H-France List Archives

• Message-Id: <199604041002.LAA04320@listserv.rl.ac.uk>
• Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 17:10:16 -0800
• From: "Bertram M. Gordon" <bmgordon@ella.mills.edu>
• Subject: H-Fr - BOOK REVIEW - Soucy

  From: KEVIN PASSMORE <SHAKP@cardiff.ac.uk>
  Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 12:54:01 GMT

  Irvine Wall's review of Robert Soucy's "French Fascism. The Second
  Wave" was in my view a perceptive one which gave the book the serious
  consideration it deserves. There is much in the review (positive and
  critical) with which I agree. I feel, however, that I have to take
  issue on one point.

  Irvine Wall asks what is to be gained by calling a movement
  "fascist" or "not fascist"? He suspects rightly that politics creep
  into our nomenclature and affect the way in which we define fascism.
  I think he is saying that instead of putting a "political" label on
  the Croix de Feu or other movement of the far right in France we
  should limit ourselves to describing "fairly and accurately" its
  politics (presumably in its specifically French context). I could say
  a lot about this, but will confine myself to three points, which are
  designed to defend the legitimacy of Soucy's interest in the question
  of fascism:

  1). Yes, historians should attempt to be conscious of and limit their
  political and other preconceptions. But the fact remains that the
  questions we ask necessarily arise partly out of such preconceptions.
  This does not, however absolve us from ensuring the internal
  coherence of our arguments and conclusions, from confronting our
  questions with evidence, or from exposing our work to the criticism
  of others. The historian therefore does not aim at "truth" but at
  relative objectivity from a point of view - our views are not
  objective, but some answers to particular questions are better than
  others. As far as the Robert Soucy book is concerned this means it
  is as legitimate for him to be interested in the question of fascism
  as it is, say, for a British conservative to be interested in
  constitutional history. As historians we cannot prevent the asking of
  particular questions. (Though we might want to do so as citizens
  and/or moralists - but of course historians are no better at
  citizenship or morality than anyone else).  Once a question is asked
  we can either choose to ignore or denounce it on moral grounds or we
  can treat it, as historians, on its merits.

  2). Once the question of fascism is posed, the historian then has to
  ask whether it is a *useful* definition. Is it more useful than
  concepts such as "authoritarian conservative", "totalitarian" and
  so on? We decide such issues by asking how much of what we know is
  revealed, explained or obscured by the concept in question. We might
  want to discard the definition altogether, or we might want to modify
  it  (Thus my own work on the Croix de Feu has argued that Robert
  Soucy's view of fascism fails to take account of the populist side of
  fascism and of the Croix de Feu).

  If we conclude that the Croix de Feu is fascist, this does not,
  however, mean that we are taking an essentialist position.
  (Essentialism I would take to mean the idea that by giving a
  movement a name we are tying down its real nature, reflecting its
  reality - clearly an untenable position - meaning, as the
  post-structuralists say, does not arise naturally from reality). All
  we are saying is that this concept is a *relatively useful* means of
  making sense of what we know. To say that the Croix de Feu is
  fascist does not therefore  rule out the possibility that this
  concept will be superceded. And crucially, neither does it mean that
  we cannot *simultaneously* use other definitions. The Croix de Feu
  could for example be both fascist *and* belong to a broader group of
  populist movements.

  3). It follows from the above that there is no reason why we should
  not pursue *both* the strategies described by Irwin Wall. On the one
  hand I would argue that using the concept of fascism reveals certain
  important features of the Croix de Feu (in my view, though not Robert
  Soucy's, these features are its combination of radical populism with
  reactionary conservatism).  Perhaps more important, using the concept
  of fascism permits *comparison*. This is impossible without concepts
  which extend beyond particular instances - in my view it is quite
  legitimate for historians to ask whether the rise of Nazism in
  Germany was part of European or world developments that favoured a
  certain kind of political movement.

  On the other hand, questions of this nature do not rule out an
  examination of the origins and nature of the Croix de Feu in its
  specifically French context. This latter type of analysis is
  possible because, as I have said, the concept of fascism does not
  claim to capture the essence of fascism; it is necessarily partial
  and of use only from a certain point of view, depending on the
  questions we ask. To claim that the Croix de Feu is fascist and
  therefore that it has important features in common with Nazism or
  Italian fascism does not mean that we have said everything there is to
  say about the movement.  So in looking at the specific features of
  the Croix de Feu we would simultaneously have to deploy many other
  concepts.

  Kevin Passmore (University of wales Cardiff) passmore@cardiff.ac.uk