Customer Reviews

Origins and Doctrine of Fascism: With Selections from Other Works

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This book contains Giovanni Gentile's programmatic essay "Origins and Doctrine of Fascism" as well as excerpts from other works and a short introduction by the editor, A.J. Gregor. Entitled by Mussolini himself as "the Philosopher of Fascism", Gentile is highly important to the study of Fascism, especially if you are interested in Fascist ideological theory rather than political practice (though Gentile served also as the Italian minister of education). Although the "Origins and Doctrine" is meant to be a popular essay, it is reflects the thought of a philosopher.

The literature on Fascism today is mostly very judgmental - against Fascism. This, of course, is legitimate, but if you want to truly understand it, you have no other choice but turn to the original writings of the fascist thinkers themselves. In this respect, the very publication of their writings in English is a great contribution to such an understanding, especially for people (like myself) who do not read Italian.

Fascist philosophy was based on two different sources: On the one hand there is the conservative 19th century Hegelian philosophy, and on the other hand there are the post-romantic challenges of the late 19th century philosophies, that challenged the moral conventions of the European civilization. The latter were influenced by thinkers like Nietzsche, Sorel and maybe Bergson. (I know that today they try to present Nietzsche as a proto-existentialist, but if you read him literally you see that to a great extent he also was a proto-fascist). While it is the second trend that makes Fascism an intriguing challenge even to our day, Gentile is clearly a representative of the first one. He keeps trying to convince the reader that Fascism is the true continuation on the classical Italian liberal Nationalism of Mazzini. I will give an example: Gentile does not criticize Freedom face to face, as some of the radicals did, but adopts the good old Platonic concept of "true freedom", stating that Man actually attains his freedom through the restricting of freedom. Actually, in this case Gentile shares the common modernist values with the liberals and the socialists, but differs on the ways to achieve them. As Gregor notes in his introduction, democrats often treat the Marxists as partners who shared the same values with them but betrayed them; they never treat Fascists in the same way, because they conceive them as brutes who never shared the same values. (I don't know to whom he was referring, but S. Zizek wrote it explicitly). Gregor says that Gentile shows that this treatment has been based on a misconception of Fascist theory. While he is wrong in respect to the second trend, he is right in respect to the first one, and certainly in respect to Gentile.

I would give this book 5 stars, but I gave it only 4 for two main reasons: (a) As I said, Gentile is not the most intriguing fascist author; (b) the price is unreasonable: a paperback booklet of about 100 pages, and they demand about 30 bucks for it. With all due respect, that is not a fair pricing.

This book really misses the mark in what it aims to do. I think A. James Gregor has done much better to uncover the philosophical underpinnings of Fascism as a legitimate political philosophy than this (for example: Mussolini's intellectuals). In fact, I dare say this work of quotations from Giovanni Gentile is counterproductive to understanding Fascism as a systemic political idea and helps re-enforce the stereotype of it being a mindless thug-police state. Understood within the context of other philosophies and theories in other works, Gentile's quotes fit, but out of such context, as these feel to be, they sound like dogmatic empty propaganda. Those who are looking for a deeper view of Fascism as a true Italian philosophy with a social ideal all it's own, are likely to come away from this book with nothing more than the stereotypes they began with. A modern work on Fascism by the likes of Emilio Gentile would be a better starting point than this, or even an alternate work by A. James Gregor. One that expounds on what corporative syndicalism is, or how the concept of totalitarianism is understood within the context of G. Gentile's 'actual idealism' and not made out to be just a police state or a whole lot of rhetoric just saying it isn't a police state but not truly explaining why that is, like this book does.

A note of caution, it appears the current picture of the cover for "Origin & Doctrine of Fascism" given here on Amazon looks not like it does here with the new copy I received, rather it looks like the picture of "Giovanni Gentile: Philosopher of Fascism", and one may get them confused for that reason.