Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle Reading App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Apple
Android
Windows Phone
Android
To get the free app, enter your email address or mobile phone number.
Best Books of 2014
Looking for something great to read? Browse our editors' picks for 2014's Best Books of the Year in fiction, nonfiction, mysteries, children's books, and much more.
A. James Gregor is one of the strongest proponents academically of the 'left' origin of fascism, as opposed those from Paxton to Griffin to Maier, that see fascism as a 'right' (or right radical) political tradition. In contrast to someone like Zeev Sternhell, however, who believes that fascism in France and Italy was certainly a revision, a very far deviation, of Marxist ideas, but nonetheless distinct from Communism (even in its Stalinist form), Gregor reduces fascism and communism, in the tradition of Ernst Nolte, into two sides of the same coin, and uses a political litmus test as useless as the old right and left divide: democratic and non-democratic (as an example, Russia now, undoubtedly authoritarian, actually has a less invasive police and security apparatus than democratic Great Britain, whose police harass and kill innocents with as much impunity, it seems, as Russian state police). Like Nolte, he is a respected and prolific scholar whose political trajectory and beliefs make the relative value of his argument as problematic as a Maoist writing a history of European imperialism. To wit, Gregor argued in the 60's for a war to the utmost against North Vietnam, in a kind of armchair war-mongering that would no doubt make Christopher Hitchens proud, and was an advisor to the unpleasant Marcos dictatorship in the 80's. His politics and the tone of this book, especially compared to some of his other works, including the far superior "Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism: Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism," leave me cold: he has no interest in an anatomy of fascism, in the Paxton style, that isn't ultimately used to excoriate Marxism and left-wingers more 'moderate' than New Labour or Bill Clinton.Read more ›
Comment
Was this review helpful to you?
Yes No
Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Gregor describes the evolution of the critique of Fascism developed by Soviet and Chinese scholars from the 1920's until the 1990's. Early critiques of Fascism by Soviet scholars of the 1920's mirrored the primitive right-left dichotomy of present-day Western Marxists. Unlike Western leftists, Soviet scholars were supremely confident in the ascendancy of Marxism, and had no need to invent defenses against the open discussion of the common intellectual origins of Marxism and Fascism. Following the schism between the Soviet politburo and Mao's dictatorship, Soviet scholars began to identify the Fascist characteristics of Mao's totalitarianism. In their turn, Chinese scholars identified the Fascist characteristics of the Leninist-Stalinist and the post-Stalinist Soviet regimes. This dialectic led to the inevitable conclusion, "We are both, essentially, Fascists." In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and of Mao's clique within China, while Western scholars fantasized about the emergence of new liberal democracies, Russia and China have emerged as modern Fascist states. The latter part of Gregor's book follows the progress of obscure Fascist politicians within Russia of the 1990's.
Gregor follows the development of leftist orthodoxy from the death of Engels in 1895 into the 1990's. Having none of the intellectual baggage of the leftwing true believer, Gregor freely describes the crisis that developed among Marxist believers following the death of Pope Engels. Bereft of its central authority, one who could authenticate the true belief, Marxism radiated into fragments.
By 1895, even the most ardent of Marxist believers had to admit that very little of Marx's prognostications had come true.Read more ›
1 Comment
Was this review helpful to you?
Yes No
Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again