I didn't have had high expectations for this book, for the subject is notoriously difficult. All I can say is that it was interesting, generally well written, and gives the subject a good try. The results were very disappointing.
It seems to me there were two basic problem. The first is that the author refuses to start with theory and sets out instead to infer the nature of fascism simply from fascist behavior. It is a commonplace that all science must start with theory, with the consensus of a body of experts that defines the object of study and the how to study it. This is why students go to school. In philosophical terms, one cannot infer the nature of something simply from a observing it. All this does is to describe the properties of a particular society and its trajectory in time.
I suspect this adoption of a radical empiricism at the expense of theory may be ideological, for it warrants a neglect of fascism's function in relation to wider capitalist society. The problem is hinted by the book's title, for an anatomy breaks up a whole into parts, which in this case are factors that Paxton assumes determine fascism because of their association with it. One cannot infer from an association that the factor is a cause or necessary condition.
The other problem is that Paxton's argument appears to be circular. His inference of fascist behavior depends on his first being able to distinguish a society as being fascist. That may be easy in the case of Italy, for it embraced the word. However, one cannot discuss fascist behaviors without first defining fascism in order to identify fascist societies.
I suspect the way around this is to come to an understanding of (capitalist) society first, and if there turns out to be the need to label a type or behavior as fascist, then do it. That is, an understanding of fascism must arise from an understanding of the underlying capitalist society. The identification of a type of that society must follow after this understanding.
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The Anatomy of Fascism
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Robert O. Paxton
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Robert O. Paxton
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ISBN-101400040949
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ISBN-13978-1400040940
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PublisherKnopf
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Publication dateMarch 23, 2004
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LanguageEnglish
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Dimensions6.63 x 1.09 x 9.54 inches
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Print length336 pages
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Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
A scholar of Vichy France, Paxton focuses here on the literature about fascism. The term is used with abandon in contemporary political discourse, reflecting scholarly disagreement about how to define it. His historical source material predominantly emanates from Mussolini in Italy and Hitler in Germany, an obvious but necessary observation since the "fascist" status of other authoritarian regimes is contentious. Paxton does integrate biographies of the two ur-fascists into his dissection, but he comments frequently that a researcher's fixation on the leader obscures rather than clarifies the rise of his party, as does a propensity to focus on the party's ideology instead of its actions, and he follows the significantly different trajectories of radicalism taken by the Fascists and the Nazis. Formulating a five-stage life cycle of fascism from birth in "mobilizing passions" provoked by World War I to its destructiveness in power, Paxton wants his intricate but readable work to "rescue the concept [of fascism] for meaningful use," a laudable goal largely achieved. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"So fair, so thorough and, in the end, so convincing, it may well become the most authoritative . . . study of the subject. . . . A splendid book." –The New York Times Book Review
"Useful and timely. . . . Mussolini and Hitler were the prototypical fascist leaders, and Paxton chronicles their rise to power--and their global influence and ultimate fall--with a brilliant economy." –San Francisco Chronicle
"A deeply intelligent and very readable book. . . . Historical analysis at its best." –The Economist
“[A] helpful contribution, thoughtfully mapping out the descent of a civilized people — first the Italians, then the Germans — into a primal state (and state of being) ruled by mythology, symbol and emotion. . . . Serves as a reminder of our power and responsibility.” –The Washington Post Book World
“Until now there has been no satisfying account of fascism that includes a convincing diagnostic kit for identifying its symptoms. . . . Robert Paxton steps in to restore sanity, with his view that fascism is not what was believed but what was done.” –Los Angeles Times Book Review
From the Trade Paperback edition.
"Useful and timely. . . . Mussolini and Hitler were the prototypical fascist leaders, and Paxton chronicles their rise to power--and their global influence and ultimate fall--with a brilliant economy." –San Francisco Chronicle
"A deeply intelligent and very readable book. . . . Historical analysis at its best." –The Economist
“[A] helpful contribution, thoughtfully mapping out the descent of a civilized people — first the Italians, then the Germans — into a primal state (and state of being) ruled by mythology, symbol and emotion. . . . Serves as a reminder of our power and responsibility.” –The Washington Post Book World
“Until now there has been no satisfying account of fascism that includes a convincing diagnostic kit for identifying its symptoms. . . . Robert Paxton steps in to restore sanity, with his view that fascism is not what was believed but what was done.” –Los Angeles Times Book Review
From the Trade Paperback edition.
From the Inside Flap
From the author of <i>Vichy France,</i> a fascinating, authoritative history of fascism in all its manifestations, and how and why it took hold in certain countries and not in others.<br><br>What <i>is</i> fascism? Many authors have proposed succinct but abstract definitions. Robert O. Paxton prefers to start with concrete historical experience. He focuses more on what fascists did than on what they said. Their first uniformed bands beat up “enemies of the nation,” such as communists and foreign immigrants, during the tense days after 1918 when the liberal democracies of Europe were struggling with the aftershocks of World War I. Fascist parties could not approach power, however, without the complicity of conservatives willing to sacrifice the rule of law for security. <br><br>Paxton makes clear the sequence of steps by which fascists and conservatives together formed regimes in Italy and Germany, and why fascists remained out of power elsewhere. Fascist regimes were strained alliances. While fascist parties had broad political leeway, conservatives preserved many social and economic privileges. Goals of forced national unity, purity, and expansion, accompanied by propaganda-driven public excitement, held the mixture together. War opened opportunities for fascist extremists to pursue these goals to the point of genocide. Paxton shows how these opportunities manifested themselves differently in France, in Britain, in the Low Countries, and in Eastern Europe–and yet failed to achieve supreme power. He goes on to examine whether fascism can exist outside the specific early-twentieth-century European setting in which it emerged, and whether it can reappear today. This groundbreaking book, based on a lifetime of research, will have a lasting impact on our understanding of twentieth-century history.
About the Author
Robert O. Paxton taught at Columbia University. His other books include Vichy France, Vichy France and the Jews (with Michael Marrus), Europe in the Twentieth Century, and French Peasant Fascism. He lives in New York City.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
Introduction
The Invention of Fascism
Fascism was the major political innovation of the twentieth century, and the source of much of its pain. The other major currents of modern Western political culture—conservatism, liberalism, socialism—all reached mature form between the late eighteenth century and the mid-nineteenth century. Fascism, however, was still unimagined as late as the 1890s. Friedrich Engels, writing a preface in 1895 for his new edition of Karl Marx’s The Class Struggles in France, clearly believed that wider suffrage would inexorably deliver more votes to the Left. Both time and numbers, Engels was certain, were on the socialists’ side. “If it [the growing socialist vote] continues in this fashion, by the end of this [nineteenth] century we [socialists] shall conquer the major part of the middle strata of society, petty bourgeois and peasants, and grow into the decisive power in the land.” Conservatives, Engels wrote, had noticed that legality was work- ing against them. By contrast, “we [socialists], under this legality, get firm muscles and rosy cheeks and look like life eternal. There is nothing for them [the conservatives] to do but break through this legality themselves.” While Engels thus expected that the Left’s enemies would launch a preemptive attack, he could not imagine in 1895 that this might win mass approval. Dictatorship against the Left amidst popular enthusiasm—that was the unexpected combination that fascism would manage to put together one short generation later.
There were only a few glimmers of premonition. One came from an inquisitive young French aristocrat, Alexis de Tocqueville. Although Tocqueville found much to admire on his visit to the United States in 1831, he was troubled by the majority’s power in a democracy to impose conformity by social pressure, in the absence of an independent social elite.
The kind of oppression with which democratic peoples are threatened will resemble nothing that had preceded it in the world; our contemporaries would not find its image in their memories. I myself seek in vain an expression that exactly reproduces the idea that I form of it for myself and that contains it; the old words despotism and tyranny are not suitable. The thing is new, therefore I must try to define it, since I can not name it.
Another premonition came at the eleventh hour from a French engineer turned social commentator, Georges Sorel. In 1908 Sorel criticized Marx for failing to notice that “a revolution accomplished in times of decadence” could “take a return to the past or even social conservation as its ideal.”
The word fascism has its root in the Italian fascio, literally a bundle or sheaf. More remotely, the word recalled the Latin fasces, an axe encased in a bundle of rods that was carried before the magistrates in Roman public processions to signify the authority and unity of the state. Before 1914, the symbolism of the Roman fasces was usually appropriated by the Left. Marianne, symbol of the French Republic, was often portrayed in the nineteenth century carrying the fasces to represent the force of Republican solidarity against her aristocratic and clerical enemies. Fasces are prominently displayed on Christopher Wren’s Sheldonian Theater (1664–69) at Oxford University. They appeared on the Lincoln Memorial in Washington (1922) and on the United States quarter minted in 1932.
Italian revolutionaries used the term fascio in the late nineteenth century to evoke the solidarity of committed militants. The peasants who rose against their landlords in Sicily in 1893–94 called themselves the Fasci Siciliani. When in late 1914 a group of left-wing nationalists, soon joined by the socialist outcast Benito Mussolini,sought to bring Italy into World War I on the Allied side, they chose a name designed to communicate both the fervor and the solidarity of their campaign: the Fascio Rivoluzionario d’Azione Interventista (Revolutionary League for Interventionist Action).At the end of World War I, Mussolini coined the term fascismo to describe the mood of the little band of nationalist ex-soldiers and pro-war syndicalist revolutionaries that he was gathering around himself. Even then, he had no monopoly on the word fascio, which remained in general use for activist groups of various political hues.
Officially, Fascism was born in Milan on Sunday, March 23, 1919. That morning, somewhat more than a hundred persons, including war veterans, syndicalists who had supported the war, and Futurist intellectuals, plus some reporters and the merely curious, gathered in the meeting room of the Milan Industrial and Commercial Alliance, overlooking the Piazza San Sepolcro, to “declare war against socialism . . . because it has opposed nationalism.” Now Mussolini called his movement the Fasci di Combattimento, which means, very approximately, “fraternities of combat.”
The Fascist program, issued two months later, was a curious mixture of veterans’ patriotism and radical social experiment, a kind of “national socialism.” On the national side, it called for fulfilling Italian expansionist aims in the Balkans and around the Mediterranean that had just been frustrated a few months before at the Paris Peace Conference. On the radical side, it proposed women’s suffrage and the vote at eighteen, abolition of the upper house, convocation of a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution for Italy (presumably without the monarchy), the eight-hour workday, worker participation in “the technical management of industry,” the “partial expropriation of all kinds of wealth” by a heavy and progressive tax on capital, the seizure of certain Church properties, and the confiscation of 85 percent of war profits.
Mussolini’s movement was not limited to nationalism and assaults on property. It boiled with the readiness for violent action, anti-intellectualism, rejection of compromise, and contempt for established society that marked the three groups who made up the bulk of his first followers—demobilized war veterans, pro-war syndicalists, and Futurist intellectuals.
Mussolini—himself an ex-soldier who boasted of his forty wounds—hoped to make his political comeback as a veterans’ leader. A solid core of his followers came from the Arditi—select commando units hardened by front-line experience who felt entitled to rule the country they had saved.
The pro-war syndicalists had been Mussolini’s closest associates during the struggle to bring Italy into the war in May 1915. Syndicalism was the main working-class rival to parliamentary socialism in Europe before World War I. While most socialists by 1914 were organized in electoral parties that competed for parliamentary seats, syndicalists were rooted in trade unions (“syndicates”). Whereas parliamentary socialists worked for piecemeal reforms while awaiting the historical development that Marxists predicted would make capitalism obsolete, syndicalists, scornful of the compromises required by parliamentary action and of most socialists’ commitment to gradual evolution, believed they could overthrow capitalism by the force of their will. By concentrating on their ultimate revolutionary goal rather than on each trade’s petty workplace concerns, they could form “one big union” and bring down capitalism all at once in one momentous general strike. After capitalism’s collapse, workers organized within their “syndicates” would remain as the sole functioning units of production and exchange in a free collectivist society. By May 1915, while all Italian parliamentary socialists and most Italian syndicalists ada- mantly opposed Italian entry into World War I, a few ardent spirits around Mussolini concluded that warfare would drive Italy further toward social revolution than would remaining neutral. They had become “national syndicalists.”
The third component of Mussolini’s first Fascists were young antibourgeois intellectuals and aesthetes such as the Futurists. The Futurists were a loose association of artists and writers who espoused Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s “Futurist Manifestos,” the first of which had been published in Paris in 1909. Marinetti’s followers dismissed the cultural legacy of the past collected in museums and libraries and praised the liberating and vitalizing qualities of speed and violence. “A racing automobile . . . is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.” They had been eager for the adventure of war in 1914, and they continued to follow Mussolini in 1919.
Another intellectual current that provided recruits for Mussolini consisted of critics of the tawdry compromises of Italian parliamentarism who dreamed of a “second Risorgimento.” The first Risorgimento, in their view, had left Italy in the hands of a narrow oligarchy whose soulless political games were inappropriate for Italian cultural prestige and Great Power ambitions. It was time to complete the “national revolution” and give Italy a “new state” capable of summoning up the energetic leadership, motivated citizenry, and united national community that Italy deserved. Many of these advocates of a “second Risorgimento” wrote for the Florentine cultural review La Voce, to which the young Mussolini subscribed and with whose editor, Giovanni Prezzolini, he corresponded. After the war, their approval gave respectability to the rising Fascist movement and spread acceptance of a radical “national revolution” among middle-class nationalists.
On April 15, 1919, soon after Fascism’s founding meeting at the Piazza San Sepolcro, a band of Mussolini’s friends including Marinetti and the chief of the Arditi, Ferruccio Vecchi, invaded the Milan offices of the socialist daily newspaper Avanti, of which Mussolin...
Introduction
The Invention of Fascism
Fascism was the major political innovation of the twentieth century, and the source of much of its pain. The other major currents of modern Western political culture—conservatism, liberalism, socialism—all reached mature form between the late eighteenth century and the mid-nineteenth century. Fascism, however, was still unimagined as late as the 1890s. Friedrich Engels, writing a preface in 1895 for his new edition of Karl Marx’s The Class Struggles in France, clearly believed that wider suffrage would inexorably deliver more votes to the Left. Both time and numbers, Engels was certain, were on the socialists’ side. “If it [the growing socialist vote] continues in this fashion, by the end of this [nineteenth] century we [socialists] shall conquer the major part of the middle strata of society, petty bourgeois and peasants, and grow into the decisive power in the land.” Conservatives, Engels wrote, had noticed that legality was work- ing against them. By contrast, “we [socialists], under this legality, get firm muscles and rosy cheeks and look like life eternal. There is nothing for them [the conservatives] to do but break through this legality themselves.” While Engels thus expected that the Left’s enemies would launch a preemptive attack, he could not imagine in 1895 that this might win mass approval. Dictatorship against the Left amidst popular enthusiasm—that was the unexpected combination that fascism would manage to put together one short generation later.
There were only a few glimmers of premonition. One came from an inquisitive young French aristocrat, Alexis de Tocqueville. Although Tocqueville found much to admire on his visit to the United States in 1831, he was troubled by the majority’s power in a democracy to impose conformity by social pressure, in the absence of an independent social elite.
The kind of oppression with which democratic peoples are threatened will resemble nothing that had preceded it in the world; our contemporaries would not find its image in their memories. I myself seek in vain an expression that exactly reproduces the idea that I form of it for myself and that contains it; the old words despotism and tyranny are not suitable. The thing is new, therefore I must try to define it, since I can not name it.
Another premonition came at the eleventh hour from a French engineer turned social commentator, Georges Sorel. In 1908 Sorel criticized Marx for failing to notice that “a revolution accomplished in times of decadence” could “take a return to the past or even social conservation as its ideal.”
The word fascism has its root in the Italian fascio, literally a bundle or sheaf. More remotely, the word recalled the Latin fasces, an axe encased in a bundle of rods that was carried before the magistrates in Roman public processions to signify the authority and unity of the state. Before 1914, the symbolism of the Roman fasces was usually appropriated by the Left. Marianne, symbol of the French Republic, was often portrayed in the nineteenth century carrying the fasces to represent the force of Republican solidarity against her aristocratic and clerical enemies. Fasces are prominently displayed on Christopher Wren’s Sheldonian Theater (1664–69) at Oxford University. They appeared on the Lincoln Memorial in Washington (1922) and on the United States quarter minted in 1932.
Italian revolutionaries used the term fascio in the late nineteenth century to evoke the solidarity of committed militants. The peasants who rose against their landlords in Sicily in 1893–94 called themselves the Fasci Siciliani. When in late 1914 a group of left-wing nationalists, soon joined by the socialist outcast Benito Mussolini,sought to bring Italy into World War I on the Allied side, they chose a name designed to communicate both the fervor and the solidarity of their campaign: the Fascio Rivoluzionario d’Azione Interventista (Revolutionary League for Interventionist Action).At the end of World War I, Mussolini coined the term fascismo to describe the mood of the little band of nationalist ex-soldiers and pro-war syndicalist revolutionaries that he was gathering around himself. Even then, he had no monopoly on the word fascio, which remained in general use for activist groups of various political hues.
Officially, Fascism was born in Milan on Sunday, March 23, 1919. That morning, somewhat more than a hundred persons, including war veterans, syndicalists who had supported the war, and Futurist intellectuals, plus some reporters and the merely curious, gathered in the meeting room of the Milan Industrial and Commercial Alliance, overlooking the Piazza San Sepolcro, to “declare war against socialism . . . because it has opposed nationalism.” Now Mussolini called his movement the Fasci di Combattimento, which means, very approximately, “fraternities of combat.”
The Fascist program, issued two months later, was a curious mixture of veterans’ patriotism and radical social experiment, a kind of “national socialism.” On the national side, it called for fulfilling Italian expansionist aims in the Balkans and around the Mediterranean that had just been frustrated a few months before at the Paris Peace Conference. On the radical side, it proposed women’s suffrage and the vote at eighteen, abolition of the upper house, convocation of a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution for Italy (presumably without the monarchy), the eight-hour workday, worker participation in “the technical management of industry,” the “partial expropriation of all kinds of wealth” by a heavy and progressive tax on capital, the seizure of certain Church properties, and the confiscation of 85 percent of war profits.
Mussolini’s movement was not limited to nationalism and assaults on property. It boiled with the readiness for violent action, anti-intellectualism, rejection of compromise, and contempt for established society that marked the three groups who made up the bulk of his first followers—demobilized war veterans, pro-war syndicalists, and Futurist intellectuals.
Mussolini—himself an ex-soldier who boasted of his forty wounds—hoped to make his political comeback as a veterans’ leader. A solid core of his followers came from the Arditi—select commando units hardened by front-line experience who felt entitled to rule the country they had saved.
The pro-war syndicalists had been Mussolini’s closest associates during the struggle to bring Italy into the war in May 1915. Syndicalism was the main working-class rival to parliamentary socialism in Europe before World War I. While most socialists by 1914 were organized in electoral parties that competed for parliamentary seats, syndicalists were rooted in trade unions (“syndicates”). Whereas parliamentary socialists worked for piecemeal reforms while awaiting the historical development that Marxists predicted would make capitalism obsolete, syndicalists, scornful of the compromises required by parliamentary action and of most socialists’ commitment to gradual evolution, believed they could overthrow capitalism by the force of their will. By concentrating on their ultimate revolutionary goal rather than on each trade’s petty workplace concerns, they could form “one big union” and bring down capitalism all at once in one momentous general strike. After capitalism’s collapse, workers organized within their “syndicates” would remain as the sole functioning units of production and exchange in a free collectivist society. By May 1915, while all Italian parliamentary socialists and most Italian syndicalists ada- mantly opposed Italian entry into World War I, a few ardent spirits around Mussolini concluded that warfare would drive Italy further toward social revolution than would remaining neutral. They had become “national syndicalists.”
The third component of Mussolini’s first Fascists were young antibourgeois intellectuals and aesthetes such as the Futurists. The Futurists were a loose association of artists and writers who espoused Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s “Futurist Manifestos,” the first of which had been published in Paris in 1909. Marinetti’s followers dismissed the cultural legacy of the past collected in museums and libraries and praised the liberating and vitalizing qualities of speed and violence. “A racing automobile . . . is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.” They had been eager for the adventure of war in 1914, and they continued to follow Mussolini in 1919.
Another intellectual current that provided recruits for Mussolini consisted of critics of the tawdry compromises of Italian parliamentarism who dreamed of a “second Risorgimento.” The first Risorgimento, in their view, had left Italy in the hands of a narrow oligarchy whose soulless political games were inappropriate for Italian cultural prestige and Great Power ambitions. It was time to complete the “national revolution” and give Italy a “new state” capable of summoning up the energetic leadership, motivated citizenry, and united national community that Italy deserved. Many of these advocates of a “second Risorgimento” wrote for the Florentine cultural review La Voce, to which the young Mussolini subscribed and with whose editor, Giovanni Prezzolini, he corresponded. After the war, their approval gave respectability to the rising Fascist movement and spread acceptance of a radical “national revolution” among middle-class nationalists.
On April 15, 1919, soon after Fascism’s founding meeting at the Piazza San Sepolcro, a band of Mussolini’s friends including Marinetti and the chief of the Arditi, Ferruccio Vecchi, invaded the Milan offices of the socialist daily newspaper Avanti, of which Mussolin...
Product details
- Publisher : Knopf (March 23, 2004)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1400040949
- ISBN-13 : 978-1400040940
- Item Weight : 1.37 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.63 x 1.09 x 9.54 inches
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Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2018
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Reviewed in the United States on August 20, 2014
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"Fascist" and "fascism" are words that people throw around loosely these days. Many use them as synonyms for "authoritarian," "racist," or "anti-Semitic." In reality, however, "fascist" is a technical term that refers to a rather specific political phenomenon. Using it loosely obscures genuine fascism, making it hard to recognize and fight it.
In "The Anatomy of Fascism," Robert O. Paxton seeks both to identify the key features of fascism and to describe five stages that a fascist movement may pass through. Arguing that fascism cannot easily be located on the traditional left-right political continuum, Paxton argues that its most salient features are: opposition to both the Left and the bourgeoisie; heavy reliance on emotion-filled mass politics; the idea that it represents a chosen nation/race/people; and a willingness to use violence to advance its ends.
Much of the book is devoted to a discussion of the five stages fascism may pass through, illustrated by copious examples, not only from Nazism and Italian fascism--the only fascist movements that have passed through all five stages--but also from unsuccessful fascist movements in such countries as France, the United Kingdom, Norway, Hungary, and Romania. He also discusses fascist movements outside Europe, including in the United States.
According to Paxton, the seeds of fascism exist in every developed or semi-developed country, for it is an outgrowth of modernity. Fascism does not have to display the swastika, use the Nazi salute, or be anti-Semitic.(It does, however, always identify one or more internal enemies which are supposedly preventing the chosen nation/race/people from fulfilling their destiny.) Most fascist movements fail; that is, they never achieve political power. History suggests that they come to power in a severe crisis, when asked to join a political coalition that is already in power.
I strongly recommend "The Anatomy of Fascism" to anyone who is interested in political science or early twentieth century European history. It is quite readable and should be accessible to a fairly broad audience.:
In "The Anatomy of Fascism," Robert O. Paxton seeks both to identify the key features of fascism and to describe five stages that a fascist movement may pass through. Arguing that fascism cannot easily be located on the traditional left-right political continuum, Paxton argues that its most salient features are: opposition to both the Left and the bourgeoisie; heavy reliance on emotion-filled mass politics; the idea that it represents a chosen nation/race/people; and a willingness to use violence to advance its ends.
Much of the book is devoted to a discussion of the five stages fascism may pass through, illustrated by copious examples, not only from Nazism and Italian fascism--the only fascist movements that have passed through all five stages--but also from unsuccessful fascist movements in such countries as France, the United Kingdom, Norway, Hungary, and Romania. He also discusses fascist movements outside Europe, including in the United States.
According to Paxton, the seeds of fascism exist in every developed or semi-developed country, for it is an outgrowth of modernity. Fascism does not have to display the swastika, use the Nazi salute, or be anti-Semitic.(It does, however, always identify one or more internal enemies which are supposedly preventing the chosen nation/race/people from fulfilling their destiny.) Most fascist movements fail; that is, they never achieve political power. History suggests that they come to power in a severe crisis, when asked to join a political coalition that is already in power.
I strongly recommend "The Anatomy of Fascism" to anyone who is interested in political science or early twentieth century European history. It is quite readable and should be accessible to a fairly broad audience.:
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Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2018
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I chose this book because accusations of fascism are currently being leveled by many in the political world. Having studied this topic too long ago to be able to weigh in on the subject, I wanted to determine whether or not we are witnessing a resurgence of any type of fascism. This book was written in 2004, so I knew there would be no controversial mentions of our current president. I came away with a very thorough understanding of how fascism takes root, seizes and exercises power, and the tactics used by fascist rulers across various countries where it was successful and why. The author waits until the final chapter to define fascism, using the accumulated evidence from his historical account.
I kept my eyes open for characteristics which might indicate that the US is headed down this path. I strongly recommend reading this book. It is a valuable source to use in staying vigilant.
I kept my eyes open for characteristics which might indicate that the US is headed down this path. I strongly recommend reading this book. It is a valuable source to use in staying vigilant.
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Matloub Husayn-Ali-Khan
5.0 out of 5 stars
Highly Perceptive and Brilliant Analysis of fascism written in Scholarly fashion!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 23, 2013Verified Purchase
This book certainly provides a brilliant, scholarly and highly perceptive analysis of fascism. The book clearly mentions the origins of fascism from its nineteenth century roots to the 'real' fascism in Italy and Germany from 1919-45. Generally speaking, most writers define their subject matter at the beginning: Robert O. Paxton leaves this to the end of the book - although he defines the word fascism as being taken from Italian: 'fascio', literally a bundle of sheaf, as I remember from my student days and I also can recall that this was taken from Latin meaning Fasces, an axe encased in a bundle of rods.
More importantly, Paxton's viewpoint differs markedly from many other writers on the subject in that he suggest that fascism should not be studied in isolation from other factors. He stresses that fascism should not be just viewed as a tool of a particular interest group and at the same time this tends to be a popular movement. Paxton concentrates on examining the development of fascism through five stages: "creating fascist movements; taking root; getting power; exercising power and the long-term (radicalisation or entropy)". In a sense, he (Paxton) argues that fascist movements tend to develop autonomously and they do get support from some of the existing liberal and conservatives elite at times of social, economic and political upheaval or crisis and when many of the democratic institutions within the state are unable to resolve the crisis. However, Paxton makes very brief references to the Marxist school of thought and which clearly offers the most sharpest analysis of fascism through the writings of Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) - who had lived through it from its height in Italy and Germany from 1919 to 1940s.
Overall, Paxton'ss analysis of fascism takes account of some of the more recent developments in Britain like the rise of the British National Party (BNP) 'wannabe' fascist groups as arising from other forces through which Emile Durkheim termed "Organic Solidarity" (dominant in more advanced societies) and "Mechanical Solidarity" (dominant in more traditional societies) as the original Italian fascist movements did. Interestingly, the recent rise in the neo-fascist movements like the English Defence League (EDL) (not mentioned in the book) have branded Islamic Fundamental movements like Al-Qaeda and Taliban as fascist. Paxton's answer to this, as according to the book: "... they are not reactions against a malfunctioning democracy. Arising in traditional hierarchical societies, their unity is, in terms of Emile Durkheim's famous distinction, more mechanical than organic. Above all, they have not "given up free institutions, since they never had any." On the question of what is Fascism? The answer in the book, clearly states that "Fascist actions are best from those actions for some of them remain unstated and implicit in fascist public language" which Paxton terms as "Mobilising Passions".
Finally, Paxton concludes: "...that when fascist are close to power when conservatives begin to borrow their techniques, appeal to their "mobilising passions" and try to co-opt the fascist following..." It is due to "having the historical knowledge" that we may be able to separate the 'wannabe' fascists "...with their shaved heads and swastika tattoos, from authentic functional equivalents in the form of a mature fascist-conservative alliance..." A must buy and read book!
More importantly, Paxton's viewpoint differs markedly from many other writers on the subject in that he suggest that fascism should not be studied in isolation from other factors. He stresses that fascism should not be just viewed as a tool of a particular interest group and at the same time this tends to be a popular movement. Paxton concentrates on examining the development of fascism through five stages: "creating fascist movements; taking root; getting power; exercising power and the long-term (radicalisation or entropy)". In a sense, he (Paxton) argues that fascist movements tend to develop autonomously and they do get support from some of the existing liberal and conservatives elite at times of social, economic and political upheaval or crisis and when many of the democratic institutions within the state are unable to resolve the crisis. However, Paxton makes very brief references to the Marxist school of thought and which clearly offers the most sharpest analysis of fascism through the writings of Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) - who had lived through it from its height in Italy and Germany from 1919 to 1940s.
Overall, Paxton'ss analysis of fascism takes account of some of the more recent developments in Britain like the rise of the British National Party (BNP) 'wannabe' fascist groups as arising from other forces through which Emile Durkheim termed "Organic Solidarity" (dominant in more advanced societies) and "Mechanical Solidarity" (dominant in more traditional societies) as the original Italian fascist movements did. Interestingly, the recent rise in the neo-fascist movements like the English Defence League (EDL) (not mentioned in the book) have branded Islamic Fundamental movements like Al-Qaeda and Taliban as fascist. Paxton's answer to this, as according to the book: "... they are not reactions against a malfunctioning democracy. Arising in traditional hierarchical societies, their unity is, in terms of Emile Durkheim's famous distinction, more mechanical than organic. Above all, they have not "given up free institutions, since they never had any." On the question of what is Fascism? The answer in the book, clearly states that "Fascist actions are best from those actions for some of them remain unstated and implicit in fascist public language" which Paxton terms as "Mobilising Passions".
Finally, Paxton concludes: "...that when fascist are close to power when conservatives begin to borrow their techniques, appeal to their "mobilising passions" and try to co-opt the fascist following..." It is due to "having the historical knowledge" that we may be able to separate the 'wannabe' fascists "...with their shaved heads and swastika tattoos, from authentic functional equivalents in the form of a mature fascist-conservative alliance..." A must buy and read book!
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John Thomas
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hard to find a better book that's actually about Fascism as opposed to a ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 7, 2017Verified Purchase
An essential introduction to the history and mechanics of Fascism. Hard to find a better book that's actually about Fascism as opposed to a specific movement.
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J. Gordon
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Outstanding Overview
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 14, 2011Verified Purchase
Paxton's "Anatomy of Fascism" is, in fact, more than an overview or introduction. It is focused on real Fascism in Italy and Germany from c. 1919-45 (but with adequate consideration of later developments and possible 'Fascisms' elsewhere). It is a scholarly and highly perceptive analysis of Fascism - by far the best that I've encountered so far anywhere. In a word, it is brilliant.
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gary thomas mcnally
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hands down the best book I've read on fascism
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 23, 2016Verified Purchase
Hands down the best book I've read on fascism. This is less a book that provides a definition of fascism. Instead, its a book that shows the underlying mechanics of fascism and what conditions can cause it to develop.
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Paul T. Gannon
5.0 out of 5 stars
Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 25, 2018Verified Purchase
Well worth reading to understand the development of mid-20th century fascism.
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