Spanish Civil War Essay Research Paper Ever

Spanish Civil War Essay, Research Paper

Ever since the fall of 1930 when the Spanish Revolution began there has been no surcease of the struggle in Spain. For a long time there was a deadlock of forces, an equilibrium in the tug of war between the property holders and the destitute. Now the equilibrium is being definitely broken. The issue before Spain is either Communism or Fascism. The matter is being fought out not with ballots but with bullets and ruthless civil war. Slowly the political revolution is being definitively turned into a social revolution.

From the very beginning, the mass of workers of Spain, both in the city and in the country were the decisive elements. When the students rioted before the universities in 1930 it was only when the workers joined them with a vast general strike that the regime of the military dictator, Primo de Rivera, fell and the temporary regime of General Berenguer set up. When General Berenguer tried to hold fake elections without extending the franchise to all, it was another general strike that overthrew the regime, compelled new elections, forced the king to flee and established the republic in April 1931.

At this point the Syndicalist and Anarchist workers began to miscalculate their forces. Syndicalism and Anarchism, in spite of their revolutionary phraseology were able only to overthrow the old regime and to allow the new democratic republic to be set up; but these movements could not go forward to the positive constructive tasks of setting up the rule of the workers. These antiquated movements were good enough to accomplish the negative and critical tasks of overthrowing an antiquated monarchy; they did not know how to deal with a modern bourgeois republic.

In the course of the revolutionary movement there was set up what in fact amounts to a dual power, the masses respecting the authority of the unions and the revolutionary organizations, the government being forced at times to yield to the opinions of these mass organizations on vital questions. At one time the bourgeois government was even forced to declare that Spain was a workers republic and to feign friendliness toward the Soviet Union.

The leaders of the toilers’ organizations, however, did not know what to do with their power. The lending groups were composed of four principal elements: the Anarchists, the Syndicalists, the Socialists and the Communists. The Anarchists were powerful enough within the trade union movement to exercise decisive influence for a time upon the whole situation. With their Bakuninist idealism they did not appreciate the necessity of preparing for revolt by building powerful organizations in all discontented strata of the population. They attempted one adventure after another and believed that the State could be abolished and all oppression ended by one blow struck by a militant minority. After each failure of the Anarchist workers, the working class would lose some of its strength, the reaction would pick up its head, the government would consolidate its position. All that the Anarchists could do was to wear out the working class in ill prepared battles, in fruitless adventures and to strengthen the reactionary forces.

The failure of the Anarchists who controlled goodly sections of the trade union movement brought about with it also a failure of the Syndicalist movement. A split occurred among the Syndicalists, some breaking from Anarchism and urging the formation of centralized authoritarian bodies leading to the dictatorship of the proletariat. These Syndicalists, however, agreed with the Anarchists in boycotting the State and in ignoring the work of the political parties, in failing to reach the widest strata of the population, etc.

As the Syndicalists too began to be discredited and the working class forces to turn a bit weary, the masses began to flock to the Socialist party banner. In the beginning of the revolution the million organized Spanish workmen had been divided somewhat as follows: about 200,000 belonging to the General Labor Union controlled by the Socialists and about 800,000 under the control of the C.N.T. , the National Federation of Labor led by the Syndicalists and Anarchists. With the deepening of the revolution, however, the masses began to move from the Anarcho-Syndicalists and to join the General Labor Union, so that by 1934 the relation was changed the other way around, 800,000 workers being members and sympathizers of the General Labor Union of the Socialists.

In the meantime the Socialists themselves had undergone somewhat of a change. In the early days of the republic it was the Right Wing Socialists typified by Prieto who controlled the Socialist Party. These were the gentlemen who took office in 1932 together with the Liberals and who at that time declared that they hoped they would not receive a majority of the votes since Spain was not yet ready for Socialism, the masses evidently, being too dumb, to understand our Socialist heroes. Within the government the Socialists aided the Liberals to put the people back to work under capitalist control, to stop the revolution and restore order. If hitherto the revolutions in Spain had mostly of a palace and camarilla variety now it was to be a superficial political revolution only, leaving the basic problems entirely untouched.

Thanks to the Socialist Party, none of the chief demands of the masses were