In this article I respond to the important questions raised by Roger Griffin and David D. Roberts by asserting the following points. First, that there is no justification to the position that the historical function of fascism was to establish the political hegemony of finance capital, as Marxist-Leninist scholars have maintained without providing a shred of evidence in support of their position. On the contrary, fascism was an epochal phenomenon which occured on several continents and had features which point to (...) a declaration of war against bourgeois society, its power structures, its values and its way of life. It was a revolt generated by disgust for a world dominated by those whom Hitler called ‘the worshippers of Mammon’. Second, that fascism was not at all an alternative modernity, but a violent and radical reaction which rejected all the values and institutions of the modern world, from individual freedom to the rights of man and citizen, from pluralist democracy to secularization. Third, that the history of fascism, like the history of communism, has shown that ideas are no mere fantasmagorical reflexes of the socioeconomic structure, as Marxist sociology claims. This was demonstrated by its political ideology, which was intent on revolutionizing the foundations of society and producing a new man, diametrically opposed to the ‘bourgeois’. (shrink)

Sociology came into being when its “founding fathers” saw what had remained hidden in the past, i.e., that man is a “social animal” in a sense much more profound than even Aristotle thought: he is a social animal not only because he lives in continual “commerce” with his peers, but also because society lives in him as a cultural tradition. In other words, sociology was born out of the “revolt against individualism” accompanied by the realization that social life is sui (...) generis: “as if it had an autonomous life, completely separate from human organisms.” Thus, to provide a sociological explanation is to show the reasons why behavior cannot be correctly deciphered without taking into account die particular cultures in which actors were socialized. (shrink)

Twenty years ago Julien Freund wrote: “We should be grateful to Guglielmo Ferrero for having once again drawn the attention of political science to the importance of the notion and principles of legitimacy, the fight for which, in his view, constituted the invisible basis of history.” Freund's gratitude was a little premature. Political science — above all American political science — continues to ignore Ferrero. Even the renewed interest in the sociological analysis of revolutionary phenomena has failed to bring Ferrero's (...) work back into the limelight, despite the fact that Ferrero has provided the most instructive interpretation yet on the totalitarian dynamics of revolutionary power. (shrink)

ExcerptIn an article published in May 2011 in Avvenire, the official newspaper of the Catholic Church, Flavio Felice, director of the Centro Tocqueville-Acton, called American constitutionalism the “child of Christianity.” This is a widely held theory,1 but so contrary to known historical facts that Farrell Till had no hesitation in denouncing it as a myth.2To start with, we should remember that “the Puritans have been hymned as the pioneers of religious liberty, though nothing was ever farther from their designs; they (...) have been hailed as the forerunners of democracy, though if they were, it was quite beside their intention;…. (shrink)