Letter to Bertold Grad, March 19, 1933. A Letter to an Austrian

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How Otto Bauer Poses the Question

Dear Comrade,

Otto Bauer calls for the defense of democracy with the argument that Hermann Müller is better than Adolf Hitler. He gives the impression that the Austrian workers have a choice between Hermann Müller's might and Hitler's dictatorship. Such a formulation is typical of the hide-and-seek politics of Otto Bauer and such people — politics which are schematic, passive, and sterile. What does it mean, concretely, to defend democracy in Austria today? Does it mean the defense of the present chaos of forces which conflict with and neutralize one another? Or the power of the Christian Socialists which hails and upholds this chaos? "To defend democracy" in Austria today means to defend Dollfuss and the chaos he has created. This is just about the most impossible, the most fanciful policy one could wish to find. Democracy in Austria needs not to be defended but to be built anew on a different basis. Democracy has to be revitalized, it has to be won, and that can only be done through the conquest of power by the working class. Such a conquest would immediately constitute Austria as the representative of the most revolutionary and progressive driving forces of the German nation. That is a gigantic and historic role which carries with it difficulties, of course, but also immense possibilities.

The policy of the Austrian Social Democracy, now passive, now threatening, does nothing but prepare the way for the victory of fascism. Seen from the capitalist point of view, the justification for the fascist dictatorship lies precisely in the fact that the opposition of the working class further weakens capitalism, which is already caught in a historical blind alley; it grinds capitalism down, paralyzes it, but at the same time proves itself incapable of seizing power and opening up a way out of the chaos and corruption.

Continued opposition, which under the present circumstances looks like treason, provokes the class enemy and brings ever-new layers and groups of people over to its side. Abstention from revolutionary means of struggle gives the enemy courage to make the final decision: at all costs.

This is the current situation in Austria. It can last for months at most. Then all the splendor of Austrian Social Democracy will be swept aside, and Otto Bauer will prove in newspaper articles somewhere in Paris or London that an Austria under Chancellor Renner really was better than an Austria under fascism. And all this is a result of the defense of democracy.

With communist greetings,

Your L. Trotsk