DOCSLIB.ORG

Communism in Crisis I

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Communism in Crisis I AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 27 Communism In Crisis i The Beijing Massacre and the recent dramatic events in Poland and Hungary emphasise that the socialist world is splitting up into reformers and monoliths. Gareth Stedman Jones traces the origins of its breakdown. n May 1968 when student sickening and mindless terror - a sordid 1960s, violence has been an inseparable demonstrations had brought and inhuman end to a great movement accompaniment to the history of 20th- the French government to the whose awesome achievements had century communism. verge of collapse, it is reported once attracted all that was most noble But this sombre and terrifying se­ I and courageous in 20th-century China that General de Gaulle made a quence of events bears only a superfi­ to its banner. secret visit to General Massu to cial resemblance to the violence unleashed in Tiananmen Square. It discover whether the army would Thus, if May 1989 had begun by resembling May 1968, by June it had forms part of a history which is now ' intervene to restore order if the come to resemble June 1848 when har­ past; it belongs to an epoch in which a -need arose. In the event, the dened generals like Cavaignac and world communist movement con­ troops were not called in; conser­ Windischgratz led raw and uneducated sidered itself to be engaged in mortal vative sentiment within the soldiers, fed on tales of the corruption combat with the forces of capitalism, , civilian population was effectively and decadence of the towns, against the imperialism and reaction. However ter­ mobilised and the legitimacy of democratic students and workers of rible the initiatives of Stalin and Mao, the government preserved. Paris and Vienna they can only be understood within this ^ • It may be presumed that Deng Xiao If 1848, rather than the previous his­ frame. The purges and the cultural Ping would have followed General de tory of communism, suggests a better revolution were the effects of mass Gaulle’s course of action in June had the point of comparison, it is because, by revolutionary processes in which mil­ , option been open to him. But it seems acting in the way in which it did, the lions were mesmerised and gripped by clear that it was not. Popular sentiment Communist Party leadership turned it­ a radical demonology, a civil war in Beijing was mounting daily, even self into a form of ancien regime and waged between the imaginary social hourly, against him. Neither the party, engaged in a form of violence which categories conjured up by political the police, nor the locally-based marks a break with its communist past. rhetoric. They can no more be attributed military could be relied upon to halt the Twenty years ago hundreds of to the well-oiled machinery of process of popular mobilisation. Un- thousands of Chinese people perished totalitarianism than can the aroused 1 able to find any accessible source of in the cultural revolution and 50 years fury of radical Islam unleashed by the legitimacy in civil society and in­ ago millions died in the campaigns and Ayatollah in Iran. Similarly, the Soviet capable of activating its day-to-day ap­ purges which followed Soviet collec­ interventions in Eastern Europe in the paratus of political authority, the tivisation. From the suppression of the ’50s and ’60s were also presented as the Communist Party abdicated. Its man­ Kronstadt rising in the early days of the armed defence of an international date from heaven was irretrievably lost. Russian revolution through the quell­ revolution under threat. Political power was surrendered to the ing of political rebellions in Berlin, Violence and metaphors of violence military and the result was an act of Budapest and Prague in the 1950s and dominated communist language from 28 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW the beginnings of bolshevism. The class the devastating human waste which consequences of this communist com­ war was a war, and the tactics of the capitalism had engendered. mand economy itself. vanguard party were conceived as battle The proclaimed success of Soviet col­ This was a moment of truth of ines­ engagements. The Communist Party lectivisation and the first five-year plan timable significance. It put into ques­ was thus an instrument designed for forced economists and politicians in the tion the very idea of a communist war; its unique power derived from the capitalist world to consider the neces­ state-led economy. The choice con- recruitment of civilian energy within a sity to control capitalism through some fronting communist states was either to quasi-military formation governed by form of economic planning. maintain self-sufficiency (but also clear lines of command. From the time Roosevelt’s New Deal, some isolation) at the cost of declining stand­ of Lenin’s What Is To Be Done, the ‘Keynesian planning’ for full employ­ ards of living, growing political dissent party’s purpose was to concentrate and ment and even the National Socialist and increasing technological disad­ lead the social forces in the revolution­ strategy in Germany to create full vantage; or else, to open themselves to ary struggle, and to divide and disperse employment through directed public new forms of economic thinking, attract state power and its reactionary supports. works and rearmament were in part in­ foreign investment, and to allow for the The original rationale of Lenin’s fluenced by the Soviet example. It is growth of unregulated market sectors. strategy lay in the special conditions of easy to forget that this perception of While smaller socialist countries like Tsarist Russia - an autocratic regime communist economy persisted into the Cuba or Vietnam could pursue the first and thus, the necessity for the party to 1960s. China had attained greater choice, for the communist superpowers work clandestinely. After the success of growth rates than India and Khrushchev themselves this choice was ultimately 1917, this animating idea was extended could confidently boast "we will bury impossible. The Soviet Union was al­ to all states in which the new communist you" when talking of the strategy of ready becoming dependent on the parties were to operate. From the foun­ ‘peaceful coexistence’. American wheat surplus from as early dation of the Comintern, the interna­ It was not until the 1970s that such as 1927 and the intensification of the tional communist movement was to act beliefs, both in the communist and in Cold War in the early 1980s imposed aii as one, both in leading the class struggle the capitalist sphere, were radically intolerable strain on the stagnant in particular countries and in defending transformed. In the 30 years since 1945, domestic economy. In China, the ex­ the first workers’ states, threatened on perience of the cultural revolution was every side by the manoeuvres of world a vivid illustration of the consequences capitalist encirclement. "the...Communist of attempting to isolate the communisi state from the world. Out of this emerges the particular stance towards But if this choice was ultimately ines­ communist stance towards democracy: democracy:...desirable, capable, the political costs were heavy. democracy was desirable, but a luxury in a situation in which the international but a luxury" For economic liberalisation could not proletarian cause was assailed by but erode the core of beliefs, both counter-revolution and fascism. Ac­ mass democracy had become the norm dirigiste and egalitarian, which had cording to the theory of democratic in Western European countries and the animated and sustained communism centralism, decisions within the party promises of better living standards through the first two-thirds of the 20th were supposed to be arrived at by a which apologists for capitalism had century. It necessarily meant the aban­ democratic process but, once laid down, been making for a hundred years, be­ donment of a manichean world view in the line was to be followed by all. It was came a perceived reality for the which the communist party had the within this manichean framework held majority of the population in in­ leading role to play. The warlike from 1917 through 1956, that com­ dustrialised countries. metaphors of leninism no longer pos­ munists were able to live with and The perceived success of the com­ sessed purchase in the domestic or the defend even the most stupefying chan­ munist model in underdeveloped international sphere. The egalitarian ges of tactic and the most unacceptable countries in the 1950s was also increas­ priorities of old communist leadership's uses of coercion. ingly challenged: the early successes of were now qualified by the language of China and North Korea were now market efficiency and the necessity of It is now difficult to understand what matched by the growth produced by nurturing an entrepreneurial spirit. In looks like the immense credulity of the capitalism in such ‘underdeveloped’ the USSR in the Brezhnev era these supporters of communism, unless the countries as South Korea, Singapore contradictions were resisted or ignored. foundation of this belief is remembered: and Taiwan. Conversely, in the com­ But with the advent of Gorbachev the that is, that it was capitalism that was in munist world, leaders and party offi­ need for basic changes, political as well crisis, while communism represented cials had been forced to face up to the as economic, was confronted. the hope of the future. incompetence and, indeed, impotence In China, on the other hand, the policy Such a view seemed to be borne out of their economies to provide basic con­ was more contradictory. Modernisation by the facts of mass unemployment and sumer needs and to compete in the field was declared a priority, foreign invest­ depression, of the violence of of new technologies, civil and military, ment was welcomed and tens of colonialism and imperialism and of the which were rapidly developing in the thousands of students were sent to study1 unreason underpinning fascism and West Even more galling, it was becom­ abroad.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Prospero's Monsters: Authenticity, Identity, and Hybridity in the Post-Colonial Age
    Bowling Green State University ScholarWorks@BGSU 18th Annual Africana Studies Student Research Africana Studies Student Research Conference Conference and Luncheon Feb 12th, 10:30 AM - 11:50 AM Prospero's Monsters: Authenticity, Identity, and Hybridity in the Post-Colonial Age Dominique Pen Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/africana_studies_conf Part of the African Languages and Societies Commons Pen, Dominique, "Prospero's Monsters: Authenticity, Identity, and Hybridity in the Post-Colonial Age" (2016). Africana Studies Student Research Conference. 3. https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/africana_studies_conf/2016/002/3 This Event is brought to you for free and open access by the Conferences and Events at ScholarWorks@BGSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Africana Studies Student Research Conference by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@BGSU. Pen1 Prospero’s Monsters: Authenticity, Identity, and Hybridity in the Post-Colonial Age Dominique Pen M.A. Candidate, Art History, School of Art 18th Annual Africana Studies Student Research Conference Pen2 In 2005, Yinka Shonibare was offered the prestigious distinction of becoming recognized as a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE). As an artist whose work is characterized by his direct engagement with and critiques of power, the establishment, colonialism and imperialism, in many cases specifically relating to Britain’s past and present, some questioned whether he was going to refuse the honor. This inquiry was perhaps encouraged
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Introduction the Empire at the End of Decadence the Social, Scientific
    1 Introduction The Empire at the End of Decadence The social, scientific and industrial revolutions of the later nineteenth century brought with them a ferment of new artistic visions. An emphasis on scientific determinism and the depiction of reality led to the aesthetic movement known as Naturalism, which allowed the human condition to be presented in detached, objective terms, often with a minimum of moral judgment. This in turn was counterbalanced by more metaphorical modes of expression such as Symbolism, Decadence, and Aestheticism, which flourished in both literature and the visual arts, and tended to exalt subjective individual experience at the expense of straightforward depictions of nature and reality. Dismay at the fast pace of social and technological innovation led many adherents of these less realistic movements to reject faith in the new beginnings proclaimed by the voices of progress, and instead focus in an almost perverse way on the imagery of degeneration, artificiality, and ruin. By the 1890s, the provocative, anti-traditionalist attitudes of those writers and artists who had come to be called Decadents, combined with their often bizarre personal habits, had inspired the name for an age that was fascinated by the contemplation of both sumptuousness and demise: the fin de siècle. These artistic and social visions of degeneration and death derived from a variety of inspirations. The pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), who had envisioned human existence as a miserable round of unsatisfied needs and desires that might only be alleviated by the contemplation of works of art or the annihilation of the self, contributed much to fin-de-siècle consciousness.1 Another significant influence may be found in the numerous writers and artists whose works served to link the themes and imagery of Romanticism 2 with those of Symbolism and the fin-de-siècle evocations of Decadence, such as William Blake, Edgar Allen Poe, Eugène Delacroix, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Charles Baudelaire, and Gustave Flaubert.
    [Show full text]
  • De Sade's Theatrical Passions
    06.puchner 4/19/05 2:28 PM Page 111 Martin Puchner Sade’s Theatrical Passions The Theater of the Revolution The Marquis de Sade entered theater history in 1964 when the Royal Shakespeare Company, under the direction of Peter Brook, presented a play by the unknown author Peter Weiss entitled, The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.1 Marat/Sade, as the play is usually called, became an extraordinary success story.2 By com- bining narrators with techniques developed in a multi-year workshop entitled “Theater of Cruelty,” Marat/Sade managed to link the two modernist visionaries of the theater whom everybody had considered to be irreconcilable opposites: Bertolt Brecht and Antonin Artaud. Marat/Sade not only fabricated a new revolutionary theater from the vestiges of modernism, it also coincided with a philosophical and cul- tural revision of the French revolution that had begun with Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s The Dialectics of Enlightenment (1944/69) and found a preliminary culmination in Michel Foucault’s History of Madness (1972). At the same time, the revival of Sade was fu- eled by the first complete publication of his work in French (1967) and by Roland Barthes’ landmark study, Sade Fourier Loyola (1971).3 Marat/Sade had thus hit a theatrical and intellectual nerve. Sade, however, belongs to theater history as more than just a char- acter in a play.Little is known about the historical Sade’s life-long pas- sion for the theater, about his work as a theater builder and manager, an actor and director.
    [Show full text]
  • Utopian Aspirations in Fascist Ideology: English and French Literary Perspectives 1914-1945
    Utopian Aspirations in Fascist Ideology: English and French Literary Perspectives 1914-1945 Ashley James Thomas Discipline of History School of History & Politics University of Adelaide Thesis presented as the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences University of Adelaide March 2010 CONTENTS Abstract iii Declaration iv Acknowledgments v Chapter One: Introduction 1 Chapter Two: Interpreting Fascism: An Evolving 26 Historiography Chapter Three: The Fascist Critique of the Modern 86 World Chapter Four: Race, Reds and Revolution: Specific 156 Issues in the Fascist Utopia Chapter Five: Conclusion 202 Bibliography 207 ABSTRACT This thesis argues that utopian aspirations are a fruitful way to understand fascism and examines the utopian ideals held by a number of fascist writers. The intention of this thesis is not to define fascism. Rather, it is to suggest that looking at fascism’s goals and aspirations might reveal under-examined elements of fascism. This thesis shows that a useful way to analyse the ideology of fascism is through an examination of its ideals and goals, and by considering the nature of a hypothetical fascist utopia. The most common ways of examining fascism and attempting to isolate its core ideological features have been by considering it culturally, looking at the metaphysical and philosophical claims fascists made about themselves, or by studying fascist regimes, looking at the external features of fascist movements, parties and governments. In existing studies there is an unspoken middle ground, where fascism could be examined by considering practical issues in the abstract and by postulating what a fascist utopia would be like.
    [Show full text]
  • THE FRENCH PHILOSOPHES and THEIR ENLIGHTENING MEDIEVAL PAST by John Frederick Logan
    THE FRENCH PHILOSOPHES AND THEIR ENLIGHTENING MEDIEVAL PAST by John Frederick Logan The Enlightenment's scorn for the Middle Ages is well known. "Centuries of ignorance," "barbarous times," "miserable age"-such descriptions of medie- val life and culture seem to justify the assumption that a contempt for the Middle Ages was a uniform and central characteristic of the French Enlight- enment. B. A. Brou, for example, sees the medieval period as an epitome of everything despised by the philosophes: the men of the Enlightenment, he asserted, "rejected authority, tradition, and the past. Thus there was disdain for the Middle Ages."' Summarizing the philosophes' view of the medieval period, the French critic Edmond EstBve similarly declared that Bayle . .scarcely knew the M~ddleAges and did not like them. HISdisciples and successors knew this period no better and detested ~t even more. The historians spoke of it because, nonetheless, one could not cross out five or six centuries of our past-whatever distaste one might have. But they affected reluctance in all sorts of ways before approaching the subjecL2 Such interpretations of the attitude towards medieval history prevalent among the philosophes are quite understandable: the colorful, often-quot- ed comments of Voltaire on the decadence and ignorance of the past come immediately to mind. Furthermore, the task of the modern interpreter of Enlightenment historiography becomes much lighter if he can neatly and quickly dispense with the philosophes' view of the Middle Ages; a uniformly negative attitude toward the medieval period provides a most useful contrast to the sympathetic approach of many nineteenth century historians.
    [Show full text]
  • Download File
    A Monster for Our Times: Reading Sade across the Centuries Matthew Bridge Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2011 © 2011 Matthew Bridge All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT A Monster for Our Times: Reading Sade across the Centuries Matthew Bridge This doctoral dissertation looks at several readings and interpretations of the works of the Marquis de Sade, from the eighteenth century to the present. Ever since he was imprisoned under the Old Regime following highly publicized instances of physical and sexual abuse, Sade has remained a controversial figure who has been both condemned as a dangerous criminal and celebrated as an icon for artistic freedom. The most enduring aspect of his legacy has been a vast collection of obscene publications, characterized by detailed descriptions of sexual torture and murder, along with philosophical diatribes that offer theoretical justifications for the atrocities. Not surprisingly, Sade’s works have been subject to censorship almost from the beginning, leading to the author’s imprisonment under Napoleon and to the eventual trials of his mid-twentieth-century publishers in France and Japan. The following pages examine the reception of Sade’s works in relation to the legal concept of obscenity, which provides a consistent framework for textual interpretation from the 1790s to the present. I begin with a prelude discussing the 1956 trial of Jean-Jacques Pauvert, in order to situate the remainder of the dissertation within the context of how readers approached a body of work as quintessentially obscene as that of Sade.
    [Show full text]
  • “The Queen of Decadence”: Rachilde and Sado
    ‘“The Queen of Decadence”: Rachilde and Sado-Masochistic Feminism’ Author[s]: Rebekkah Dilts Source: Moveable Type, Vol.11, ‘Decadence’ (2019) DOI: 10.14324/111.1755-4527.095 Moveable Type is a Graduate, Peer-Reviewed Journal based in the Department of English at UCL. © 2019 Rebekkah Dilts. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY) 4.0https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. 10 Moveable Type 11 (2019) In 1884, the novel Monsieur Vénus took the French literary world by storm, and inaugurated its controversial female author, Rachilde, the ‘queen of decadence.’ Many critics did not believe that a young, aristocratic woman could possibly have devised such a salacious story. A literary press which specialized in erotica first published the book, but it was banned regardless, and Rachilde was even condemned to prison for pornographic writing. Subsequent editions therefore required fake male co-authors and introductions by famous male writers that consigned the novel not literature at all, but the case study of a hysterical woman. Rachilde also publicly denounced the feminism of her moment, a proclamation that affected the twentieth- century reception of her writing. Yet, following new French and English editions published in 2004, Monsieur Vénus has been hailed a queer forerunner in contemporary academic circles, even while questions about Rachilde’s feminist affiliations persist. This paper goes beyond the biographical details that have dominated conversation about Rachilde’s writing to closely interrogate the use of sexual violence in Monsieur Vénus, and in her much lesser-known novel, La Marquise de Sade (1887).
    [Show full text]
  • The Sodomitic Reputation of Weimar Berlin Gregory Woods
    9 The Sodomitic Reputation of Weimar Berlin Gregory Woods Resumo A Berlim da Republica de Weimar tornou-se a cidade europeia, por exceli!ncia, dos sonhos eroticos e dos pesadelos morais. Berlim tornou­ Sf 0 simbolo tanto das coisas maravilhosas que poderiam ser alcanr;adas se se lutasse por eias, quanta das coisas terriveis que poderiam aeonteeer se nao se lutasse contra elas. A proliferar;ao e a visibilidade da vida homossexual berlinense era tanto uma promessa quanto uma amear;a. 0 legado de Weimar nao foi tanto 0 moralismo vingativo do Nazismo, quanto 0 fervor eficaz com 0 qual a BerUm queer conseguiu se reestabelecer e prosperar depois da guerra, apesar de estar no iwsW epicentro da Guerra Fria. Palavras-chave: Berlim. Homossexualismo. Nazismo. Gragoata Niter6i, n. 14, p. 9- 27,1. sem. 2003 10 Visiting Berlin in 1919 in the aftermath of Germany's defeat in the Great War, Kurt von Stutterheim fOlmd that "all kinds of dubious resorts had sprung up like mushrooms". Censorship had been relaxed, with the result that "Notorious magazines, which no chief of police of former times would have permitted, were sold openly on the Potzdamer Platz". Having already deplored the open display of these lmnamed publications on the streets, Shltterheim could not resist going into the "dubious resorts" to see if they were any less shocking: "An acquaintance took me into a dance-hall where painted men were dancing dressed in women's clothes. I was refused admission to another resort because it was only open to women, half of whom were dressed as men" (STUTIERHEIM, 1939, p.
    [Show full text]
  • The Age of Decadence - the New York Times
    17/8/2020 Opinion | The Age of Decadence - The New York Times https://nyti.ms/2UDjIWu Opinion The Age of Decadence Cut the drama. The real story of the West in the 21st century is one of stalemate and stagnation. By Ross Douthat An Opinion columnist and the author of the forthcoming book “The Decadent Society,” from which this essay is adapted. Feb. 7, 2020 Everyone knows that we live in a time of constant acceleration, of vertiginous change, of transformation or looming disaster everywhere you look. Partisans are girding for civil war, robots are coming for our jobs, and the news feels like a multicar pileup every time you fire up Twitter. Our pessimists see crises everywhere; our optimists insist that we’re just anxious because the world is changing faster than our primitive ape-brains can process. But what if the feeling of acceleration is an illusion, conjured by our expectations of perpetual progress and exaggerated by the distorting filter of the internet? What if we — or at least we in the developed world, in America and Europe and the Pacific Rim — really inhabit an era in which repetition is more the norm than invention; in which stalemate rather than revolution stamps our politics; in which sclerosis afflicts public institutions and private life alike; in which new developments in science, new exploratory projects, consistently underdeliver? What if the meltdown at the Iowa caucuses, an antique system undone by pseudo-innovation and incompetence, was much more emblematic of our age than any great catastrophe or breakthrough? The truth of the first decades of the 21st century, a truth that helped give us the Trump presidency but will still be an important truth when he is gone, is that we probably aren’t entering a 1930-style crisis for Western liberalism or hurtling forward toward transhumanism or extinction.
    [Show full text]
  • Sociology and Psychology of Communism
    , I Sociology and Psychology of Communism J ULES MONNEROT TRANSLATED BY JANE DEGRAS AND R ICHARD REES / BOSTON: THE BEACON PRESS Contents PART ONE THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY ' ISLAM' 1. The Twentieth-century 'Islam' 9 2. Failing Oligarchy and Impotent Plebs 24 3. A Technological Messianism 39 4. Structure of the Army 46 5. Growth of Absolutism and Concentration of Power 60 6. Bolshevisation 85 7. The Third Army 100 8. The 'Men of the Threshold' 112 PART TWO SECULAR RELIGIONS AND THE IMPERIUM MUNDI 9. The Prestige of Totality 123 10. The Psychology of Secular Religions 133 11 . The Political Phenomenon of Tyranny 164 12. Twentieth-century Absolutism 182 13. The Totalitarian Dynamic 237 14. Projections of the Sacred 264 15. What is a Revolution? 293 Postscript to Chapter 15 334 INDEX 337 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY 'ISLAM' 13 society and shaped by a different history. And this Campaign is an answer to the particular problems posed by that history. A new type of social differentiation has appeared, whose hierarchical aspect bas become clearly recognisable in the course of thirty years to the lay (I mean the non-communist) observer, and with it has appeared a new type of regime, harsh towards the 'free' proletariat and inhuman towards its slave labour.1 The proletariat can only be called free by comparison with the labour force of the concentration camps. The revival of slavery is one of the characteristic features of 20th-century totalitarianism: the defeated in political and factional warfare, side by side wlth delinquents of every kind, many of whom would not in countries farther west be liable to any penalty at all, are all alike re­ duced to slavery, and not by a foreign power but by their own State.
    [Show full text]
  • The 'Regime-Model' of Fascism: a Typology
    02_Articles 30/1 19/11/99 11:10 am Page 77 Aristotle A. Kallis The ‘Regime-Model’ of Fascism: A Typology Introduction In recent years there has been a revival of interest in the nature of generic fascism. This renewed search for a paradigmatic model of fascism originated as a reaction to the trend of overstating specificity, of studying fascist phenomena in the longue durée and of using their individual differences to underscore the futility of grand theories of fascism. A large part of the blame for the dis- crediting of comparative approaches is borne by the erratic and often mystifying sample of the studies themselves. Lack of clarity about the nature and content of fascism resulted in a number of comparative studies, whose insufficiently justified sample of case studies left the concept of ‘fascism’ in disarray. The ‘totalitarian’ approach focused on the political features of fascism as regime (i.e. Italy and Germany), but then subjected it to a broader definition which dovetailed with aspects of such a disparate socio-political phenomenon as communism.1 Nolte’s Three Faces of Fascism provided an insightful account of the ideological similarities between the Italian and German regimes, only to obfuscate his paradigm by including Action Française in his analysis.2 The ideological affinities notwithstanding, the weak- nesses of his generic definition are obvious. If ‘fascism’ is a broad ideological phenomenon, then why are other case-studies ex- cluded (Austria, Britain, etc.)? If, on the other hand, ‘fascism’ is both ideology and action, movement and regime, then why is Action Française comparable to the Italian and German regimes? Even the recent account by Roger Eatwell has focused on a curious combination of two major interwar regimes (Italy, Germany) and a plethora of disparate movements (most of which achieved limited, short-lived appeal and none of which ever European History Quarterly Copyright © 2000 SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi, Vol.
    [Show full text]
  • On Fascist Ideology
    On Fascist Ideology Federico Finchelstein Comprendere e saper valutare con esattezza il nemico, significa possedere gia` una con- dizione necessaria per la vittoria. Antonio Gramsci1 Fascism is a political ideology that encompassed totalitarianism, state terrorism, imperialism, racism and, in the German case, the most radical genocide of the last century: the Holocaust. Fascism, in its many forms did not hesitate to kill its own citizens as well as its colonial subjects in its search for ideological and political closure. Millions of civilians perished on a global scale during the apogee of fascist ideologies in Europe and beyond. In historical terms, fascism can be defined as a movement and a regime. Emilio Gentile – who, with Zeev Sternhell and George Mosse,2 is the most insightful historian of fascism – presents fascism as a modern revolutionary phenomenon that was nationalist and revolution- ary, anti-liberal and anti-Marxist. Gentile also presents fascism as being typically organized in a militaristic party that had a totalitarian conception of state politics, an activist and anti- theoretical ideology as well as a focus on virility and anti-hedonistic mythical foundations. For Gentile a defining feature of fascism was its character as a secular religion which affirms the primacy of the nation understood as an organic and ethnically homogenous community. Moreover, this nation was to be hierarchically organized in a corporativist state endowed with a war-mongering vocation that searches for a politics of national expansion, potency and conquest. Fascism, in short, was not a mere reactionary ideology. Rather, fascism aimed at creating a new order and a new civilization.3 The word fascism derives from the Italian word fascio and refers to a political group (such as the political group lead by Giuseppe Garibaldi during the time of Italian unification.) Fascism also refers visually and historically to a Roman imperial symbol of authority.
    [Show full text]