The New State

The New State (Spanish: El Estado Nuevo) is a 1935 book by Víctor Pradera. It contains a political theory, intended to reveal key political laws and to propose an adequate vision of the state.

Development

Pradera’s political vision was clearly incepted by Vázquez de Mella, whom he considered a mentor and intellectual master. It was evolving gradually, in course of some 40 years, starting late 19th century. At first, its elements were expressed as press articles and various public addresses, including these in the Cortes. Later they also took shape of conference papers and historical books. The almost final expression of Pradera's political theory was incorporated in a series of articles printed throughout 1934, to be finally integrated in El Estado Nuevo, the book published in Madrid in 1935.

Main Threads

Reception

Upon the release of El Estado Nuevo, the work was unconditionally and rather enthusiastically accepted among the Carlist intellectuals as an in-depth discourse of their ideology and a guidance for the future. Among the Spanish Right of the 1930s El Estado Nuevo made a huge intellectual impact, especially that all the competing formations, the Alfonsists from Renovacion Espanola, the Catholics from CEDA and the rapidly growing fascists from Falange were missing a comparable, detailed, integrated, visionary doctrine. The organic vision of the society and the corporativist vision of the future state were largely accepted and shared. Key differences focused on the questions of monarchy, coercive powers of state and degree of social engineering. Among the Left the vision of Pradera did not attract much attention, since Carlism and its theories were considered profoundly archaic, if not simply long dead. Some greeted El Estado Nuevo with amusement, as an utopian nonsense, rather than with hostility. On the Marxist left, be it socialist or communist, Pradera’s work was considered to be fascist. In the Francoist Spain Pradera’s vision was referred to with sympathy – Franco himself wrote a foreword to the 1945 edition of El Estado Nuevo – but never as an alleged theoretical foundation of the state. Today it is usually regarded as a monarchist version of the corporativist theory. Some historians consider Pradera's work a disintegration rather than integration of Carlism, the result of political amorphism of the 1930s.

See also

References

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