Page - 221 - in Otto Bauer (1881–1938) - Thinker and Politician

the ‘thirdway’ to socialism 221 justification for neglecting the peasant question and failing towork out any programmesforthecountryside. The sdapwas the first Social-Democratic party that delivered suchapro- gramme.Inthe1920s,AustrianSocialDemocratswereawarethatthedevelop- mentofagriculturehadnotvindicatedMarxianprognoses.Moreover,theydid not believe that one shouldwait for history to catchupandvindicate them. In their view, apartywishing tochangeproperty relations in thecountryside requiredaprogrammewhichtookintoaccountnottheprojectedbuttheactual developmenttendenciesofagriculture.Furthermore, itshouldbeattractiveto thedivided countryside. Theagricultural committee summonedat theparty congress inSalzburgon2November 1923,withBauerat itshead,wasentrus- tedwith the responsibility todraft suchaprogramme.Bauer’s profoundand extensive study,DerKampfumWaldundWeide (TheStruggle forWoodsand Pastures), served as a basis. The draft was unanimously adopted at the 1925 partycongressandincorporatedintotheprogrammeofLinz.Itrepresentedthe quintessenceofSocial-Democraticpoliticsconcerningthecountryside,andat the same time reflected the social policies of the sdap.Disregarding towhat extent itwas genuinely a socialist programme, its authors’ effort toprecisely define its basic features and carefully consider detailed solutions cannot be ratedhighlyenough. Marxisttheoryservedasasourceofinspirationfortheagrarianprogramme. ItisdifficultnottorecognisetheinfluenceofclassicalMarxistsontheagrarian question reflected in its pages. For instance, the notion that the productiv- ity of big agricultural enterprises is greater than the productivity of smaller ones prevailed. According to the programme, this was the reason why big enterprisesobjectively contributed to the rationalisationofproduction.Non- etheless, the programme departed from the premise that small agricultural enterprises would disappear, a premise that had remained in the European Social-Democraticmovementsincetheadoptionofthe1891Erfurtprogramme. Instead, thenecessitytopreservetheprivatepropertyofpeasants,evenunder socialism,was accentuated.128 This echoedanalyses basedonexperiences of theOctoberRevolution that Bauer had expressed in earlier texts.He argued that itwouldbewrong to impose collectivisationonAustrianpeasants from above, because social relations weremore advanced in the Austrian coun- trysidethaninRussia.Hence, theemphasisofhisagrarianprogrammewason thequestionastowhetheritwaspossible–or, indeed,desirable–tointroduce socialist relations intothecountrysidewithout infringingthe interestofpeas- 128 Seesdap1926binDocuments,Programmes,Protocols,p.23.