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Austria The Social Democratic Party of Austria
The Social Democratic Party of Austria (Sozialdemokratische
Partei Österreichs--SPÖ), until 1991 known as the Socialist Party
of Austria (Sozialistische Partei Österreichs--SPÖ), has its
roots in the original Social Democratic Workers' Party
(Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei--SDAP), founded in 1889 by
Viktor Adler, a young doctor. The SDAP supported revisionist
Marxism and the use of democratic methods to establish workingclass rule in a democratic government. The SDAP was responsible
for pushing through universal voting rights for men in 1905 and
for extending the same for women in 1919. From 1934 to 1945,
during the regimes of Engelbert Dollfuss (1932-34) and Kurt von
Schuschnigg (1934-38) and the takeover by the Nazis, the SDAP was
outlawed. In 1945 it was reconstituted as the Socialist Party of
Austria. In 1991 the party readopted the designation "Social
Democratic."
Moderates such as Karl Renner and Adolf Schärf, each of whom
eventually served as president of the Second Republic, led the
postwar party (see
table 14, Appendix). Their primary interests
lay in increasing SPÖ power in the coalition government rather
than in fostering Marxism. Between 1945 and 1957, the party
supported democratic practices and intraparty cooperation,
programs for higher wages and lower food prices, and increased
government spending on social programs.
The election of Bruno Pittermann as party chairman in 1957
marked the beginning of major policy changes. The party had a
strong following among industrial workers, but party officials
wanted to expand SPÖ membership to the middle class and whitecollar workers and to soften the party's anticlerical position in
order to become acceptable to Roman Catholics. These changes were
expressed in a new party program adopted in 1958. The program
claimed that the SPÖ was "the party of all those who work for a
living," and it stated the party's opposition to communism and
fascism.
The late 1960s brought more changes in party doctrine. A new
economic program in 1967 constituted a shift from concern for the
distribution of wealth to concern for economic growth, including
increasing foreign investment in Austria. Cultural and social
reforms were demanded, and emphasis was placed on attending to
the needs of young people. In line with its appeal to youth, the
party supported a plan to shorten the term of military service.
Under Bruno Kreisky, who became chairman of the SPÖ in 1967,
the party continued its move toward the center of the ideological
spectrum. Although party platforms continued to refer to the
classless society as an ideal, the SPÖ was careful to distinguish
its brand of socialism from the centralized, inefficient version
of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The party program of 1978
stressed the four principles of freedom, equality, justice, and
solidarity. Central to the SPÖ's philosophy was a guarantee for
all Austrians of freedom from fear, hunger, exploitation, and
unemployment. The freedom to pursue wealth had to be balanced by
the government's guarantee of equal opportunity and social
justice.
Under Kreisky the SPÖ triumphed at the polls in 1970, 1971,
1975, and 1979, and between 1971 and 1983 the party enjoyed an
absolute majority in parliament. The Kreisky governments laid
great emphasis on improving the social welfare system and
achieving full employment. The Kreisky era also featured the
flourishing of the technocrats--SPÖ politicians successful in
business and banking whose lavish life-styles seemed incongruous
in a party supposed to represent the interests of labor.
In the parliamentary election of 1983, the SPÖ lost its
absolute majority, and Kreisky decided to retire from politics
rather than preside over a coalition government. Fred Sinowatz,
Kreisky's minister for education, was chosen as chancellor in a
coalition government with the FPÖ. The Sinowatz era, from 1983 to
1986, proved to be a short interregnum and was not distinguished
by any great achievements
(see Political Developments since 1983
, this ch.).
Franz Vranitzky, born in 1937, became chancellor in June 1986
when Sinowatz resigned after the SPÖ lost the presidential
election to Kurt Waldheim. Vranitzky replaced Sinowatz as party
chairman in May 1988, becoming the first person from a workingclass background to hold this position. Despite his working-class
heritage, Vranitzky had had a successful career in banking before
entering politics.
Under Vranitzky the SPÖ moved to restore its image among
rank-and-file members by improving its methods of intraparty
communication. Computers and direct mail technology were used to
gauge the opinions of members in the provinces, and efforts were
made to improve recruiting techniques by means of recreational
groups. In the area of government policy, Vranitzky stressed that
limits on state activity were necessary, although he noted that
health care and education were fields where market forces had to
be regulated.
Vranitzky displayed a more open attitude toward the question
of privatizing government industries than Kreisky had. To a large
extent, changes in this area were inevitable because of large
losses in the state industrial sector that came to light in 1985.
Vranitzky embraced the principle that privatization should be
pursued if it would lead to greater operational efficiency. The
press dubbed Vranitzky's approach "pinstripe socialism." The
policy has proven to be a responsible one and has been fairly
popular with Austrians.
In 1984 the SPÖ launched a program called Perspectives '90,
designed to promote intraparty discussion on current issues. A
major aim of the leadership was to show that the party was eager
to listen to grass-roots concerns. A series of nationwide debates
eventually led to the issuance of a draft document in 1986 that
incorporated the views of party members on issues such as the
environment, controls on the development of technology, and
democratization of society. Events that had embarrassed the
party, such as the conflict over the Hainburg power plant in 1984
and Minister for Defense Friedhelm Frischenschläger's reception
of Walter Reder in 1985, were also discussed
(see Political Developments since 1983
, this ch.).
An estimated 30,000 party members participated in the
Perspectives '90 meetings, which took place in 1,000 local
groups. The success of this project led the SPÖ to stage the
Congress for the Future in Vienna in the summer of 1987, where
400 of the party's top leaders and intellectual luminaries
discussed the outlook for social democracy. It was agreed that
the SPÖ needed to formulate an alternative to the neoconservatism
of the 1980s that would allow for greater codetermination in the
workplace but also avoid the pitfalls of too much state control.
After the success of this conference, the SPÖ began planning
another that would produce a Social Democratic Manifesto for the
Year 2000.
Membership in the SPÖ is direct (unlike the ÖVP, where a
person joins an organization affiliated with the party). SPÖ's
membership grew rapidly in the postwar period--from 360,000
members in 1946 to its peak of nearly 720,000 members in 1979.
With the loosening of the grip of the Lager on Austrian
society, SPÖ's membership has declined slightly. In the early
1990s, it was estimated at 700,000.
Party organization remained centralized as of the early
1990s. The main link between rank-and-file members and party
leaders are the activists known as Vertrauenspersonen, who
personally collect annual membership dues. At the local level,
the SPÖ is represented by almost 4,000 groups in villages and
towns. Every two years, the SPÖ holds a federal conference that
elects the party executive, which has sixty-five members. Because
of the executive's unwieldy size, a smaller group, known as the
presidium, is selected from it and actually conducts most party
business.
Delegates to the federal conference are drawn from the
various suborganizations of the party. The party has two youth
organizations, the Young Generation (Junge Generation--JG) and
the Socialist Youth of Austria (Sozialistische Jugend Österreichs
--SJÖ). The Group of Socialist Trade Unionists (Fraktion
Sozialistischer Gewerkschaftler--FSG) sends fifty-two delegates
to the conference. There is also a Women's Committee, which has
representatives from each province. Over the years, women have
consistently made up one-third of SPÖ's membership. In 1985 the
federal conference passed an amendment providing for greater
representation of women in the party and larger numbers of female
candidates. Progress toward this goal has been slow, however, and
in 1989 only eleven of the SPÖ's deputies in the Nationalrat were
female.
SPÖ candidates for parliamentary elections are determined by
the Party Council, whose members come from the nine provincial
party organizations. The party executive and the heads of the
nine provincial parties have an input into the selection process.
Roughly one-fifth of the places are reserved for high-ranking
party officials, whose presence in the Nationalrat is considered
imperative.
Data as of December 1993
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