918, Bauer determined the ideologicalandprogrammaticcourseofthesdap. The influenceof contemporaryViennaontheir theories cannotbeoveres- timated. The young ‘VienneseMarxists’, as Karl Vorländer called them later, cameofageinanatmosphereofsubserviencetothehouseofHabsburg,which was saturated in clericalism, anti-Semitism, andnationalism. In this climate, national tolerancehad its limits: the superiorityof theGermannationhadto beunconditionally recognised.All of themwere studentsof liberal-reformist bourgeoisteachers.19Still, theyletthemselvesbecarriedawaybythenewzeit- geist, i.e. the unconventional literary currents of the early twentieth century (HermannBahr,HugovonHofmannstahl,ArthurSchnitzler,KarlKraus,Robert Musil),music (AntonBruckner,GustavMahler,ArnoldSchönberg), architec- ture(OttoWagner, JosephHoffmann,AdolfLoos)andpainting(GustavKlimt, JosephMariaOlbrich,KoloMoser andEgonSchiele amongothers). Thiswas allanexpressionoftheirrebellionagainst traditional ideasandvalues. The beginning of the Viennese socialists’ scientific activity was marked by the publication of the first volume ofMarx-Studien by Max Adler and Rudolf Hilferding, which was dedicated to Victor Adler (the publication of this tome coincided with the end of the Social Democrats’ long campaign for universal suffrage,whichhadpersisted from 1889–1907). It contained the group’s programmaticmanifesto, aswell asMaxAdler’s ‘Kausalität undTele- ologieimStreiteumdieWissenschaft’(‘CausalityandTeleologyintheStruggle for Science’), Renner’s ‘Die soziale Funktion der Rechtsinstitute, besonders desEigentums’ (‘The Social Functionof Legal Institutions, Particularly Prop- erty’), andHilferding’s ‘Böhm-BawerksMarxKritik’ (‘Böhm-Bawerk’sCritique ofMarx’).Thelatterposedachallengetopositivism,neo-Kantianism,thepsy- chologicalschoolofeconomics,andespeciallyinterpretationsofMarxismheld in so-calledorthodoxcircles thatwere indebted tonaturalism, scientismand Darwinism.Evenif theauthorshadoriginally intendedtheirconceptsasanti- dotestorevisionism,theynonethelesstestifiedtothebirthofanewtheoretical directionwithintheSecondInternational. TheAustromarxists believed thatMarx’s development stage of capitalism belonged in thepast.Applyingmethodsandanalysesderived fromhistorical 19 Anexpert on thisperiod,Norbert Leser, argues: ‘Austromarxist cultural and intellectual life was not only characterised and inspired by a revolutionaryMarxist and pseudo- religious,messianicelement,butalsobyaclassicalpathos foreducation,whichdrewon thestockofGermanclassicismandromanticism.It isapparentinalmostallexponentsof Austromarxism’(ourtranslation).Leser1986,p. 1986.