Alan Scott

This article is both a personal response to Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and an examination of the concept within literature of making the strange familiar and making the familiar strange. It discusses the educative force and potential of Beckett’s strangers in a strange world by examining my own personal experiences with the play. At the same time the limitations of Beckett’s theatre are explored through the contrast with the work of Berthold Brecht, who sought to make the familiar strange as a method of political enquiry to facilitate the transformation of the capitalist state. Parallels are drawn between the possibilities of both theatre and education as tools for social transformation and change.

This serves as an introduction to a debate between Hans Kelsen and Otto Bauer concerning the nature and relative autonomy of the state, and the theories that informed the political practices of the Austro-Marxists and of the SDAP immediately after the fall of the monarchy and during the early years of the First Republic. Both pieces were published in Der Kampf, the SDAP’s theoretical journal, in which many key texts of Austro-Marxist thought appeared. The debate is of theoretical interest, particularly with respect to Marxist state theory, but is potentially also of renewed relevance to an age of post-GFC austerity. Bauer’s distinction between functional oligarchy and functional democracy is identified as one such potential contribution to current debate and analysis.