Harder times ahead for Austria Rainer BAUBOECK VIENNA — "The end of an era" - that was what most of the commentators said after the April 24 elections to the Nationalrat, the major house of the Austrian parliament.
After being in full control of the government for 13 years, the Austrian Social Democratic Party (SPO) lost its absolute majority. Chancellor Bruno Kreisky resigned.
Undoubtedly, the SPO defeat was an important turning point in postwar Austrian politics. But unlike the victory of Kohl and Strauss in West Germany on March 6, it did not mark a major change in the relationship of forces between the social classes.
With 47.65% of the vote, the SPO remains by far the strongest party in the electoral arena. This is a score that the Social Democrats in most West European countries would hardly dare dream of.
Behind the SPO vote stands a party membership whose size is unmatched in any other country (nearly 10% of the total Austrian population belong to the party) and OLLe of the strongest trade-union organizations in the capitalist
Kreisky prepares to face TV cameras (DR)
geois liberal votes that were cast previously for Kreisky rather than for the SPO must have gone this time to the second bourgeois party, the Freiheitliche Partei Oesterreichs (FPO - Liberal Party of Austria).
A third factor was the large number of voters who cast blank ballots or failed to vote. These were mainly SPO rank-and-file voters in the key sections of the industrial proletariat.
LOSSES FOR WHICH THE SPO HAS ONLY ITSELF TO BLAME
The losses in these three major areas amount to a clear condemnation of the policy the Kreisky government has followed in recent years.
On the questions that were taken up in particular by the Greens and the Alternative List groupings - the environment, arms, militarism, privileges, and social inequality - the position of the SPO has clearly been hypocritical.
On the one hand, the party leadership gave those specially concerned with these questions a certain room within the party, so as to bring the so-called new social movements at least partially into the orbit of the SPO. On the other hand, the policy that the SPO tops actually followed was in glaring contradiction to these concerns. Kreisky as the trampled on the resulte ot During the election campaign the 1978 referendum on nuclear power by giving the go-ahead for the only nuclear reactor in the country to resume functioning.
Four months before the election, Kreisky's finance minister, Herbert Salcher, presented a proposal for expanding the Austrian army under the pretext that it was necessary to combat the youth unemployment that was begin-
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A discussion initiated last summer by the SPO about the need, context of the economic crisis, to carry out a policy of income distribution by a tax system favoring the lowest income groups ended with vague promises that some of the tax privileges of politicians
In the first half of the 1970s, Kreisky was able to attract new layers of voters, including bourgeois voters, by a series of modest reforms that liberalized Austrian society somewhat. For example, abortion was made legal during the first three months of pregnancy. was a reform of the penal code.
In the four years before these latest elections, however, the SPO has proposed hardly any reforms like the ones it carries out in the early 1970s. Instead, like the OVP before, it became implicated in scandals over financial deals and
This explains why the small chairman Steger has managed to attenuate the party's old image nationalist group of exNazis, was able to win votes away from the SPO by campaigning against corrup-
The campaign that Kreisky this time was more conservative than any on to the gains that have been made." But this obviously was no longer credible for a lot of SPO working class
The breakthrough of the world capitalist crisis into Austria in the last year has led unemployment to jump to 4.5%. That percentage looks relatively good in comparison to other countries, but even the SPO admits that it is going to grow in the coming year.
The methods encompassed by the govpromoted full employment to a certain extent, have largely exhausted their pos-
The so-called Austro-Keynes- influencing investment trends public spending and by using the weight of the large sector of nationalized industries and banks in Austria - has been reaching its limits. That is, it has been coming to the point where service on the national debt takes more money out of circulation than public spending
THE FEEBLE BOURGEOIS WINNERS conservative OVP is the only party in parliament that gained votes
It got 43.22% of the vote this time, a gain of 1.32% by comparison with 1979. This is, after all, a very modest gain, and far less than the SPO lost. Nonetheless, it was hailed by the party chairman, Alois Mock, and the bourgeois press as a great victory. In fact, this is the first time since 1966 that the OVP has gained strength relative to the SPO
The OVP borrowed its main themes from its sister party, the CDU, in West Germany. It called for cutting state spending - "Stop squandering the taxpayers' money." It called on the voters to "join us to get an economic upturn, although there is not a glimmer of this
Despite the parallels with bourgeois conservative austerity policies in other West European countries, there is an important difference. The OVP does not believe that it can carry out such a program by itself in opposition to the Social Democrats and the unions.
There are two reasons for this. One is the organizational strength of the Austrian workers movement the lack of a big-capitalist base for the bourgeois parties. Since the centers of industry and finance capital are managed by the state, the social base of the OVP and the FPO is primarily the so-called classes middle industrialists, small business, farmers).
Since 1945, the Austrian bourgeoisie has followed a very successful policy of institutionalized collaboration with the unions and in most governments with the SPO. By this means it has been able to achieve its interests through negotiation and so far as possible to avoid social
This system of "social partnership" could rely on the general bourgeois policy of the SPO and the union leader-
Alois Mock's achievement is that in these elections he succeeded in uniting the bourgeois camp around the objective of a "Great Coalition" between the OVP and the SPO, which would take "social partnership" into the government it-
In 1979, the SPO managed to defeat the OVP partly on the basis of a successful campaign against the threat of a "bourgeois bloc." This time, the OVP put forward a more modest and credible governmental able to win voters away from the FPO and keep the bourgeois Green party from headway among its electoral A COALITION FOR FURTHER DEFEATS
The negotiations between the SPO, OVP, and FPO on the formation of the new government are not yet concluded. In the SPO, especially in its trade-union wing, there is a strong current in favor of a Great Goalition.
Nonetheless, it seems likely that the Social Democrats will cheat the OVP out of its half victory and form a small coaliand the center of the party apparatus are openly arguing for this solution. hope thereby to better maintain the SPO's positions in the state apparatus and a greater continuity with the policy followed in the last decades.
The fate of the Schmidt government in West Germany, however, has clearly shown how much even a weak bourgeois coalition partner can threaten to alter the role of a Social Democratic party in a period of crisis.
The sort of coalition the SPO wants to set up now will inevitably aggravate the causes of its present losses in the coming
Kreisky's legacy, participation by the SPO in a bourgeois government will prove a Greek gift. create conditions that will give the OVP a real chance to become the strongest party in the country in the 1987 elections.
An understanding of this is appearing in a lot of discussions in the base groups. Quite often proposals are being made that the party should go into opposition and revitalize its internal life. But while such a shift might for a time stem the growth of the Green-Alternative left of the SPO and slow the erosion of the party's base in the industrial proletariate, we do not share the illusions of the comrades in the SPO that their party leadership is capable of really changing
If the SPO went into opposition, it would not give up the policy of social partnership" that has brought the Austrian bourgeoisie the lowest strike figures in any industrialized capitalist state.
conceivable government that could be formed today will make conditions worse for a revival of class struggle in Austria than if the SPO had gotten an absolute majority.
The Gruppe Revolutionaere Marxisten (GRM), Austrian section of the Fourth International, campaigned for an allSPO government. Such a government, because of its social basis, would have had less room for attacking the material gains of the working class. Moreover, the fact that the SP leadership would have had clear responsibility for the government's policies would have favored differentiation within the Austrian workers move-
A NEW FACTOR - THE GREENS
AND THE ALTERNATIVE LIST
Although the VGO and the ABU, which respectively got 1.93% and 1.36% of the votes, did less well than expected and did not make it into parliament, these groupings represent a new factor in Austrian politics, which may become important in the coming years under a coalition government.
Nonetheless, there is no great future for the bourgeois VGO, which is a pure protest party without an independent
Its chairperson, geology professor Alexander Tollman, quickly withdrew when it became clear that he was not going to get a seat in parliament.
The Alternative Liste Oesterreich can be compared in many respects with the Green party in West Germany. Like it, the ALO bases itself on the protest movements against destruction of the environment, women's oppression, discriminaand militarism. However, such movements are weaker in Austria than in other European countries.
Nuclear energy programs and the sta-
NATO rockets, have polarized West German society and made possible the success of the Greens, do not have the same importance in Aus-