Page - 220 - in Otto Bauer (1881–1938) - Thinker and Politician

220 chapter 5 theSocialDemocrats’distrustof thepeasantmovementemergingundertheir aegiswas justified: thesocialistpeasants’movementwasaperfunctory trend. Thepeasant leadersneithermanaged toagreeonaplatformof co-operation betweenvariousruralgroups,nordidtheymakeinroadsintothemiddle-class layers of the peasantry, whichwere hostile to the growth of the agricultural workers’movement. Inaddition,theleadersofthepeasantorganisationswere indiscreet about the fact that their support for the sdapwas a tacticalman- oeuvretopreventtheriseofworkers’councils.127 In 1923,objective factorsdrewtheattentionof thesdapto theagricultural question.Economically, thesituation inagriculturewaspoor:due to lowpro- ductivity, theneeds of the cities couldnot bemet. Theother factorwas of a politicalnature:becauseof theirdispersedexistenceandlowclassconscious- ness,theSocialDemocratsstilldidnotconsiderthepeasantryanindependent political force. On the other hand, they could no longer ignore the political advantage that theChristian Social Party and Landbund,which in 1920 had forced the sdap to resign from the coalition government, had secured from organising the rural population.When in 1923 votes for the sdap increased by300,000, theparty’sappetite forseizingpowerof itsownaccordawakened. Inorder toachieve this, ithad to take theprofessionalandsocial structureof Austria’spopulace intoaccount, i.e. appealnotonly to the industrialworking class,butalsotothepeasantry.Forthemajorityoftheparty, itwasevidentthat thesdapcouldonlyconsolidate itspowerandimplementasocialistorderby enticingthepeasantsfromthebourgeoisparties’grasp.Thedirectioninwhich Social-Democraticpoliticswouldmovewassignificant for thepeasants too, if theyweretosupportthesdapandcontributetotheirsuccess. European Social-Democratic thought on the agrarian question since the adventofWorldWariwascharacterisedbyorthodoxMarxistpositions,espe- cially thoseexpounded inKautsky’s earlywritings: thedevelopmentof capit- alismwouldgohandinhandwiththeprocessofconcentrationinagriculture, leadingtothedemiseofsmall farmsandriseofbigagriculturalenterprises. In thelong-term,theseenterpriseswouldbecomelinksinthechainofaplanned socialist economy, and in the short-term, they wouldmodify property rela- tions in the countrysidebasedonproperty relations in the cities – capitalist landownersversus theproletarianisedpeasantry.The logical conclusion from thispositionwasthatpeasantswerethenaturalalliesofworkers inthesocial- ist revolution. For theSocialDemocrats–with theexceptionof the theorists around Bernstein who looked into the agrarian question – this served as a 127 SeeMattl 1985b,p.221.