David Lewis-Baker's Fascist Studies and

Political Economy Site

Bath, Somerset
david.lewis.baker@gmail.com

Seminar #2

Generic Fascism - The Classical Marxist and Historical Liberal - Primacy of Economics verses Politics and Culture.

Essential Readings

Seminar Presentation pdf file

Classical Marxist Analysis of fascism:

Roger Griffin (Ed.) : International Fascism: Theories and the New Consensus, Arnold, London, 1998. (Readings 4, 5, 6, & 7, pp. 59-97.

Classical Liberal Historiography of fascism.

Roger Griffin (Ed.) : International Fascism: Theories and the New Consensus, Arnold, London, 1998. (Readings 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 19

Extra Readings:

Martin Kitchen: Fascism, Macmillan, London, 1978, Introduction, (Chapters. 1, 7, and 8).

David Beetham: Marxists in the Face of Fascism, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1983. (Introduction, p. 1 -62)

Stanley G Payne: A History of Fascism: 1914-1945, UCL Press, London, 1997. (Introduction).

Roger Griffin (Ed.) : International Fascism: Theories and the New Consensus, Arnold, London, 1998. (Preface and pp. 13-15, 50-55, 158-9)

'The Primacy of Culture: The Current Growth (or Manufacture) of Consensus within Fascist Studies', The Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 37, no. 1 (2002), pp. 21-43 http://ah.brookes.ac.uk/resources/griffin/primacyofcul.pdf (Takes

Generic Theories of fascism.

An exceptional form of Capitalist state. (Poulantzas)
The puppet of capitalist classes unable to govern through liberal democracy. (Trotsky)
The result of individual and mass neurotic or pathological psychosocial impulses. (Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm)
The product of the sudden appearance of amorphous and essentially undemocratic masses. (S. M. Lipsett)
The consequence of a certain stage of economic growth, or special historical sequence of national economic development. (Organski)
The product of a cultural or moral breakdown in inter-war Europe. (G. L. Mosse).
A reactionary struggle against modernisation. (Nolte)
The expression of a unique form of radicalism of the destabilised petit bourgeoisie. (Renzo de Felice).
A form of revolutionary ultra-nationalism. (Payne).
A struggle for an alternative form of brutal modernisation) (Griffin)

Quotations

Stanley Payne on Fascism:

Fascism was not the agent of any other force, class, or interest or the mere reflection of any social class, but was produced by a complex of historical, political, national and cultural conditions, which can be elucidated and to some extent defined. Above all fascism was the most revolutionary form of nationalism in Europe [between the wars] … and was characterized by its culture of philosophical idealism, willpower, vitalism and mysticism and its moralistic concept of therapeutic violence, strongly identified with military values, outward aggressiveness, and empire. (Stanley Payne A History of Fascism: 1914-45, 1997, p. 487-88.)

Fascism is [a] form of revolutionary ultranationalism for national rebirth that is based on a primarily vitalist philosophy, is structured on extreme elitism, mass mobilisation and the Fuhrerprinzip, positively values violence as an end as well as a means and tends to normalise war and/or military values. (A History of Fascism 1914-1945, (1997), p. 14.)

Roger Griffin defines generic fascism as: 'a political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism'. Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (1991), p. 44.

Extract from George L. Mosse’s final work:

Fascism considered as a cultural movement means seeing fascism as it saw itself and as its followers saw it, to attempt to understand the movement in its own terms. Only then, when we have grasped fascism from the inside out, can we truly judge its appeal and its power...The cultural interpretation of fascism opens up a means to penetrate fascist self-understanding, and such empathy is crucial in order to grasp how people saw the movement, something which cannot be ignored or evaluated merely in retrospect. George L. Mosse, The Fascist Revolution (New York 1999), p. x.

Pioneer neo-Marxist theorist of Nazism, Franz Neumann:

'National Socialism is, we repeat, incompatible with any rational political philosophy, that is, with any doctrine that derives political power from the will and needs of man….. National Socialism has no rational political theory. But it has an anti-rational one, and is there such a thing as an anti-rational theory? We believe not. There are non-rational religious theories and there is non rational magic. But a political theory cannot be non-rational. If it claims to be non-rational it is a conscious trick….Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, 1942, p. 379.

Web Hosting by Yahoo!