2016/12/08 by Jakub S. Beneš · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Central European national history #European history and politics
paper · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198789291.003.0002
openalex publication_date 2016/12/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
This chapter examines the general cultural dynamics and dispositions of Austrian Social Democracy from 1890, when it became a mass movement. At the core of this culture was a propensity to grasp the past, present, and future of the workers’ movement through powerful stories of suffering and redemption, more or less openly borrowed from popular Christianity. This chapter charts how the socialist organization was built on forms of activism that broadcast and institutionalized these emotive narratives in various ways, especially through print culture and public manifestations. It then discusses how utopian Christian ideas and motifs suffused the movement, in spite of its rationalistic and secular self-projection. Consequently, socialist workers tended to view their own political agency through scenarios of suffering, sacrifice, and ultimate salvation.