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When The Birth of Fascist Ideology was first published in 1989 in France and in 1993 in Italy, it aroused a storm of response, both positive and negative. In Sternhell's view, fascism was much more than an episode in the history of Italy. He argues here that it possessed a coherent ideology with deep roots in European civilization. Long before fascism became a political force, he maintains, it was a major cultural phenomenon.
List of contents
Acknowledgments Ch. 1Georges Sorel and the Antimaterialist Revision of Marxism Ch. 2Revolutionary Revisionism in France Ch. 3Revolutionary Syndicalism in Italy Ch. 4The Socialist-National Synthesis Ch. 5The Mussolini Crossroads: From the Critique of Marxism to National Socialism and Fascism Epilogue: From a Cultural Rebellion to a Political Revolution Notes Bibliography Index
About the author
Zeev Sternhell
With Mario Sznajder and Maia Asheri
Translated by David Maisel
Summary
The author argues that the fascism possessed a coherent ideology with deep roots in European civilization. Long before fascism became a political force, he maintains, it was a major cultural phenomenon.
Additional text
"[This] work obliges us to ground any study of fascism in the particular moment toward the end of the nineteenth century when politics expanded dizzily from a gentleman's hobby to a matter of mass opinion and votes. [Sternhell] shows irrefutably that fascist doctrine had complex cultural origins, drawing not only from conservative efforts to adapt to the novel requirements of mass politics,...but also from dissent within the left against the materialism, positivism, and reformism that mainstream Marxism shared with social democracy in the 1890s."---Robert O. Paxton, The New York Review of Books
