A. James Gregor: Trending quotes

“On November 24, 1914, when he was expelled from the Socialist Party, Mussolini insisted that his expulsion could not divest him of his ‘socialist faith.’ He made the subtitle of his new paper, Il Popolo d’Italia, ‘A Socialist Daily.’ National intervention in the European conflagration was an immediate issue and as a problem it divided socialists, but since most continental socialist parties had opted for war, Mussolini conceived at that time that interventionism was not a commitment sufficient to require the abandonment of socialism.”

A. James Gregor

Source: The Ideology of Fascism: The Rationale of Totalitarianism, (1969), p. 141

War , Faith , Problem , Time

“However extensively Lenin was prepared to creatively develop the Marxism he inherited, he was not prepared to ‘skip stages’ in achieving socialism. Socialism required, as prerequisite, the modernization and industrial development of its economic base. To create the missing material prerequisites, Lenin was prepared to fall back on a centrally supervised market-influenced program of state capitalism.”

A. James Gregor

Source: Marxism, Fascism & Totalitarianism: Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism, (2008), p. 56

“Not only has capitalism not entered into its final crisis anywhere in the world, but Fascism was first successful in marginally industrialized Italy—in a nation that had only begun its industrial development. Italian industrial capitalism was hardly at the end of its life cycle. It was at little more than its commencement. Moreover, subsequent movements elsewhere in Europe that have been characterized as fascist proved to 'have been most successful in mobilizing lower classes in underdeveloped… countries.”

A. James Gregor

Source: Young Mussolini and the Intellectual Origins of Fascism, (1979), pp. 18-19

Life , World , Success , Country

“We are left with a budget of paradoxes. Given the seeming logic of the proposed classification of right-wing polities—with nationalism, hierarchical political structures, and charismatic leadership as defining properties— both fascism and Marxism-Leninism would seem to be political products of right-wing extremism. Should that be the case, the revolutions undertaken by Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Mao Zedong were all right-wing endeavors.”

A. James Gregor

Source: The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century, (2000), p. 5

“Bereft of much of its mummery, Marxist theory reveals itself as a variant of generic fascism. The contest of the twentieth century, which has cost so much in human lives, was not between the Right and the Left. It was between representative democracies and their anti-democratic opponents”

A. James Gregor

Source: The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century, (2000), p. x

Democracy

“Mussolini was a Marxist ‘heretic.”

A. James Gregor

Source: Young Mussolini and the Intellectual Origins of Fascism, (1979), p. xi

“The intellectuals of Mussolini’s Fascism provided the most consistent, coherent, and relevant doctrinal rationale for the reactive nationalist and developmental revolutions of our time.”

A. James Gregor

Source: The Phoenix: Fascism in Our Time, (1999), p. 184

Time

“Whether their ideological commitment was to proletarian communism, or the Nordic race, or the restoration of Italy to its proper place in the community of nations, they all chose the hierarchically structured, charismatically led single party state to pursue their ends—a state first fixed in the political doctrine by Fascism.”

A. James Gregor

Source: Marxism, Fascism & Totalitarianism: Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism, (2008), p. 313

Communication

“Many of the principal theoreticians of Fascism, as we have seen, had been schooled in Marxism and, like Giovanni Gentile, demonstrated a competence in the material that won the admiration of Lenin himself. The fact was that the philosophical neo-idealism that served Fascism as its normative foundation shared its origins with orthodox Marxism through their common connection to Hegelianism… Like Marx, Gentile rejected the ‘liberal’ conviction that human beings are best understood as independent, self-sufficient monads, possessed of inherent freedoms, interacting only at their conveniences.”

A. James Gregor

Source: The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century, (2000), p. 166

School , Freedom

“As late as 1947, Mao insisted that his program corresponded to that of Sun. Until December of that year, Mao insisted that his ‘new democracy’ would protect the ‘bourgeoisie’ and ‘their industry and commerce.’ Because of China’s backwardness, he would continue to support capitalist development and ensure that both public and private, capital and labor, interests would benefit from the revolution.”

A. James Gregor

Source: The Phoenix: Fascism in Our Time, (1999), p. 191, footnote 19

Democracy , Support , Sun

“By the time Spirito delivered his communications at the Convention of 1932, these sentiments had united with neo-idealist totalitarian aspirations. The result was variously identified as ‘Fascist communism,’ Fascist Bolshevism’ or ‘Fascist socialism.”

A. James Gregor

Source: The Ideology of Fascism: The Rationale of Totalitarianism, (1969), p. 296

Communication , Time

“All totalitarianism of the twentieth century were predicated on a systematic, anti-individualistic collectivism. In the case of Marxist-Leninism, the source was classical Marxism. [Giovanni] Gentile had carefully dissected the neo-Hegelian roots of that collectivism. What he found missing in the collectivism of Marx was ethical concern. He sought to provide that concern to the collectivism of Fascism—a collectivism that shared a common intellectual origin with Marxism and Marxism-Leninism.”

A. James Gregor

Source: Giovanni Gentile: Philosopher of Fascism, (2001), p. 102

“The Stalinism that followed the totalitarian intimations of Lenin's Russia, was not only totalitarian, it was infused by an ‘almost fascist-like chauvinism,’ together with a ‘bureaucratization, absence of democracy, censorship, police repression,’ and, as has been suggested, by an irrepressible and increasingly intrusive anti-Semitism. By the mid-1990s, it was increasingly acknowledged that left-wing totalitarianism more and more began to resemble right-wing totalitarianism.”

A. James Gregor

Source: The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century, (2000), p. 7

Democracy

“That Mussolini chose Gentile to author the philosophical portion of Fascism’s official doctrine provides evidence of the confidence Fascists entertained with respect to Gentile’s thought.”

A. James Gregor

Source: The Phoenix: Fascism in Our Time, (1999), p. 94

Confidence

“What some of the revolutionary syndicalists proceed to do was to identify the ‘communality’ of man not will class, but with the nation. The first intimations of a ‘revolutionary nationalism’ made their appearance among the most radical Marxists.”

A. James Gregor

Source: Giovanni Gentile: Philosopher of Fascism, (2001), p. 55

Communication , Appearance

“In 1934, Mussolini reiterated that capitalism, as an economic system, was no longer viable. Fascist economy was to be based not on individual profit but on collective interest.”

A. James Gregor

Source: The Ideology of Fascism: The Rationale of Totalitarianism, (1969), p. 299

“In his Table Talks, Hitler spoke of the eventual ‘elimination’ of those Germans who did not meet ‘Nordic’ criteria of racial purity. The fact was that according to Hans Guenther, Nazi Germany’s ‘racial scientist', ninety-five percent of Germans did not meet those criteria. It was no longer clear who would suffer in the serious implementation of National Socialist policy.”

A. James Gregor

Source: The Phoenix: Fascism in Our Time, (1999), p. 182

Suffering

“Between 1862 and 1922, the Italian government had disbursed sixty million lire for school construction; between 1922 and 1942, the Fascist government devoted 400 million lire of public monies to the enterprise. The total expenditure on education rose from 922.4 million lire in the financial year 1922-23 to 1,636 million lire for 1936-37. In 1930 there were 110,200 public elementary schools while the number, by 1935, had risen to 126,934.”

A. James Gregor

Source: Italian Fascism and Developmental Dictatorship, (1979), p. 260

Education , School

“By 1938, Mussolini could confidently assert that ‘in the face of the total collapse of the system [bequeathed] by Lenin, Stalin has covertly transformed himself into a Fascist.”

A. James Gregor

Source: The Fascist Persuasion in Radical Politics, (1974), p. 132

Confidence

“In order to create the appropriate material conditions, Lenin was prepared to make recourse not only to market arrangements, but to international capitalism as well. Not only was private property, private enterprise, and private profit largely restored in Lenin’s Russia, but Lenin appealed to international capitalism for assistance as well. He was prepared to offer generous concessions to foreign capitalism.”

A. James Gregor

Source: Marxism, Fascism & Totalitarianism: Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism, (2008), p. 55