Nations without nationalism: The Austro-Marxist Discourse on Multiculturalism

In addition to the socialist discourse on popular education, theoretical contributions of Austro-Marxist intellectuals such as Karl Renner, Otto Bauer and Otto Neurath on multiculturalism represent an important intellectual source of leftist culturalism. Considering actual debates, the Austro-Marxist approach on nation and culture moved between the politics of recognition and the politics of difference. Their concept combined both the recognition of (a positively evaluated) difference between national cultures and the demand for political unification transcending the nation state. Beyond their contemporary context, the Austro-Marxist concept gains in importance even for today by formulating a possible combination of political and economic unity on the one hand and cultural difference (and diversity) on the other. In a way, the Austro-Marxist approach represents a political and cultural concept of ‘nations without nationalism’.