10/05/09

Post 1 for the week:

SO this one was an article on Ernest Erber.

In the beginning it opens up with another individual by the name of Maximiliano Olay, who was a veteran of the anarchist labor struggles in Cuba and one of the leaders of the Chicago Free Society Group. What he did was move to New York later and open up an office for propaganda on 5th Ave. (The odd thing that I've noticed is that many of these offices were opened on 5th Ave. Perhaps this is something I'll look into further). Upon opening the office, he began to fundraise lots and lots of money for his comrades overseas in Spain.

This is where Ernest Erber comes in. Ernest Erber was a leader of the Young People's Socialist League in his days. He then joiend the staff of La Batalla because he was quite the writer apparently. Within the portfolio is a composition he wrote called the, "Overall Implications of Howe-Radosh Exchange". No lie, it was so complicated to read. I was at a loss for words at how complicated it was.

The Howe-Radosh exchange is basically a "retrospective evaluation of the Spanish Civil War) and whether "saving Republican Spain was a just cause for Liberals and Socialists" and the possibility of even having a Socialist Spain if the Republican party was victorious.

In this compisition, Erber argues that it wasn't just about a war to help people resist economic exploitation, as some people argue, but rather a fight for the struggle of peasants to own the land they tilled, the rights of people (civil rights), and a fight for raical and gender equality, which Franco totally opposed. (The traditional role of women at home, supporting the husband like the pious wife they should be).

It then transitions into the fact that Howe and Radish view the Soviet System as totalitarian in similarities to a Soviet society, which is anti-democratic and anti-capitalist (oddly enough I learned this in my Comparative Politics class).

Finally it closes with defining different parties, which I'll now record.

Social Revolutionary party: organized a military to overthrow the Soviet government

Left Social Revolutionary party: joined the Social Revolutionary party but opposed Lenin's strategy of a peace treaty with Germany

Menshevik party: wanted to overthrow the Soviet government but thought the Czarist White Guard army was worse

Anarchists: hated the White Guard & the Red Army