The linkages between nationalism and socialism and the nature of peasant and artisan politics in East Europe are the fundamental problems engaged by this study of socialism in nineteenth-century Galicia. The origins of the socialist movements lay in democratic national movements formed in response to the introduction of the Austrian constitution.
This is the first full-length study in English of the role of Marxist theory in the Spanish Socialist movement prior to the outbreak of Civil War in 1936. In particular, the author stresses the intellectual poverty of this aspect of leftwing politics in Spain. In concentrating on the Partido Socialista Obrero Espafiol (PSOE), the major organised party of the left prior to the Civil War, the study seeks to achieve two main aims: first, to attempt to isolate the political, social and intellectual factors which led to a particularly distorted version of Marxism which became established in Spain at the end of the nineteenth century; and second, to demonstrate how this particular conception of Marxism had a crucial negative impact on the political formulations and fortunes of the PSOE between 1879 and 1936. The central argument of the book is that the significance of Spanish Marxism lay precisely in its poverty, since it was this 'decaffeinated' version of the theory which set the parameters within which the PSOE formulated its strategy for socialism.
One hundred kilometers from Seville, there is a small village, Marinaleda, that for the last thirty years has been at the center of a long struggle to create a communist utopia. In a story reminiscent of the Asterix books, Dan Hancox explores the reality behind the community where no one has a mortgage, sport is played in the Che Guevara stadium and there are monthly "Red Sundays" where everyone works together to clean up the neighbourhood. In particular he tells the story of the village mayor, Sanchez Gordillo, who in 2012 became a household name in Spain after leading raids on local supermarkets to feed the Andalucian unemployed.
In spite of the fact that Conservative, Christian democratic and Liberal parties continue to play a crucial role in the democratic politics and governance of every Western European country, they are rarely paid the attention they deserve. This cutting-edge comparative collection, combining qualitative case studies with large-N quantitative analysis, reveals a mainstream right squeezed by the need to adapt to both 'the silent revolution' that has seen the spread of postmaterialist, liberal and cosmopolitan values and the backlash against those values – the 'silent counter-revolution' that has brought with it the rise of a myriad far right parties offering populist and nativist answers to many of the continent's thorniest political problems. What explains why some mainstream right parties seem to be coping with that challenge better than others? And does the temptation to ride the populist wave rather than resist it ultimately pose a danger to liberal democracy?
The linkages between nationalism and socialism and the nature of peasant and artisan politics in East Europe are the fundamental problems engaged by this study of socialism in nineteenth-century Galicia. The origins of the socialist movements lay in democratic national movements formed in response to the introduction of the Austrian constitution.
Anarchist Socialism in Early 20th Century Spain is the first English translation of and critical introduction to Ideario, a collection of newspaper and journal articles written by Spanish anarchist Ricardo Mella. Given that Mella is virtually unknown to the English-speaking world, this book provides readers access to his extensive body of work about Spain, human nature, and a world increasingly dominated by capitalism. Suitable for both the general public interested in learning more about anarchist ideas and for scholars studying twentieth-century Spain, the three introductory essays help to introduce Mella, ground his work in the context of Spanish anarchism, and draw connections between Mella and the urban in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Spain. Stephen Luis Vilaseca’s translation is accessible and engaging.
This comparative attempt, intended for postgraduates and scholars of Eastern-Central Europe, investigates the political, economic, and cultural landscape of Habsburg Galicia and the Romanian Kingdom in the second half of the 19th century. Often, in historiography and in the public sphere alike, the two cases under study have been separately regarded as contexts that provided atypical answers to modernity, and parts of a region that has been regarded as atypical in itself. Recently, efforts have been made to integrate each of the cases in a post-imperial paradigm, identifying the complex interactions between their socio-political modernisation and historical memory. This book continues this trend by investigating for the first time the two cases together, as parts of a space of alterity, as labs of shifting ideologies and labels. The public figures and the institutions depicted in the book are physically located in Central and in Eastern Europe, but by sometimes competing experiences they are illustrative for several identities and historical realms, local, regional, and continental. Secondly, the current work addresses dilemmas related to Nationalism and nation building, for the sake of separating those discourses which reflected on civic nationalism from those which directed the public mind to the values of ethnic nationalism.
The triumph of Zionism has clouded recollection of competing forms of Jewish nationalism vying for power a century ago. This study explores alternative ways to construct the modern Jewish nation. Jewish nationalism emerges from this book as a Diaspora phenomenon much broader than the Zionist movement. Like its non-Jewish counterparts, Jewish nationalism was first and foremost a movement to nationalize Jews, to construct a modern Jewish nation while simultaneously masking its very modernity. Diaspora Nationalism and Jewish Identity in Habsburg Galicia traces this process in what was the second largest Jewish community in Europe, Galicia. The history of this vital but very much understudied community of Jews fills a critical lacuna in existing scholarship while revisiting the broader question of how Jewish nationalism - or indeed any modern nationalism - was born. Based on a wide variety of sources, many newly uncovered, this study challenges the still-dominant Zionist narrative by demonstrating that Jewish nationalism was a part of the rising nationalist movements in Europe.