A. James Gregor

A study of the informal logic that has governed the half-century of academic writing devoted to what has been generally identified as 'neofascism', together with a careful assessment of those political movements and regimes considered the proper objects of inquiry. The intent of the study is both pedagogical and cautionary. Its central thesis of the work is that terms like 'fascism', 'generic fascism', and 'neofascism' are often used with considerable indifference, applied uniquely to political movements and regimes considered on the 'right' rather than the 'left', intended more often to denigrate rather than inform. The result has been confusion. Within that context some of the most important political movements of our time are considered, including, among others, the Alleanza Nazionale of Italy and the Bharatiya Janata Party of India, both of which have discharged leadership roles in their respective governments: identifying either as 'neofascism' has clear implications for international relations.

A study of the informal logic that has governed the half-century of academic writing devoted to what has been generally identified as 'neofascism', together with a careful assessment of those political movements and regimes considered the proper objects of inquiry. The intent of the study is both pedagogical and cautionary. Its central thesis of the work is that terms like 'fascism', 'generic fascism', and 'neofascism' are often used with considerable indifference, applied uniquely to political movements and regimes considered on the 'right' rather than the 'left', intended more often to denigrate rather than inform. The result has been confusion. Within that context some of the most important political movements of our time are considered, including, among others, the Alleanza Nazionale of Italy and the Bharatiya Janata Party of India, both of which have discharged leadership roles in their respective governments: identifying either as 'neofascism' has clear implications for international relations.

The recent rise in Europe of extreme right-wing political parties along with outbreaks of violent nationalist fervor in the former communist bloc has occasioned much speculation on a possible resurgence of fascism. At the polemical level, fascism has become a generic term applied to virtually any form of real or potential violence, while among Marxist and left-wing scholars discredited interpretations of fascism as a "product of late capitalism" are revived. Empty of cognitive significance, these formulas disregard the historical and philosophical roots of fascism as it arose in Italy and spread throughout Europe. In Giovanni Gentile: Philosopher of Fascism, A. James Gregor returns to those roots by examining the thought of Italian Fascism's major theorist.In Gregor's reading of Gentile, fascism was-and remains-an anti-democratic reaction to what were seen to be the domination by advanced industrial democracies of less-developed or status-deprived communities and nations languishing on the margins of the "Great Powers." Sketching in the political background of late nineteenth-century Italy, industrially backward and only recently unified, Gregor shows how Gentile supplied fascism its justificatory rationale as a developmental dictatorship. Gentile's Actualism (as his philosophy came to be identified) absorbed many intellectual currents of the early twentieth century including nationalism, syndicalism, and futurism and united them in a dynamic rebellion against new perceived hegemonic impostures of imperialism. The individual was called to an idealistic ethic of obedience, work, self-sacrifice, and national community. As Gregor demonstrates, it was a paradigm of what we can expect in the twenty-first century's response, on the part of marginal nations, to the globalization of the industrialized democracies. Gregor cites post-Maoist China, nationalist Russia, Africa, and the Balkans at the development stage from which fascism could grow.The first book-length analysis in English of Gentile's thought in over thirty years, this volume is valuable not only as a work of historical scholarship but as a timely warning. While Marxism-Leninism has passed into history, fascism may yet reemerge as an external threat to democratic nations.

A central problem in political inquiry is the conceptual and linguistic informality of political science. For most of its history, the discipline has been largely pursued with the analytic and logical machinery of ordinary language. Likewise, there has been little effort to standardize how language is used, or to systematize theoretical procedures to insure methodological uniformity. In an effort to better understand and defend the research processes that attend, sustain, and foster the systematic credibility of political science, Gregor argues a special conceptual language is needed to enhance the rigor, replicability, articulation, and interpretation of political science's empirical findings.Gregor reviews the conceptual inventory of the social sciences in general with particular emphasis on distinctions between descriptive, theoretical, and normative language. He analyzes what might count as "objectivity" and "truth" in a given set of circumstances in an effort to standardize how political scientists make such distinctions. How "theory" and "explanation" might be assessed in less rigorous disciplines is also considered. Gregor is opposed to the postmodernist tendency to use "language games" in the social sciences that purport to close the gaps separating the discourses of knowledge, ethics and politics, but do so at the expense of clarity, rigor, and objectivity. In Gregor's view, these alternative perspectives have exploited vagueness and ambiguity in order to accomplish what they consider to be their political tasks. A substantial postscript to this edition traces some of the postmodernist perspectives to their origins in the works of particular individuals and to their history in the thought of twentieth-century Europe.Metascience and Politics attempts to address all these issues, with brevity and seriousness of purpose, in order to provide a defensible rationale for the scientific character of social and political studies. It will be of interest to political scientists, sociologists, philosophers, and intellectual historians.A. James Gregor is professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley and an adjunct professor at Command and Staff College, U.S. Marine Corps University at Quantico, Virginia. He has also been awarded the Order of Merit by the President of the Italian Republic for his contribution to Italy as a nation through his published works. He is the author of Giovanni Gentile: Philosopher of Fascism, Interpretations of Fascism, Phoenix: Fascism in Our Time, and Marxism, China, and Development, all published by Transaction.

China has endured a century of turmoil, beginning with the anti-dynastic revolution associated with Sun Yat-Sen, through the military and tutelary rule of Chiang Kai-shek, the revolutionary regime of Mao Zedong, and the radical reforms of Deng Xiaoping. China has had little respite. Historians and social scientists have attempted to understand some of this history as being the consequence of the impact of European ideologies-including Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, and Fascism. Rarely instructive or persuasive, the discussions regarding this issue have, more often than not, led to puzzlement, rather than enlightenment.In A Place in the Sun, A. James Gregor offers an interpretation of the role of European Marxist and Fascist ideas on China's revolutionaries that is both original, and based on a lifetime of scholarship devoted to revolutionary ideologies. Gregor renders a detailed analysis of their respective influence on major protagonists. In the exposition, Gregor reveals an unsuspected and complex set of relationships between the Chinese revolution and essentially European ideologies. His discussion concludes with a number of estimations that suggest implications for the future of modern China, and its relationship with the advanced industrial democracies. How post-Dengist China-the world's most populous nation-is to be understood remains uncertain to most comparativists and historians. Gregor provides one well supported alternative, and he is carefully attentive to the implications of this alternative.

China has always been something of a mystery to Westerners. For one genera-tion, Mao Zedong and his followers were simple "agrarian reformers," while for another they were the "communist emperor and his blue ants." In the 1970s, some of the finest Sinologists believed there was much the United States could learn from Mao's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution with regard to bureaucracy, criminal justice, health care, and mass education. By the 1980s, those same theo-rists asserted that Maoism was nothing more than a feudal fascism and had abso-lutely nothing positive to teach. Marxism, China, and Development provides a plausible explanation of these developments that have had such a powerful effect on the people of China for the past half century.The author describes and explains the strange collection of beliefs that made up the Marxism of Mao Zedong. He seeks to understand why the communist leader-ship of China, like that of the USSR, tried to spur economic growth by abandoning the market modalities common to developed economies. A. James Gregor's con-ceptual framework is both original, and makes more comprehensible the history of Marxism and the history of China. Among the major topics he covers are imperi-alism, political democracy, economics, and alternatives to Maoism and Marxism for China.While it is unlikely that our understanding of so complex a series of events as modern Chinese history will soon become less controversial, Marxism, China, and Development's clear, concise explanations will clarify some perplexing areas, and make the new turns in Chinese political economy more understandable. This is a monumental effort at theory construction that will be of interest to political scien-tists, economists, sociologists, and Sinologists.

This volume constitutes a survey of social science efforts to explain the fascist phenomenon. Attempts to adequately interpret fascism have involved an inordinate number of social researchers and historians for an inordinate amount of time over the past half century. For all that we still find ourselves without a compelling account of the entire complex sequence. Fascism constitutes a significant concern for students of contemporary politics. To develop an intellectually defensible explanation of the nature, origins, and development of Italian Fascism and German Nazism remains a responsibility still outstanding.Interpretations of Fascism provides a review of the efforts that have been made to date to interpret and explain the phenomenon, It addresses itself specifically to those efforts undertaken to provide a social science explanation of Mussolini's Fascism. Dealing wiht the special application of social science methods to a specific problem, the book provides a special angle to examine this ubiquitous system in a comparable context. The book should be useful for college courses inb political theory, comparative politics, democracy and dictatorship, economic and political change, and modern European history.The new edition is graced by a provocative, lengthy new essay reviewing the literature from 1973 through 1996. As such, it is an up to date examination of fascism in our times. Professor Gregor is careful to emphasize that fascist movements can thrive in confines far beyond Italy and Germany. It has found fertile soil from Russia to Africa. In short, Gregor argues that this makes fascism a movement that extends through political space no less than historical time. The documentation of the book is now very rich, with a bibliographic review that can serve experts and generalists alike.Stanley G. Payne credits Gregor with "clearing away useless, obfuscatory theoretical debris", claiming that "Gregor's book serves the study of fascist politics very well indeed". And Giuseppe Prezzolini, introduced the Italian language edition by noting that "Interpretations of Fascism is rich in information and scientifically precise in style...a reflection of an intelligence that operates beyond passions."