Page - 175 - in Otto Bauer (1881–1938) - Thinker and Politician

the ‘thirdway’ to socialism 175 Inviewoftheabove, it isevidentthatBauerunderstoodthetransformation of the socio-economicorder as a transitional development stageof capitalist societytowardssocialismthatwouldlastmanyyears.HeconcurredwithMarx that this stagewould only begin once the bourgeoisie hadbeendeprived of politicalpower,althoughheinnowaysupportedhisdoctrineofarmedrevolu- tionaryuprising.Whatformarevolutionmighttakeremainedcontroversialfor Bauer–hestronglyfocusedonitduringboththerevolutionaryperiod(1918–21) andthefascistcounter-revolution(1926–38).Becausethistopicwillbesubject tocloserexaminationlateron,a fewgeneralremarkswill sufficehere. Bauer understooddictatorship as a total negationof bothdemocracy and socialism,but, aboveall, as a threat to the civil rights and libertyof the indi- vidual, a restriction on the realmof productivity, and a source of alienation anddehumanisation of societies. LikeRenner, he identified the dictatorship of theproletariat not just as a new typeof class state, but as a distinct form ofpower. Yet, for Bauer, thepeaceful road to socialismwasmuchmore than anissueof tactics for theworkers’movementorapurelytheoreticalquestion. Analysing the forms that a socialist revolutionmight take,heconcluded that theywoulddependontheconditionsunderwhichrevolutiontookplace.Inhis earlierworksandpublicappearances,hedidnottakeintoaccounttheoption of employing dictatorialmeasures during or after the struggle for power.He summeduphis position thus: ‘It is barely possible tomaintain a soviet dic- tatorshiphere [inWesternandCentralEurope] in the longer term,albeit the proletariatdoesnotneed it inorder toseizepower’.13According toBauer, the parliamentary routewas themost appropriateway, especially in a situation where the proletariat constituted aminority. Thus, he recommended at the party congress of 30October–1November 1918 that theworkingmasses con- siderwinningfullpoliticaldemocracyinthebourgeoisstatetheirstrategicgoal, andonlythentakingupthestruggle forsocialism.14 itiononproletarian revolutionbeingclose toMarx’s, Leichterdefended thenotion that thereweredifferencesbetweenbourgeoisandproletarianrevolutions.SeeLeichter 1924, p. 179. 13 Bauer1976c,p.349. 14 Iwouldliketostress that from1918–19,manyactivistsandideologistsofEuropeanSocial Democracy adopted Bauer’s perspective and proclaimed that the highly industrialised countriesofEuropeboastedneitherpoliticalnoreconomicpreconditions fora socialist stateorder.TheSocialDemocratsbelieved that thestruggle for socialismwouldassume peacefulandlegalmeans.Parliamentaryworkwouldprotectthestateagainstthedestruc- tion of its foundations and simultaneously facilitate themodification of its functions in the interest of all social classes. Contradicting his own earlier statements, Kautsky