The nature of 'fascism' has been hotly contested by scholars since the term was first coined by Mussolini in 1919. However, for the first time since Italian fascism appeared there is now a significant degree of consensus amongst scholars about how to approach the generic term, namely as a revolutionary form of ultra-nationalism. Seen from this perspective, all forms of fascism have three common features: anticonservatism, a myth of ethnic or national renewal and a conception of a nation in crisis. This collection includes articles that show this new consensus, which is inevitably contested, as well as making available material which relates to aspects of fascism independently of any sort of consensus and also covering fascism of the inter and post-war periods.This is a comprehensive selection of texts, reflecting both the extreme multi-faceted nature of fascism as a phenomenon and the extraordinary divergence of interpretations of fascism.

The limitations and advances of various forms of democracy in class society, from its roots in ancient Greece through its rise and decline under capitalism. Discusses the emergence of Bonapartism, military dictatorship, and fascism, and how democracy will be advanced under a workers and farmers regi

The limitations and advances of various forms of democracy in class society, from its roots in ancient Greece through its rise and decline under capitalism. Discusses the emergence of Bonapartism, military dictatorship, and fascism, and how democracy will be advanced under a workers and farmers regime.

Poulantzas's book is the first major Marxist study of German and Italian fascism to appear since the Second World War. It carefully distinguishes between fascism as a mass movement before the seizure of power and fascism as an entrenched machinery of dictatorship. It compares the distinct class components of the counter-revolutionary blocs mobilzed by fascism in Germany and Italy; analyses the changing relations between the petty bourgeoisie and big capital in the evolution of fascism; discusses the structures of the fascist state itself, as an emergency regime for the defense of capital; and provides a sustained and documented criticism of official Comintern attitudes and policies towards fascism in the fateful years after the Versailles settlement. Fascism and Dictatorship represents a challenging synthesis of factual evidence and conceptual analysis that has been rare in Marxist political theory to date.

This classic work of comparative history explores why some countries have developed as democracies and others as fascist or communist dictatorships Originally published in 1966, this classic text is a comparative survey of some of what Barrington Moore considers the major and most indicative world economies as they evolved out of pre-modern political systems into industrialism. But Moore is not ultimately concerned with explaining economic development so much as exploring why modes of development produced different political forms that managed the transition to industrialism and modernization. Why did one society modernize into a "relatively free," democratic society (by which Moore means England)? Why did others metamorphose into fascist or communist states? His core thesis is that in each country, the relationship between the landlord class and the peasants was a primary influence on the ultimate form of government the society arrived at upon arrival in its modern age. “Throughout the book, there is the constant play of a mind that is scholarly, original, and imbued with the rarest gift of all, a deep sense of human reality . . . This book will influence a whole generation of young American historians and lead them to problems of the greatest significance.” —The New York Review of Books