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Irwin Wall on French Fascism: the Second Wave, 1933-1939

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Irwin Wall on French Fascism: the Second Wave, 1933-1939 Robert Soucy. French Fascism: The Second Wave, 1933-1939. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995. xii + 352 pp. $35.00, paper, ISBN 978-0-300-05996-0. Reviewed by Irwin Wall Published on H-France (March, 1996) Many years ago, when I frst began my stud‐ Feu, was not fascist at all, but rather a form of ies of French Communism, I turned naturally to adult boy-scouting. the works of the late French historian, Annie I have argued that both Kriegel and Remond Kriegel. She asserted that Communism was un- were wrong, totally wrong. Neither Communism French, essentially a Russian phenomenon, graft‐ nor fascism were foreign imports. Indeed, after ed artificially onto the French social organism due reading Ernst Nolte, who traced fascism back to to an accidental conjuncture of circumstances, the Royalist Action Francaise, I was convinced there strangely to take root and become a power‐ that both owed their very existence to French po‐ ful political force. From my frst exposure to it, I litical inventiveness. All this is to explain that I be‐ found this thesis bordering on the absurd: was gin with a prejudice in favor of the challenging not France the country of Gracchus Babeuf and conclusions of Robert Soucy, which seem to me the conspiracy of equals, of Saint-Simon and eminently commonsensible. The controversy over Charles Fourier, of Louis Blanc and Auguste Blan‐ fascism in France has in recent years been domi‐ qui? Did not even Leon Blum at the Congress of nated by the work of Israeli historian Zev Stern‐ Tours in 1920 regard Bolshevism as a form of hell. According to some commentators, Sternhell Blanquism come home to roost? The parallel with did for French fascism what American historian the work of Rene Remond immediately struck me; Robert Paxton did for Vichy, demonstrating con‐ for him, fascism was equally un-French, a foreign clusively its deep roots in the national experience. import to which the French were fortunately im‐ Soucy agrees with Sternhell on this point: there mune. The few genuinely "fascist" groups in was nothing "un-French" about fascism. But Stern‐ France, like the Francistes of Marcel Bucard and hell takes the argument a step further: fascism, he the Faisceau of Georges Valois, were inspired argues, had its roots on the revolutionary left. It from across the Alps or the Rhine and remained owed as much to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Al‐ tiny and marginal. The genuine mass movement bert Sorel as to Charles Maurras and Maurice Bar‐ led by Colonel Francois de La Rocque, the Croix de H-Net Reviews res, and its continued problematic was to fnd a were also extraordinarily adept in taking the way to revise Marx in a way that successfully syn‐ wind out of its sails: Raymond Poincare in thesized socialism and the national experience. 1926-28, Gaston Doumergue in 1934, and Edouard Sternhell follows the Italian Rienze de Felice, who Daladier in 1938 all ended left-wing experiments insists upon the revolutionary nature of Italian with government in a manner satisfactory to the Fascism, similarly arguing in favor of a French French bourgeois elite, which fnanced the fascist fascism that was "neither right nor left". groups and participated in their leadership. In no Soucy refuses to accept Sternhell's main line sense were the French ever "immune" to fascism. of argument; indeed both his excellent studies, Indeed, given the sorry history of Vichy, one won‐ French fascism: the First Wave (1986) and now ders at the proclivity of scholars to conclude any‐ French fascism: the Second Wave are largely de‐ thing else. voted to refuting Sternhell on precisely this point. It is tempting to leave the question right For Soucy, there is nothing remotely leftist about there, giving appropriate credit to Soucy for the fascism. On the contrary, fascism was a new vari‐ thoroughness of his research and the systematic ety of authoritarian conservatism and right-wing way in which he applies his fndings to his model. nationalism that sought to defeat the Marxist The conclusion seems inescapable. Whether one threat and the political liberalism that allowed it focuses on the Croix de Feu or any other of the to exist in the frst place. Fascism was dictatorial, eight groups under scrutiny, the same result hierarchical, para-military, socially conservative, emerges. If it looks like a duck, walks and quacks union-busting, imperialist, rhetorically anti-bour‐ like a duck, it must be a duck! geois but substantively defensive of bourgeois in‐ Why, then, do I leave the reading of Soucy terests and the existing class structure. In two with a lingering sense of dissatisfaction and books Soucy systematically applies this model to doubt? The trouble, it seems to me, lies in the no less than eight French putatively fascist move‐ methodology. Construct a model, apply it in a giv‐ ments and organizations, from the Jeunesses Pa‐ en number of cases, show the ft, and the conclu‐ triotes and the Cagoule through the Croix de Feu sion is obvious. There are two possible problems and Jacques Doriot's Parti Populaire Francais here, following David Hackett Fischer's Histori‐ (PPF). All these movements, says Soucy, meet the ans' Fallacies. One is semantic; in arguing about definition without a doubt. All, including the whether the Croix de Feu was "fascist," are we not Croix de Feu-- which Sternhell and the "consen‐ arguing about mere words and what it is appro‐ sus" historians, as Soucy calls them, exclude from priate to call things? This is not a very substantive the Fascist lexicon--fully qualify as Fascist. Here, argument. Or, on the other hand, in constructing Soucy follows Canadian historian William Irvine, models and explaining phenomena, do we not fall adding copious evidence in an effort to show that into the "essentialist" fallacy of ascribing an un‐ La Rocque's movement was indeed fascist. And derlying "essence" or reality to what is, after all, lest we be tempted to underestimate the signif‐ an intellectual construct or model, in this case cance of this fnding, Soucy reminds us that the Fascism. Thus, for Soucy, para-militarism would Croix de Feu, according to some commentators, seem to be an "essential" quality of fascism while had 1.2 million members at its high point in 1937. anti-Semitism is not. The philosophical fuzziness Hitler's Nazi party had only 800,000 when it in this modus operandi appears throughout seized power in 1933. Fascism failed in France-- Soucy's description of the Croix de Feu (CF), in until the war--because the economic crisis was which we fnd that the "fit" to the model is never less severe and the left united against it, among as precise as one would like. Thus, in reference to other reasons. French conservative politicians 2 H-Net Reviews street politics, the CF was "more fascist than any a fascist, why, like the proverbial duck, does he other formation of the Third Republic" (p. 137). walk and talk like one? Fascism has suddenly become a question of de‐ Not being mainly polemicists, historians gree. Elsewhere the CF was fascist because "it did should endeavor to control their political pas‐ not exclude members with Fascist sympathies" sions. It seems to me that arguing about whether (p. 142). This is hardly a meaningful test. Nor was the CF was or was not "fascist" may obscure the the CF, in its professions of republicanism, "sin‐ point. Is it not sufficient to describe fairly and ac‐ cerely democratic" (p. 143). curately the CF's politics? Soucy has done this, elu‐ "How many politicians are?" one might well cidating in often painful detail its authoritarian‐ ask. La Rocque, we are told elsewhere, was "more ism, para-militarism, anti-liberalism, anti- Marx‐ than a conservative; he was a reactionary" (p. ism, anti-feminism, anti-communism, and eventu‐ 147). This does not seem very helpful either in de‐ ally, its anti-Semitism. He shows its corporatist-in‐ scribing fascists. Nor is it useful to observe that af‐ spired concern to achieve class harmony at the ter 1940, lest we want to exculpate La Rocque for expense of the workers in a nationalist frame‐ eventually joining the Resistance, he acted "more work, and he quotes copiously from its many ex‐ fascistically than democratically" (p. 147), whatev‐ pressions of admiration for the achievements of er that may mean. Similar imprecision creeps into Hitler and Mussolini. Indeed, one of the strongest Soucy's discussion of the Solidarite Francaise, points of Soucy's work lies in his repeated demon‐ which he occasionally describes as giving certain stration that virtually every para-military, author‐ doctrines a "fascist twist," or holding a cluster of itarian group of the right in France advocated or‐ attitudes that were "undeniably fascist," or else‐ thodox economic capitalist solutions of the era, where, "highly fascist" (pp. 82, 88, 103). cutting expenditures and balancing budgets at the I suspect that our politics creep into our expense of the working class. He demonstrates nomenclature. Sternhell and Remond incline to that militants of the CF moved in and out of the the right; Soucy and I, to the left. The former are many rightist groups in French politics, with as‐ parsimonious in their use of the fascist moniker, tonishing ease. He demonstrates conclusively that insisting that strong distinctions be used to sepa‐ Doriot and the PPF shared the politics of the CF, rate conservatives and fascists. Soucy and I would and that the social or leftist concerns of the one probably agree with American historian Arno and the other were largely a sham designed to Mayer that fascism is counter-revolutionary and give psychological, not material, satisfaction to that it lies along a continuum of rightist move‐ workers.
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