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REVIEWS | 107 Phoenix: Fascism in Our Time. By James A. Gregor (New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers, 1999) 204 pp. $32.95 Certain aspects of the debate about fascism die hard. Gregor, who has written extensively on Italian fascism and the interpretations of general fascism, has revived the moribund debate about whether fascism is revo- lutionary or reactionary. He comes down squarely on the revolutionary side, identifying the source of the fascist revolutionary philosophical tra- dition in the Italian syndicalists. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/32/1/107/1695016/jinh.2001.32.1.107.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 Gregor argues for the existence of a paradigmatic fascism that emerged in Italy from a synthesis of Italy’s late-blooming nationalism and revolutionary syndicalism. In his words, “Mussolini’s Fascism was a form of reactive, antidemocratic, developmental nationalism that serves as a paradigmatic instance of revolution in the twentieth century” (20). Fascist ideology catered to the need of a humiliated or disadvantaged people for redemption. The key intellectuals who created this revolu- tionary fascism were the revolutionary syndicalist Roberto Michels and the liberal Giovanni Gentile, who harnessed the revolutionary impulse of syndicalism to the idea of a national redemption of proletarian Italy in an attack on the political and social status quo of post-Risorgimento It- aly. Indeed, Gregor’s historical examination of how the ideas of Michels and Gentile fed into Mussolini’s version of fascism is the strongest part of the book. As Gregor trenchantly observes, contradictory deªnitions of fascism have proliferated. Most of these deªnitions have at their root a norma- tive impulse to identify fascism with a particular bête noire. Adding an- other narrow deªnition, instead of reconciling the various views, does not advance understanding. In Gregor’s interpretation, however, Italian fascism is the template for all fascist movements. The only groups that can possibly be fascist are those that arise under conditions comparable to early twentieth-century Italy. But Gregor’s emphasis on the Italian context implies that fascism is almost entirely descended from the left, which is misleading. To be sure, fascism—especially Italian fascism—has drawn on Marxism, and Gregor makes this case well. Yet, even in Italy, the fascist synthesis draws as much, if not more, on liberal and conserva- tive sources. When Gregor turns to the postwar era, the candidates for inclusion in the fascist camp seem to be restricted to former communist move- ments, such as Gennadi Ziuganov’s Communist party in Russia. Condi- tions in post-Tiannamen Square China are also ripe for a possible fascist movement. These are intriguing possibilities, although the rapid ascent of Vladimir Putin seems to have defused the resurgence of Ziuganov. One cannot help but wonder whether other former communists in Eastern Europe—Aleksander Kwasniewski in Poland for one—should also be counted as potential fascists. Conspicuously absent are smaller groups such as the German Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutchlands (npd), or parties from Western Europe such as the Movimento Sociale Italiano. If the issue is the possibility for mass success, Gregor might well have a 108 | KENNETH F. KIPLE point, but such distinctions seem problematical from the standpoint of deªnition. The ªeld of fascism is a mineªeld, especially with regard to deªnitions. This book is worth reading for its thought-provoking criti- cisms of blindly held beliefs about fascism and, especially, for its solid analysis of the impact of syndicalism on Italian fascism. The familiar ar- gument that fascism is a singular, deªnable and unchanging ideology emanating largely from the left, not a multiplicity of trends bundled to- gether in a fascist synthesis, ªnds renewed support in this work. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/32/1/107/1695016/jinh.2001.32.1.107.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 Samuel Goodfellow Westminster College Beriberi, White Rice, and Vitamin B: A Disease, a Cause, and a Cure. By Kenneth J. Carpenter (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2000) 282 pp. $40.00 Heaviness in the legs, followed by a loss of feeling, and then partial to total paralysis has signaled the onset of “dry” or “neuritic” beriberi for a million or more individuals throughout the centuries. Beriberi can also assume what is called a “wet” or “cardiac” form if edema and cardiac symptoms develop. Some cases present with both wet and dry symp- toms, and, in addition, there is generally fatal infantile beriberi that strikes the nursing infants of thiamin-deªcient mothers. Although beriberi is an ancient disease, pinpointing thiamin deªciency as its cause was the result of late nineteenth- and early twenti- eth-century research, which is the subject of this book. Appropriately, Carpenter calls it a “medical detective story” (xi). The clues were both myriad, and bafºing. Because beriberi had a greater incidence during the rainy season it was frequently blamed on miasmas arising from marshy areas close to costal areas. Yet, it also erupted in arid areas and aboard ships in temperate zones. Rice, too, was a centuries-old suspect because the disease was most common in rice-eating cultures. But just as new steam-driven mills were managing to polish the thiamin out of rice with ever-increasing efªciency, and epidemic beriberi plagued many parts of the world, the advent of germ theory precipitated searches for a patho- genic, rather than a nutritional, cause. The book begins with a look at beriberi as Japan’s “national disease” during the latter part of the nineteenth century and the opinions of Western doctors about its cause. The following chapter, which examines “Rice as a Staple Food,” shows that the manner in which rice was pro- cessed and cooked could either predispose consumers to beriberi or pro- tect them from it, no matter how limited (or thiamin-deªcient) the supplements to the rice core diet might be. Beriberi research in the colonies of Western nations is the subject of the following four chapters. Christiaan Eijkman’s work in Java in the Dutch East Indies during the 1880s and subsequently in Holland is.

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