Rezension: K. Renner, Der deutsche Arbeiter und der Nationalismus, Wien 1910

Emil Lederer: Review of Karl Renner, Der deutsche Arbeiter und der Nationalismus (1910)

Lederer’s brief review presents Renner’s pamphlet as an incisive account of Austria’s national conflicts and German Social Democracy’s response. His organizing claim is that confrontation with both German and Slavic nationalists made a shared national programme politically necessary:

Diese bittere Notwendigkeit des täglichen politischen Kampfes zwang die Sozialdemokratie, sich auf ein nationales Programm zu einigen.

English translation: This bitter necessity of the daily political struggle compelled Social Democracy to agree upon a national programme.

Lederer praises the skill and tact of Social Democratic nationality politicians. He outlines the pamphlet’s movement through population, demographic vitality, infant mortality, workers’ living conditions, minority schools, education, and bourgeois national parties. National autonomy supplies the common standpoint: social conditions and educational institutions become central to understanding national politics.

His concluding judgment establishes the pamphlet’s relevance as an alternative to nationalist journalism:

Ueber Wesen und Bedeutung des nationalen Kampfes und nationaler Politik erfährt man aus dieser kleinen Schrift (im wesentlichen die Wiedergabe mehrerer Zeitungsartikel) mehr, als jahrelange Lektüre »nationaler« Blätter zu bieten vermöchte.

English translation: Concerning the essence and the significance of the national struggle and of national politics one learns more from this small tract (essentially the reproduction of several newspaper articles) than years of reading "national" papers could offer.

The review’s core move is thus to connect practical political pressure with programmatic clarification, endorsing Renner’s capacity to explain national conflict through a Social Democratic framework.