Austria ǀ Lesson Leningraz – Friday

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You have to look at this KPÖ Graz, raved these days Katalin Gennburg, directly re-elected member of the Left Party in the Berlin House of Representatives. On the day of the capital city election debacle, confessing communists elsewhere had won a council election, in the Styrian state capital, with almost 29 percent of the vote! The 37-year-old Gennburg then wrote on Facebook: “When I read from Elke Kahr that she reaches people with empathy and humanity, I immediately thought that this is exactly what we miss far too often as leftists, although it is so simple!” Or neither. In general: To what extent can comrades from Graz give an answer to questions that are currently being asked by the left in Berlin?

It should be noted in advance that a lot is politically different in Austria – and not exactly better. So the social discourse framework has moved considerably further to the right. That a Vice Chancellor on vacation would urge a Russian oligarch niece to do the imageBuying a newspaper and kicking out editors is still unimaginable in this country. Nor that the Federal Ministry of Finance places advertisements in the boulevard and naturally expects editorial consideration for them. On the other hand, anti-communism in Austria has not developed such a distinctive tradition. In addition to the SPÖ and ÖVP, the KPÖ was the third founding party of the Second Republic. In the first post-war government under Leopold Figl (ÖVP), the communists appointed the Minister for Energy and Electrification for two years. Vienna even had a communist police chief. And a Stalin memorial plaque hangs in Schönbrunn Palace Street to this day. But this is another story.

In any case, “Leningraz” with its 230,000 inhabitants is the second largest city in Austria. And the fact that the KPÖ recently won the council selection here is tantamount to a turning point. In fact, it was the first election defeat for the ÖVP in the era of the recently resigned Chancellor Sebastian Kurz – at a time when he was still undisputed in his party. The turquoise, as Kurz changed the color of the former black People’s Party, lost a full twelve percent in Graz. What a crash! And that despite such announcements as bringing the Winter Olympics 2026 to Graz or building a subway. Not so with the KPÖ, which did not even make any election promises. The five hundred social housing that have been built on her initiative in recent years speak for themselves. Samuel Stuhlpfarrer, who worked for a KPÖ-related foundation in Graz for years and is now the editor of the left-wing monthly magazine diary is active, sees the striking thing in the factual appearance of the KPÖ. For weeks they advertised with the slogan: “It’s about time!”, Loosely based on the songwriter Hannes Wader. When in the last days of the election campaign everyone felt how much the social mood had turned, the comrades made it: “It’s time for change!” – a well-known Sebastian Kurz slogan, the language of which suddenly turned against himself. “That was a brilliant scoop!” Says Stuhlpfarrer. – Apparently the Berlin Left Party was lacking such ideas, let alone ideas.

We are sitting in a café near the Berlin House of Representatives, with a view of Potsdamer Platz. Katalin Gennburg has found some time, but no rest. The fact that she does not drink a latte macchiato but herbal tea should only be reported in passing. And also that she vehemently rejects the word from the “lifestyle left”, which Sahra Wagenknecht so helpfully introduced into the discourse during the election campaign. The urban development expert, whose political career began in the reformer wing of the PDS, today sympathizes with the left-wing movement. She speaks of a fundamental renewal of the party, of limited office time and more participation in the grassroots. “We have to democratize ourselves radically,” she says.

In the House of Representatives election, which took place at the same time as the Bundestag election, Katalin Gennburg not only defended her constituency. In absolute numbers, it even gained 1,163 votes. And that “with a clear demeanor and rebellious address”, as it is the newspaper New Germany said. She evades the question of why hardly any low-wage earners and Hartz IV recipients vote for the Left Party. She says there is “a blatant crisis of representation” that is the result of general capitalist processes of decline. “We experienced that during the doorstep election campaign: people who no longer believe in anything.” And Gennburg, what does she believe in? If it had its way, the Left Party would become more radical.

This is realpolitik, not radical

Both parties, the Left in Berlin and the KPÖ in Graz, are currently holding talks with Social Democrats and Greens. With the difference, however, that the communists have invited in the city on the Mur. On November 17th, the victorious top candidate Elke Kahr is to be elected in the constituent meeting of the municipal council. Samuel Stuhlpfarrer remains cautious: “After all that has been learned so far, there will be little structural change even with a communist mayor.” The originally planned remunicipalisation of the municipal companies outsourced to a holding company has already been refrained from. The KPÖ does not want to take back the alcohol ban in public places for the time being. A ban that is primarily directed against the “Sandler”, as the homeless in Austria are called. And the “security guard”, which in police-like uniforms enforces the displacement of the homeless, will remain. But there will probably be more social workers and emergency overnight accommodation, just as more social housing is to be built in general. In other words: The Graz KPÖ is anything but radical in its realpolitik. How then was this election victory possible?

If two are doing the same thing, it doesn’t have to be the same. The Left Party and KPÖ have declared housing policy to be the main focus in the election campaign. With the Graz comrades, it worked (as always). Not so in Berlin: The referendum for the socialization of large housing groups in the city, which was also to be voted on on election Sunday, received a large majority, specifically: 1.04 million votes, which corresponds to a share of 59.1 percent, but on the enclosed ballot Only 14 percent (2016: 15.64 percent) wanted to vote for the House of Representatives election with the Left Party – the only party that wanted to implement this referendum. Katalin Gennburg says that without the referendum and without her party’s connection to the tenant movement, things would have been even worse. The success of this election was that the Berlin Left was able to keep the old result halfway. “We lost so hard in the old strongholds in Marzahn and Lichtenberg, which were always considered natural partners, that it is exciting to ask: Why were we able to compensate for that elsewhere?” – But the question seems to be even more exciting: What does the Graz KPÖ do it differently?

The publicist Christa Zöchling, herself an activist in the Communist Student Association (KSV) in the 1980s, explained to the readers of the magazine these days Profile the “miracle of Graz”. There is no secret behind the victory of the communists, “unique in the western hemisphere”, but unswerving grassroots work. The KP has always been regarded as the “caretaker party”.

And for some it is still the “Kaltenegger Party”: the only KPÖ municipal council for a long time set up a tenant emergency number in the nineties. The word gentrification was not yet known. But from countless public conversations he knew about the housing shortage and that many of the harassed and often even terminated tenants could not afford a lawyer, and often did not even dare to object. The phone number from the tenant emergency number was posted across the city. The original idea, as Ernest Kaltenegger remembers, was: “We want to inform people about their rights and encourage them to defend themselves a little.” Soon the Graz KPÖ set up “legal aid for speculator victims”, financed by Kaltenegger’s monthly diet as a councilor – money that was hardly ever needed. Because the complaining tenants, among them many old people, were in the right and in the vast majority of cases they were also awarded their rights by the courts.

A bathroom is also culture

And so it happened: In the council elections, the party won in 1998 with 7.8 percent parliamentary strength; Ernest Kaltenegger became a councilor for housing. He donated more than half of his earnings to social causes and once a year presented an account of the use made on the so-called day of open accounts. Of course, Kaltenegger was also unable to perform miracles, but he was able to set clear social accents. When Graz was to become European Capital of Culture in 2003, it was “Ernesto” who ensured that, with the help of the EU funds, wet rooms were finally installed in the over one hundred substandard apartments that belonged to the city of Graz. “A bathroom for every community apartment. That too is culture, ”was his program.

While the right-wing populist FPÖ was soaring elsewhere in Austria, and in Carinthia it even provided the governor with Jörg Haider, Graz of all places, which still had a free mayor in the 1980s, became a KPÖ stronghold. In the municipal council elections in 2003, the communists were already the third largest group in the city parliament with 21 percent. Two years later it even succeeded in entering the state parliament of Styria with four mandates! At first, Christa Zöchling said that “Sacred Heart Communism” was slightly derogatory. Or from a momentary confusion of the people of Graz. “But the moment is dragging on.”

But what is the main difference to the left desk in Berlin? Could it be the utopia of a communist society? Zöchling writes about the Graz KPÖ: “The upheaval of the situation, the weakening and, in the end, the abolition of global capitalism have been laid down in their program; they would never deny it and yet they do not consider it relevant to their everyday politics. Rather than a distant galaxy that you would like to land on one day, at some point. Comparable to the children’s faith of a Catholic with the hope of going to heaven. “

The real difference lies in the understanding of politics. Deputies and city councils of the Styrian KPÖ live with the people by whom they were elected. Making politics as a synonym for social work. In terms of their habitus and their standard of living, the KPÖ’s “mandataries” have not strayed light years from their clientele. Whoever is elected on the Communists’ ticket in Styria has to give two thirds of their earnings – and not for the party fund, but as a donation for social purposes. KPÖ politicians bring their children to the same schools as their voters, have the same apartments and go to the same inns. Because they don’t have the money for the noble Italian, at only 1,900 euros net per month, which corresponds to the average salary of skilled workers.

Back in Berlin: As a farewell, Katalin Gennburg says that she left the room in 2019 before the vote on the diet increase. The top of the group did not approve a vote against her. In the middle of the legislative period, the members of the Berlin House of Representatives had increased their salaries by almost 60 percent, from 3,944 to 6,250 euros per month. Only the AfD had voted against it at the time.

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