Publisher's Synopsis
The history of socialism has its origins in the 1789 French Revolution and the changes which it brought, although it has precedents in earlier movements and ideas. ... Socialist governments established the mixed economy with partial nationalizations and social welfare.
Trying to carve out a road between reformism and Bolshevism, the Austromarxists embarked on an ambitious journey towards a socialist oasis amid capitalism. Their showpiece, the legendary "Red Vienna," has worked as a model for socialist urban planning ever since. At the heart of the Austromarxist experiment was the conviction that a socialist revolution had to entail a cultural one. With the Fascist threat increasing, the physical aspects of the cultural revolution became ever more central as they were considered mandatory for effective defense. 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.
