Questions have been coming up at my book talks and interviews about the origins of the philosophy behind the utopian vision that is now called Red Vienna, which is also the title of the first volume of Two Suitcases. This article from Jacobin Magazine is the best one on the subject that I’ve come across:
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Eve Neuhaus 
Thank you for introducing us to Otto Bauer! The Jacobin article suggest that Bauer was struggling to find a remedy for what is probably the greatest flaw in Marx’s well-intentioned analysis–its oversimplified linear view of history, its notion that all people went through the same developmental stages in sequence, from bands to tribes to states, and that their future evolution could be understood in a similarly linear way, without regard to vast cultural differences. This same flaw also pervades the popular (and often the taught) understanding of history in capitalist societies as well, despite a plethora of counter-examples. For example, students are still taught that the development of major irrigation works brings hierarchical states with power exerted from the top and a strong class structure. Yet right here in California, when they still lived autonomously, the very egalitarian Owens Valley Paiute maintained extensive irrigation works, some of them still in use by their successors, and in each village, the chief irrigator, who decided on the distribution of the water and on when to encourage volunteers to maintain the channels, was up for a potentially contested popular election every year. A recent book full of recent research on the extreme non-linearity of ancient and not so ancient history is “The Dawn of Everything” by David Graeber and David Wengrow; the vast variety of national and cultural traditions provides corroboration for Bauer’s struggle against Marxist orthodoxy. Societies do not need to all follow the same channel; our differences make us a richer, more resilient species; the greater the variety of solutions to the problems of life are found, the more choices we all have!
Hi Eric, I was really impressed too. Bauer’s idea of nationalism is so different from the way it’s commonly seen. I think your irrigation example is right on. “The Dawn of Everything” is a wonderfully eye-opening book.