Preface

This comparative social and political history of the Spanish Revolution in Barcelona and the Popular Front in Paris attempts to show the potency of revolutionary ideologies in Spain, a country with a weak bourgeoisie, and their decline in France, a nation in which capitalists developed modern industries. It investigates how workers in Paris and Barcelona labored during the Popular Fronts, when organizations that claimed to represent the working class held varying degrees of power. The patterns of working-class actions (and inaction) lead this study to question the dominant paradigms of Anglo-American labor historiography.

The book began as a doctoral dissertation supervised by Professor Arthur Mitzman of the University of Amsterdam; it benefited from extensive research in Paris, Barcelona, and Salamanca in the early 1980s. In Paris, I was assisted by both friends and scholars. I owe much to Sylviane Lavergne, Véronique and Jean-Pierre Bachimont, Arthur Marchadier, Louis Chevalier, and Michelle Perrot. In Barcelona, Joaquín Sirera and Horacio Capel provided knowledge and comfort. Stanley Payne directed me to the incredibly rich but disorganized civil war archives at Salamanca, and Raymond Carr provided needed encouragement.

The manuscript has also benefited from the criticisms and suggestions of Traian Stoianovich, John Gillis, Victoria de Grazia, Allen Howard, and Mark Wasserman. The comments of Robert Seidman have anglicized occasionally hispanic and gallic idioms