The Curious Success of the Communist Party in Graz, Austria

[NYAnarchist222]

.... the Styrian capital and Austria’s second-biggest city, Graz, being the site of one of Europe’s most intriguing electoral phenomena of recent years: the local chapter of the Austrian Communist Party, KPÖ (Kommunistische Partei Österreichs), has emerged as the city’s second-strongest party, earning 20 percent of the popular vote. This is not only remarkable for the fact that no other Communist Party has comparable success in any major Western European city today, but also, and even more so, for the fact that the Austrian Communist Party hovers nationwide around a pitiful 1 percent.

:) Pretty good article to read too... thoughts? Anyone know of any other local communist success like this anywhere? :hammersickle: :hammersickle: :hammersickle: :hammersickle:

[MarxSchmarx]

:) Pretty good article to read too... thoughts? Anyone know of any other local communist success like this anywhere? :hammersickle: :hammersickle: :hammersickle: :hammersickle:

For the longest time, the prefecture (basically province/state) of Kyoto was a communist bastion. The city of Kyoto is quite wealthy, but the suburbs have always been home to working class communities particularly who had ties to Osaka instead of the ancient capital. Even today westerners who ride the train into central Kyoto station to see the famous sites often comment on the tenements they see along the way.

For several decades, Kyoto was led by the Ninagawa administration which had close ties to the JCP and the (now mostly defunct) Social Democrats. In fact, even the leading communists of the day found Ninagawa abrasive and "too radical" but his policies exemplified the goals of "municipal socialism" and later came to be widely adopted in Japan (e.g., the system of medical care for senior citizens). Local leftists around Japan called them the "regional lighthouse" for how, in a country dominated by the center right national politicians, local administrations can make a concrete impact on people's lives, the central government be damned.

In the 1990s the Japanese communists again came within a hair's breadth of sweeping the Kyoto local elections. The sense I get is that since then, they have never had a local stronghold quite in the same way.