Women and Socialism - Socialism and Women by Helmut Gruber

“One of the big and important class struggles in the history of the international workers’ movement.” -Arnold Reisberg, author of Februar 1934: Hintergründe und Folgen “Austria was ahead of the times and established a precedent for future revolutionary developments.” -Ilona Duczynska, author of Workers in Arms: The Austrian Schutzbund and the Civil War of 1934 Hobsbawm, author of The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 left behind the glorious memory of resistance to fascism by arms and not merely by speeches.” Helmut Gruber, author of Red Vienna: Experiment in Working-Class Culture, 1919–1934 “A foretaste of the socialist utopia of the future in the present.” Murray Bookchin, author of Anarchism, Marxism and the Future of the Left “An almost completely forgotten episode in labor history.” His texts in this book are being made available in English for the first time. Deutsch represented the physical defense of the working class against its enemies like few others. Despite the final defeat of the workers’ militias in the Austrian Civil War of 1934 and subsequent Fascist rule, the Austromarxist struggle holds important lessons for socialist theory and practice.Īntifascism, Sports, Sobriety contains an introductory essay by Gabriel Kuhn and selected writings by Julius Deutsch, leader of the workers’ militias, president of the Socialist Workers’ Sport International, and a prominent spokesperson for the Austrian workers’ temperance movement. At no other time in socialist history did armed struggle, sports, and sobriety become as intertwined in a proletarian attempt to protect socialist achievements as they did in Austria in the early 1930s. With the Fascist threat increasing, the physical aspects of the cultural revolution became ever more central as they were considered mandatory for effective defense. Numerous workers’ institutions and organizations were founded, from education centers to theaters to hiking associations.

Their showpiece, the legendary “Red Vienna,” has worked as a model for socialist urban planning ever since.Īt the heart of the Austromarxist experiment was the conviction that a socialist revolution had to entail a cultural one. Trying to carve out a road between reformism and Bolshevism, the Austromarxists embarked on an ambitious journey towards a socialist oasis in the midst of capitalism. The Austromarxist era of the 1920s was a unique chapter in socialist history.

Women and Socialism - Socialism and Women by Helmut Gruber