Ideologies in the Age of Extremes: Liberalism, Conservatism, Communism, Fascism 1914-1991 on JSTOR

Ideologies in the Age of Extremes: Liberalism, Conservatism, Communism, Fascism 1914-1991 on JSTOR





Ideologies in the Age of Extremes: Liberalism, Conservatism, Communism, Fascism 1914-1991
Willie Thompson
Copyright Date: 2011
Published by: Pluto Press
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt183pcxs
Pages: 288
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt183pcxs
Search for reviews of this book

Cite this Item
Book Info

Table of Contents
You are viewing the table of contents


You do not have access to this book on JSTOR. Try logging in through your institution for access.
Login

Export Selected Citations Select / Unselect all
Front Matter
Front Matter (pp. i-vi)
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt183pcxs.1
Add to My Lists
Cite this Item
Table of Contents
Table of Contents (pp. vii-vii)
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt183pcxs.2
Add to My Lists
Cite this Item
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements (pp. viii-viii)
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt183pcxs.3
Add to My Lists
Cite this Item
Abbreviations
Abbreviations (pp. ix-x)
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt183pcxs.4
Add to My Lists
Cite this Item
Introduction: Definitions and argument
Introduction: Definitions and argument (pp. 1-12)
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt183pcxs.5


This volume is concerned with ideology not in general, but in a specific sense – the four dominant political ideologies of the twentieth century – and at a specific time – not the century as a whole, but what Eric Hobsbawm has called ‘the short twentieth century’, the ‘Age of Extremes’, the years between the onset of the First World War and the collapse of the Soviet bloc.

The very concept of ideology, an eighteenth-century coinage, is itself highly ambiguous. When originally used by Destutt de Tracy in the late eighteenth century, it was simply intended to mean a science of ideas; subsequently...
Add to My Lists
Cite this Item

I AGE OF CATASTROPHE 1914–45
1 Economic and social developments
1 Economic and social developments (pp. 15-28)
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt183pcxs.6


The guns of international conflict and slaughter finally fell silent in November 1918, but certainly not those of revolution (both social and national), counterrevolution and bilateral national bloodlettings. Sometimes these conflicts were combined – Romanian troops invaded Hungary both to help suppress a communist regime and to seize large territories. The Poles, having already fought the Germans on their western frontier, invaded Soviet Russia aiming to do the same as the Romanians in Hungary; in response, the Soviets counter-invaded Poland with the purpose of spreading the Revolution (and, had the Red Army been successful, would have carried on to Berlin). The...
Add to My Lists
Cite this Item

2 Liberalism
2 Liberalism (pp. 29-42)
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt183pcxs.7


At the opening of the twentieth century, liberalism was the hegemonic world ideology – or at least that of its ruling sectors, ‘spreading right across the political spectrum to encompass nearly the entire political class’, as John Gray writes with reference to Britain, but in fact this description applied much more widely. Even the Russian Empire had been obliged to make some concessions, socially if not politically. It is important not to misunderstand: liberalism did not necessarily imply a humanitarian or cuddly outlook. On the contrary, depending upon how it was understood, liberalism left plenty of room for violence, racism, authoritarianism,...
Add to My Lists
Cite this Item

3 Conservatism
3 Conservatism (pp. 43-63)
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt183pcxs.8


There is a story that King George III, a conservative icon of his time, once reproved a cleric who had written a defence of Christianity, telling him that surely Christianity needed no defence. The naivety of King George masked a more profound perception – for once conservatism in the sense of attachment to inequality and arbitrary authority requires embodiment in an articulated rather than an implicit and unformulated ideology, half the argument has already been conceded. Much better that existing inequities and iniquities should be taken for granted and these embarrassing questions never raised. The French Revolution and its aftermath compelled...
Add to My Lists
Cite this Item

4 Communism
4 Communism (pp. 64-84)
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt183pcxs.9


A dictionary of politics in the 1950s noted that communism could be seen either as a variant of socialism or its antithesis. It was a perceptive definition. The term first came into prominence in the late 1840s with the establishment under Marx’s influence of the revolutionary Communist League and its famousManifesto. The organisation adopted the term to distinguish itself from the early socialists who were seen as both utopian and lacking in militancy.

By the early twentieth century, as explained in the Introduction to this book, the term had to a great extent dropped out of currency. Even the...
Add to My Lists
Cite this Item

5 Fascism
5 Fascism (pp. 85-102)
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt183pcxs.10


The definition of fascism, as we shall see, is extremely difficult to pin down; the multinational movement that was recognised by that term was extraordinarily diffuse and protean. The origins of the name, however, are straightforward enough, being derived from the political groupings formed by Benito Mussolini during and immediately after the First World War, the official date of origin being 1919. The Italian wordfasciomeans a bundle or grouping; the fasces were the bundle of rods surrounding an axe carried by the Roman lictors (ceremonial officials accompanying the consuls) as a badge of authority and this was adopted...
Add to My Lists
Cite this Item

II GOLDEN YEARS 1945–73
6 Economic and social conditions
6 Economic and social conditions (pp. 105-117)
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt183pcxs.11


The Second World War had been fought on all sides with the utmost mobilisation of the belligerents’ human resources both social and ideological. Without that the war could not have been won, and the consequences were momentous.¹ In the USSR, where survival was at stake and the regime was autocratic, the authorities did not have to promise much except survival and victory, though no doubt the populations, as victory grew increasingly probable, expected a post-war future much improved from the 1920s and 1930s. In the West however, where the rules of formal democracy either continued to apply or would have...
Add to My Lists
Cite this Item

7 Liberalism on the right
7 Liberalism on the right (pp. 118-137)
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt183pcxs.12


All ideologies present themselves as programmes of emancipation, even the most overtly repressive ones: for these define emancipation as pertaining to the social body and freedom as the mental contentment which results, in their perspective, from willing submission to authority.

Liberalism is exceptional in the emphasis which it places on emancipation as meaning the exemption of individuals from social rules except insofar as these can be justified on pragmatic grounds regarding the preservation of social cohesion – and also of property, which is closely intertwined in liberal thought with the individual personality. Liberal thinking commenced with concern about the security of...
Add to My Lists
Cite this Item

8 Liberalism on the left
8 Liberalism on the left (pp. 138-150)
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt183pcxs.13


Eric Hobsbawm has remarked that what he terms the ‘golden age’ between 1950 and 1973 came as near as reality permitted to fulfilling, in the industrially advanced West (and to a degree in Japan), the dreams of the socialist pioneers. The barely interrupted economic growth of those years combined with governments committed to the maintenance of full employment and on the whole to social welfare, in the context of a labour market favourable to the employed workforce, promoted an unprecedented advance in material living standards across the board. A cartoon in a British newspaper sums it up. It has Harold...
Add to My Lists
Cite this Item

9 Communism
9 Communism (pp. 151-168)
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt183pcxs.14


The years between 1945 and 1975 saw the world communist movement and communist ideology reach the height of its extent, power and influence, and at the same time begin to unravel both in material terms and with regard to its hold on public consciousness.

The geographical spread of its power has already been noted. At the close of hostilities there existed two communist regimes (one of them of little account), by the early 1960s there were 13 (not counting Yugoslavia), covering a third of the global population. A couple more were to be added in the 1970s, apart from a...
Add to My Lists
Cite this Item

10 Conservatism and fascism
10 Conservatism and fascism (pp. 169-184)
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt183pcxs.15


Placing these two ideologies in the same chapter does not mean to imply that the two are identical or even necessarily very close together. They had, however, indulged in a significant degree of mutual accommodation during the pre-war years, and both, though to very different degrees, were in an invidious position following the Allied victory. The impact of openly proclaimed conservatism on public affairs (except in Britain) was very limited and that of fascism quite negligible. They can therefore be dealt with in more summary fashion.

Throughout Europe, as the smoke cleared from the battlefields, conservatism as an ideological position...
Add to My Lists
Cite this Item

III CRISIS 1973–91
11 Economic and social conditions
11 Economic and social conditions (pp. 187-195)
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt183pcxs.16


The point at which the post-war long boom ended can be dated fairly precisely. It was the autumn of 1973, when in response to the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur war the OPEC oil producers raised the price of oil by a substantial amount. This proved to be the dislodged pebble that set the landslide in motion. At another time, an oil price hike, even a substantial one, would have been unlikely to have had such dramatic results, but the economic structure of the long boom had been suffering erosion since the middle of the previous decade. The crisis, however, did not...
Add to My Lists
Cite this Item
12 Liberalism and conservatism coalesce
12 Liberalism and conservatism coalesce (pp. 196-213)
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt183pcxs.17


Among the major political ideologies of the twentieth century, liberalism was the great survivor. It comprehensively defeated and overwhelmed its antagonists, fascism and communism, and absorbed its rival, conservatism. In this respect at least, Fukuyama’s thesis¹ could not be considered mistaken. It is these developments that this chapter will be principally concerned with. They are reflected in its terminology, with the appearance of the concepts of ‘neoliberalism’ and ‘neoconservatism.’ The liberal ideology, as expressed in the rhetoric of its spokespersons and statespersons, shifted its orientation from a social liberal one to a conservative one – and pulled social democratic parties and...
Add to My Lists
Cite this Item

13 Communism
13 Communism (pp. 214-230)
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt183pcxs.18


The Warsaw pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 did not produce the disruptions and uproar in the world communist movement that had followed from the events of 1956, but it nevertheless marked a definitive stage in the Soviet ideology’s loss of credibility. What could not be disguised was that here, in comparison with Hungary twelve years beforehand, there was no insurrection, no threat to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact and not even any plans to abolish the single-party¹ regime. Moscow’s official claims that socialism in Czechoslovakia was endangered by West German revanchism, and US imperialism could not be taken...

14 Fascism
14 Fascism (pp. 231-243)
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt183pcxs.19


Fascist ideology of various sorts sustained a substantial underground existence after 1945 alongside a rather less substantial public presence. The more unfavourable economic climate and the greater political instability which set in during the years after 1973 provided fresh opportunities, as they had done for neoconservatives. The new combination of circumstances, though in no way so desperate as those of the interwar decades, did present some resemblances to the earlier period. Economic uncertainty, inflationary pressures and rising militancy among workforces – which in Britain even overthrew a government – coalesced with cultural angst inherited from the previous decade and the emergence of...
Add to My Lists
Cite this Item

15 Aftermath
15 Aftermath (pp. 244-256)
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt183pcxs.20


The USSR was finally wound up in December 1991 and communist principles abandoned in nearly all of the states which had previously adhered to them. In the same year the outlines of the ‘New World Order’ showed themselves with the military attack on Iraq by the USA and several of its vassal powers, punishing Saddam’s regime for the kind of breach of international law that they found convenient to overlook in other circumstances. Iraq, after all, was not the only state in the Middle East that attacked its neighbours and seized their territory, possessed or aspired to possess weapons of...
Add to My Lists
Cite this Item
Notes
Notes (pp. 257-269)
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt183pcxs.21
Add to My Lists
Cite this Item