CRISIS IN AUSTRIAN SOCTALIST PARTY
VIENNA, Sept. 20 ~- Internal conflicts among the bureauoratic leaders of the: Austrian Socialist party have flared into the open, involving the working class ina dramatic way, much to the distaste of the pureaucracy.
Olah, the Minister of the Interior and former president of the Austrian Confederation of Trade Unions, was forced to bow to a majority vote in the SP leadership and resign his government post,. The ouster was initiated by Bruno Pitterman, president of the Austrian Socialist party after a party arbitration commission had censured Olah for granting an interview.in the bourgeois daily Die Presse in which he: ‘violated party: discipline.
In: the. interview Olah talked about. the internal party. dis~ pute and: charged, among other things, that "certain members of his own party glandered him in a worse way than his political enemies," He talked about "personal defamation of comrades in the same party"; accused his opponents of using Stalinist methods and said it was "nonsense" to. accuse him of wanting to set up a leadership cult around his own personality.
Olahts resignation touched off a militant reaction among sectors of the working class, On September 18, after a series of on~thejob meetings, the workers in all the power plants in Vienna came out on strike, cutting off the current to the tramways for a few hours, and marched towards Socialist party headquarters. There were some 1,300 in the parade. They carried banners protesting Olah!s forced resignation,
The former Minister of the Interior is popular among the workers because he appears more militant than Pitterman, always on. the lookout for a "compromise," Olah came into prominence in 1961 when he resigned some political offices in demonstrative protest against the failure to take trade-union demands into consideration during negotiations over the budget. The party bureaucrats accused him at the time of violating the rules of collective leadership and engaging in a public demonstration against party policy,
This. was the first rift since the Scharf case in 1945,
(Scharf was a party secretary who went over to Stalinism in the early fifties. ) oe i 7
The differences were patched up, however, and the SP came out in support of the trade-union demands,
Despite his popularity among the. workers, Olah is a very ambiguous political figure, He is against Marxist ideology, stating that he favors "practice" (as against "theory"), In the Socialist party he is accused of displaying dictatorial tendencies, Up until recently in the SP leadership he advocated. seeking a coalition with the FPOE (Austrian Liberal party), which represents the interests of West German big business and whose program is tainted with Pan- Germanism and Nazism, Olah has been characterized as an Austrian replica of the unscrupulous American trade-union boss willing to resort to any means to increase his power.
The militant movement in favor of Olah swiftly collapsed, since Olah wasn't willing to head it with the requisite militant .. program of opposition to coalition with bourgeois parties.
_ Discontent among Austrian workers is rising and this was one of the factors that found expression in the demonstration in favor of Olah, The working class has been hit by price increases, The cost of living has increased more than five per cent the past year, The trade unions, however, are bound by a long-term contract with their "social partners," the bosses, It-.should be noted that Olah himself was one of the signers. SO
The workers feel that the unions and the Socialist party do not follow policies corresponding to the weight and power of the working class, That is why they are sensitive to rifts in the leadership and tend to take sides, -
The main bourgeois party, the Austrian People's party, who are in a coalition with the Socialist party in the government, are now trying to take advantage of the differences that have come into the open, During the strike, their Minister of Defense put the army in a state of alert. They have indicated that unless new concessions are forthcoming they will refuse to accept Czettel as the new Minister of the Interior. Czettel was nominated by the Socialist party ieadership to replace Olah, He is chairman of the shop stewards committee in one of the biggest Austrian steel plants. A new government crisis thus seems to be shaping up.
| The domestic political scene is stirring again. In the Socialist party new and intense critical discussions will occur. The party leadership denies that the crisis is political in character, since there are no political differences among the leaders, But the same leadership has lost much of its authority as a result of recent events, 2
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BOUDIAF!S