In late September/early October of 1950, a massive strike wave, including a general strike swept through Austria. Hundreds of thousands refused to work, as they demonstrated in the streets and occupied public buildings. They were united in their demands to scrap the hated wage-price agreements, which had pushed down living standards following World War 2. Despite the massive show of working-class force, the movement was defeated and the October Strikes are now but a dim memory in Austria. How could this happen?
The Development of Capitalism in Austria
Austria is now known as one of the richest countries, with one of the highest living standards in the world. But immediately after 1945, things looked quite different. World War 2 left behind not only mountains of corpses, but also a destroyed country. At that time Austria was one of the poorest countries in Europe. The main task was reconstruction, to which everything else was subordinated, including the living standards of the workers. The bourgeois forces in Austria had developed primarily as an appendage of the monarchy in the 19th century, and had always been quite weak. After World War 1, they largely supported first Austro-fascism (1933–38) and then the Nazi regime (1938–45).
Because of this weakness, the Austrian bourgeoisie could not play a leading role in post-WW2 reconstruction. On the contrary: small and medium-sized enterprises had to be nurtured by the Austrian state, supported by the “Marshall Plan”. The then-nationalized large and heavy industries ensured them favourable access to raw materials and provided the necessary infrastructure. The bourgeois motto of the time, which still echoes to this day was: “If the economy is doing well, we are all doing well“.
Social Partnership
But that this formula is not true was shown even then by the fact that companies drastically raised the prices of everyday goods, pushing the working population into ever greater hunger and poverty. Above all, entrepreneurs and the management of the nationalized companies were of the opinion that wages must be kept low in order to stabilize the reconstruction of the economy. The capitalists agreed that the demands of the working class should be resisted. In order to mitigate these attacks on the working class, which had already paid the price of war and fascism, but also to forestall protests, the Austrian Trade Union Federation (ÖGB) negotiated the so-called “wage-price agreements”. In negotiations with representatives from business and government, the development of wages and prices was to be regulated.
These wage-price agreements were the forerunners of institutionalised collective bargaining and thus the beginning of “social partnership”. Social partnership, which is based on the wrongheaded idea that there are common interests of capital and labour, became a widely-held belief in Austria during this era. Because it explicitly denies the existence of class struggle, social partnership relies primarily on negotiation and largely rejects the means of industrial action. It is more than just a tactic and has in fact become the ideological flagship of the ÖGB. Every previous step forward by the working-class was and is attributed to this magical idea. However, few trade union members know that this fortress of social peace, which is today almost in ruins, was enforced by violence and the political muzzling of its opponents, not of representatives of capital, but of important parts of the Austrian working class itself.
The consciousness of the working class in the post-war period was shaped by the objective situation of being in a destroyed country, as well as by a certain self-confidence and radicalization that followed 1945. For many, the connection between fascism and capitalism had become clear during the war; there existed a desire for a common workers’ party (for which there were very real beginnings in 1945) in opposition to the right wing led social democracy that had adapted to capitalism. The fact that the latter wanted to push through the social partnership by any means necessary is also related to this relative strength of the working class. Already after World War I, when revolutionary initiatives of the masses were launched in large parts of Europe, social democracy played a disastrous role in crushing them. When workers began to administer and control public life and parts of the economy again in 1945, the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) stifled the movement with all its might. In 1950 it did not let it get that far.
The ÖGB did not fight against exploitation, but rather consolidated it by accepting exploitation in principle and simply advocating a weaker form of it. However, the capitalists did not keep to their side of the agreements, which caused prices to explode again. So did the mood in the population — because the unions held onto their side of the agreement and the low wages. In 1949, after the 3rd wage-price agreement, there were workplace meetings and protest rallies. When it was leaked during the negotiations for the 4th wage-price agreement that it would again not meet the needs of the population, strikes and demonstrations began throughout the country, starting in western Austria.
The strikes
The strikes in October 1950 were the largest strike movement of the 2nd Republic, the period that lasted from 1945 to today. Hundreds of thousands took action against the 4th wage-price agreement. They were particularly enraged, that while trade union leadership said they were “negotiating”, they had already secretly agreed with the government and company representatives to implement very high real wage cuts.
The outbreak of the strikes began on September 24th in the big VÖEST steel works in Linz, primarily organized both by members of the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) and by members of the right-wing VdU, predecessor of today’s Freedom Party (FPÖ). The VdU was a reservoir of former Nazis, which was used in the context of the prevailing anti-communist propaganda to draw a picture of a solidarity between communists and fascists. This was an early sign of the contradictory role KPÖ would play.
In the following days, 20,000 workers demonstrated in the industrial town of Linz where the VÖEST is still located, and workplace meetings took place across multiple states. By September 27th, some 200,000 workers had gone on strike in Vienna, Styria (another industrial hotspot), Upper and Lower Austria. The strikes took on an enormously radical and powerful character: in Vienna and Lower Austria, the movement resulted in the occupation of train stations, post offices, streets and railroad tracks.
The goals of the movement were potentially explosive: during a conference of workplace council representatives in late September, the demands were agreed to bring down the wage-price agreements, to immediately freeze prices and double wages. All this massively challenged the grand coalition of People’s Party (ÖVP) and SPÖ as well as the ÖGB leadership. So it was not only a purely economic question, but also a question of the balance of power in the country and the role of the trade union leadership.
Movement Begins to Stall
Unfortunately, at the height of the movement, the Communist Party agreed to a 3-day suspension of the strikes. This put the brakes on the strike wave, sapping its power before it could be used effectively to win victories. It also put the SPÖ and ÖGB in a position to begin undermining the movement and its leading figures.
On September 28th, an SPÖ newspaper wrote that a “Communist general strike attempt had failed” — this was the beginning of a narrative that the strikes were an attempted communist putsch, which remained the official position of the ÖGB until 2015. These rumours and headlines only grew more intense in the following days and weeks, preparing the way for repression against the workers.
By September 29th, only VÖEST-Linz remained on uninterrupted strike. There were other intermittent strikes in other locations, but the initiative had been decisively lost. By October 4th, there were only a few companies still on strike. This is when the repression started in earnest. Attacks were organized to break up the remaining strikes. They coordinated with the US occupying powers (Austria was occupied 1945–55 by the US, France, Britain and the USSR), which provided logistical assistance, trucks and finances. On October 5th, communists and other strikers were arrested, and factories were occupied by government forces. At this point, the workplace council conference decided to break off the strikes.
Role of the Social Democracy and the trade union leaders
As part of a grand coalition with the ÖVP, the SPÖ bears direct responsibility for the betrayal of the strikes. The Social Democratic party and the trade unions, theoretically the fighting organizations of the working class, did everything possible to stifle the initiative of workers.
Fritz Klenner, SPÖ/ÖGB functionary and “inventor” of the coup d’état myth, admitted 30 years after the October strike that it was not a communist coup that the trade union leadership feared. The real goal was to prevent an alternative — combative — trade union developing by any means and to cement the role of the ÖGB as a pro-capitalist union based on the reconciliation of class interests.
The defeat of the October strike and the enforcement of the wage-price agreements was a defeat for the left within the SPÖ and ÖGB. Thousands of union members, strike leaders, militants and communists alike, were expelled one after the other. 85 leading officials, including ÖGB Vice President Fiala and member of the communist party, were kicked out. In the SPÖ, the party leadership launched a devastating strike against the SPÖ left.
The most extreme example of this during the October Strikes was SPÖ trade unionist Franz Olah, chairman of the construction-timber trade union. Not only did he organize goon squads to physically attack striking workers, he also later embezzled union funds and used them to supply the FPÖ and the newly founded right-wing tabloid paper Kronen Zeitung.
The Communist Party KPÖ
Contrary to the long-lasting myth of an attempted coup, the KPÖ in fact had a contradictory position towards the strike movement from the beginning. Interwoven as it was with the Soviet bureaucracy, the Communist Party generally had no interest in destabilizing Austria through a truly revolutionary movement of the working class; but at the same time it wanted to push through improvements for workers. In 1950, it also became clear that the Communist Party was not concerned with the struggle for socialism — a consequence of its popular-front policy in resistance to fascism, where it sought alliances with bourgeois anti-fascists and in return put aside its criticism of capitalism.
In reality the KPÖ had never posed a danger to the system. Even in the struggle against fascism, following the line of the Stalinist Soviet Union, the primary concern was to re-establish bourgeois democracy, not to overthrow capitalism. Although many Communist Party members had leading roles in the strikes, the Communist Party was little more than the Austrian branch of the Stalinist Soviet Union, which had no tactical interest in overthrowing capitalism in Austria.
The Aftermath
The suppression of the October strikes in 1950 by the Social Democrats and the ÖGB leadership marked the beginning of the establishment of the orientation to social partnership by the Austrian trade union leadership. To this day, the consequences for the working class — the repeated betrayal by their own leadership and the passivity of the Austrian workers’ movement as a whole — are clearly felt.
The ideology and institutionalization of social partnership is one of the greatest obstacles to the reconstruction of a strong workers’ movement today. As a result, the ÖGB and affiliate unions do not even begin to fight against the fact that the costs of the crisis are being borne by the working class. The social partnership, as a naturally contradictory alliance between “workers’ representatives” and capitalists, is not only an Austrian phenomenon: in many countries a similar trade union policy and bureaucracy has developed, which relies on cooperation with, instead of opposition to the ruling class.
Now we are in one of the deepest crises of capitalism. It is precisely in such a crisis that there is no longer any economic scope for social partnership. Ever worsening collective bargaining agreements with no wage increases, and a lack of mobilization of the working class show that there is nothing to be gained from this union leadership. The Corona crisis has already led to massive job cuts and plant closures. High unemployment, a policy of cutbacks and further social upheavals are imminent. The only force that can effectively fight against this-with labour disputes, strikes and, if necessary, factory occupations/takeovers, is the working class. For this we must rediscover the militant traditions of 1950.
