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Fascism and Modernization
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2011
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If the number of publications is an accurate gauge, there was a conspicuous revival of interest in fascism during the past decade. One obvious reason for this was the erosion of the theories of totalitarianism that had dominated discussions of political extremism during the 1950's. By linking German National Socialism and, in some cases, Italian Fascism with Russian Communism, these theories inhibited consideration of fascism as a distinctive generic phenomenon in its own right. But in the wake of the thaw in Khrushchev's Soviet Union and the general relaxation of cold-war tensions during the 1960's, the various theories of totalitarianism became less compelling.1 As a result, many students of twentieth-century politics became aware of the absence of a concept suitable for characterizing those interwar authoritarian movements and regimes in Europe that were neither conservative nor Communist. For some, fascism provided the solution.
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References
1 For two examples of the criticism to which those theories were subjected during the logo's, see Hildebrand, Klaus, “Stufen der Totalitarismus-Forschung,” Politische Vierteljahresschrift, ix (September 1968), 397–422Google Scholar; Burrowes, Robert, “Totalitarianism: The Revised Standard Version,” World Politics, xxi (January 1969), 272–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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21 Gallo, Max, L’ltalie de Mussolini (Verviers 1964), 243Google Scholar.
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23 Nolte (fn. 2); Sauer (fn. 18). Italian scholars have, virtually without exception, dealt with Fascism as an isolated national problem, ignoring all except the Marxist theories of fascism as a generic phenomenon. A departure from this pattern may be found in the recent survey of theories about fascism by Felice, Renzo De, Le inter-pretazioni del jascismo (Bari 1969)Google Scholar.
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25 Albert Speer, in his memoirs (fn. 13), relates that Hitler objected to industry on the grounds that it gave rise to communism and bred an intelligentsia, something the Führer regarded as undesirable (309). Yet Speer records that, upon his appointment as Munitions Minister in 1942, Hitler advised hi m to circumvent the bureaucracy whenever possible and deal directly with industry, since that was where the best brains were (202). According to Speer, Hitler abandoned his original plan to de-industrialize the occupied territories of the East only when he came to realize the necessity of utilizing industrial installations there on behalf of the German war effort (309).
26 See James Joll's essay on Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Fascism in his Three Intellectuals in Politics (New York 1965), 133–84Google Scholar.
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28 Ibid., 288.
29 For comparative data on the rate of change, see Patel, Surendra J., “Rates of Industrial Growth in the Last Century, 1860–1958,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, ix (April 1961), 316–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the obstacles to change in France, see Sawyer, John E., “Strains in the Social Structure of Modern France,” in Earle, Edward Mead, ed., Modern France (Princeton 1951)Google Scholar.
30 See the illuminating analysis of middle-class political behavior in a small German town in Allen, William Sheridan, The Nazi Seizure of Power (Chicago 1965)Google Scholar.
31 See Mosse (fn. 15) and Stern (fn. 15); also Lebovics, Herman, Social Conservatism and the Middle Classes in Germany (Princeton 1969)Google Scholar; Klemperer, Klemens von, Germany's New Conservatism (Princeton 1957)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
32 On Quisling, see Paul M. Hayes, “Quisling's Political Ideas,” in Laqueur and Mosse, eds. (fn. 2), 145–57; also Hayes, , Quisling: The Career and Political Ideas of Vidkun Quisling, 1887–1945 (London 1971)Google Scholar; also T. K. Derry, “Norway,” in Woolf, ed., European Fascism (fn. 2), 217–30. On the Falange, see Nellesen, Bernd, Die verbotene Revolution (Hamburg 1963)Google Scholar, and Payne, Stanley, Falange (Stanford 1961)Google Scholar; such tendencies seem to have been most evident in the JONS faction led by Onésimo Redondo y Ortego and Ramiro Ledesma Ramos.
33 On Mosley, see R. J. A. Skidelsky, “Great Britain,” in Woolf, ed., European Fascism (fn. 2), 231–61. On Doriot, see Gilbert D. Allerdyce, “The Political Transformation of Jacques Doriot,” in Laqueur and Mosse (fn. 2), 56–74; also Wolf, Dieter, Die Doriot-Bewegung (Stuttgart 1967)Google Scholar. On Peron, see Blanksten, George I., Peron's Argentina (Chicago 1953)Google Scholar, and Fillol, Tomas, Social Factors in Economic Development: The Argentine Case (Cambridge, Mass. 1961)Google Scholar.
34 This has been argued by Alan Cassels (fn. 24), who has suggested that in back-ward countries such as Italy, fascism was a forward-looking agent of modernization, while in advanced countries, such as Germany, it was backward-looking and nihilistically regressive. However, Cassels encounters difficulties in applying this thesis to the putative fascism of eastern Europe. In addition, as suggested above, the cases of Mosley and Doriot seem to contradict his formula.
35 See, for examples, George L. Mosse, “Introduction: The Genesis of Fascism,” in Laqueur and Mosse (fn. 2); Sauer (fn. 18); Hugh Trevor-Roper, “The Phenomenon of Fascism,” in Woolf, ed., European Fascism (fn. 2); Weber, Eugen, Varieties of Fascism (Princeton 1964)Google Scholar.
36 On the history of the term itself, see Nolte, Ernst, ed., Theorien über den Faschismus (Cologne 1967)Google Scholar; Schieder, Wolfgang, “Faschismus,” in Kernig, C. D., ed., Sowjet-system und demohratische Gesellschajt, ii (Freiburg, Basel, Vienna 1968), 438–77Google Scholar.
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