Table Of ContentAUSTRIAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY TODAY
Also by John Fitzmaurice
SECURITY AND POLmCS IN mE NORDIC AREA
QUEBEC AND CANADA
mE POLITICS OF BELGIUM
POLITICS IN DENMARK
AUSTRIAN POLITICS
AND SOCIETY TODAY
In Defence of Austria
John Fitzmaurice
Foreword by
Bruno Kreisky
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-11803-8 ISBN 978-1-349-11801-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-11801-4
© John Fitzmaurice 1990 Foreword © Bruno Kreisky 1990
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990.
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholary and Reference Division,
St. Martins Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1990
ISBN 978-0-312-04706-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fitzmaurice, John.
Austrian politics and society today: in defence of Austria! John
Fitzmaurice; foreword by Bruno Kreisky.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-312-04706-1
1. Austria-Politics and government-l945- 2. Austria
Civilization-20th century. I. Title.
DB99.2.F58 1990
943.605'3-dc20
~32409
CIP
For Elizabeth
Table of Contents
Map of Austria viii
Foreword ix
Acknowledgements xii
List of Abbreviations xiii
Preface xiv
1 Introduction 1
2 From Empire to Nation 8
3 Austria in the World 34
4 . The Political Process 71
5 Austro-Keynesianism: Politics Against the Market 120
6 Social Partnership 140
7 Democratic Reform: Federalism and Democracy 156
8 A Summing Up 173
Further Reading 180
Index 187
VII
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AP
Foreword
At a time of well-publicised attacks on Austria, it does one
good to be confronted, though from a not uncritical standpoint, with
this work, with its subtitle 'In Defence of Austria'. The very complex
history of the Austrian nation makes these varied views most
appropriate
In the year of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Adolf
Hitler, I decided to be one of the contributors to a comprehensive
evaluation of Hitler in the well known critical German magazine Der
Spiegel. There, I dealt with the use of stereotypes, as is often the case
today, to unleash orgies of hatred. This was of course not my only
motive, since political and historical truth must be served.
What are the most frequent reproaches levelled at Austria today?
Even if a good deal of this must be reduced to its proper proportions,
it still is worth looking at what remains uncontested and therefore still
valid. There have been frequent collapses in Austrian history.
Dreadful mistakes were certainly made in the old Austro-Hungarian
Monarchy and it is worth making the attempt to analyse what, in
Austrian history was so to say ineluctable and what could have been
different if a radically different policy had been followed.
British historians in particular showed a very limited fairness
towards the Austria of 1918. Historians like Seton-Watson or A.J.P.
Taylor made no secret of their slavophile tendencies, and this led to
the easy conclusion as to what should happen to the rump of Austria.
Many also came to the simplistic view that all Austrians, like the old
rump, had desired the Anschluss. The historical paradox that after
the Second World War, the majority of Austrians did not want to
hear about any 'Anschluss', is deliberately ignored now, so it is
hardly surprising that some over eager supporters in Austria of the
European Idea are suspected of covertly promoting an Anschluss
with Germany.
What can be briefly said about the issue? Even those who are not
supporters of the Austrian Nation have to admit that, apart from the
years between 1938 and 1945, Austria was in fact never part of
Germany. Certainly, since the collapse of Hitlerism, the vast majority
of the Austrian people have supported independence. The difference
between Germany and Austria is slightly reminiscent of the situation
ix
x Foreword
in Britain, though at first sight this may appear rather surprising. No
Scot would deny the existence of Scotland merely because Scots and
English people both speak English. The comparison is not of course
perfect, but on the other hand, it is not as unjustified as it may seem.
What I mean by it is that the Austrians are always being told that they
must be Germans because they speak German. That has never been
applied in the French-speaking world and certainly never in the wider
Latin world. Why then should it be applied to Austria, where
demonstrably, indeed as a result of greater German imperialism, the
old slogan 'Ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Fuehrer' has long ceased to hold
sway?
What about the Nazi aspect? Well, already in the old Austria,
there was often clerico-catholic sympathy with antisemitism. This is
difficult to explain in detail. Indeed, it must be very difficult to
understand for the British historical tradition, where a Lord
Beaconsfield, born as Disraeli, is taken for granted. It remains
however a fact which can be shown through many examples such as
the notorious Mayor of Vienna Karl Lueger, that it was a dominant
trait of Austrian history. In the article to which I referred earlier, I
show how close historically, Lueger's antisemitism was to the
holocaust. This issue is still very much alive, as a controversial article
written by Joel Carmichael in the AprillMay number of the New
York review Midstream shows. He calls on Christian theologians to
set the New Testament criticisms of the Jews back in their historical
context and thereby 'transform the Jews from their status as
mysterious agents of Satan, into normal non-Christians like the
majority of the human race'. Religious historians are right to deal
with this aspect of the problem.
As to more recent social and economic developments in Austria, 1
would like to insist on the fact that while I was in government, I
followed a policy, called neo-Keynesian by some and which certainly
went along those lines, especially to fight unemployment, but which
was, I must in all modesty point out, different in both form and
content. I shall illustrate this by a few comments. Certainly, the
phenomenon of unemployment and the battle against it, does have
historical meaning, but probably not the basic ideas themselves. I am
only too well aware that the ideas that we helped promote were
strongly attacked at the time of their greatest political
relevance - that is the fate of all the basic ideas of political economy.
However, as the Report to the US Congress by Professor Leontief,
recommending closer attention to the German and Austrian
