Example research essay topic: Trade Union Movement Labor Union - 1,508 words

NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote

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 carried out. The land of the wealthy was neither confiscated nor partitioned and given to the poor peasantry, thus the land question still remained a burning one.

Inflation robbed the workers of any gain that they might have won through strikes, thus the labor question remained unsolved. The church property which was supposed to be confiscated was left intact and the government proved very slow in separating church from state and in disbanding the disloyal religious orders. Thus the religious question has been left for mass direct action to solve. On their part, the leaders of the workers organizations made no attempt really to arm the people and to establish a workers militia; they did not try to raise the question of workers' control over production to guaranty to each worker security and life; they did not make the slightest effort to set up revolutionary organs, soviets, to take state power. Thus, the workers, after turning from the Anarchists and Syndicalists to the Socialists, could not find any better solution to their problems. In time of revolutionary advance it was the Syndicalists that led the way, but since these advances were always defeated, it was the Socialists that gained ultimately.

In times of retreat, the workers took to parliamentary actions and to day-to-day economic struggles that placed them under the banner of the Socialists without involving them in a battle for political power. At least under the Socialists the workers were able to build authoritarian centralized mass organizations that recognized that the workers had to capture the state. Only the Socialists believed that they could take control of the state in a peaceful and parliamentary manner. The Stalinist Communist Party showed itself completely bewildered and futile in all of this action. The entire Spanish revolution caught the Communist International unprepared. In the beginning the Communist Party did its best to attack the Socialists and rejected the united front of all workers' organizations to fight the capitalist enemy.

Instead of the united front they began their crazy tactics of building paper unions, splitting up labor's forces, etc. The result of this was miserable failure. In the end the Stalinist's gave up their special trade union organizations and fused them with the Socialists' General Labor Union. In the meantime the Spanish reactionaries had taken heart at the defects and disunity of the workers and prepared one blow after another.

They were able to see to it that all the revolutionary measures which the masses had favored were postponed by the Liberal-Coalition government which continued to live only because of the collaboration of the Socialists with it and because the workers did not know what to do with the power they had organized. Having stalled the revolution, the monarchist reactionaries then began their counter-offensive, the most important phase being the attempt of General Sanjurjo with part of the army and Civil Guards. It was in such periods when reaction threatened that the masses were able to isolate the reactionary cliques and give them crushing blows. The Sanjurjo revolt was quickly put down and the masses demanded death to the traitors and the confiscation of their property.

Again the Liberals of the Zanorra-Azana stripe ran to the aid of the reactionaries to protect them from the wrath of the people. Thus the deadlock continued for a number of years. However, this unstable equilibrium could not last forever. The intensifying contradictions throughout the world and within Spain compelled the political movements to give permanent answers to the burning problems of the day.

The great growth of Fascism in Europe, particularly its brutal victory in Germany and Austria, compelled the masses of France and Spain to draw the necessary lessons that the ruling class would never give up its power without a f...

Research essay sample on Trade Union Movement Labor Union