The Nationalities Programme of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Austria (Extract)¶
Core Argument¶
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This extract presents the nationalities programme adopted by the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Austria in 1899, a foundational document for Marxist theory on the national question. Its core argument is that the national strife paralysing Austria-Hungary is not a primordial ethnic conflict but a symptom of political backwardness and feudal privilege, deliberately fomented by the ruling classes to prevent the working class from uniting around its real interests. The resolution therefore frames a settlement of the national question as a prerequisite for proletarian emancipation.
The key claim is that national equality and cultural development are impossible under the existing Habsburg state structure, which combines “bureaucratic-state centralism” with “feudal privileges of the provinces.” The party rejects both the centralising German-dominated bureaucracy and the historic crown lands, which it views as relics of feudalism that perpetuate division. Instead, it proposes a radical reorganisation: Austria is to become a “democratic federation of nationalities.” This would be achieved by replacing the old crown lands with “nationally delimited self-governing bodies,” whose legislatures would be elected by universal, equal, and direct suffrage. Crucially, the programme introduces the concept of “nationally unified associations”—all self-governing territories of the same nation would form a single autonomous body to manage its own national affairs. This is an early articulation of the principle of “national cultural autonomy” within a multinational state, distinct from territorial federalism.
The document draws on the immediate historical context of the late 1890s, a period of intense national conflict between Germans, Czechs, and other groups within the Austrian half of the Dual Monarchy, which had paralysed the Imperial Parliament. The party’s theoretical context is the internationalist Marxism of the Second International, which held that the working class has no nation but must unite across borders. The programme’s polemical thrust is therefore directed against two enemies: first, the bourgeois nationalist parties of each nationality, who use “petty quarrels” to obscure class struggle; and second, the reactionary Habsburg state apparatus, which uses national division as a tool of rule. The programme explicitly rejects the demand for a single “national language” of the state, insisting instead that the extent of any mediating language be decided by the Imperial Parliament, with the rights of national minorities safeguarded by a separate law. The final declaration is a direct appeal to the working class of all languages to maintain their “international community of struggle,” asserting that cultural progress depends on solidarity, not inter-ethnic conflict.