CLASS WAR

The conflict between the Viennese Socialists and the Dollfuss National Party is the first major class war since the Russian revolution of 1917. It is interesting to contrast the groups from which the two bodies are drawn. Austria of today is composed of impoverished Vienna and a hinterland mainly devoted to agriculture, quite insufficient to support the economic needs of its metropolis. The Socialist party has held Vienna in the palm of its hand since the war, while the national government has been dominated by the small land-owners, peasants, and the agrarian capitalist aristocracy.

Whereas the Nazi fascism in Germany was built up around the industrial capitalism to keep the reins of power out of the proletariat's hands and the proletariat out of socialism, socialism taxed the individual capitalist out of existence in Vienna. Dollfuss, it seems, wishes to preserve agrarian capitalism without the opposition of Viennese socialists. The Austrian agrarian proletariat, the peasants, found the Maxist doctrine incomprehensible and impractical, and their overlords, the landed aristocracy, found it distinctly undesirable. From them Dollfuss has drawn his party, and since he has the benefit of the national army and the majority of the population, there is little doubt that the Socialists will be crushed.

Where do the Nazis and their long-touted anschluss enter the picture? While Hitler has repeatedly persecuted German socialists, there is strong likelihood that many of the Austrian socialists will turn to the Swastika against Dollfuss. If Austrian Nazism gains a working majority in Austria, if Dollfuss can be overthrown, the anschluss is a foregone conclusion. Foreign armed intervention in such a case would be made considerably more difficult in this case than if Germany forced the anschluss by a repetition of 1866. Even in such an exigency, however, it is dubious, as Professor Langer says, if the people of Europe could be made to bear another war for causes not directly concerning them.