10.1. TIMELINE
1922,
22-29 October: March on Rome
1923
21 July.
The Italian Chamber of Deputies approves a new election law ("Acerbo
Law") 223 to 123.
13
September. Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (until 1930)
8-9
November. Failure of the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler is incarcerated.1923
1924
21 January. Death of Lenin. Kamenev and
Zinoviev take control of the Party, with Trotsky (on their left)
("Permanent revolution") and Bukharin on their right.
10 June.
Socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti,
a harsh critic of Mussolini's government, is kidnapped by fascist militia. His
body is found on 16 August.
1929
February. Stalin expels Trotsky from the
Soviet Union.
24 - 29
(Thursday - Tuesday) of October. The New York Stock Exchange (Wall Street)
collapses. Great Depression
1930 8 January Primo de Rivera resigns.
1931
14
April. Proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic. The same day the king
Alfonso XIII leaves Spain.
28
June General elections in Spain
9
December Approval of the II Spanish
Republic´s Constitution
1932 8 November. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected President of the United
States, with 57.4% of the vote and winning 42 States; Herbert Hoover takes
39.7% of the vote and wins 6 States. (New
Deal)
1933
30 January.
Hitler is appointed Chancellor.
(NSDAP: 33% of the votes).
23 March
Enabling Act (Ermächtigungsgesetz). Hitler imposes dictatorship.
19
November Second elections in Republican Spain. Women vote for the first time. Right Parties wing wins.
1934
June
30 to July 2: the Night of the Long
Knives. Hitler kills leading figures of the Nazi Party.
October Asturias Revolution. Socialist revolution in Spain, against right wing
Government.
1936
16
February Third elections in Republican Spain. Left wing parties (Popular
Front) win.
25
August Execution of Zinoviev. Beginning
of Stalin’s Great Purge.
Until 1939 more than one million Russians (mostly revolutionaries of 1917) are
executed by political reasons.
18
July. Military revolt in Spain against the Republic. Beginning of the Spanish Civil
War.
1938
9
march Franco approves the Labour
Charter (Fuero de los españoles). The first of its Fundamental Laws of
the Realm
12 March.
Incorporation of Austria into the Third Reich (Anschluss).
September
30. The Munich Agreement. Chamberlain and Daladier give in to Hitler on the
question of the Sudetenland.
1939
1
April. End of the Spanish Civil War, with the absolute victory of General
Francisco Franco.
23 August.
Ribbentrop and Molotov sign the Non-aggression Pact between theThird Reich and the Soviet Union.
1
September. Germany invades Poland.
Second World War begins.
7
September. Stalin invades Poland.
1940
April -
May. Katyn Massacre (Poland). Soviet
troops gun down 22,000 Polish soldiers in cold blood.
21 August.
Leon Trotsky is assassinated in Coyoacán (Mexico) by Catalonian Ramón Mercader,
at Stalin's behest.
1941 22 June. The Germans invade Russia (Operation Barbarossa).
1942
20 January.
Wannsee Conference, at which the implementation of Jewish extermination, the
"Final Solution"
(Endlösung), is decided.
17
July Franco approves the Law
Constituting the Cortes (Ley constitutiva de Cortes). Second of the Fundamental
Laws of the Realm
1943
31 January.
Von Paulus surrenders at Stalingrad.
24 July. Mussolini is dismissed by the
Grand Council of Fascism and replaced by Marshal Pietro Badoglio.
1944 6 June. Landing of the Allies at Normandy.
1945
12 April.
F.D. Roosevelt dies and is replaced in office by Harry S. Truman.
28 April.
Mussolini is shot, along with Claretta Petacci.
30 April.
Hitler commits suicide in his Berlin bunker.
7 May. Unconditional surrender of Germany.
17 July Franco approves the Charter of the Spanish
(Fuero de
los españoles). Third of the Fundamental
Laws of the Realm
2
September. Ho Chi Minh founds the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
22
October Franco approves the National
Referendum Law (Ley del Referendum Nacional). Fourth of the Fundamental
Laws of the Realm
1946
5 March. Churchill
coins the term "Iron Curtain" to refer to the
separation between the Europe of Soviet influence and Western Europe.
2 June. In
a referendum 54% of Italians vote against the monarchy. Proclamation of the
Italian Republic (Constituted on 22 December, 1947).
December The United Nations recommend retiring
Ambassadors from Francoist Spain.
1947
5 June.
George Marshall's speech at Harvard University.
Launch of
the European Recovery Program
(ERP), better known as the Marshall Plan.
26 July Franco approves the Law of Succession (Ley de Sucesión en la Jefatura del
Estado). Fifth
of the Fundamental Laws of the Realm
1948 25
June. Initiation of the Berlin Airlift (Luftbrücke) to rescue western Berlin
from the blockade imposed by Stalin.
1949
4 April.
Signing in Washington of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) agreement, forming a western
alliance against Soviet expansionism.
23 May.
Enactment of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. The Federal
Republic of Germany is born.
1 October. Mao Tse Tung proclaims the People's
Republic of China at the Gate of Tiananmen Square (Forbidden City).
10
December. Final military victory of Mao over nationalist forces. Chiang
Kai-Shek takes refuge in Taiwan.
1950
25 June.
Start of the Korean War (Until
1953).
October.
China invades Tibet.
1953
5 March. Stalin dies. His legacy: 10
million dead Russians (4 million killed in political purges, 10 million dead
from starvation).
17 July.
End of the Korean War. Division between North Korea and South Korea
(demilitarized zone). 4 km wide and 238 long.
1954 7 May. A French army surrenders at Dien Bien Phu. Ho Chi Minh is
proclaimed President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
1956
February.
20th Congress of the CPSU (Russian Communist Party). Condemnation of Stalinism
(Nikita Khrushchev). 23 October –
10
November. The Hungarian Revolution
against the Soviet Union is brutally put down by Soviet tanks.
1958 17 May
Franco approves the Law of the Principles of the National
Movement (Ley de Principios del Movimiento Nacional). Sixth of the
Fundamental Laws of the Realm.
1959 1 January. Triumph of the Cuban Revolution. (Flight of
Fulgencio Batista. Fidel Castro seizes power).
1961
15-19
April. Anti-Castro invasion of Cuba ends in disaster at the Bay of Pigs.
13 August.
Building of the Berlin Wall
(Berliner Mauer), which would stand until November 9, 1989.
1962 October.
The Cuban Missile Crisis. President
Kennedy is on the verge of declaring war on the Soviet Union (under
Khrushchev).
1963 22 November. President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas.
1964 2 August. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident. An American warship is purportedly
attacked by a North Vietnamese patrol boat.
1965 6 February. President Johnson orders the
bombing of North Vietnam. The Vietnam War begins.
1966 8 August. Mao launches the "Cultural Revolution," which
seeks to eradicate traditional Chinese culture.
For 10 years the Revolution implements a series of radical policies.
1967
10
January Franco approves the Organic Law of the State (Ley
Orgánica del Estado). Seventh of the Fundamental Laws of the Realm.
9
October. Revolutionary leader Che Guevara is executed in La Higuera
(Bolivia) by
order of Bolivian President Barrientos.
1968
5 January -
20 August. Stage of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia (Prague Spring) with Alexander Dubcek
emerging as a leader. The invasion of
Warsaw Pact troops puts down this attempt at reform.
May. A
state of emergency is declared in France in response to student and worker
protests (May 1968).
1973
27 January.
Signing of the Peace of Paris between
United States and North Vietnam.
29 March.
The last U.S. soldiers leave Vietnam.
16 October.
The Nobel Peace Prize goes to Henry Kissinger.
1974 8 August
President Nixon resigns (Watergate
Scandal)
1975
17 April.
The Khmer Rouge conquer Phnom Penh. Pol Pot (Saloth Sar) perpetrates genocide
against all non-revolutionaries. 2 million Cambodians are killed.
30 April.
North Vietnamese troops occupy Saigon.
20 November. Francisco Franco dies in Madrid.
39 years, day by day, after the execution of José Antonio Primo de Rivera.
10.2 SOME
WORDS
Proletariat
Communista Manifesto
Social Democracy
Bolshevism
Kommintern
Spartacist
Uprising
March on Rome
Fascism
Acerbo Law
Giacomo
Matteoti
Beer Hall
Putsch (Munich, 1923)
National
socialism
Enabling
Act (Ermächtigungsgesetz)
Great
Depression
New Deal (F.
D. Roosevelt)
Welfare
State
Night of
Long Knives
Stalin’s
Great Purge (Moscow Trials)
Anschluss
Munich
Agreement
Endlösung
Marshall
Plan
North Atlantic
Treaty Organisation
Korean War
Bay of Pigs
Berlin Wall
Cultural
Revolution
Prague
Spring
Watergate
Scandal
Disaster of
Annual (1921)
Patriotic Union
(Primo de Rivera)
Asturias
Revolution (1934)
Frente
Popular
Falange
Junta de Defensa Nacional
National Movement
(Franco)
Fundamental
Laws of the Realm (Francoist regime)
Partitocracy
10.3 SOME
QUESTIONS
1. Explain briefly what is the “Social
question” and why it started.
2. What was
the constitutional consequence of the Social question as far as political
institutions were concerned?
3. What did Marx and Engels propose for solving
the social question?
4. Is
Social Democracy a revolutionary movement? Explain why or why not
5. Why the
Soviet revolution was “International” and why fascism and Nazism were “national”?
Think in terms of solving the social question
6. Name in
chronological order the principle phases of Spanish Constitutional history
between 1923 and 1939.
7. What was the aim of the Marshall Plan?
8. Why
Communists dictatorship’s were considered politically correct by European intellectual
elites during the XXth century?
9. The totalitarian
phase in XXth century European constitutional history has left any trace in our
actual democratic regimes?
10. What is
the Social Rule of Law model State? Why and where did it start?
11. What
provoked in Spain the Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship?
12. What
were the aims of Primo de Rivera? Think in economical, social and political terms.
13. Why did
the Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship ended?
14. How did
the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed, and why it ended with a Civil War?
10.4 TEXTS
10.4.1 The appearance of the
"proletariat" and the origins of the “social question”
“If after 1850 one can speak of the triumph of
"Big Capitalism" it is because Europe enjoyed exponential economic
growth. This dramatic expansion of production and trade volumes was, to a great
extent, a result of the historic changes brought about by scientific progress
and, more specifically, the appearance of new technical developments and
inventions that radically altered the conditions of everyday life for
Europeans. At the same time society experienced spectacular demographic growth
due to higher standards of living and advances in nutrition, health, hygiene
and medical science. As a result, Europe shifted from a focus on the individual
to a “mass culture.” This radical transformation of Europe's social structure
led, in turn, to major alterations to the constitutional system.
Just when
the middle class had managed to penetrate the body politic, however, the social
order was once again shaken up and blurred as a consequence of the momentous
economic transformations spawned by Big Capitalism. Beneath the middle class
arose a new European social strata: the proletariat (from the Latin proles,
meaning "offspring"), so called because its members had no assets but
their own children. The proletariat
was also referred to as “the fourth estate” to differentiate it from the former
tripartite estate system under the Ancien Régime: the two privileged classes
(clergy and nobility) and the Third Estate, made up of the common people. From the
point of view of constitutional history the proletariat burst onto the
political scene in the mid-19th century, aiming to achieve the political
influence necessary to alter a constitutional system in Europe which had
relegated workers to a life of misery. This is what came to be known as
"the social question."
10.4.2 From censitary to universal suffrage:
the Communist Manifesto and the first mass parties (1848-1905)
Between
1814 and 1914 Europe abandoned absolutism as a state model, replacing it with a
liberal model in which power was limited and controlled by a new oligarchy made
up of the old nobility and members of the high bourgeoisie.
In the mid
19th century the European nation-states' swelling wealth allowed the middle
class to achieve a degree of political influence as it was incorporated into
the electoral base when censitary and indirect suffrage was abandoned, giving
way to universal (male) suffrage. In the United States the transition to
universal suffrage was a consequence of the incorporation of new, non-slave
states into the union populated by many small property owners, a process that
would be consolidated after the end of the Civil War in 1865. In Europe the
expansion of suffrage came about progressively: in England between 1832 and
1918; in France it was introduced abruptly in 1848, though it would be
consolidated after 1875; in Prussia, in 1850, at least formally; and in Spain,
first between 1868 and 1875, and then on a permanent basis after 1890. These
were clear signs that European politics was undergoing a historic shift.
Universal
suffrage, despite being initially limited to men, swung open the doors to
masses of workers who had become "class conscious" in the wake of the
publication, on 21 February, 1848, of Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich
Engels' (1820-1895) Communist Manifesto (Manifest
der Kommunistischen Partei) a powerful proclamation of communist
principles, which ended in the following manner:
"The Communists disdain to conceal their
views and intentions. They openly declare that their ends can only be attained
by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling
classes tremble at the prospect of a Communist revolution. The proletariat has
nothing to lose but its chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all
countries, unite!"
Henceforth
the Socialist movement's aim became to control the liberal state by legal means
and to acquire power through the corresponding electoral processes (Social
Democracy). In fact, it was at this time when the first mass parties were
founded: the German Socialist Workers' Party (1875), the Spanish Socialist
Workers' Party (1879), the Italian Socialist Party (1892), the English Labour
Party (1900), the Russian Socialist-Revolutionary Party (1901), and the French
Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), created in 1905, the forerunner
of the current French Socialist Party.
10.4.3 International proletarianism vs. the
capitalism of the liberal nation-states
“The
triumph of the Soviet Revolution and the establishment of a communist
dictatorship in Russia utterly contravened the liberal model of the
nation-state, based on government's non-intervention in bourgeois society
(laissez faire) and, in fact, overturned the very principle of the nation-state
itself.
When Lenin
signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany (March 3, 1918), according to
which the new Soviet Russia suffered important territorial losses, he did so
because he considered the war a struggle between capitalists, and in this he
was not mistaken. The leader of the
Soviet Russia held, this time in line with the purest Marxist orthodoxy, that
German workers would not fight against their Russian comrades, but against
German oligarchies that had enslaved them. Thus, in opposition to the
nation-state arose the model of the totalitarian state, but with a view to
international domination.
The Germans
perceived too late the danger posed by the triumph of the Soviet Revolution
and, as a result, ended up seeking the armistice to end World War I, signed on
11 November, 1918. A few months later the Third International, or Kommintern (of International Communism)
met, its precise objective to extend the proletarian revolution throughout the
world. In fact, in the year 1919 a wave of revolutionary processes swept
through Europe. There was unrest in recently-defeated Germany, where in January
of 1919 the Spartacist Uprising
(January Strike) broke out, headed by Karl Liebknechtand and Rosa Luxemburg
(December 1918 – January 1919), violently put down by the government of the
Weimar Republic under the leadership of the socialist Friedrich Ebert.
After
Lenin's death in 1924 Stalin, from his post as General Secretary of the
Communist Party, managed to gain power by killing off all the revolutionaries
from the first stage (Kamenev, Zinoviev and Trotsky) through a set of kangaroo
courts known as the "Moscow Trials"
(1936-1939). Before his death (1953) Stalin went on to impose an iron
dictatorship over a monolithic State, based on relentless police repression and
terror. In fact, Stalin's purges and totalitarianism would be condemned even by
the Communist Party at its 20th Congress (1956), led by Nikita Khrushchev”.
10.4.4 The states of Europe react by defending
"national socialism."
The Soviet
Revolution was a real blow to the ruling classes of the western states, which
did not hesitate to support the formation of parties appealing to the masses of
workers with platforms of aggressive social reform in a desperate attempt to
prevent the triumph of Bolshevism.
This trend
in Italy would lead to the rise of Benito Mussolini (1922-1943) and, in
Germany, Adolf Hitler (1933-1945), populist leaders who ended up imposing two
dictatorships which actually advanced policies of labor and economic reform.
After coming to power in 1922 by way of a coup d'état (The March on Rome), Mussolini strengthened the executive, reorganized
government administration and created public bodies to boost the economy
through massive investment in public works and industrial consortia. As a
result, Italy overcame its economic crisis and enjoyed an era of great
prosperity.
In Germany
Hitler, after failing to pull off his own coup (Beer Hall Putsch, Munich, 1923)
rose to power ten years later via election in 1933, and quickly imposed a
fierce dictatorship. In the economic arena Hitler, like Mussolini, also
launched a policy of state economic intervention which alleviated the massive
inflationary crisis which had consumed the country.
Both
Mussolini and Hitler embraced a state model according to which the government
actively intervened in the economy and adopted the measures necessary to
prevent social injustice, but on a strictly "national" scale, soundly
rejecting the kind of "international socialism/communism" forwarded
by Lenin. It is highly significant that the party with which Hitler came to
power was called the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche
Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP), a political organization founded in 1920 months
after the failure of the Spartacist Uprising and the foundation of the Kommintern.
But Hitler
sought not only to take over the German state, but to redefine the very idea of
the "nation," propounding a racist concept according to which the
German people (Deutscher Volk) needed
to be purified so as to contain only pure Aryan blood. This perverted notion of
the nation led to the extermination of entire ethnic groups (genocide),
including the Jews and Gypsies, in the "Final Solution" (Endlösung) and the elimination of
persons with physical and mental defects to improve race through eugenics.
10.4.5 The Spanish Civil War as the prologue of
the confrontation between communism and fascism
From the point of view of constitutional
history the triumph of totalitarianism in Russia, Italy and Germany ushered in
an era characterized by brutal repression through the development of state
security forces that crushed any attempts at dissent. Stalin, Hitler and
Mussolini all killed or confined in concentration camps those who opposed their
regimes. This system of terror was, however, "offset" by spectacular
economic growth and concealed by propaganda which illustrated only the regimes'
achievements. Thus, liberal parliamentary government spiraled into crisis as
attempted military coups and revolutionary uprisings spread, in both cases
aimed at overthrowing the constitutional order in order to impose dictatorships
which promised to more effectively solve the social and economic crisis
plaguing the era.
Europe was,
thus, divided into two extremist and diametrically opposed camps: supporters of
communist dictatorships and those who defended the triumph of the totalitarian,
national socialist or fascist model.
In line
with this trend, in Spain on September 13, 1923 General Primo de Rivera imposed
a dictatorship suspending the Constitution of 1876, less than a year after the
March on Rome (27-29 October, 1922) which had placed Mussolini in power. Dictatorship
lasted until January 1930 and led to the fall of the Spanish Monarchy in April
14, 1931.
The Second
Republic saw the triumph of universal suffrage as the 1931 Constitution gave
the Women the right to vote. But triumph of right wing parties in November 1933
general elections was never accepted by the Left parties, and the Socialist
Leader Largo Caballero tried to rebel against the Government. From 5-9 October, 1934, as reaction to the
victory of the right-wing in the elections on 19 November of the previous year,
PSOE Secretary General Francisco Largo Caballero led a revolution throughout
Spain (which succeeded, ephemerally, only in Asturias) through which he sought
to establish a Soviet-style regime.
The tension
between communists and fascists swelled throughout Europe and ended up
exploding in the form of the Spanish Civil War (July, 1936 - April, 1939) a
grisly armed conflict which was long and devastating, as both sides were fueled
by external support to wage it. While the democratic nations adopted policies
of non-intervention, the totalitarian regimes sent aid to support their
ideological allies. Stalin defended the Frente
Popular (the Republic disappeared, de facto, in July of 1936) while
Mussolini and Hitler supported the España Nacional (a term employed by those
who carried out the military coup following the creation of the Junta de Defensa Nacional on July 24,
1936).
10.4.6 Second World War and the end of fascism
The Spanish
Civil war was, however, only the prologue to a new global confrontation which
would originate in Europe: World War II. This conflict had its origins in the
imperialist policies through which Mussolini, and especially Hitler, strove to
expand their nations' territory, in Germany's case in search of Lebensraum, or
"vital space." Both dictators initiated widespread rearmament, which
portended the outbreak of a new worldwide conflict. After the 1938 annexation
of Austria (Anschluss) and the
Sudetenland (a German-speaking region of Czechoslovakia), accepted by England
and France in the Munich Agreement (September 30, 1938), Hitler signed a
"Non-aggression Pact" with Stalin on August 23, 1939, through which
Germany and Russia effectively divvied up Poland.
On
September 1, 1939, Wehrmacht troops crossed the Polish border, thereby igniting
World War II. 16 days later, on September 17, it was the Russians' turn to
invade Poland, which they did under the pretext of protecting the Ukrainians
and Belarusians who lived in the eastern part of the country. The Germans ultimately lost the war in the
spring of 1945. The Russians would continue to impose and support communist
dictatorships until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
On 22 June,
1944 Hitler committed the fateful blunder of invading Russia (Operation
Barbarossa), an offensive would end in absolute failure after the Germans'
defeat at Stalingrad (June, 1942 - February, 1943). The surrender of Von Paulus
(commanding 90,000 soldiers surviving from his initial force of 250,000) marked
the beginning of the end for Hitler. The paradox was that Stalinist Russia
emerged on the side of the victors, and during the early post-war years the
communists touted themselves as the saviors of the world.
The fragile
alliance between the democratic nations and the totalitarian Soviet Union would
end up rupturing after the launch of the Marshall
Plan (June 5, 1947). Europe was split into two blocks: Western Europe, in
which the democratic model of the state was recovered; and Eastern Europe, in
which Soviet-style totalitarianism prevailed until 1989. In fact, the
considerable importance which communist parties enjoyed in democratic European
states all the way through the 1980s should not be overlooked. These parties were
integrated into the Communist International, and their general secretaries
continued to receive instructions from Moscow.
All of this crashed down like a house of cards after the Soviet Union's
demise in 1991.
10.4.7 The Communist Dictatorships as totalitarian
politically correct regimes
The end of the Second World War did not mean the end of dictatorship.
Stalin’s Soviet Union got stronger as ever before, and Communism saw the
triumph of Revolution in Mao’s China (1949) and Fidel Castro’s Cuba (1959). In 13
August 1961 the beginning of the building of the Berlin Wall (Berliner Mauer), which would stand until
November 9, 1989, was the symbol that the world was divided between Western
Capitalists Countries and Countries dominated by Real Socialist Regimes.
The
collapse of the Soviet Union (1991) and most of the countries with states
integrated into the model of "real socialism" did not prevent
communist dynamics from continuing to expand during the era of decolonization,
above all in Asia: in 1945 Ho Chi Minh founded the Democratic Republic of
Vietnam; in North Korea Kim II Sung created the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea, which he would rule with an iron fist from 1948 to 1994; in China Mao
Tse Tung rose to power in 1949. Communism would also cross the Atlantic thanks
to the triumph of the revolution led by Fidel Castro in Cuba against the
Fulgencio Batista dictatorship (January 1, 1959), while other Ibero-American
leaders, such as Che Guevara, would also seek to spread it.
Hitler's
defeat and the collapse of the Berlin wall and the Soviet Union did not, then,
do away with totalitarian regimes. There still remain Cuba, North Korea,
Vietnam and the People's Republic of China. In the latter case, however, the
meaning of the dictatorial state has changed, as rather than attempting to
suppress the market system it has actually ended up fomenting it, creating a
state-guided form of capitalism coated with economic imperialism, and not
devoid of a certain strain of “revanchism” in response to the colonial era
during which China was dominated by the West.
It is, no doubt, an unprecedented model which, for now, has made China a
superpower, respected by the leaders of democratic regimes even though it is a
police state which continues to impose the death penalty and where the
suppression of free expression and protest is relentless. China and states like
it are, in short, autocratic states ruled by isolated elites which adopt
euphemistic descriptions of themselves as socialist, democratic and popular,
despite the glaring fact that they are, in fact, none of these things.
10.4.8 From Dictatorship to Partitocracy
As for
Soviet Russia, the October Revolution generated a very curious totalitarian
state featuring successive constitutions (1918, 1924, 1936, 1977) containing a
peculiar version of public law, including provisions such as an election rule
whereby only the workers were allowed to vote (appearing in Lenin's first
constitution), which deprived all other social groups, from the middle class
up, of political representation. It was, one might say, a kind of proletarian
censitary suffrage. As with Stalin's constitution of 1936, the constitutions
underwent constant changes, as they were modified to govern aspects which would
normally be dealt with by ordinary laws, or even regulations. The Soviet
constitutions were not, thus, lasting and stable foundational texts, but rather
legislative hodgepodges undergoing constant change - not to mention the
Brezhnev Constitution of 1977, which officially gave up on the ''dictatorship
of the proletariat." These were all constitutional regulations which
established a legal framework suitable for a regime in which the important
thing was not the government, nor the legislatures, nor the courts, but the
power of the sole party (Communist Party of the Soviet Union), which
constituted the core of the state. One only came to form part of the Party
after a long and careful selection process for which it was necessary to spend
several years as a candidate before joining the new dominant class.
All of
these classes of totalitarian states certainly merit a more detailed study, as
they are extremely germane and valuable towards an understanding of the extent
to which law did not serve as a limiting force, but rather a legitimizing
instrument of power after the collapse of the Ancien Régime. Above all they
illustrate how each new autocratic regime ended up creating its own legitimacy
and legal framework, which came to be accepted by the democratic nations, as is
now the case with the Chinese dictatorship. Moreover, specific aspects of these
totalitarian regimes still form part of our democratic states in the 21st
century. Without going any further, one can cite the power structure prevailing
in our current mass parties, whose leadership is determined by conventions at
which cadres of elites are elected which end up enforcing party discipline,
particularly when it comes to drawing up electoral lists. These practices have
led specialists in public law to expressively designate our contemporary
political parties as "New Princes " which have turned our democracies
into "Partocracies." Massification obliges.
10.4.9 The social reaction of Western
democracies: Roosevelt's New Deal and Welfare State. Towards the Social Rule of
Law model State.
The liberal
model of the state did not disappear, but it did have to be adapted to address
new circumstances, even in the world's most liberal regime: the United States
of America. This was the work of the nation's 32nd president, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt (FDR), the longest-serving president in the country's history, in
office from March 4, 1933 until April 12, 1945. Elected four times, he died in
office, cutting short his final term.
FDR, a
Democrat, triumphed in the election of 1933 with a platform whose central tenet
was protection for the common man from the ravages of the Great Depression. To this end he proposed a "New Deal"
based on the premise the state should intervene to stimulate the economy and,
in general, to alleviate the situation of the needy. This program was carried
out in two phases. Immediately after taking office Roosevelt began to take
steps to revive the U.S. economy in the short term ("The 100 Days.")
In 1935 a second, more ambitious, longer-term phase began. The New Deal
included federal aid to farmers, public assistance to the homeless, and
established the nation’s first social welfare system (Social Security Act,
August 14, 1935), agricultural protection legislation (Agricultural Adjustment
Act, 12 May, 1933) and an ambitious initiative known as the National Recovery
Administration (NRA), a government body created via the National Industrial
Recovery Act of June 16, 1933, a bill encapsulating the very essence of the New
Deal. Its aim was to regulate economic affairs, including work hours, minimum
wages and guaranteed prices. The federal government strove to bolster the
economy through a bold policy of public works, including the creation of a
government agency for the exploitation of the Tennessee River (Tennessee Valley
Authority Act, May 18, 1933), featuring major investments to improve its
navigability, control floods and generate electricity. Also undertaken was the
construction the Hoover Dam and the Colorado River Dam, on the border between
the states of Arizona and Nevada, which took five years to build (1931-1936)
and whose workers founded the nucleus of what is today the city of Las Vegas.
The policy of economic interventionism
initiated by Roosevelt in the United States had repercussions in Europe, where
democratic governments also began to implement interventionist policies in the
defense of workers. The most significant example is that of France, where in
1937 a coalition of leftist parties, the Popular
Front, won the elections, placing
socialist León Blum at the head of the government. The most important
achievement of Blum’s government were the social benefits for the first time
granted French workers, including a reduction in work hours, guarantees of paid
vacation time (15 days per year) and a 40% reduction in railway prices. In the
summer of 1936, some 600,000 French workers went on vacation. The following
year the number soared to 1,800,000.
It was the
first step of a new model of State, that was between the pure Liberal Laissez faire model and the totalitarian
regimes: the Welfare State. Power was
submitted to the Rule of Law principle, but one of the main aims of the State
is to provide protection and promotion of the economic and social well-being of
its citizens.
10.4.10 The first interventionist State
experiment in Spain: The Primo de Rivera’s Dictatorship (1923-1930)
a) The
Disaster of Annual (22 July 1921)
The Battle
of Annual was fought on July 22, 1921, at Annual in Spanish Morocco, between
the Spanish Army of Africa and Berber combatants of the Rif region during the
Rif War. The Spanish suffered a major military defeat, almost always referred
to by the Spanish as the Disaster of Annual, which led to major political
crises and a redefinition of Spanish colonial policy toward the Rif.
The Spanish
lost more than 20,000 soldiers at Annual. German historian Werner Brockdorff
states that only 1,200 of the 20,000 Spanish escaped alive. Rif casualties were
800. Materiel lost by the Spanish, in the summer of 1921 and especially in the
Battle of Annual, included 11,000 rifles, 3,000 carbines, 1,000 muskets, 60
machine guns, 2,000 horses, 1,500 mules, 100 cannon, and a large quantity of
ammunition. Abd el Krim remarked later: "In just one night, Spain supplied
us with all the equipment which we needed to carry on a big war." Other
sources give the amount of booty seized by Rif warriors as 20,000 rifles
(German made Mausers), 400 machine guns (Hotchkisses), and 120–150 artillery pieces
(Schneiders).
The
political crisis brought about by this disaster led to the Primo de Rivera’s
Dictatorship.
b) Establishment
of Dictatorship
On
September 13, 1923, the indignant military, headed by Captain General Miguel
Primo de Rivera in Barcelona, overthrew the parliamentary government, upon
which Primo de Rivera established himself as dictator. In his typically florid
prose, he issued a Manifesto explaining the coup to the people. Resentful of
the parliamentarians' attacks against him, King Alfonso tried to give Primo de
Rivera legitimacy by naming him prime minister. In justifying his coup d'état,
Primo de Rivera announced: "Our aim is to open a brief parenthesis in the
constitutional life of Spain and to re-establish it as soon as the country
offers us men uncontaminated with the vices of political organization." In
other words, he believed that the old class of politicians had ruined Spain,
that they sought only their own interests rather than patriotism and
nationalism.
Although
many leftists opposed the dictatorship, some of the public supported Primo de
Rivera. Those Spaniards were tired of the turmoil and economic problems and
hoped a strong leader, backed by the military, could put their country on the
right track. Others were enraged that the parliament had been brushed aside. As
he travelled through Spain, his emotional speeches left no doubt that he was a
Spanish patriot. He proposed to keep the dictatorship in place long enough to
sweep away the mess created by the politicians. In the meantime, he would use
the state to modernize the economy and alleviate the problems of the working
class.
Primo de
Rivera began by appointing a supreme Directory of eight military men, with
himself as president. He then decreed martial law and fired civilian
politicians in the provinces, replacing them with middle-ranking officers. When
members of the Cortes complained to the king, Alfonso dismissed them, and Primo
de Rivera suspended the constitution and dissolved the legislative body. He
also moved to repress separatists, who wanted to make the Basque provinces and
Catalonia independent from Spain.
Despite
some reservations, the great Spanish philosopher and intellectual, José Ortega
y Gasset, wrote: "The alpha and omega of the task that the military
Directory has imposed is to make an end of the old politics. "The purpose
is so excellent, that there is no room for objections. The old politics must be
ended." Nevertheless, other intellectuals such as Miguel de Unamuno and
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez criticized the regime and were exiled.
The
dictator enjoyed several successes
in the early years of his regime. Chief among them was Morocco, which had been
festering since the start of the 20th century. Primo de Rivera talked of
abandoning the colony altogether, unless sufficient resources were available to
defeat the rebellion, and began withdrawing Spanish forces. But when the
Moroccans attacked the French sector, they drove the French and Spanish to
unite to crush the defiance in 1925. He went to Africa to help lead the troops
in person, and 1927 brought victory to the Franco-Spanish forces. Grateful
Spaniards rejoiced to think that decades of North African bloodletting and recriminations
were over.
c) The era
of reforms
Primo de
Rivera deeply believed that it was the politicians who had ruined Spain and
that governing without them he could restore the nation.This is why he worked
to build infrastructure for his economically backward country.
Infrastructures: Spain had few cars when he came to power; by
1930, it possessed Europe's best network of automobile roads. The Barcelona
Metro, started many years earlier, opened in 1924. His economic planners built
dams to harness the hydroelectric power of rivers, especially the Duero and the
Ebro, and to provide water for irrigation. For the first time, electricity
reached some of Spain's rural regions. The regime upgraded Spain's railroads,
and this helped the Spanish iron and steel industry prosper. Between 1923 and
1927, foreign trade increased 300%. Overall, his government intervened to
protect national producers from foreign competition. Such economic nationalism
was largely the brainchild of Primo de Rivera's finance minister, José Calvo
Sotelo. While Spain benefited from the European post-World War I boom, its
economic growth also came from Primo de Rivera's policies and the order his
regime gave the country.
Social reforms: The tranquility was, in part, due to the
dictatorship's ways to accommodate the interests of Spanish workers. Imitating
the example of Benito Mussolini in Italy, Primo de Rivera forced management and
labor to cooperate by organizing 27 corporations (committees) representing
different industries and professions. Within each corporation, government
arbitrators mediated disputes over wages, hours, and working conditions. This
gave Spanish labor more influence than ever before and this might be the reason
why the Spanish Socialist Party and UGT where quick to cooperate with the
government and its leaders affiliated themselves with the committees mentioned
before.[4] Individual workers also benefited because the regime undertook
massive public works. The government financed such projects with huge public
loans, which Calvo Sotelo argued would be repaid by the increased taxes
resulting from economic expansion. Unemployment largely disappeared.
Repression: But Primo de Rivera brought order to Spain
with a price: his regime was a dictatorship, albeit a mild one. He censored the
press. When intellectuals criticized the government, he closed El Ateneo, the
country's most famous political and literary club. The largely anarchist CNT
was decreed illegal and, without the support of the Socialist Party, the
general strikes organised by the organisation where dismantled violently by the
army. To suppress the separatist fever in Barcelona, the regime tried to
expunge Catalan culture. It was illegal to use Catalan in church services or to
dance the sardana. Furthermore, many of the dictator's economic reforms did not
actually help the poor as huge public spending led to inflation, which the rich
could cope with more easily. This led to a huge income disparity between the
wealthy and working classes in Spain at the time.
Yet despite his paternalistic conservatism,
Primo de Rivera was enough of a reformer and his policies were radical enough
to threaten the interests of the traditional power elite. According to British
historian Gerald Brenan, "Spain needed radical reforms and he could only
govern by the permission of the two most reactionary forces in the country—the
Army and the Church." This is why finally Primo de Rivera dared not tackle
what was seen as Spain's most pressing problem, agrarian reform, because it
would have provoked the great landholding elite. Writes historian Richard Herr,
"Primo was not one to waken sleeping dogs, especially if they were
big."
d) A new
political system?
Primo de
Rivera chiefly failed because he did not create a viable, legitimate political
system to preserve and continue his reforms. He seems to have sincerely wanted
the dictatorship to be as brief as possible and initially hoped that Spain
could live with the Constitution of 1876 and a new group of politicians. The
problem was to find new civilian leadership to take the place of the military.
In 1923, he began to create a new "apolitical" party, the Patriotic Union (UP), which was
formally organized the following year. Primo de Rivera liked to claim that
members of the UP were above the squabbling and corruption of petty politics,
that they placed the nation's interests above their own. He thought it would
bring ideal democracy to Spain by representing true public opinion. But the UP
quite obviously was a political party, despite the dictator's naive
protestations. Furthermore, it failed to attract enthusiastic support or even
many members.
On December 3, 1925, he moved to restore
legitimate government by dismissing the military Directory and replacing it
with civilians. Still, the constitution remained suspended, and criticisms of
the regime grew. By summer 1926, former politicians, led by conservative José
Sánchez Guerra, pressed the king to remove Primo de Rivera and restore
constitutional government. To demonstrate his public support, Primo de Rivera
ordered the UP to conduct a plebiscite in September. Voters could endorse the
regime or abstain. About a third of those able to vote declined to go to the polls.
Nevertheless,
buoyed by his victory, Primo de Rivera decided to create an entirely new
political system. On 10 October 1927, with the king in attendance, he opened a
National Assembly. Although they met in the Cortes chamber, members of the
regime-appointed assembly could only advise Primo de Rivera. They had no
legislative power. In 1929, following guidance from the dictator, the assembly
finally produced a new constitution. Among its provisions, it gave women the
vote because Primo de Rivera believed their political views less susceptible to
political radicalism. He intended to have the nation accept the new
constitution in another plebiscite, to be held in 1930.
As
Spaniards tired of the dictatorship, the economic boom ended. The value of the
peseta fell against foreign currencies, 1929 brought a bad harvest, and Spain's
imports far outstripped the worth of its exports. Conservative critics blamed
rising inflation on the government's spending for public works projects.
Although no one recognized it at the time, the final months of the year brought
the international economic slump which turned into the great depression of the
1930s.
e) End of
the dictatorship
When Primo de Rivera lost the support of the
king and the armed forces, his dictatorship was doomed. The Spanish military
had never unanimously backed his seizure of power, although it had tolerated
his rule. But when Primo de Rivera began to inject politics into promotions for
the artillery corps, it provoked hostility and opposition. Troubled by the
regime's failure to legitimize itself or to solve the country's woes, the king
also began to draw away.
Alfonso, who had sponsored the establishment
of Madrid's University City, watched with dismay as the country's students took
to the streets to protest the dictatorship and the king's support for it. A
clandestine pamphlet portrayed Alfonso as Primo de Rivera's dancing partner.
Yet the king did not have to remove Primo de Rivera. On 26 January 1930, the
dictator asked the military leaders if he still had their support. Their
lukewarm responses, and his recognition that the king no longer backed him,
persuaded him to resign two days later. Primo de Rivera retired to Paris, where
he died from fever and diabetes on 16 March 1930.
f) The
aftermath: From Dictatorship to Republic and Civil War
In the
early 1930s, as most of the western world, Spain fell into economic and
political chaos. Alfonso XIII appointed General Dámaso Berenguer, one of Primo
de Rivera's opponents, to govern. But the monarch had discredited himself by
siding with the dictatorship. Social revolution fermented in Catalonia. In
April 1931, General José Sanjurjo informed the King that he could not count on
the loyalty of the armed forces. Alfonso XIII suspended the monarchy on 14
April 1931, leaving the royal family in Madrid. The act ushered in the Second
Republic.
Two years later Primo de Rivera's eldest son,
José Antonio, founded the Falange, a
Spanish fascist party. Both José Antonio and his brother Fernando were arrested
in March 1936 by the republic, and were executed in Alicante prison by
republican forces once the Spanish Civil War began in July 1936. The
Nationalists led by Francisco Franco won the Civil War and established a far
more authoritarian regime. By that time, many Spaniards regarded Primo de
Rivera's relatively mild regime and its economic optimism with greater
fondness.
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