The Birth of Fascist Ideology:
From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution
Zeev Sternhell
With Mario Sznajder and Maia Asheri
Translated by David Maisel

Paper | 1995 | $37.50 / £26.95
348 pp. | 6 x 9

e-Book | 2001 | $37.50 | ISBN: 978-1-4008-2105-1

Shopping Cart | Reviews | Table of Contents

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.

Reviews:

"[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 Contents:

	Acknowledgments
	Introduction: Fascism as an Alternative Political Culture	3
Ch. 1	Georges Sorel and the Antimaterialist Revision of Marxism	36
Ch. 2	Revolutionary Revisionism in France	92
Ch. 3	Revolutionary Syndicalism in Italy	131
Ch. 4	The Socialist-National Synthesis	160
Ch. 5	The Mussolini Crossroads: From the Critique of Marxism to National Socialism and Fascism	195
	Epilogue: From a Cultural Rebellion to a Political Revolution	233
	Notes	259
	Bibliography	315
	Index	327

Other Princeton books by Zeev Sternhell:

• The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism, Socialism, and the Making of the Jewish State.
• Neither Right nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France.

Subject Areas:

• European History
• Political Science and International Relations

Hardcover published in 1994

Shopping Cart:

For customers in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Asia, and Australia
Paper: $37.50 ISBN13: 978-0-691-04486-6

For customers in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and India
Paper: £26.95 ISBN13: 978-0-691-04486-6

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