How is a party created from antipolitics? The origin of the Syndicalist Party in the Spanish 2nd Republic

Abstract

This article deepens into the reasons for the creation of political parties and for that, the case of the Spanish Syndicalist Party has been chosen. This election responds to the need of knowing the causes of the birth of a political party out of groups that ideologically reject them. It has been necessary to resort to a historical case as the libertarian movement, given their peculiarities and the difficulty to find examples nowadays. The article starts with a differentiation on anti-party sentiments to define the exceptionality of the phenomenon and, after that, it formulates an initial idea that aims to clarify Lipset and Rokkan’s theory on cleavages for the formation of parties. Subsequently, based on the previous theory, a series of hypotheses is established about the factors that favor the creation of parties. The empirical analysis confirms the hypothesis and it serves to conclude that the organizational level of the libertarian movement and its lack of success, together with failures in the electoral market, favored the creation of the Syndicalist Party during the 2nd Republic. Finally, the scope of the results and their relationship with similar and current cases is discussed.gles Along with Communists, the Nazis were the main contenders in the climate of latent civil war lived in Germany in the final years of the Republic of Weimar. Their Assault Division or SA was decisive in breeding an atmosphere of capillary and mimetic violence in the whole country. This article deals with violence among "political enemies" in a specific neighbourhood of the German capital. Relying on archive materials, newspapers and literature of the time it is shown how violence on political grounds penetrated daily life, ranging from street-quarrels without major consequences to the death of two activist of the SA in the Nostitz area, the neighbourhood in Berlin-Kreuzberg we focus on. Escalation of violence in there illustrates the political confrontation which best characterizes the country previous to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933.