The Intellectual Origins Of Fascism

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1979.

This book, first published in 1973, sets out to clear away many of the confused ideas and misconceptions concerning the origins and nature of fascism. The first section deals with the intellectual origins of fascism and examines the constituent strands and development of fascist theory, including discussion of such topics as the myth of race, the idea of the elite and the leader, nationalism, and the influence of militarism. The book then goes on to look at fascism in action, particularly in relation to economic affairs. The author here examines the process by which the fascists came to power in Germany and Italy, investigating both the political and social causes. A third section contains discussion of the nature of more recent regimes in Greece, Latin America and Africa.

This work traces the changes in classical Marxism (the Marxism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels) that took place after the death of its founders. It outlines the variants that appeared around the turn of the twentieth century—one of which was to be of influence among the followers of Adolf Hitler, another of which was to shape the ideology of Benito Mussolini, and still another of which provided the doctrinal rationale for V. I. Lenin's Bolshevism and Joseph Stalin's communism. This account differs from many others by rejecting a traditional left/right distinction—a distinction that makes it difficult to understand how totalitarian political institutions could arise out of presumably diametrically opposed political ideologies. Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism thus helps to explain the common features of "left-wing" and "right-wing" regimes in the twentieth century.

Renowned historian George L. Mosse's landmark work, first published in 1964, explored the ideological foundations of Nazism in Germany and introduced readers to the völkisch ideal--the belief that the German people were united through a transcendental essence. This new edition includes a critical introduction by Steven E. Aschheim.

The unification of Germany in 1871 disappointed many Germans from the bourgeois and educated classes: it was seen as too materialistic, and they thought that the Germans failed to achieve inner, spiritual unity through the establishment of the Empire. This disappointment brought about the rise of the "völkisch" movement, which rejected modernity and stressed the unity of the Germans through the bond of German "blood and soil". The "völkisch" ideology acquired traits of a national religion, in which antisemitism was an important element. The stereotyped "rootless" and "soulless" Jew seemed to be the enemy of the "Volk". Gradually, "völkisch" antisemitism acquired a racist and mystical character. Dwells on the rightist conservative organizations and youth movements (e.g. the Pan-German Association, the Wandervögel) that belonged to the "völkisch" movement and shared its antisemitism. Nazism was a natural outgrowth of the this movement. Hitler transformed its anti-capitalism into antisemitism, radicalized the latter and made it into a political vehicle. The Nazi idea found its greatest support among the educated classes, just like the "völkisch" idea had had its appeal to them before 1914. Antisemitism was not transitory, but endemic to Nazism. Dwells, also, on another party that grew out of the "völkisch" movement - the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (1918-33), and on the transformation of its antisemitism.

Fascism has traditionally been characterized as irrational and anti-intellectual, finding expression exclusively as a cluster of myths, emotions, instincts, and hatreds. This intellectual history of Italian Fascism--the product of four decades of work by one of the leading experts on the subject in the English-speaking world--provides an alternative account. A. James Gregor argues that Italian Fascism may have been a flawed system of belief, but it was neither more nor less irrational than other revolutionary ideologies of the twentieth century. Gregor makes this case by presenting for the first time a chronological account of the major intellectual figures of Italian Fascism, tracing how the movement's ideas evolved in response to social and political developments inside and outside of Italy. Gregor follows Fascist thought from its beginnings in socialist ideology about the time of the First World War--when Mussolini himself was a leader of revolutionary socialism--through its evolution into a separate body of thought and to its destruction in the Second World War. Along the way, Gregor offers extended accounts of some of Italian Fascism's major thinkers, including Sergio Panunzio and Ugo Spirito, Alfredo Rocco (Mussolini's Minister of Justice), and Julius Evola, a bizarre and sinister figure who has inspired much contemporary "neofascism." Gregor's account reveals the flaws and tensions that dogged Fascist thought from the beginning, but shows that if we want to come to grips with one of the most important political movements of the twentieth century, we nevertheless need to understand that Fascism had serious intellectual as well as visceral roots.

Giovanni Gentile (1875-1944) was the major theorist of Italian fascism, supplying its justifi cation and rationale as a developmental form of dictatorship for status-deprived nations languishing on the margins of the Great Powers. Gentile's "actualism" (as his philosophy came to be called) absorbed many intellectual currents of the early twentieth century, including nationalism, syndicalism, and futurism. He called the individual to an idealistic ethic of obedience, work, self-sacrifi ce, and national community in a dynamic rebellion against the perceived impostures of imperialism. This volume makes available some of his more signifi cant writings produced shortly before and after the Fascist accession to power in Italy.