Page - 252 - in Otto Bauer (1881–1938) - Thinker and Politician

252 chapter 6 Asapoliticianwellacquaintedwiththesocio-politicaldynamicswithinthe state,Bauerknewthatthebourgeoisiewouldfighttoruleexclusivelyassoonas ithadbuttresseditspoliticalstanding.Healsorealisedthatitwouldattemptto pushtheworkingclassoutofallpolitical,administrativeandeconomicbodies that limited bourgeois economic power. Prophetically, he predicted in the 1920s that thebourgeoisiewouldabandondemocraticpositions themoment democracywasnolongerabletosafeguarditseconomicinterests.Bauercame to experience this first-hand after 1922, when the bloc of bourgeois parties, emboldenedby the fact that Seipel’s plans for theGenevaProtocolhadbeen successful, repealed some of the concessions achieved by theworking class during the revolutionaryperiod. Inpractice, abstracted fromsocio-economic realities, the ‘socialbalance’ theoryof thestateassumedtheconcrete formsof thebourgeois democratic republic in the 1920s and theauthoritarian regime after 1934. Bauer’s ‘balanceof classpower’ theoryprovoked ire fromLenin10–under- standably so, fromaCommunistperspective–andwasdismissedas apetty- bourgeois delusion on the part of the Social Democrats.11 Norwas it spared criticismfrombourgeois theorists.KelsenaccusedBauerofrevisingtheMarx- ist theoryofclassstruggleandabandoningMarxistpositions,claimingthathe had forsakenrevolutionaryperspectives.12Thischargewouldhavebeen justi- fiedhadBauereverendorsedMarx’s theoryofarmedrevolution. In truth,his conceptofthestateas‘balanceofclasspower’wasanintegralpartofhisoverall visionofademocraticroadtosocialism.Bauer’stheoryofthestateallowedhim toprovidea commongroundof cross-classunderstandingandco-operation. Its sincere actual purposewas to vindicate the sdap’s strategies and legitim- ise the coalitionpolicies inwhich it had engaged since thebeginning of the First Republic. The idea that itwas necessary for theworkers’ party to forge coalitions and co-operatewith bourgeois partieswas the result of a specific assessmentofbourgeoisdemocracyandacorrespondingstrategicapproach.13 10 Leninunabashedly attacked it as beingharmful for theworking class – seeLenin 1965, pp.460–80. 11 SeeAdler1981,pp. 198–203. 12 SeeKelsen1924. 13 Kautskysharedthisperspective–seeKautsky1922,p. 106.