Since last Monday, the partially renewed Austrian government has officially been in office. The third Chancellor within two months, Karl Nehammer, also brings with him new government members of the conservative “People’s Party” (ÖVP). Sebastian Kurz’s closer, “turquoise” circle is now likely to play a lesser role within the ÖVP; obviously, power is shifting back to the old structures as well as to the black provincial parties.

But even if the names and functions of the government members as well as the decision-making methods in the ÖVP change to some extent, much remains the same. Not only the short-lived Kurz governments leave a mess behind, but the ÖVP as a whole, which has been continuously represented in government in Austria for 35 years. It was helped in this by the Social Democratic Party(SPÖ), the far right “Freedom Party”(FPÖ) and now the Greens for over three and a half decades.

All governments of the Second Austrian Republic were bourgeois governments in the service of capital. In 1945, when the Communist Party was in government, the possibility of a people’s democratic orientation was sabotaged by the anti-socialist SPÖ in favour of collaboration with the ÖVP, Austrian capital and Western imperialism. In the light of this, we have always had to deal with bourgeois governments - whether with SPÖ or ÖVP chancellors - whereby the administration of capitalism has sometimes turned out to be “social partnership”, sometimes social liberal, sometimes “neoliberal”.

As a Marxist-Leninist party of the working class in Austria, the Party of Labour does not fight this or that “variant of capitalism”, not this or that government, not this or that party, not this or that constellation of rule. The PdA stands for the consistent class struggle for social, democratic, societal, ecological and peace progress, as far as possible under capitalism, and in particular for the struggle for the revolutionary overcoming of capitalism as a whole and the construction of socialism. In this light, we have no illusions about the new-headed government of the ÖVP and the Greens, nor about alleged alternatives under SPÖ leadership.

No bourgeois government will solve the problems of the country, society and the planet. These problems are the results of the profiteering of capital, of exploitation and oppression, of imperialism. The capitalist crises include an economic side, a social side, an ecological side, a democratic side and a peace side. Through the Corona pandemic, the health crisis also became obvious. In political terms, all the parties represented in parliament are responsible for all this, partly willfully and with full intention, partly out of incompetence and ignorance, in the last instance because they are tools of capital.

We should therefore not expect the rulers to substantially fight the existing problems, because they cannot and do not want to. Unemployment, inflation, social and labour pressure, political repression, environmental destruction and climate change, oppression of women, xenophobia and racism, militarism and warmongering or the destruction of the health system are inevitable results of government policies in the interests of capital and imperialism, in Austria as well as at the EU level.

It follows that not only the present government must go, but all bourgeois-capitalist rule. This marks the task and the objective to which the PdA is committed. The revolutionary class struggle for socialism-communism is the only way out of the capitalist crises, out of exploitation and oppression, out of the dangers of war. Only beyond capitalism will it be possible to seriously combat and eliminate the dangers to humanity - namely, just as much the present dangers to health as to its general survival as a species. The alternative remains and is highly topical: socialist future or capitalist barbarism.

Editor: Zhong Yao、Zheng Yifan

From:http://www.solidnet.org/article/Party-of-Labour-of-Austria-New-chancellor-old-problems-capitalism-must-end/.（2021-12-13）