The Faces of Janus; Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century

by James A. Gregor

• ISBN13: 9780300078275
• ISBN10: 0300078277
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2000-01-11
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

Attempting to understand the catalogue of horrors that has characterized much of twentieth-century history, Western scholars generally distinguish between violent revolutions of the "right" and the "left". Fascist regimes are assigned to the evil right, Marxist-Leninist regimes to the benign left. But this distinction has left us without a coherent understanding of the revolutionary history of the twentieth century, contends A. James Gregor in this insightful book. He traces the evolution of Marxist theory from the 1920s through the 1990s and argues that the ideology of Marxism-Leninism devolved into fascism. Fascist regimes and Communist regimes -- both anti-democratic ideocracies -- are far more closely related than has been recognized.

Employing wide-ranging primary source materials in Italian, German, Russian, and Chinese, the book opens with an examination of the first standard Marxist interpretation of Mussolini's fascism in the early 1920s and proceeds through the emergence of fascist phenomena in post-Communist Russia. A clearer understanding of the r

Author Biography

A. James Gregor is professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley and adjunct professor at Marine Corps University.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
On Theory and Revolution in Our Time	1	(18)
The First Marxist Theories of Fascism	19	(26)
The Marxist Theory of Fascism after the Second World War	45	(23)
Fascism and Marxism--Leninism in Power	68	(21)
Fascism and the Devolution of Marxism in the Soviet Union	89	(18)
Fascism and Post-Soviet Russia	107	(21)
Fascism and Bolshevism	128	(21)
Fascism, Marxism, and Race	149	(17)
``Fascisms''	166	(19)
Appendix: Chronology, 1919--1995	185	(8)
Notes	193	(40)
Index	233