Renner, Karl

(1870–1950)

   Moderate socialist Karl Renner was an Austrian social democratic theorist, a pioneer in the Marxist study of law, and twice chancellor of his home nation. Having joined the Austrian Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) in 1896, Renner represented it in parliament from 1907. In 1918 he became the first chancellor of the fledgling Austrian republic, a position he held until 1920, and following the end of German occupation in April 1945, the first chancellor of the second Austrian republic. Renner had also served as president of the Austrian parliament between 1930 and 1933. In December 1945 he was elected president of Austria by the parliament, a position he occupied for five years until his death in 1950. Renner led the right wing of the SPÖ, espousing a more reformist agenda than that of Otto Bauer, the leader of the dominant left of the party. In 1916 Renner’s Probleme des Marxismus collection of essays was published. Here he attempted to modify the Marxist theory of state and of class, wishing to emphasize the impact of huge state intervention in the economy, and the rise of the new “service class” within the middle classes. His 1904 work, The Institutions of Private Law and their Social Functions, offered a groundbreaking insight into the social functions of law from a Marxist perspective.