Talk:Fascism/suggested readings

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Below are some suggestions, which are also valid for related articles on fascist regimes and countries' histories. I understand that this is a brief encyclopedic article on fascism, not a detailed series on comparative history of fascist regimes and their origins. But I decided to go with a long list to increase the likelihood that many users will be familiar with at least one of them. In addition, no one needs to read a single text here. It's possible to do a search for anyone of them, find a short academic article or two, and cite the most influential arguments and theses. Citing an online article briefly summing up the analysis of an influential scholar (e.g., Moore), is better than tired old debates, such as whether fascism and socialism are opposites, or whether there was anything intrinsically socialist in the 1919 manifesto (which was one of the debates on the talk page). - 172 12:12, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The article does a good job when it comes to mentioning important characteristics, but doesn't go beyond the surface level. It's actually a good start, and it does well with pointing out general similarities between right-wing movements. But it needs to be more engaged in the social structures and historical processes that help give rise to fascism, and how fascism fit in, and reacted to broad developments of the troubled interwar era.

Contents

[edit] Origins

For starting with the origins, the most influential school of thought on the subject has examined the relationship of German, Japanese, and Italian fascism in the interwar era to the social process of "modernization." The seminal work for this school is Barrington Moore's 1966 Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, which is done in a general comparative framework examining the Japanese case, but with the German and Italian experiences in mind. Since Moore's groundbreaking work, comparative history has stressed the importance of the survival of labor repressive landlords into the modern era.

Related to this approach, historians with expertise in Germany often link Nazism to the idea of the "Sonderweg," Germany's "peculiar path" of modern development. Below is a list of the most influential sorces examining the nature and origins of German fascism:

  • G. Eley's 1984 The Peculiarities of German History.
  • R.J. Evans' essay, "Whatever became of the 'Sonderweg'?"
  • D. Blackbourn's 1997 Germany 1780-1914: The long nineteenth century
  • R.J. Evans' 1988 Rethinking German History
  • H.U. Wehler's 1985 The German Empire 1871-1918
  • G. Eley's Society, Culture and the State in Germany, 1870-1930
  • G. Eley's What Produces Fascism: Preindustrial Traditions or the Crisis of the Capitalist State. (a great work for tackling the origins of fascism rooted in socio-economic structures)

[edit] International factors

In case someone's feeling brave and ambitious, I'd recommend another field, though far more contested and controversial, that can provide interesting insights. Complementing previously listed sources, which largely examine social structures, would be some of the contributions of World Systems Analysis. This framework sees World War I and World War II as a continuous thirty years' war between rival hegemonic powers: the United States and its allies (the more established world powers) and Germany and its allies (the emerging world powers). For Germany, Nazism was the by-product of this competition for hegemonic succession taking a stark ideological turn in 1933. Germany was not only seeking hegemony within the current system but a global empire conceptualized as the ein tausendjähriges Reich (a thousand-year empire).

In addition, this school of thought suggests that the fascism of the Axis Powers was the culmination of the aggressive national rivalries, militarism, and imperialism of the nineteenth century. In this sense, the expansionism of the German Reich, Meiji Japan, and the Kingdom of Italy (all newly reunified and newly industrializing) in the late nineteenth century was the major tool of newly industrializing nations and emerging great powers. In particular, Germany was seeking to usurp the worldwide dominance of older colonial powers, especially Britain. Social scientists in this field see this process as analogous to the mercantilist empire building of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which pitted England and France against each other.

Though its focus is broad and abstract, this important text of World Systems Analysis offers interesting, albeit brief, analysis of fascism in an international context:

  • Immanuel Wallerstein's 1980 The Capitalist World Economy.

[edit] Totalitarianism and mass control

Other sources will be helpful as well, the rest of the one's that I'm listing are not necessarily in the comparative historical tradition. The rest look at the matter of totalitarianism and control, ideology, mass mobilization, seizures of power, the relationships with traditional elites, party and state structures, and the political economy.

Laqueur and Kershaw are the best when addressing the issue of totalitarianism and mass control.

  • From an heir to Max Weber, there is Ian Kershaw's The Nazi Dictatorship.
  • Laqueur's Fascism: A Readers' Guide is good for a general survey.
  • For a political-cultural interpretation (ever popular- but weak- considering the wealth of evidence suggesting that fascism's a world phenomenon), there's Roger Griffen's The Nature of Fascism

[edit] Political economy of the fascist regimes

To provide a word of caution to future writers, these topics, along with the nature of fascist and Nazi ideology, are often beaten like a dead horse in high schools, undergraduate institutions, and popular histories. Of course, few of us have not been, either directly or indirectly via family or friends, affected by the horrors of fascist brutality, so this is a natural area of interest in our greater culture. However, this article will need to be of a more academic nature, and effective in addressing the historical origins of fascism; rise, consolidation, and fall of fascist regimes; the social bases of support for fascist regimes; and the political economy of the fascist regimes. Often considered dry (and rarely the focus of best-selling works of history), these topics will offer a surprising amount of insights on the repressive and aggressive nature of European fascist regimes nevertheless.

On the political economy of fascist regimes, these would also be helpful:

  • Alberto Aquarone's Italy: the Crisis and the Corporative Economy
  • Kershaw's The Nazi Dictatorship. Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation

If there isn't anyone who's familiar with the literature on the origins of fascism and fascism as an international phenomenon, at least someone who's familiar with Moore's brilliant work (which should be read by everyone with a general interest in history and politics!!!) should revamp this article, and remove the politicized left vs. right 'talking points' (e.g., look, socialists in disguise!; or Orwell says this...; or look, they're just like contemporary conservatives!).

In short, this list could give new writers an impression of the best literature on fascism and some of the more influential analyses, arguments, and interpretations. We don't need a Blackbourn or a Kershaw to write this article, just someone broadly familiar enough with the various schools of thought of scholars to briefly introduce various fascist, Nazi, and fascist-like ideologies and the nature of fascist regimes in a more historical context. 172 12:12, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Fascism as a world phenomenon

Back to the general comparative framework of political science, we have:

  • Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan's The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes
  • G.A. O'Donnell's Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics

When examining fascism as an international, cross-regional historical phenomenon, O'Donnell's Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism is essential for Latin America, while Moore's Social Origins analyzes Japan very well. In this work, O'Donnell uses Moore's work as a theoretical pillar for his comparative historical analysis (in brief, focusing on the latifundistas of Latin America- the counterparts to Germany's Junkers), but relates it to Latin America by noting the effects of dependent development on class structure and class alliances.

As an aside, to get a good impression of this approach, my articles on Brazil, namely the Wiki series on the History of Brazil, (the one on 1930-64 in particular) would be useful. Though my articles are a brief survey of the era of "bureaucratic authoritarianism" in Brazil, it's completely compatible with O'Donnell's work.
BTW, if anyone's showing any interest, I'll start posting links to articles and short journal pieces little by little to the talk page related to this topic. That will enable many users to be engaged with the most important literature on the subject without having to read the entire texts of some of the sources that I suggested.

[edit] Suggested structure and organization for the article

Here are Adam Carr's comments and suggestions, posted on another page:
"Having had a quick look at it, I think it starts reasonably well but then deteriorates. I think there needs to be a clearer distinction from the start between
  • fascism as an ideology
  • fascism as a system of government
  • fascism as a political movement, both prewar and postwar
Adam 12:37, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)"


The proclamation of an official "Doctrine of Fascism" is in the pages of the Enciclopedia Italiana (1932). Herbert Hoover in quoting the definition of Fascism, referenced the London Quarterly which referenced this Enciclopedia Italiana.

  1. Challenge to Liberty by Herbert Hoover (recommended by Wheeler
  2. Liberty or Equality by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (recommended by Wheeler and has 994 footnotes.
  3. Leftism Revisited by von Kuehnhelt-Leddhihn (recommended by WHEELER, 172 considers this a polemic and not a useful resource. but has 1044 footnotes)[1]


[edit] Talk:Fascism/suggested readings

I would like to achieve a compromise regarding this link. Any thoughts? Sam Spade 23:22, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It's a talk page, it doesn't have to be NPOV. Why don't we just move it to Talk:Fascism/172's suggested readings? john 23:27, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Don't do this. Instead, why not expound it yourself? 172 06:28, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)
That would be fine w me. My objection was to how it was presented. Sam Spade 03:45, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)


The famous book

  • A. Hitler, Mein Kampf (My Battle)

Is conspicuous by its previous absence here. Kim Bruning 11:58, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] More books

Well, here, for edification, is one of my grad student colleagues' reading lists on fascism (he had a whole field on fascism, so it should be pretty extensive. Here goes:

[edit] Models of Fascism

[This section should be particularly useful, I think, for our purposes here]

[edit] Fascism

  • Nolte, Ernst, Three Faces of Fascism, 1966.
  • Eley, Geoff, ‘What Produces Fascism: Preindustrial Tradition or a Crisis of the Capitalist State?’, in From Unification to Nazism. Reinterpreting the German Past, 1986, pp.254-282.
  • De Felice, Renzo, Fascism: an informal introduction to its theory and practice, New Brunswick, NJ, 1977.
  • Mason, Tim, Nazism, Fascism, and the Working Class: Essays, 1995.
  • Griffin, Roger, ed., Fascism, 1995.
  • Payne, S.G., A History of Fascism, 1914-1945, 1995.
  • Bessel, Richard, ed., Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: comparisons and contrasts, 1996.
  • Paxton, Robert O., ‘The Five Stages of Fascism’, Journal of Modern History, 70(1), 1998, pp.1-23.
  • Sternhell, Zeev, Neither Right nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France, Berkeley, 1986.
  • Lyttelton, Adrian, (ed.), Italian Fascisms: From Pareto to Gentile, New York, 1977.

[edit] Totalitarianism

  • Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1949.
  • Talmon, Jacob, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, 1952; Political Messianism - the Romantic Phase, 1960; The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of the Revolution, 1981.
  • Gleason, Abbott, Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold War, 1995.
  • Burleigh, Michael, The Third Reich: A New History, 2000.
  • Burrin, Philippe, ‘Political Religion: The Relevance of a Concept,’ History and Memory, 9(1-2), Fall 1997.
  • Halberstam, Michael, Totalitarianism and the Modern Conception of Politics, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1999.
  • Furet, Furet, The Passing of an Illusion, 1995.

[edit] Sonderweg

  • Dahrendorf, Ralf, Society and Democracy in Germany, 1967.
  • Blackbourn, David, and Eley, Geoff, The Peculiarities of German History, 1984.
  • Elias, Norbert, The Germans, 1996.
  • Moore, Barrington, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, 1966.
  • Lewin, Moshe, The Making of the Soviet System, 1985.
  • Engelstein, Laura, ‘Combined Underdevelopment: Discipline and the Law in Imperial and Soviet Russia’, American Historical Review, 1993, pp.338-81.
  • Maier, Charles, ‘Consigning the Twentieth Century to History: Alternative Narratives for the Modern Era’, AHR 105, 30, June 2000.
  • Arrighi, Giovanni, The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Times, 1994.

That should be good for now, but there's a lot more to the list that I could put on, if there's interest. I will admit to not having read many of these books, save Arendt, Blackbourn and Eley, and Barrington Moore (the latter two already mentioned by 172). I'd note that the field, as conceived, was not just on fascism, but on the "short twentieth century" in general, and thus included discussion of communism, as well. I imagine that everyone will now go out and start reading that old brownshirt Ernst Nolte now. john 08:59, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Great work, John. Perhaps we ought to start a list of primary sources too. 172 09:37, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Websites (moved from Talk:Fascism:

Diagrams of the Geneology of National Socialism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:National_scocialist_diagram.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Identitarianism_and_Equalitarianism.jpg

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