AUT: Re: Syndicalism vs. Fascism

[Michael Pugliese <debsian@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've really only glanced through his works, but from reviews I've read, the
work of historian Zeev Sternhill might be useful in untangling this one. (Or
at least of further polemic and flame wars!)I gather his work is
controversial but, shouldn't analysis of fascism get passionate? After all
it is not as if one is debated the merits of one brand of detergent over
another- hell, I'd say 2 or 3 brands dominate the market there anyway,
whereas the "neo-liberal" model tries to channel all economic and other
activities into the one "brand", the one we know all too well.
                                   Michael Pugliese

 The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political
Revolution
Zeev Sternhell  David Maisel (Translator)  With Mario Sznajder

Paperback, 348pp.
ISBN: 0691044864
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Pub. Date: January  1996
Edition Desc: REPRINT
FROM THE BOOK
Table of Contents
 Acknowledgments
 Introduction: Fascism as an Alternative Political Culture 3
Ch. 1 Georges Sorel and the Antimaterialist Revision of Marxism 36
Ch. 2 Revolutionary Revisionism in France 92
Ch. 3 Revolutionary Syndicalism in Italy 131
Ch. 4 The Socialist-National Synthesis 160
Ch. 5 The Mussolini Crossroads: From the Critique of Marxism to National
Socialism and Fascism 195
 Epilogue: From a Cultural Rebellion to a Political Revolution 233
 Notes 259
 Bibliography 315
 Index 327

Synopsis
This is a revised version of a work first published in France in 1989.
Chapters 3 and 4, on the origins of Italian fascist ideology, are by Mario
Sznajder. The material for Chapter 5, on Mussolini, was provided by Maia
Asheri. "We seek to demonstrate that the conceptual framework of fascism,
created long before August 1914, was nonconformist, avant-garde, and
revolutionary in character. Due to this intellectual content, fascism became
a political forcecapable of assailing the existing order and competing
effectively with Marxism. . . . In this book, we focus on the formative
period of fascism. We analyze the development of the thinking of the
movement and of the intellectual structures it created within the context of
the Franco-Italian cultural complex."(Introduction) Bibliography. Index.
Description from The Reader's Catalog
"[This book] deserves to be read and, whatever one's reservations, to be
considered seriously...[It] rectifies the stereotyped and narrowly
derogatory image of a movement that was as representative and influential as
its more acceptable contemporaries, and more original than many." -- Eugen
Weber

>From The Publisher
When The Birth of Fascist Ideology was first published in 1989 in France and
at the beginning of 1993 in Italy, it aroused a storm of response, positive
and negative, to Zeev Sternhell's controversial interpretations. In
Sternhell's view, fascism was much more than an episode in the history of
Italy. He argues here that it possessed a coherent ideology with deep roots
in European civilization. Long before fascism became a political force, he
maintains, it was a major cultural phenomenon. This important book further
asserts that although fascist ideology was grounded in a revolt against the
Enlightenment, it was not a reactionary movement. It represented, instead,
an ideological alternative to Marxism and liberalism and competed
effectively with them by positing a revolt against modernity. Sternhell
argues that the conceptual framework of fascism played an important role in
its development. Building on radical nationalism and an "antimaterialist"
revision of Marxism, fascism sought to destroy the existing political order
and to uproot its theoretical and moral foundations. At the same time, its
proponents wished to preserve all the achievements of modern technology and
the advantages of the market economy. Nevertheless, fascism opposed every
"bourgeois" value: universalism, humanism, progress, natural rights, and
equality. Thus, as Sternhell shows, the fascists adopted the economic aspect
of liberalism but completely denied its philosophical principles and the
intellectual and moral heritage of modernity.

Reviews
>From Robert S. Wistrich - The Times Literary Supplement
{Sternhell's} thesis is not new, . . . but in The Birth of Fascist Ideology,
it is deepened with the help of Mario Sznajder and Maia Asheri, two
formerdoctoral students with a special knowledge of Italy. This enables
Sternhell to extend his earlier understanding of the genesis of radical
right ideology in France into a wider analysis of the whole Franco-Italian
cultural complex atthe beginning of this century. . . . Sternhell's study,
marked by the intellectual rigour, lucidity and single-mindedness that
characterize his work as a whole, helps to move us away from the more banal
explanations of the fascist appeal. He conclusively demonstrates that there
was a fascist ideology which needs to be taken seriously. He also shows how
the revolt against the materialistic positivism of the nineteenth century
seduced many leading European intellectuals, from the left as well as the
right. This is an important message at a time when the siren-call of fascism
can be heard again in {Europe}, . . . and in other parts of the world.

>From Stephen Turner - American Journal of Sociology
When this book first appeared in French it produced a violently negative
reaction . . . from those whose cultural attitudes have the same roots that
Sternhell claims fascism had. Nevertheless, the case appears to have
withstood the challenge. Sternhell's argument, amply documented by an
extended examination of French and Italian writings, is that fascism's
intellectual origins evolved from theoretical reflections on the practical
political experience of theextreme revolutionary left. . . . Although The
Birth of Fascist Ideology is not a work of sociology, it bears on many of
the cliches that sociologists haveemployed to account for fascism and
Nazism. . . . The hatred of the bourgeoisorder . . . that is such a visible
theme both of Italian fascism and Nazism is, for the first time, given
proper recognition as a . . . central part of thephenomenon of fascism,
emotionally and ideologically.

>From Robert O. Paxton - The New York Review of Books
Sternhell's emphasis on fascism as an ideology has two implications. It puts
more weight upon origins than upon later developments, and it rates the
thinkers as more authentically fascist than the doers. In Sternhell's
thesis, fascism was already fully formed before the First World War. . . .
Sternhell has been the target of scholarly criticism as well as of lawsuits.
French scholars . . . found his application of the fascist label to
anti-liberal, anti-parliamentary and anti-individualist thought in 1930s
France far too loose and sweeping. . . . It is therefore worth putting the
positive case for Sternhell'swork as firmly as possible. . . . He shows
irrefutably that fascist doctrine had complex cultural origins, drawing not
only from conservative efforts to adapt to the novel requirements of mass
politics, . . . but also from dissent within the left. . . . Those first
intellectual positions, however, do not tell us very much about the
subsequent development of fascism.

>From Eugen Weber - The New York Times Book Review
Eloquent, repetitive, uneven in style and insistent in argument, 'The Birth
of Fascist Ideology' (in a workmanlike translation from the French by
DavidMaisel) will not convince the unconvinced, and it will raise hackles
Mr. Sternhell likes to see raised. But it deserves to be read and, whatever
one's reservations, to be considered seriously. Its approach, in my view, is
too deliberately and narrowly intellectual, shortchanging political and
social factors. The authors make Fascism and the intellectuals who forged it
in France and Italy bear a heavier ideological burden than they can sustain.
But this book rectifies the stereotyped and narrowly derogatory image of a
movement that was as representative and influential as its more acceptable
contemporaries, and more original than many.





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