History ETDs

Publication Date

4-28-1972

Abstract

Federica Montseny emerged during the 1920's and 1930's as the leading anarchist theoretician of Spain. As a cultural critic, novelist, essayist and speaker, she did much to educate and radicalize the Spanish laboring class. She directed their aimless discontent into what she considered to be the principled path of anarchism. She influenced the development of the Spanish labor movement as a leader of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) and as an active member of the National Confederation of Labor (CNT). As a social critic she called attention to the extreme injustices of Spanish society. In formulating her political theory, she clearly defined the anarchist's position on socialism, syndicalism, communism, capitalism and fascism. In highly patriarchial Spain she became the first and only woman to hold a ministerial post in the national government. As a philosophical and practical anarchist, Federica Montseny must be ranked with Emma Goldman, Peter Kropotkin and Louise Michel. Yet, no biography, not a brief article on her career, can be found. One searches the works on the Spanish Civil War for some analysis of this woman's participation in the Largo Caballero Cabinet or in the war effort generally, only to reap very limited returns. No collection has been printed of even a part of her voluminous writings, although occasionally and briefly she is quoted. This study is an attempt to correct this situation. It is designed as an intellectual biography of Federica Montseny which emphasizes the development of her thought in several areas, the most important of which is the philosophical structure embodied in her definition of anarchism, a definition which in turn permeated and shaped all other areas of her thought: cultural, social and political. Because of the paucity of secondary materials related to Montseny, this essay depends almost exclusively upon an analysis of her writings between the years 1923 and 1943. The most important of these are in the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam, Holland: La Revista Blanca--a journal of cultural and social criticism, El Luchador--her newspaper, her printed speeches, her novels, and her correspondence with Max Nettlau and the Fritz Brupbackers.

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Degree Name

History

Department Name

History

First Committee Member (Chair)

Robert William Kern

Second Committee Member

Gunther Eric Rothenberg

Third Committee Member

Donald David Sullivan

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

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