NATIONALIZATION OF BANKS AND INDUSTRY IN AUSTRIA IN 1945–1946

Abstract

The article gives the analysis of post-war nationalization in Austria. Nationalization was carried out in the interests of the big capital. This was applied both to the methods and forms of economic management in the nationalized sector, and to the methods and forms of management that were directly carried out by large monopolists and their protégés. Austria’s monopolies exercised full power in the country and used the public sector to the maximum extent possible to strengthen their financial, political and economic dominance, to increase their own profits by redistributing the national income and violating the labor legislation. The experience of the nationalization in Austria, although it is a small country, has made it possible to draw some conclusions about the significance and the role of nationalization in the workers’ struggle to build a socially just state. In Austria, nationalization was caused by the special historical conditions that developed in the country after the defeat of the fascist Germany. The Austrian oligarchy, which was a Germany’s ally, had no direct way to get the industry located in Austria, which belonged to German monopolies. In this period Austrian financial experts considered nationalization as a lesser evil. It was advantageous for the Austrian oligarchy to shuffle off the burden of the entire financial and economic burden on to the state, i.e., ultimately, to the taxpayers. With the help of nationalization, it hoped to prevent the transfer of enterprises located in Eastern Austria and owned by Germany, as reparations, under the ownership of the USSR. The author comes to the conclusion that the economic basis of Austrian neutrality was nationalization, which was also a powerful weapon of the workers in the conditions of a radical change in the balance of power in the country.