The return of the social subject in

The return of the social subject in Spanish Historiography

Carlos Barros

University of Santiago de Compostela

The aim of this paper is to briefly overview historiography on social conflicts, revolts and revolutions starting off with the heyday that took place in the 70s until the current recovery of the genre from two points of view:

1) An inter-historical viewpoint[1] : by trying to link the evolution of the object of study in the various academic fields of different historical knowledge ( especially Medieval, Modern and Contemporary History). In Contemporary History, no doubt, reflection is more frequent, but it always appears in a paralel , interwoven fashion, in so far as it is a consequence of common conditionants both internal (disciplinal) and external ( mental, political and social).

2) A Spanish Historiographical viewpoint[2] . Spanish Historiography boasts of a rich tradition on this field ( something similiar is true of South America) that dates back to the early 20th century[3] making it equal to other foreign historiographies, whose positive influence in some cases ( Past and Present and Annales schools) we acknowledge, well aware of its innovative contributions to the historiography on social conflicts. These contributions, far from being exhausted, take us back several decades. It is also our belief that nowadays reflecting and discussing on the situation of Spanish historiography is not only possible but necessary as well. This should be conducted directly, without the habitual mediation of authors and schools from abroad, beyond the necessary mention that becomes imperative in this time of historiographical globalization which demands, more than ever, paying attention to our own historical profile[4] as the only way of being present in the current processes of recomposition of the international community of historians.

The expression history of the social movements, borrowed from sociology , became widespread in the eighties among contemporary historians who, by trascending the history of the working class movement, widened the interest of researchers into other social, interclass, religious, and political movements. Nonetheless, this label is barely transferible to historical periods as a whole. What is it we come across throughout history ? Minor and major conflicts and revolts rather than social movements with a certain degree of organization, ideology and continuity. It is for this reason that we mantain, in order not to limit to the most inmediate historical time, the old - and in the least ambiguous - common term of social conflicts, revolts and revolutions[5], so as to refer in a interhistorially coherent fashion to this aspect of the socio-historical subject. Social history has long ago restored the ways of social protests denounced as primitive, apolitical or spontaneous , which, in turn, have given rise to the most valuable efforts in historiographic innovation, both French and British, in the field of social history[6] . The current tendency in sociology has otherwise returned to define social movements as a function of the collective actions and of the conflicts generated, linking them to the concept of social change[7].

The heyday of the seventies

The parity of Spanish historigraphy with the most advanced currents abroad, which dates back to the fifties (Vicens Vives), is consolidated in the seventies and eighties with the thrust of the new generation- the irruption of the 1968 generation into the faculties results in a break- the first break with traditional history understood as political, institutional and biographical. One of the most productive branches of this new socio-economic history is the history of social conflicts. It is undoubtly the most radical politically as well as from a historiographical point of view in proposing what later came to be called history from below . The struggle for historiographic renewal and the struggle in favour of a democratic reform within the university and against Franco s dictatorship went together in those times. A great deal of young historians - and not so young, let s think, for instance, of Tuñón -, who in the seventies did research on the history of the workers movement, the conflicts and revolts in the history of Spain, had a bias towards left, marxist and communist parties, which then dominated the political scene at universities. The more or less active participation - the academic career and political affiliation did not go well together- in the thriving student movement both before and after 1968 as well as a sympathy towards the upcoming workers movement[8] contributed to the appearance of the historical social movements as the subjects of dissertations and doctoral thesis, which in turn benefited from the growing influence of the historigraphical trends [9] prevailing then at the academy: Annales and Marxism.

The rediscovery[10] of the conflicts, the revolts and the revolutions[11], therefore, is part of the historiographic revolution of the 20th century both in Spain and internationally. Jaume Vicens Vives s prologue to his Historia de los remensas en el siglo XV is dated in 1944 ( a subject he had already devoted his attention to during the republic). In 1954 he publishes El gran sindicato remensa ( 1488-1508). His desire to widen the scope of contemporary history takes Vicens Vives[12] and his collaborators from medieval revolts to the workers movement . In 1959 Casimir Marti s Origenes del anarquismo en Barcelona is published. In 1960, he[13] works in colaboration with Vicens and Nadal on Los Movimientos obreros en tiempo de depresión económica ( Las Huelgas 1929-1936). But it will be, as we know, in the seventies when the new ways of approaching history, in general, and social history, in particular, will flourish and become widespread.

A cooperative work representative of the momentum of the new line of research is Clases y conflictos sociales en la historia ( 1977) . It is the result of a joint effort at a week-length conference on historical methology in Oviedo during the 1974-5 academic year with the contribution of J.M. Blázquez ( ancient istory), J.Valdeón (medieval history), G. Anes ( modern history) and M. Tuñón ( contemporary)[14] . Julio Mangas (ancient history), in the prologue, opens with a categorical claim , no doubt shared by most authors: historical materialism is in my opinion the only methology that has at its disposal a coherent and accurate theoretical framework [15] . The book ends with an appendix, made by students, on Modos de producción capitatistas [ capitalist ways of production], indebited to Karl Marx s Formaciones económicas Pre-capitalistas[16], (published by Ciencia Nueva in 1967 and by Ayuso in 1975). Its prologue was written by Hobsbawm, who draws on Althusser and Balibar s structuralist Marxism, a necessary reference for young eager Spanish Marxists. It is from Althussser- rather than from Marx himself- that the whole conceptual framework Mangas refers to originates. The structuralist leanings of the work can be perceived in its very title, which brings to the forefront the conflicts of the objective existence of the (conflicting) classes. In the discussion following the presentations, Valdeón is asked one of those questions that, in those days, puzzled us: Throughout your presentation and so far in the discussion, I have noticed that the topics related to the evolution of History seem to come down to objective movements, regardless of consciousness or structures. What is then the role of man ? You cannot limit the history of mankind to mathematic formulas! [17] The categorical answer, common by then[18], would be to blurt out that Marxism is different from humanism . Julio Valdeón, however, like most historians whose background does not readily admit the role of a structuralist that denies a subject-within-history approach, pointed out: I don t see that contradiction . Nonetheless, he eventually reverts, true to his time (hence his representativity) to structural determinism by quoting the objetivist Marx: the conscience of mankind is determined by its social being . . . man makes history but amidst conditions he has not chosen [19]. Surprisingly enough, or perhaps not so much, we do not hear of the Marx who wrote for the Communist League in 1848: the history of mankind is the history of the class struggle , nor of the young Marx who wrote Manuscritos : economía y filosofía ( Madrid, 1968)[20], nor the Marx turned into a historian of his time in Las luchas de clases en Francia ( Madrid, 1967) y El 18 Brumario de Luis Bonaparte ( Barcelona 1968). Beyond the subjectivist will and even its praxis, sometimes global, of the new historians of social conflicts, the political and intelectual atmosphere imposed a structural economic approach[21] which eventually led to a neglect of a line of research which could ultimately (and not only could but should) contribute to overcoming (dialectically ) the dichotomy object / subject in history and the social sciences. But let s go ahead with our brief review.

In medieval history the characteristic paradigm is Julio Valdeón s Los conflictos sociales en el reino de Castilla en los siglos XIV y XV ( 1975), which begins by claiming that a knowledge of the social conflicts is fundamental if the historical process is to be correctly apprehended. He also adds the conflicts that should attract our attention are basically those reflecting the fundamental contradictions in society , that is to say, the antagonistic-structural contradictions, the conflict between lords and peasants [22] and concludes by putting Castilla y León on a level with the rest of Late Middle Ages Europe as far as this intensification of social tensions is concerned. This is an extremely innovative claim if we take into account that the prevalent paradigm in those days was to deny the feudal nature of medieval Castillian society. Valdeón stresses that it is necessary to go beyond a mere typology to link conflicts with their context by introducing social struggles, especially those against lords, into the historical interpretations of Late Castillian Middle Age. This was already present in both Viñas Mey s bourgeoisie /nobility and Luis Suárez s[23] nobility /monarchy dynamics. These proprosals were, in turn, influenced by social history and are not flatly rejected by Julio Valdeon. Valdeón s innovation, whose work encouraged and is representative of a remarkable series of papers on the struggle of the subject individual in Middle Age Spain [24], trascended medieval studies and history itself[25]. This is not to say that the influence of the intelectual mileau , both Marxist and non-Marxist was not taken into account. Julio Valdeón welcomes the markedly unidirectional classic threefold framework: economic crisis / social inestability / civil war,or to put it in other words, economy / society / politics, which he argues, was advocated by Vicens Vives in the case of 15th century Catalonia as the line to pursue to establish a model study of the social tensions. Vicens Vives, nonetheless, was aware of some flaws in his proposal (the neglect of such important aspect as ideologies and collective mentalities together with its determinism in the economy). As a consequence , in order to fully understand social revolts[26], he refers us to baseline structures thus self-limiting his historiographic approaches, more prone to seeking causes[27] than historical effects on social structures[28]. The latter are clearly undervalued[29], except - and this distinguishes Valdeón from other Spanish Marxist historians- in the almost unexplored field of mentalities: obviously no substantial changes took place in the structure of society, at most rebels obtained some partial gains. But the fundamental consequence of people s riots at the end of the Middle Ages registered in collective mentalities [30] . For all these reasons the desired contextualization of the social actor remains suspended, without being proven, rather the contrary, the driving role of the class struggle Marx defended in some his writings and in his political praxis. The slow reaction of Western Marxist historiography against the structuralism prevailing- which in Spain was more remarkable since translations into Spanish[31] were not readily available- came about when the history of the social conflicts was already on the wane [32]. In 1981 E.P.Thompson s Miseria de la teoría is published in Spanish. It is a direct criticism of Althusser s new Marxist idealism . His criticism also extends to sociologists Hindnesss and Hirst, who were responsible for some statements that infuriated Thompson: history is bound to empirism by the nature of its purpose (...) Marxism, as a praxis both theorerical and political, does not at all benefit from either its association with written history or with historical research. The study of history is devoid not only of scientific value but also of practical value [33]. It could be said that by adopting structuralism, like in the case of other social and human sciences, we left the fox to care for the hens .

Also in 1975, Ricardo García Cárcel published Las Germanías de Valencia. This book is based on a doctoral thesis supervised by Joan Reglá[34]- which plays a role in the historiographical vanguard[35] similar to that of Julio Valdeón s[36] in the field of modernist historians, and is therefore subject to the same constraints derived from the paradigms shared by Marxism and the social sciences of the aftermath to the Second World War that reached Spain in the seventies. García Cárcel work is an updating -not yet superseded[37]- of the research into the germanías revolt. Its antecedents were the traditional historiographical approaches, from liberal romanticism to positivism . He used the typical structural-functional paradigm of the sixties : structural and temporary preconditions ( subordinate to the former) and poor historical effect ( in his conclusion the author speaks of the paucity of the agermanada revolt[38]), and between both extremes, so unevenly tackled, the cronological development of events and the sociologic and geographical structure of germanias.

For the upcoming contemporary history, the paradigmatic reference is, no doubt, Manuel Tuñón de Lara, who apart from his work - not merely empirical but also attentive to methodological and historiographical reflection[39], like Valdeón s- carried out year after year throughout the seventies a key organizative effort to understand the flourishing in Spain of the social history of the 19th and 20th: Los Coloquios de Pau[40]. His most significative book, as regards this critical review on the historiography of social conflict, is El movimiento obreo en la historia de España ( 1972) that follows the well-known threefold framework- which somethimes becomes fourfold by including ideology - that is to say, economy ( structure and temporary), society (workers conditions) and politics of the events ( strikes and conflicts), of the organizations and of several events explicitely political ( elections and wars). He pays special attention to the context, in line with a common paradigm, focused more on coincidences than on effects, which is somehow contradictory with the title of the book, which then became - and is even today- a major and innovative reference , a solid baseline for what would later be the history of the working class movement in Spain[41] .

Tuñón has also been an example in both his biography - something not frecuent among scholars- and his professional career for his compromise as a historian - something in decline in the eighties[42] - ( national life cannot be conceived aside from the working class[43] , he claimed in 1972, undoubtly with the present and the future in mind).

In his methodological works, Tuñón de Lara explicitely acknowledges his debt to Labrousse, Braudel and historical materialism. Determinant factors, latent structures, overt situations - with their sparking functionalism , quantitative methods and - to a certain extent in contraction with this - the principle of centrality of the class war[44]: The study of conflicts and their originanting factors, at all levels, is nowadays the backbone of historical studies[45] . Without being explicitely acknowledged, as it is the case of the Manifiesto Comunista, that this controversial historical constant is the motor of history (or it may be , but then we are not before a compulsory law), it is impossible to see the incidence of social actors in history if they do not grow bigger or are detached from the structures. This is an epistemologic problem that has often reduced socio-historical studies to mere positivist descriptions. How could social change be explained if social conflicts do not affect social structures ? Well, there are two explanations and both neglect common people, the social individual, in favour of either the technological- economic change (the structural proposal) or the political change (traditional proposal). A synthesis able to find the subject/object historical interface is yet to be worked out.

The pioneer works so far analysed, however, and many others that preceded or followed them have amounted to a breakthrough (something often forgotten) in the evolution of Spanish historiography in four senses: a) they introduced the history of the working class movement and the social revolts into universities, issues that were not academically prestigious; b) they contributed to spreading - or recovering - outside the academy social themes such as the social struggles , in favour of a dignified life and freedom[46] ( history in the service of the recovery of the collective memory); c ) they created the conditions to supersede the old-fashioned liberal-romantic approaches that made these events into enduring myths ; and d) they provided new socio-economic explanations, perhaps incomplete but scientifically sounder than scholarly or old-fashioned conspirative interpretations on the manipulation of the masses by leaders, organizations or parties with hidden agendas .[47] These socio-econonic explanations will have in their novelty their greatest contribution, while their greatest flaw will be their deterministic approach to the social historiography of the seventies.

Common people, workers, peasants did not exist for history until a group of young - or not so young- historians - especially Marxist and annalistes- soon acommodated into the academic world- decided to devote their attention to them. This is indeed a great achivement if we bear in mind that, meanwhile, sociology, political sciences and psychology considered social revolts as deviant behaviour , the work of social crimminals[48], and their protagonists were seen as masses moved by irrational motivations[49]. History, therefore, anticipated to sociology and the rest of the social sciences in recovering the social individual before May 1968, and there lies the problem. The other social sciences stifled the premature subjectivity of the new history, which proved unable to export its counter-current experience to these sciences for a number of reasons, the most important one we have been burdened with ever since the first paradigmatic revolution, positivism: a certain theoretical incapacity.

To summarize, the very flaws of historiography, together with the influence of the economy, the structural funcionalism and scienticism imposed an objectivist and economicist interpretation of history from the end of World War II[50] that rendered futile our early historiographical efforts in favour of a history with a subject, in other words, in favour of a more global approach[51].

The minor role attributed to the subject of history in the objectivist paradigm prevailing almost leads to its banishment from the historiographical scene. Hobsbawm himself, in his well-known paper, De la historia social a la historia de la sociedad (1971) where he shows his regret for a total history he fails to see developing in the foreseeable future[52], maintains the notion of a strong link between social history and the history of social protest which is still the perfect laboratory for the historian. Nonetheless, he also notices the pre-eminence of the economic over the political due to the influence of Marxism and the German historical school ; the overwhelming superiority of economy over the other social sciences; the tacit agreement by historians on starting the study of the social and economic structure outwards and upwards pointing out that it is far from my intention to discourage those interested in these issues [revolutions] . Not in vain have I devoted a great deal of my professional time to them. However. . . , he eventually sugguests that revolutions be approached in longer temporal periods in an attempt to capture the structrure [53]. This would be fair enough were it not that by acknowledging the objectivist impact without confronting it directly ( as Thompson will do later), what it is being favoured, regardless of the author s intention[54], is the neglect of the collective action, academicism and the hostility toward this theory[55].

What is the problem ?Basically that structural socialism was developed to effectively integrate the social conflict within the structure and to prevent, in the short term, the posibility of a radical social change[56]. Its hegemony in postwar social sciences favoured the spread of the mature Marx who wrote the prologue to Crítica de la economía política ( 1859) where he presented the social revolution as the result of the (objective) contradictions between productive forces and the relations of production instead of young Marx s Manifiesto Comunista ( 1848) where the history of mankind was seen as the result of a class war. As a consequence, Marxism was not only adulterated, handicapé. Historians found themselves, as well, almost without realizing, due to the tacit agreements characteristic of the academy ( that Kuhn explained so well and that is mirrored in Hosbsbawn s paper), without such important topics of research as conflicts, revolts and revolutions. But for history, ignoring the subject amounts to suicide as a discipline. It is for reason that the traditional subject ( individual, political, narrative) forced its way back in an attempt to fill the gap left by the social actor.

The 1982 turn

In 1982 two young historians, José Alvarez Junco and Manuel Pérez Ledesma, published a paper Historia del movimiento obrero. )Una segunda ruptura? [57], which for its daring, ambitious approach[58] and its representativity [59]and consequences deserves a privileged position in Spanish historiographical reflection[60].

The authors claim that they do not abandon the centrality of working-class struggles . They add that it is possible to mantain the study of the working class movement but with new orientations as it is not possible to ignore their decisive importance in the last one hundred and fifty years of European history. Workers did not carry out the revolution they dreamt of, but they forced a number of changes that have profoundly marked societies . Curiously enough, these changes have been played down by the classic history of the working class movement, thus, fouling their own nest [61]. That centrality, however, was not such since the history of the working class movement was deprived of its priviledged epistemological status and was replaced by the history of the social movements [62].

The criticisms the history of the working class movement in the seventies has received are threefold: a) a commited, semiclandestine[63], teleological, working-class-oriented, overpious[64], and self-indulgent history, pure social realism ; b) a simplifying history, economically-determined, based on preconceived patterns that rule out previous hypothesis and domanied by popular socialism [1]; c ) a traditional history , focused on the study of ideology, institutions unions and workers parties- and the individuals - the workers s leaders. The excess of their criticism and their unilaterality[1] is as obvious as necessary: you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs .

The proposals of these two authors are, therefore, to depoliticize Spanish social history, making it more academic, free from ideological preconceptions, providing new themes ( such as studying workers and their life and work conditions, other social and political movements, the employer s organizations, non-labour parties, the relationship of the different classes with the State) and new methods (by learning from sociology and the other social sciences as well as from British and French historiography[65] - the history of mentalities[66])- in other words, to get away from the sometimes stifling framework historography of the social movement has so far been inmersed [67].

As an innovative project, what has been said so far still holds true: there remain many new ways of approaching the Spanish history of the social movements to be worked out, especially now with the revival of social conflicts in historiography. But it is also necesary to supersede the 1982 hypercritical, iconoclastic approach.

Firstly, it is necessary to further support the recovery of the history of social conflicts and revolts, ostracized by the innovative excesses of the eighties. This was against the will of their promoters but, as historians, we know that historical results, like the historiographical ones, are, to a great extent, involuntary. Apart from our rational choice , other factors, both internal and external, come into play.