Socialism and War The Spanish Socialist Party in Power and Crisis, 1936–1939

This book recovers the lost history of Spanish socialism during the turbulent years of the Civil War (1936-39). Just as the energy of the socialist movement had sustained the pre-war Second Republic as an experiment in reform, so too it underwrote the Republican war effort in the crucial years of the conflict which would determine Spain's long-term future. Leading Socialist Party (PSOE) cadres formed the bedrock of the government, while thousands of Party and union militants helped bear the tremendous weight of the war effort. The role of the PSOE in the construction of Republican political unity during the Civil War was pivotal. Yet, paradoxically, previous accounts of wartime Republican politics have virtually written the PSOE out of the script by concentrating exclusively on the fierce ideological dispute between anarchists and communists. But the key issues of revolution and State power marked all the forces in Republican Spain, none more so than the Socialist movement. As the traditional party of the working class and the only mass party in Spain as late as 1931, PSOE militants were to be found on both sides of the revolutionary/reformist divide which split fatally the Republican forces during the Civil War. The PSOE's disintegration was a function of that of the Republic itself; but the reverse was no less true. The book investigates the responses of organised socialism to the complex issues raised by the conflict, as it charts the PSOE's devastating experience of political power and desperate crisis in a war it could not win.

Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Introduction; Part I. The Struggle for Control of the Psoe's National Organisation 1934–1936: 1. Internal divisions in the Spanish socialist movement 1934–1936; 2. The break-up of socialist unity and the coming of the civil war; Part II. The Socialist Left in Power 1936–1937: 3. The appointment of the Largo Caballero government; 4. Political realignments inside the socialist movement; 5. The socialist left: crisis and collapse; Part III. The Battle in the Party 1937–1938: 6. Ramón Lamoneda confronts the PSOE left; 7. The purge of the party left and the growing crisis in the reformist camp; 8. The atomisation of reformist socialism; Part IV. The Dispute in the UGT: 9. The battle for control of the union and the eclipse of the socialist left 1937–1938; 10. The caballerista old guard: entrenchment and resurgence; Part V. Socialist - Communist Rupture: 11. The Casado cuop and the end of the war; Appendices; Notes; Bibliography; Index.