Austria's Socialists in Trouble
MOTYL, ALEXANDER
ON THE EVE OF ELECTIONS Austria's Socialists \x\ TBroublc by alexander m°tyl BRUNO KREISKY Austria's streets are clean and safe, health care is free and the living standard is high. Small...
...And in the most ingenious of all their arguments, they maintain that there are more practicing Catholics in the SPO than in the OVP...
...Recent events, however, have intruded on this provincial idyll—and the repercussions could prove painful for Chancellor Bruno Kreisky and his ruling Socialist Party (SPO...
...Both are vague, only the moral pathos of the '58 program sounds more genuine and honest...
...For the chancellor, who did "not exclude" the possibility of resignation were the vote to be No, the result was an embarrassment and "a personal defeat in every respect...
...has published articles in Dissent, Commonweal and other journals...
...This February, though, the roof came down on the SPO...
...For Bruno Kreisky and the Socialist Party things are also getting serious...
...The effect of all this has been to make many Austrians feel the Socialists have gone too far, too fast, with too little sensitivity for the country's existing institutions...
...Along with sustaining damage from such negative economic trends, Kreisky and the SPO have suffered a series of humiliating political setbacks within the last 12 months: • First came a summer scandal over the outrageously small taxes paid by Kreisky's millionaire vice-chancellor and finance minister, Hannes And-rosch...
...Nonetheless, it contains little actual discussion of Socialism...
...In November came the referendum on atomic energy...
...The program, in short, has been modernized and expanded...
...nine years of Socialist rule have, further, made Austria into "a land of the people...
...The only problem was that his two youthful assailants claimed they had beaten him up after he made indecent advances toward them...
...ambassador to the United Nations, Kreisky said: 'It is a superstition that Jews are intelligent...
...Sounding something like Andrew Young, the often controversial U.S...
...Small wonder, then, that for many citizens their country is the world: Self-satisfied and content, they tend to regard what exists elsewhere as uncultured, impolite or dirty—in any case, as highly unpleasant compared to the joys of eating hot apple strudel and sipping black coffee...
...After all, whom other than the ruling party is the Austrian voter to blame for the nation now finding itself confronting some of the problems of the rest of the world...
...The Socialists garnered just over 50 per cent of the vote in 1970, 1971 and 1975, and have used their absolute majority to push through a large number of reforms, many of them ill-conceived...
...Whether such tactics will prove enough to divert the voter's attention from the numerous unpleasantries that have afflicted both Austria and the Socialists in the last year, thereby allowing the SPO to retain its parliamentary majority, is doubtful...
...It is somewhat less anti-Soviet and anti-Communist than the '58 program, and the reference to the desirability of German unification has been dropped, while support for the Third World is more emphatic and appreciably more space is devoted to the specifics of the social transformations the SPO wants to bring about...
...A few days later, Vienna's equivalent to Macy's, Gerngross, burned down—an event that could prove as damaging to the SPO as the collapse of the Reich's Bridge in 1976...
...Then Kreisky's foreign minister, Willibald Pahr, got mugged while taking what he said was a late night stroll in Strasbourg...
...I'd like to say without wanting to appear self-satisfied that I at any rate still possess a sufficiently well-developed political sensorium to be sure to go before people ask:' When is he finally going to leave?'" Three months of relative calm followed the storm caused by Zwenten-dorf...
...That may hardly seem a problem by American standards, but it portends disaster for thousands of Austrians unaccustomed to worrying about job security.(Perhaps the best barometer of the growing unemployment difficulties is the steady decline in the number of "guest workers": 15,000 Turks and Yugoslavs will lose their jobs and have to return home this year alone...
...nor is the new one appreciably better in its formulations...
...It's nothing more than a refined art of banditry...
...diers, but that's easy to learn...
...That's nonsense...
...Their party, they claim, is now open...
...Newspaper editorials insisted the government was at fault for lax inspection of fire hazards...
...In September, the "sly old fox" himself made several remarkable gaffes during an interview with a Dutch newspaper correspondent...
...Accordingly, the SPO has been downplaying ideology and trying to change its image as "the worker's party...
...Currently enjoying a scant three seat majority in Parliament, the party could be forced into a coalition or even defeated in next month's (May 6) election...
...Nevertheless, said Kreisky with regard to the May balloting, "I am very confident...
...Significantly, the popular Gratz—whom the Viennese refer to as "pretty Poldi"—felt it necessary to emphasize personality and deemphasize his SPO credentials in the campaign...
...Get up, beat us Bruno," Kishon wrote, "we are your drums...
...The situation was exacerbated by the disclosure that Androsch also ran a private and very lucrative tax counseling service while in office...
...To begin with, the Austrian Supreme Court ruled that a Socialist motion to keep employees related to plant owners from voting in elections for management-worker councils was unconstitutional...
...He had thoughts about the Israeli Army, too: "They are good solAlEXANDER MOTYL, a new NL (WlIribuior...
...The balance of payments not only remained dangerously in the red, but the growth rate fell and unemployment started climbing—from 1.8 per cent to today's 2.4 per cent...
...Worse, two Socialists involved in the voting crossed sides and supported Bacher...
...Some weeks afterward, Kreisky's prestige dropped another peg when the politically unaffiliated Gerd Bacher was reelected "general intendent" of Austrian Radio despite the Chancellor's personal intervention to have him removed...
...They're as stupid as the others...
...In May, workers at the Semperit tire plant in Traiskirchen staged a three-week strike—an unheard of thing in this nation—and won...
...The tone, rather, is one of bland pragmatism...
...Inspired by the electoral success of the "green activists" in France and Germany, Austrian atomic energy opponents—ranging from the Socialists Youth and the Communist Party to the conservative People's Party (OVP) and the Freedom Party (FPO)—mobilized just enough votes to defeat Kreisky's plan to open Austria's first atomic energy plant at Zwen-tendorf...
...The Viennese are fond of saying, "Things may be hopeless, but they are not ser-ious...
...The trouble began in the winter of 1978, when a group of terrorists kidnapped businessman Walter M. Palmers and the wife of industrialist Leopold Boehm...
...In October, Leopold Gratz, the handsome Socialist mayor of perenial-ly "Red Vienna" was returned to office, but with a decreased margin of victory...
...WILLIBALD PAHR The most serious obstacle to an SPO victory next month, however, is that dissatisfaction with what it stands for has been perceptibly on the rise...
...At a recent SPO congress, for example, a new program was adopted that is notable merely for its blandness...
...The worst news of all, though, has been provided by the economic indicators...
...Indeed, this editorial continued, the document is a " form of Kreiskyismus, the theoretical formulation of the daily-practiced Brun-ology"—in other words, an attempt to appeal to as many voters as possible...
...As one magazine noted, "Only an arms producer as defense minister would be more problematic...
...Ephraim Kishon, a popular Jewish satirist living in West Germany, promptly replied in Der Spiegel, calling Kreisky a "talented, autodidactical anti-Semite...
...A few months later, in a move reminiscent of the disturbances in Allende's Chile, truck drivers and owners protesting the government's planned transit tax on lorries paralyzed Austria's economy for five days by blocking all border crossings...
...A conservatively-oriented Viennese newspaper pretty well summed up the party's general approach when it pointed out: "Neither is the ['58] program fulfilling its demands...
...The same strategy is discernible in the campaign the Socialists are currently waging to retain power...
Vol. 62 • April 1979 • No. 9
