The Apprentice’s Sorcerer: Liberal Tradition and Fascism

Ishay Landa, Ph.D. (2004) in History, Ben-Gurion University, Israel, is Visiting Senior Lecturer of History at the Israeli Open University. He has published on Nietzscheanism, Marxism, political theory and popular culture, including The Overman in the Marketplace (Lexington, 2007).

20th-century European Fascism is conventionally described by both historians and political scientists as a fierce assault on liberal politics, culture and economics. Departing from such typical analysis, this book highlights the long overlooked critical affinities between liberal tradition and fascism. Far from being the antithesis of liberalism, fascism, both in its ideology and its practice, was substantially, if dialectically, indebted to liberalism, particularly to its economic variant. Fascism ought to be seen centrally as an effort to unknot the longue dur e tangle of the liberal order, as it finally collided, head on, with mass democracy. This brilliantly provocative thesis is sustained through innovative and incisive readings of seminal political thinkers, from Locke and Burke, to Proudhon, Bagehot, Sorel and Schmitt.

Acknowledgements Introduction What Do Words Matter? Preliminary Reflections on Fascism, Socialism, Liberalism and Semantics 1. The Liberal Split: Divorcing the Economic from the Political Liberalism and Democracy in the Longue Duree Putting Property under Locke and Key From Constant to Donoso Cortes Pareto: on Foxes and Musso-Lions Engels and Gumplowicz Outlining the Overthrow from Above 2. Liberal Economics, Fascist Politics: "A Wonderful Wedlock" Spengler: The "Will to Property" Hitler and Liberalism: a "Wonderful Harmony" of Politics and Economics Spengler and Hitler: the Bookworm Mistakes His Place After Fascism: J. S. Schapiro and the Illusive Death of the Dismal Science 3. Anti-Liberal Liberals-I (Moeller van den Bruck, Proudhon, Carlyle) The Bourgeois Spirit of the Germanic Ideology Outsiders-Insiders: Proudhon and Carlyle 4. Anti-Liberal Liberals-II (Schmitt, Sorel) Carl Schmitt: A Democratic Anti-Liberal? The Strange Case of Georges Sorel 5. Liberalism and Fascism between Myths and Reality I Liberal Myth No. 1: Fascism as Tyranny of the Majority Liberal Myth No. 2: Collectivist Liberalism, Individualist Fascism? 6. Liberalism and Fascism between Myths and Reality II Liberal Myth No. 3: The Origins of the Fascist "Big Lie" Liberal Myth No. 4: Fascism as a Nationalistic Attack on Epilogue Sub-Man, Underman, Untermensch: Fascism as an International Co-production References Index