Page - 248 - in Otto Bauer (1881–1938) - Thinker and Politician

248 chapter 6 ety,andthestateasaspecific legalandpoliticalorder.LikeMaxAdler,hesaw the bourgeois-democratic state as a tool of bourgeois rule, stressing that its legal systemonlyservedto fortifyeconomicandclass subjugation.Likeother Austromarxists,however,heprioritised the formal rather thantheclass facet. Hence, as amaturepolitician, he ratified anotionborrowed fromLassalle, a viewalsopresent in thebeliefsofRennerandKelsen–undercapitalistprop- ertyrelations,heargued,thestatehadaneutralcharacterandwasbeneficialto theworkingclass.3Despitehiscriticisms,Bauer’stheoryofthestateas‘balance ofclasspower’ testifiedtohisrespectforthebourgeoisstateanddemocracyas formalinstitutions.Democracywasnotonlytheoverridingcategoryinhisstate theory; itwasalsothecardinalvalueinhisperceptionofdemocraticsocialism. 1 TheStateas ‘Balance’ofClassPower This theory can be found in Bauer’s works from 1923–4,Die österreichische Revolution (TheAustrianRevolution) andDasGleichgewichtderKlassenkräfte (TheBalanceofClassPower).The fact thatherevisited thetheory inhis 1934– 6 texts,DemokratieundSozialismus (DemocracyandSocialism) andZwischen zweiWeltkriegen (BetweenTwoWorldWars) demonstrates howsignificant he considered it to be. The aims it intended to serve culminated from socio- historicalconditions: initially, ‘balance’theoryprovidedtheantecedentforthe practice of democratically transforming capitalism into socialism. Later, he used it toexplain themechanismsbywhich fascismcouldobtainpower.4 Its constitutional thesiswas that thecapitalist statewouldenteraperiodduring which thebalanceofantagonistic classeswaspractically equal.5Bauerbased 3 In the 1920s, Renner stated that in the contemporary bourgeois state, there is a growing tendency for ‘the economy… to exclusively serve the capitalist class, and for the state to predominately serve the proletariat’ (our translation). Original: ‘die Ökonomie … immer ausschließlicherderKapitalistenklasse,derStaatimmervorwiegenderdemProletariatdient’. ThiswasbasedonKelsen’s thesis fromKelsen1923,p. 105. 4 ForinterestingcommentaryonbothaspectsofBauer’stheoryofthe ‘balanceofclasspower’, seeSaage1986,pp.83–5andSaage1990,pp.67–76. 5 Theconceptdidnotrefertoarithmeticequalitybetweenthebourgeoisieandtheproletariat, but rather to the political strength of both. This is echoed in Kautsky’sDie proletarische RevolutionundihrProgramm(TheProletarianRevolutionanditsProgramme, 1922),wherehe finds that a state of balancebetween thebourgeoisie and theproletariat canbe achieved. Withuniversal suffrage at its disposal andbecause of its increased electoral potential, the workingclasscandefenditselfagainstbeingpushedontothedefensive.Kautskyconcluded