Description
Book SynopsisThe 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.
Trade Review"[This book] deserves to be read and, whatever one's reservations, to be considered seriously...[It] rectifies the stereotyped and narrowly derogatory image of a movement that was as representative and influential as its more acceptable contemporaries, and more original than many."--Eugen Weber, The New York Times Book Review "[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
Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Fascism as an Alternative Political Culture3Ch. 1Georges Sorel and the Antimaterialist Revision of Marxism36Ch. 2Revolutionary Revisionism in France92Ch. 3Revolutionary Syndicalism in Italy131Ch. 4The Socialist-National Synthesis160Ch. 5The Mussolini Crossroads: From the Critique of Marxism to National Socialism and Fascism195Epilogue: From a Cultural Rebellion to a Political Revolution233Notes259Bibliography315Index327
