Talk:Fascism/Archive 10

message: I've moved the following paragraph by WHEELER here for discussion:
"Fascism was born in France amongst the turbelence produced by the French Revolution.  It is born from the clashing ideas between revolution and stability, between bourgeoisie and proletariat bodies, between materialism and faith, between the rise of democracy and class warfare seen as destructive forces and nationalism as a source of preservation and between socialism and capitalism.   France was the birth place of syndicalism and anarchosyndicalism which in turn formed Italian Fascism."
The Doctrine of Fascism was written by Giovanni Gentile an idealist philosopher and who served as its official philosopher. Mussolini signed the article and it was officially attributed to him. In it, Frenchmen Georges Sorel, Charles Peguy, and Hubert Lagardelle were invoked as the sources of fascism. Sorel's ideas concerning syndicalism and violence are much in evidence in this document. It also quotes from the Frenchman Joseph Renan who it says had "prefascist intuitions". Both Sorel and Peguy were influenced by the Frenchman Henri Bergson. Bergson rejected scientism and mechanical evolution and materialism of Marxist ideology. Also, Bergson promoted an elan vital as an evolutionary process. Both of these elements of Bergeson appear in fascism. Mussolini states that fascism negates the doctrine of scientific and Marxian socialism and the doctrine of historic materialism. Hubert Lagardelle, an authoritative syndicalist writer, was influenced by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who is the inspirer of anarchosyndicalism
AndyL 17:35, 5 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Schapiro was writing when, in 1949? His suggestions have not been accepted by any other writers, have they? If Schapiro is suggesting that Proudhon's anarcho-syndicalism was the basis of fascism he is unique in that interpretation (and as Marxists are not fans of anarchism I don't think you can blame this on a Marxist bias in academia). It's one thing to say syndicalism had an influence on fascism, it's quite different to say that syndicalism and fascism are the same thing and that the founder of anarchosyndicalism was also the founder of fascism.  Even if you are correct that syndicalism spawned fascism (and I find that claim dubious despite your use of the "appeal to authority" fallacy by saying that I can't dare disagree with a Leon Blum Professor of Politics let alone a Professor emeritus - emeritus really just means retired) to say Proudhon founded fascism would be like saying Moses founded Christianity. AndyL 00:49, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Prof Sternhell also has this throughout his book.  The snythesis of syndicalism with nationalism.
Getting back to Pari' and the origin of Fascism in France:
"With his sense of theater, Marinetti knew that in order to strike the imagination of this contemporaries, this cry of rebellion had to come out of Paris.  The mecca of arts and letters, an unequaled cultural center, Paris was also a major center of Italian culture where the most famous Italian writer of his period, the nationalist hero of the immediat postwar era, Gabriele D'Annunzio, lived and worked.  Marinetti and D'Annunzio often wrote in French and participated in the intellectual life of the French Capitol".  The Birth of Fascist Ideology, pg 29.
Clear and convincing proof.  Prof. Sternhell backs up Prof Schapiro.WHEELER 14:28, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

text: Yes, I think this is what we've been trying to say for some time.  WHEELER is not interested. john 03:26, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Origins of Fascism

message: #Wikipedia:Cite your sources
#Wikipedia:Verifiability
Sam Spade 08:02, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Arguments in Favor of WHEELER

message: Look, I think it's legitimate to say that early fascist thinking echoed, expanded and may even have been in part inspired by some ideas put forward by Sorel, Bergeson, even Proudhon; but I don't think there is any reasonable way to say that fascism originated in France.  To the extent that there was a coherent cluster of ideas that can be labelled "fascism" - and I think there was, but that remains somewhat controversial - its origins are clearly to be found in Italy.  The etymology of the word alone placed the burden of proof on someone who wants to claim otherwise.  There are quite large gaps between all the French thinkers that have been named here and the works of the early fascists.
The fascists happily cited a wide variety of 19th century intellectuals.  That was part of Mussolini's schtick - fascism was a doctrine of brownshirts and know-nothings; Mussolini was a brownshirt and know-nothing, albeit far from stupid; many of the early fascists were desperate to be taken seriously.  Citing Saint-Simon, Proudhon, Pareto, Hegel, god knows who else doesn't make any of those men fascists.  He also cited Marx, Adam Smith, Locke and even Jesus Christ - they weren't fascists either.
Wheeler, look again at your quotes from Shapiro.  "Proudhon [...]  intellectual forerunner of of Fascism", "first sounded the fascist note", "a herald of the great world evil of fascism".  He never says "Fascism started in France."  He says that many of the ideas that it drew on, many ideas that were similar, many notions that came to be used by the fascists started in France, but he never, ever identifies a single one of those figures as "fascist". Nor does Sternhell - Sternhell idetifies the roots of fascism in the confluence of syndicalism and nationalism, both French doctrines, but unless fascism is redefined to include a broad swath of people traditionally considered non-fascist, it makes no sense to say it originated in France.
Sternhell's thesis remains controversial:
::First, to apply fascism retrodictively to constellations of ideas current before 1914 is surely to underestimate the dramatic impact which the First World War had on compounds of organic nationalism with non-Marxist socialism. The war not only crystallized the sense of decadence and crisis of liberal capitalist civilization, and transformed internationalist socialism into a genuine threat to its hegemony, but through the mass mobilization of civilian populations, and the intensification of the state control of society which this necessitated, radicalized the populist, militaristic dimension of the revolt against the status quo without which fascism might never have emerged as an overtly anti-conservative and ritualistic movement of `people power'. The squadristi, the Freikorps, oceanic assemblies and vast rallies were the external manifestations of the unleashing of massified populist energies, signalling that something had burst upon the modern world which was qualitatively distinct from Boulangism or the Cercle Proudhon. A world of collective trauma and exhilaration separates the Camelots du Roi of the Action Française from the Sturmabteilung of the NSDAP. In this sense it is no coincidence that the term `fascism' is derived from a mass movement which combined party politics with extra-systemic violence in a way which has no parallel in pre-1914 France. 
As far as I know, only Sternhell is advancing such a radical thesis and he does not enjoy widespread support for it.  I would be willing to collaborate in a paragraph offering his interpretation as an alternative POV, but not as an established fact.
Fascism as a coherent thing came into being in Italy.  There are respectable mainstream points of view that it never really was a coherent thing, so fascism can only mean the doctrines of Mussolini, Hitler and those who drew directly on them; or that it was a syncretic doctrine drawn from convenient bits of all sorts of thinkers.  Either way, I don't see a case for a French origin to fascism unless fascism is redefined as something different than what most people mean by the word.  A clearer discussion of the ideological roots of fascism might well name many French thinkers, but that's as far as it goes.
Diderot 08:38, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Shapiro doesn't say it, Sternhell's judgement is motivated by other intentions and thus suspect without outside support, and Gregor is just plain nuts.  As for Hoover, what precisely makes Hoover an expert on fascism?  Seems to me he spent the 30's and 40's rhetorically covering his ass for doing nothing when the American economy collapsed.  He wasn't in Europe, and he wasn't much of a historian.  I mean, he can't even quote Mussolini accurately.  Diderot 21:10, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Andy's right on this