Page - 13 - in Otto Bauer (1881–1938) - Thinker and Politician

otto bauer andhis time 13 consequentdisintegrationof theparty.Hiswasa far-sightedpolitics: the fed- eralpartystructure,enforcedin1897bystrongcentresofoppositionespecially inCzechiaandPoland,weakenedthestabilityof theworkers’movement.The party leadershipheldtheviewthatthepreservationofvasteconomicterritor- ieswas in the interestof theproletariat.Hence, leavingaside theclassaspect of the national question, the programme it adopted inBern in 1899 deman- dedthetransformationofAustria-Hungary intoafederalstateofautonomous peoples, defended the inviolability of the borders of themonarchy, and de factorejectedtherightofnationstoself-determination.Thisprogrammesoon found theoretical support in Renner’s 1902 concept of exterritorial national- cultural autonomy.32 Bauer addressed this concept in several articles inDer Kampf in1907–8–‘DiesozialeGliederungderösterreichischenNationen’(‘The SocialStructureoftheAustrianNations’), ‘UnserNationalitätenprogrammund unsereTaktik’(‘OurNationalitiesProgrammeandTactics’),and‘Massenpsyche undSprachenrecht’ (‘MassPsychologyandLinguisticRight’)–andinhismost substantial work, TheQuestion of Nationalities and Social Democracy, which VictorAdlerhadencouragedhimtowrite.Whenthe latter textwas firstpub- lishedin1907inthesecondvolumeofMarx-Studien, itearnedthe26-year-old authordeservedfameandinternationalrecognition.33Basedonthereception ofKarl Lamprecht’sDiedeutscheGeschichte (GermanHistory),34 Bauer’s text wasadeparture fromthewidespreadbeliefamongSocialDemocrats (suchas JeanGuesdeandRosaLuxemburg) that thenational ideawasbutabourgeois prejudice.What ismore, itattackedcanonical sociological theoriesbyFerdin- andTönnies,GeorgSimmel, andRudolf Stammler, andchallenged theSocial Darwinists.OneofBauer’sachievementswasthatheappliedMarx’smethodof historicalandeconomicanalysis–hewasunjustlyaccusedofhavingborrowed the formofpresentation fromMarx’sTheEighteenthBrumaireofLouisNapo- 32 SeeRenner1902. 33 Thisworkwastranslatedintomanylanguages.PartsofitwerepublishedinPolishin1908, enticinggreat interest fromtheorists in thePolishSocialistParty (pps). In the 1920s, the programme of national-cultural autonomy inspired Kazimierz Domosławski, Zygmunt Dreszer,andTadeuszHołówko,whiletheAustrianideaoffederalisationfoundthesupport of BolesławLimanowski andMieczysławNiedziałkowski. LeonWasilewskimaintained the idea of national assimilation. Echoes of the cultural interpretation of the nation contained inTheNationalitiesQuestionandSocialDemocracycanbe found in thework of Tadeusz Rechlewski, Bronisław Siwik,M. Niedziałkowski and L.Wasilewski. I wrote onthedifferencesbetweenAustrianandPolishsocialistconceptionsinCzerwińska1991, pp.437–59. 34 Bauerwroteitssectionsaspartofadissertationin1905andaddedfurtherparts in1906.