Books

Books

Joseph Buttinger’s book, “In the Twilight of Socialism,” is the history of the Austrian socialist underground from the victory of Austro-Fascism in February 1934 up to Hitler’s Anschluss in March 1938.

Indian Summer of Austrian Socialism

IN THE TWILIGHT OF SOCIALISM, by Joseph Buttinger. Frederick Praeger. New York, 1953. 577 pp. $6.

Joseph Buttinger’s book, “In the Twilight of Socialism,” is the history of the Austrian socialist underground from the victory of Austro-Fascism in February 1934 up to Hitler’s Anschluss in March 1938. The movement of the “Revolutionary Socialists” was the most dramatic. expression of Austrian socialism; it was at the same time the climax of the European labor movement which had recognized the Austrian party as the “model” party of the Second International between the two World Wars.

The Austrian Social Democratic Party’s international prestige was well deserved. Austria had neither “yellow unions” nor a Communist party worth mentioning. The bulk of the working class was solidly united within the Social Democratic movement. The party was noted for its skill in combining an apparently highly revolutionary militancy with practical politics and—witness the famous welfare institutions of Red Vienna—for its great administrative ability.

The Austrian working class had very early embraced socialism as its political philosophy. Workmen were the core of the movement when Austrian Social Democracy was born in 1888; workmen remained the backbone throughout its existence. Nowhere in the world was the bond between the working class and socialism stronger. The labor movement was made up of four main branches: the party, labor unions, cultural organizations and consumers’ cooperatives. All were formally independent but, in fact, coordinated parts of the common movement.

This movement was unbelievably broad and diversified. In 1932, 648 thousand dues paying members, or 10 per cent of the total population, were organized in 1720 party locals. Hundreds of thousands were also members of labor unions or cultural organizations. More than 1000 co-op stores were spread over the country; other businesses, such as banks, bookstores, printing plants, hotels and restaurants, bakeries, a shoe factory and even a department store were operated by the movement. The Viennese Arbeiterzeitung was the biggest full-size paper in a city where the party also published a popular daily tabloid; scores of local newspapers and magazines flowed off mostly party-owned presses.

The movement provided not only educational activity but also sports, recreation and hobbies. Whether you wanted to read or study; play chess, music or football; preferred hiking, swimming or fishing; liked to go to concerts or to the theater; wanted to visit museums or art galleries—but also if you were given to such innocent pastimes as stamp collecting or canary breeding, not to forget yodeling—the movement was ready for you.

Social Democracy was not just another political party. It was— if not a state within a state–a n...