Youth and the ecology movement and asle to relaunch
For more than two years, the Austrian government's scheme for building a dam and a nuclear power station at Hainburg on the Danube has met with massive resistance, especially among the youth. This affair has become a burning issue in day-to-day politics, and even the supporters of this project have had to retreat. At the start of 1985, the government in fact decided to yield to the mobilizations and to the activists who occupied the Hainburg site and who had faced violent police repression. The work was suspended until a referendum could be held on the question.
These struggles made it possible to relaunch the activity of the ecological and antinuclear movement, producing national and international reverberations. The question facing the Austrian Greens -Alternatives movement and the currents of the revolutionary left is whether the conditions have been assembled for undertaking the construction of a political party to the left of the Social Democracy, which could concentrate and magnify the capacity for mobilization shown in these latest struggles. The discussion has thus been opened on what should be the political foundations of such a party.
queston. Herman DWORCZAK
In Austria in the past environmental questions played quite a secondary role. The workers' movement regarded them as irrelevant. Of course, the Social Democratic Party (SPOe) has a large organization called the "Friends of Nature." But its activities have been more or less confined to hiking, mountain climbing, and sailing.
For the radical left also, the question of defending the environment remained essentially a "dead horse" up until late in the 1970s. Concern for the environment was left almost exclusively to the "unpolitical" environmental defense organizations, individual scientists, or bourgeois personalities. Such people tended to be regarded as rather odd and unworldly.
A break with this attitude first occurred over the project of building a nuclear power station at Zwentendorf. Under the impetus of international experiences, a broad antinuclear movement developed. In it the left, in particular the Maoists, who were still strong, set the tone. On the initiative of Austrian section of the Fourth International, the movement took up the demand for a referendum on nuclear energy. Since the conservatives, the Oesterreichische Volkspartei, took their distance from the Zentendorf project for tactical reasons, the SPOe was threatened with being stuck with a pronuclear label in the upcoming parliamentary elections. So, the then SPOe premier, Bruno Kreisky, decided to hold a referendum on the subject on November 5, 1978. Nuclear power was defeated by a narrow majority, 50.5% against 49.5%.
The broad movement, whose influence reached deep into bourgeois circles themselves, broke up. A tew small propaganda groups remained, which began reactivating when the nuclear lobby made new moves toward opening Zwentendorf.
Despite the breakup of the anti-nuclear movement, the awareness of environmental problems continued to 10 rise strongly after 1978. It was impelled by international developments such as the rise of the German Greens, the erosion of the Social Democracy, and the failure of the panaceas of the radical left. A Green-Alternative current developed. From the outset, despite an ideological overlapping, two distinct projects were discernible. One was the bourgeois conception of the "pure Greens," who would work for environmentalist reforms in the framework of the market economy. The other was the conception of the "Alternatives," who did not want to limit their activity to defense of the environment and who looked to a "society beyond the profit principle." These two approaches are expressed
TEENAGANA FEE REE FILE + Д today in two different organizations, the first by the Verinten Gruenen (VGOe, the United Greens of Austria), and the second by the Alternativen Liste Oesterreichs (ALOe, Alternative Slate of Austria).
The post-1945 period in Austria, the period of the Second Republic, has been marked by a general process of depoliticalization. The reasons for this are clear. The conservatives and Social Democrats formed a "great coalition" that was to last until 1966. Conflicts were eliminated by "social partnerships" before they got to parliament. Every autonomous move by the working class was stifled before it could get anywhere.
Austria today holds the world's record for the least strikes, with 5.7 seconds per worker lost in strikes. Not only were criticism and study of the fascist past not wanted, intellectual debate in general, political culture went into decline. The Alpine republic became "Europe's Disneyland." (1)
While the older generations retained some rudiments of political thinking, the youth were nearly totally depoliticalized. A small young left swam against the stream in the 1960s (the Verband Socialistischer Mittelschueler [Socialist High-School Students League] and the Verband Sozialistischer Studenten Oesterreichs [Socialist Student League of Austria]. On this basis, the student movement began to develop in 1967.
Unlike other countries, the Austrian student movement failed almost totally to make any impact beyond the campus. Despite operations to "unfreeze the climate" and some individual political successes, May 1968 and its effects in Austria were no more than a "hot quarter of an hour." (2)
In the second half of the 1970s and the first years of the 1980s, there were
Cf. Siegried Mattl, "Europas Disneyland. Politik, Kultur und Unkultur in der Zweiten Republik," in Die Linke, No. 6, 1985. 2. Fritz Keller, Wien, May 1968 - Eine heisse Viertelstunde, Venna 1983.
International Viewpoint 17 June 1985
limited vouth mohilizatione youth mobilizations, mainly suggest s-managed cultural and struggles for self managed cultural and communications centers. They never managed to involve more than small groups.
However, the conflict over the nuclear reactor project in Hainburg last December, in which young people played the main role, showed that under the deceptive surface of passivity a considerable discontent has accumulated. And the generally repressive social climate for young people has shaped this process to a considerable extent.
At the beginning, Hainburg was "only" a dubious project from the environmental and economic standpoints. But the government's stubborness and the cementworshipping philosophy of the Austrian unions, which have learned nothing from the Zwentendorf struggle and have taken up the cause of the profits of the building and electrical industry, made the Hainburg project rapidly the focus of all sorts of social contradictions. Among other things, this issue highlighted the undemocratic character of Austrian parliamentarianism.
When the police launched a massive attack on the occupiers of the Hainburg site on December 19, 40,000 persons came out to a protest demonstration in Vienna.
Confronted with these strong protests, the government opted for a "Christmas truce" and then for a year's "pause for reflection." So, the building plans were put on ice until next fall.
While the "bunker" faction in the Austrian Confederation of Unions is still pressing for the construction of Hainburg, in various unions the traditional ideas about "growth at any price" have started to slip. For example, Alfred Dolinger, president of the country's biggest union, the Private Industry Workers, turned away from the "traditional conceptions" in a Factory Council members conference in March, and raised a call for involvement of the unions in environmental questions. It is International Viewpoint 17 June 1985 no wonder! He estimates that in his own union, a third members are concern mental questions."
While in 1983, Gruenen," who were media, got far less t results in the parlia and in the vote for council, the Alternat respectable vote. (3)
In the wake of t Alternativen went into which they were awak Hainburg conflict. In have had difficulty in programmatic bases. T the already outdated Manifesto of the ALI statement has a few nic self-management, anti women, it does not substantial hevond the of the 350,000 ed about environthe "Vereinten favored by the han the expected nentary elections the Vienna city iven got quite a nis, however, the hibernation, from ened only by the particular, they developing their hey still hold to
"Programmatic Oe." While this ie passages about militarism, and offer anything
"environmentalism, solidarity, grass-roots democracy, and non-violence."
The Social Democrats and bourgeois parties are thrown together without distinction into the category of "old parties." There is an insufficient understanding of the state, and at the same time the ALOe makes a bow to the constitution: "The ALOe acts on the basis of the constitution of the Republic of Austria." There is no specific appreciation of late capitalism nor any precise perspective for the future. The statement says:
"We want an economy that does not endanger the bases of life and that makes it possible for all to lead a full life." There are also very unfortunate evocations of the theme of "small is beautiful," such as "The alternative is not to live from the world market but from your own forces."
Even the more left Vienna Alternative Slate denounces the Social Democracy mainly for being " the nuclear party." Instead of orienting to the workers'
A polluted river in Austria (DR)
movement, movement, which which is particularly is nartieularly necessary in Vienna, it sees itself only as "a coalition of the discontented in this city."
In the most recent period the VGOe have assumed a more right-wing profile, and not the least important reason for this is their hope of getting into parliament even without a coalition with the Alternativen. Their representative the Josef Buchner explained their economic and political principles as follows:
"We do not want to change the economic system. We want a free economic system. To some extent, our model is freer than the strongly regulatd one that now exists." These conceptions are very reminiscent of the "neoliberal" rants of the Association of Industrialists. Moreover, the general secretary of the VGOe Wolfgang Pelikan, fired a blast at the nationalized industries:
"They have gotten too big, and the state bureaucracy is not necessarily the appropriate instrument for managing enterprises."
The action to stop Hainburg and subsequent successes in local elections in the states of Steiermark, Niederoesterreich, and Vorarlburg objectively posed the question, regardless of the will of those involved, of the way forward for the Green-Alternative current. Will it advance inch by inch in local elections or, like the Greens in West Germany, make a sudden leap into "big time politics?"
After the Alternatives and the Vereinten Gruenen engaged in a little unprincipled flirting around the Hainburg action and following it, the right turn of the Greens has caused a certain dismay among , the Alternativen. In comradely discussions with the latter, the GRM (Revolutionary Marxist Group, Austrian section of the Fourth International) has stressed that founding a party which could combine the potential for protest and mobilization and raise it to a higher level would undoubtedly give an impetus to the possibilities for progressive political action. At the same time, we insisted that four points were essential.
In the first place, such a party would have to offer strong programmatic points, such as the 35-hour week without any cut in pay, opposition to any form of austerity policy, full support for women's right to chose, and solidarity with the Third World Liberation Movements.
Secondly, there is "no way around" the working people, especially those who have been expelled from the process of production.
Thirdly, internal democracy has to be guaranteed in the party, and not in the last instance for various ideological currents.
Finally, any members of the party elected to parliament must assume the role of speaking for the decisive extraparliamentary movements. 3. In the parliamentary elections, the GOe got 93,000 votes; the ALOe, 65,000. In Venna, in the municipal elections, the Alternativen elected people in ten wards.
11 substantial beyond the four themes of
BELGIUM.