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Example research essay topic: Socialist Party Spanish Army - 1,556 words

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... ight. The murder of so many Socialists broke up the Socialist International and caused certain parties to revise their position on legalism and parliamentarian. The Socialists got angry because, in spite of their servility to capitalism, capitalism in its Fascist phase, was kicking the Socialists out of office and making them lose their social reform and nice jobs. These reformists saw that they would have to fight to keep their reforms.

The masses, under Socialists influence, were demanding action against Fascism. As the Socialist International now split into fragments, in France and in Spain the Right Wing began to lose influence and to separate itself from the Socialist Party proper. Now it was the turn not of Prieto, but of Caballero, leader of the Socialist "Left" to take control. The rise of Fascism also occasioned the bankruptcy of Stalinism; these Stalinist's now rushed to hide behind the mass organizations of the Socialists and in joining forces with the Socialists, the Stalinist's could not but add to the Left Wing strength. The Trotskyites also capitulated and joined the Socialist Party.

Thus encouraged by this unification, the Socialist workers demanded that the aims of the Spanish revolution begin to attain realization. The workers called for social insurance, for workers' control over production, for the division or confiscation of estates, for the real separation of church and state, etc. Then the Liberal-Radical government, now thoroughly under the influence of reactionary forces led by Lerroux, Robles and March, tried to deny the will of the masses, in 1934 there took place, under the banner of the united alliance of Socialists, Communists and certain elements of the Syndicalists who broke away from the Anarchists, the great insurrectionary movement among the miners and other workers in the Asturias region of Spain. The revolt was put down by the government with much cruelty, many hundreds being shot and thousands perishing in the battles. The Asturias revolt was of enormous significance to the Spanish people. In the first place, it showed the capitalists and large land holders that the people were not going to wait further but were going to divide the land and control their jobs.

These reactionaries now began to mobilize their power in earnest. The monarchist agrarian elements now began to cement their close alliance with the capitalist city forces led by Juan March and Gil Robles and others who were forming Fascist groups. As the property even of the Liberal Azana began to be invaded by the peasants, these worthies, the Azana Liberals, leaned all the more closely to the reactionaries, permitting them to have the greatest leeway politically, especially in the organization of their forces in the army. The Liberals no longer would form a coalition with the Socialists under the new terms that the Socialists were compelled to ask but formed a coalition with the rightist element and thus the Socialists were placed outside the ruling bodies of the government. However, by this action the government only made itself still more unpopular and made the Socialist Party lend itself even more to activities of the left groups. The Socialist politicians saw that they could hold their jobs and their heads only by yielding to the demands of the masses and organize them for action.

In the second place the Asturias revolt taught the masses that to win they would have to knock out the state apparatus and set up their own dictatorship. The workers broke forever with rotten Anarchism that had stood aside in the most treacherous manner while the masses were fighting and being shot down. The C. N. T.

had refused to take part in the Asturias action; this damned the Anarcho-Syndicalists forever in the eyes of the conscious workers of Spain. In the third place the fighting gave the masses many lessons in the art of civil war. While it had unified all forces temporarily under the banner of the opportunist Socialist Party, whose opportunism and cowardice was directly responsible, incidentally, for the defeat and isolation of the workers of the Asturias, it had taught the workers and toilers the value of unity in action and the meaning of revolution. The defeat of the workers forced the revolutionary masses to take to parliamentary activity for the time being. This they could do only under the banner of the Socialist Party and at the next election the mass of people for the first time sent an overwhelming leftist delegation to the Cortes. This leftist delegation was made up of Communists, Socialists and Left Radicals, who being more responsive to the masses, at once made an attempt to execute the decrees already passed in 1931 but not yet executed.

It is to be noted that the Socialist Party of Spain, under the pressure of the Left Wing, did not take part in forming the government but kept in opposition. By this fact alone, the Socialist Party of Spain showed how more advanced it was than the Socialist Party of France, whose leader, Leon Blum, is premier to do the dirty work for the capitalist class of France and who uses the government to prevent the French from attaining Socialism. In this respect the Spanish revolutionary movement is far more advanced than the French. In order to execute the decrees desired by the people, the government had to take real control of the army and thus was forced very timidly to begin the reorganization of the army by removing certain Fascist and reactionary generals and officers. The reaction ists, however, could not afford to lose the army. They would have to fight rather than give up their chief weapon.

At the moment time was pressing heavily against the reaction ists. The government in Spain was being pushed to the Left not only by the Spanish masses but by the "People's" government in France. The great general strike movement in France had shown that the workers were not following the "People's Front" government in France so much as the "People's Front" government was following the workers. It was the workers that were taking the initiative and spontaneously forcing the hand of the government, compelling the government to yield on one demand after another. Faced with such powerful support the Leftist government of Spain could not help but go forward and allow the masses to have their will. And in this they were aided by the great strike movement that began to shake Spain as it shook France.

The workers were becoming increasingly bolder. Now was the time for the Fascists to strike their blow or never. Such, at least, was the opinion of those sections of the former ruling class and land owners who could no longer wait for favorable world conditions to break for them. It should be remembered, too, that in Spain the army had always been a paramount political force in the country. He who controlled the army, controlled Spain and the army men had been accustomed to make and unmake governments. This was owing to the fact that for centuries Spain had stagnated and up to recently there had been no class capable of challenging the will of the monarch who ruled through the army and who was displaced by palace revolutions led by men controlling that army.

The Spanish army was no good in foreign war. It was, however, an invaluable weapon internally to any resistance to the dictatorships set up within Spain. The Spanish army was also a place where grandees could regain their lost fortunes and get fat salaries doing nothing. The Spanish revolution, however, had unleashed new forces that were changing the entire character and role of the army. No longer was the army necessarily a decisive force in Spanish history.

It was the people who were speaking now in their own name, who demanded the entire dissolution of the old army and the establishment of a workers militia. Up to 1934 the Socialists and others were able to sabotage that demand for a workers' militia, but with the Asturias uprising and afterward the workers army became a fact and showed its great potentialities. The day of the mercenary standing army with its great pack of generals and officers was doomed, once the revolution was allowed definitely to swing to the Left. No wonder these officers, as one man, looked with hatred and fury upon the revolution and aspired to crush it. But to put down the masses, the Rightists now had to put down the Leftist parliamentary regime that showed itself so weak before the people. The revolt, therefore, had to be a revolt against the government itself.

Thus the Spanish revolution now shows itself to be a replica of the Russian Revolution, as the Revolution had moved to the Left, the Right Wing capitalist elements had conspired against it and were forced to fight the government of the Liberal-Radicals of Kerensky. And in Russia, too, although the masses hated Kerensky and the whole parliamentary frame work and wanted to give all power to the Soviets, yet the workers were compelled to defend Kerensky and parliamentarian. but in the course of this defense the masses were taught to go still further to the Left and wipe out both Kerensky and parliament and establish the Soviet regime and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Bibliography: spanish civil war by aloft deeper


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Research essay sample on Socialist Party Spanish Army

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