The Apprentice's Sorcerer ─ Liberal Tradition and Fascism

While Landa (history, Israeli Open U.) agrees with other writers on the fact of fascist ideological rejection of liberalism, he disputes the consequences that are drawn from this rejection: that it implied an approximation to socialism as well as a rejection of capitalism and the bourgeois socioeconomic order. He instead makes the case for recognizing a liberal-fascist affinity, wherein the liberal order significantly contributed to fascism, providing the framework wherein such aspects of fascism as the repudiation of democracy, the assault on rationalism and scientific objectivity, propaganda, chauvinistic nationalism, imperialism, and racial war are the products of the crisis of liberalism. The crisis of liberalism was a result of the calling into existence of mass forces of workers that challenged the bourgeois order. In response, Landa argues, "the liberal apprentice conjures a sorcerer," fascism, in order to salvage the liberal economic order through the rejection of liberalism's political institutions. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Ishay Landa is Visiting Senior Lecturer of History at the Israeli Open University.