Neo-Socialism’s Equivocal Turn
from Part II - The Vicissitudes of Neo-Socialism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 February 2026
This chapter begins with an analysis of the neo-socialists’ infamous watchwords of “order, authority, nation.” Rather than an expression of fascist sympathy, these represented an initial attempt to appropriate and rearticulate these terms in service of a popular-democratic and national-popular socialist politics oriented against the threat of fascism. The chapter then considers neo-socialism’s equivocal turn, in which it briefly adopted a more ambiguous attitude toward fascism during the political crisis inaugurated by the February 6, 1934, anti-parliamentary riots. However, this equivocal turn in neo-socialist discourse did not represent a logical development of neo-socialism, but rather its adaptation to a political field in crisis. The neo-socialists sought to take advantage of their marginal position within the political field and capitalize on widespread anti-parliamentary sentiment by reinventing themselves as the vanguard of a “revolution by the center” and making common cause with elements of the political right.
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