The Apprentice's Sorcerer: Liberal Tradition and Fascism

by Ishay Landa

20th-century European Fascism is conventionally described as a fierce assault on liberal politics, culture and economics. Departing from this analysis, Landa highlights the long overlooked critical affinities between the liberal tradition and fascism. Far from being the antithesis of liberalism, fascism, both in its ideology and its practice, was substantially, if dialectically, indebted to liberalism, particularly to its economic variant

Genres: Politics, History, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, Political Science, Society

368 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2009

About the author

Ishay Landa Ph.D. (2004) in History, Ben-Gurion University, Israel, is Visiting Senior Lecturer in History at the Israeli Open University. His scholarly work as a historian of ideas focuses on reconstructing the intellectual genealogy of fascism and its complex relationship to the intellectual history of the West. He has also published on Nietzscheanism, Marxism, political theory and popular culture.

Reviews

[tara bomp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really great book. Read it. Definitely read it if you're at all interested in talking about fascism or liberalism from a left perspective. The rest is elaboration on why it's so great but yeah it's one of the best books I've read in a while.

The class character of fascism is essential to understand it and this has of course been a major feature of leftist thought - that fascism represents a force of reaction from the bourgeoisie saving capitalism against the workers. However, this connection has always bothered those supporting the capitalist system because obviously it implies that capitalism isn't always a beacon of freedom or that there's something about liberalism that leads to fascism. Especially with cold war politics and the rise of neoliberalism, something different was needed. There are ideas like "totalitarianism" which are hegemonic but they don't provide an account of where fascism came from. Here Landa suggests that Zeev Sternhell stepped in. In the introduction Landa talks about Sternhell's guiding motive, which is apparently "taking fascists at their word" and focusing on their ideology rather than "material" factors. This apparently reveals the socialist roots of fascism. He suggests that this has become the hegemonic way of talking about fascism. The rest of the book is a comprehensive and highly convincing attack on this idea, showing that even if you take fascists at their word, which is a poor idea, then what comes through is their absolute dedication to ideas of economic liberalism.

One of the early distinctions Landa makes is between political liberalism and economic liberalism - the first being a project for greater democracy, freedom of expression, civil liberties etc and the second for "free markets", property laws, capitalism etc. He suggests that the two were originally conjoined as part of a project to seize power for the bourgeoisie from the old ruling classes but when the bourgeoisie became dominant the political aspect became dangerous to the much more important economic part. Therefore, the defence of each split, with those on the left generally taking up the defence of political liberalism while the right took up the cause of economic liberalism, particularly over the last half of the 19th century. This isn't a perfect classification but it really helps to understand what "anti-liberalism" from the right actually means.

Short list of the figures who come under attack in this book: Locke, Hayek, Mises, Weber, Schmitt, Proudhon, Carlyle, Sorel (all 4 of which get in depth studies, showing Proudhon was very liberal and Sorel was absolutely not socialist in any sense at all), Tocqueville, Nietzsche, Malthus, Churchill and the entire pre-WW2 British establishment, Heidegger, Le Bon, Mill, van der Bruck, Pareto, Burke, as well as people who are explicitly regarded as fascist of course like Spengler. He really highlights the similarities between fascism and market liberalism, sometimes explicitly paralleling the words of a fascist and a liberal to show their similarities on key issues. It becomes clear how many liberals explicitly kept open the possibility of fascism by believing that property was sacrosanct and it was perfectly reasonable for a dictator to restore order, if only as a "temporary" measure. Landa highlights how ridiculous this idea is - how can it be a democracy if it's apparently perfectly justified for democracy to be suspended if it's even *perceived* as hurting property rights? This is why it's absurd to conceive people like Mises and Hayek as defenders of freedom - they're quoted as believing dictators are perfectly fine in these cases. He also highlights how people like Carlyle, Proudhon and Sorel who are perceived as "anti-liberal" actually accepted fully the core ideas of market liberalism - they simply had issues with the exact justification, how these ideas actually worked out in practise, or democracy itself.

The last 2 chapters are dedicated to attacking 4 liberal myths about fascism. 1) that it was "the tyranny of the majority" 2) that it was "collectivist" as compared to "individualist" liberalism 3) that the "big lie", the use of propaganda etc to cover the "truth", was unique to fascism/"totalitarianism" or started there 4) that fascism was an ultra-nationalist attack on liberal cosmopolitanism.

For 1, he focuses not so much on attacking the idea that fascists were a majority (he does do this, but the book isn't focused on this sort of thing which has been gone over before many times) but instead how many liberals believed in the tyranny of the majority *against property owners* and were perfectly willing to accept dictatorship to protect the elite minority from the dangers of a majority attacking their elite position - and that liberals were in fact key ideological supporters of the fascist dictatorship to protect the market against the attacks of socialism.

For 2, he points out first "it should be realized that terms such as “individualism” or “collectivism” are, in and of themselves, devoid of political meaning, whether radical or conservative, left or right, socialist or capitalist. It is only the historical content poured into such signifiers, that lends them their concrete ideological import." These terms aren't helpful or meaningful as ideals. Nevertheless, he points out how liberal defences of the individual actually often took place from the standpoint of a greater community or goal - he points out how Edmund Burke called society a "family" simply to defend that the elite patriarchs should be able to do whatever they want yet without any responsibility in return. The collective standpoint acts as a justification for inequalities - that allowing the elite to do what they want advances greater goals, like culture, the health of the race, the nation etc. Individualism was actually often a way of advancing socialist goals by pointing out that every human being deserves a certain quality of life and the elite don't deserve more.

For 3, he quotes liberal philosophers who believed in the dangers of democracy so talked about the need for elites to work behind the scenes so the masses believe they're in charge while really a small elite do everything. He quotes Leo Strauss extensively, which is kind of weird as he's "post-fascism", but it's valuable as a more developed example of exactly what other liberal philosophers wanted. It shows that "totalitarianism" isn't so obviously confined to non-liberal ideologies.

For 4, he points out how common ideas of the nation were for liberals - similar to 2 - as a justification for inequality, as a basis for wealth (Wealth of Nations for example), as a myth to rally the masses. Again, he's clear that nationalism isn't inherently "good" or "bad" - pointing to the way nowadays third world nationalism is a valuable force for liberation while liberal countries at capitalism's centre are stressing the opposite. He's saying that nationalism isn't a unique quality of fascism at all. He also quotes Hitler suggesting that if Germany isn't good enough to win its place at the forefront of countries, he doesn't care for it. He doesn't present it as if it counters the idea of nationalism in fascism but he points out that it suggests alternative priorities.

The epilogue focuses on one specific historian's (Michael Mann) ideas about how fascism wasn't able to take hold in north-west Europe because of their "strong liberal traditions". He points out first that there were serious differences in material conditions but also that British politicians, for example, were closely tied to fascism, regularly expressing admiration for it and supporting fascists abroad, while implementing "crypto-fascist" ideas at home. Fascism was also impossible without ideas from the UK and the US - eugenics ideas from there especially were very popular among fascists. The idea that it was "liberal traditions" that stopped it spreading is shown as, at best, incredibly naive.

I highly recommend this book. It's written in a very clear style that doesn't get bogged down in academic terms and was kind of a page turner, amazingly enough. All the ideas above are pretty thoroughly fleshed out with many quotes and a decent coverage of thinkers. I wished there was more coverage but he can only do so much and he does a good job of discussing a lot of figures of importance. He clearly shows the problems of a straight "fascism is very close to socialism" formulation and invites us to question seriously much accepted wisdom about liberalism. It's given me a lot to think about. Essential reading for leftists especially.

[Reid tries to read · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stop recommending people libshit like Paxton’s “Anatomy of Fascism” and start telling them to read this bad boy. Full review will come eventually

[prz grz · Rating 5 out of 5]

an indispensable counterargument to idealist historiography that presents European fascism as a "non-Western" aberration, turns it into a cautionary tale about the dangers of too much democracy, or obscures its class character. Landa instead demonstrates the continuity between classical liberal thought and fascist practice -- their shared concern with the rule of the elite, protecting property and "free enterprise", imperialism, colonialism, and their similarly contradictory stances on "individualism" and "the State", often mistakenly thought to be diametrically opposed. an extremely useful study.

[Hustlehoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Das Manifest gegen die Hufeisentheorie.

Hoffe er hat bei den Zitaten jetzt kein cherry-picking betrieben, aber wird schon stimmen.
Hater sagen, er habe keine eigene Faschismusdefinition, aber juckt.

Ach ja und ganz wichtig: Die Libs werden geowned. 😎🍻

[Hanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 weil man doch erwarten würde, dass am Anfang zumindest Faschismus irgendwie definiert wird (besonders weil die Faschismusdefinition von Sternhell stark kritisiert wird) aber ansonsten inhaltlich sehr gut, viele gut ausgewählte Zitate und es wird auch viel auf mögliche Gegenargumente eingegangen. Insgesamt ein gutes Werk, um die Idee, dass NationalSOZIALISMUS irgendwas mit echtem Sozialismus zu tun hat, zu widerlegen und zu beweisen, dass Faschismus ideologisch viel näher am Wirtschaftsliberalismus klebt, der heutzutage maßgeblich unsere Politik prägt.

[Jayden gonzalez · Rating 5 out of 5]

i highlighted a lot of things in the book that means its good

[Lorién Gómez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un muy buen libro que me ha planteado muchas reflexiones. Centrado en las concomitancias ideológicas entre liberalismo y fascismo -y no tanto en el apoyo social directo que brindó la burguesía y las élites liberales a Mussolini y a Hitler- destripa las raices que guarda el segundo en el primero en aspectos tan nucleares a la cosmovisión liberal como el individualismo, la propiedad privada, la política de masas, la competencia, la democracia o el nacionalismo. También a través del análisis de autores y pensadores tan diversos como Spengler, Tocqueville, Sorel, Schmitt, Le Bon, Pareto, Weber, Nietzsche, Hitler o Rocco, entre otros. Si como decía Gramsci, en el plano político hay que atacar a los enemigos por sus puntos flacos y en el plano intelectual por sus puntos fuertes, la obra de Landa permite atacar a las aproximaciones historiograficas de talante liberal al fascismo por lo que ha sido su principal escudo intelectual: la ideología. Y con ello cuestiona muchos de las aproximaciones del llamado Nuevo Consenso historiografico en torno al fascismo.

[Kippen_anton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Die beste Vorlesung, die ich nie besucht habe.
Der unvereinbare Gegensatz zwischen politischem Liberalismus, der Mitbestimmung Aller, und dem ökonomischen Liberalismus, der wirtschaftlichen Ordnung zugunsten weniger Besitzender, ist ein großartiger Ansatz zur Untersuchung der politischen Ideengeschichte. Landa zeigt, dass der Liberalismus, der sich selbst gern als "demokratische Mitte" darstellt, dem Faschismus näher steht als weithin angenommen. Letztendlich ist das Buch auch praktisch unfassbar wertvoll, um aktuelle Politik und Debatten zu verstehen, und sich fundiert mit rechtsliberalen bis rechtsextremen Argumenten auseinanderzusetzen.
Eher Fach- als Freizeitlektüre, aber unglaublich nützlich, um den momentanen Rechtsruck zu verstehen und zu bekämpfen.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was hoping Landa's book made good on its provocative title, and I think it does.

Liberalism, like the sorcerer's apprentice in the famous poem/story, called into existence forces, immensely useful at first, but which it subsequently could not control, those unruly, and uncannily multiplying mops, the modern workers, which refused to accept their role as mere tools in the production process and were gaining lives and wills of their own. So the liberal apprentice conjures a sorcerer, too, in order to re-establish order, re-transform the animated brooms into plain wood. Fascism, in spite of words and gestures, came not really to do battle with liberalism, but primarily as an ally, albeit a bullying, patronizing one, offering much needed succor.

Landa's premise revolves around splitting liberalism into two parts: political liberalism and economic liberalism, which I found a very helpful distinction. The distinction is one between the liberal idea of democratic and universal human rights among legally established equals on the one hand, and the liberal idea of individuals established upon property rights, contractual relationships, and market transactions on the other.

I choose in what follows to call attention to that which fascism owes to economic liberalism, as an ideological expression of capitalism. I do so in the belief that such a reminder is greatly needed today, when anti-fascism is widely used as a pretext to battle democracy, particularly social democracy, and to cement capitalism, in a way which would probably have pleased a Mises. And I do so in the conviction that the debt of fascism to liberalism is indeed a considerable one. At the same time, I wish to clarify that my historical reconstruction does not simply equate liberalism—not even economic one—with fascism, nor do I assume that fascism derived its worldview strictly from liberal sources, however historically transmuted.

This definition also aligns well with modern distinctions within liberalism, as defined here by Leo Strauss:

"Liberalism is understood here and now in contradistinction to conservatism" (vii), but the "conservatism of our age is identical with what originally was liberalism" (ix). Propositions from which Strauss draws the logical conclusion: "Being liberal in the original sense is so little incompatible with being conservative that generally speaking it goes together with a conservative posture."

Overall I agree with Landa in placing fascism's source in economic liberalism (as is the case with most modern reaction of any note) and found his argument persuasive, though I also think a few of his readings are gross oversimplifications—for instance Imperialism isn't a simple case of ultra-nationalism, and as Aimé Césaire points out in Discourse on Colonialism, it has much to say regarding Landa's thesis:

People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: "How strange! But never mind—it's Nazism, it will pass!" And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole edifice of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack.

But in the end I don't think such cutting of historical corners takes much from Landa's overarching argument, even if it would have only made it stronger.

One more time we come up against an issue that has been at the centre of this book ever since the Introduction, namely the difference between political rhetoric and reality, ideology and practice, between names and substances. The problematic of fascism in England, I take it, cannot be reduced to the BUF [British Union of Fascists] and adjacent "grouplets." And while historians overwhelmingly tend to look at British fascism strictly through the prism of expressly fascist groups, contemporary observers, among them some of the most incisive, approached affairs with a political outlook more subtle as well as more profound, less concerned with epithets and more with fundamental social and economic interests. Churchill's idea that Mussolini's new political experiment had provided "the ultimate means of protection" for every "great nation" was a commonplace rather than an oddity. We may consult a figure as different from the future Prime Minister as the novelist Evelyn Waugh who, in 1936, commended the ostensible civilizing effects of the Italian occupation of Abyssinia.

It indeed seems a fool's errand to remove the spirit which animated fascism with the history of liberalism's political and economic development, even if Landa skips over several important historical precedents.

[Jacksonian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely illuminating overview of the oft-overlooked connection between liberalism and fascism. Landa engages in nothing less than a systematic takedown of the lie that fascism was merely the twin brother of socialism. In the analogy which gives the title its name, liberalism (the apprentice) conjures democracy/socialism (the cleaning supplies), only to find itself in eminent danger until fascism (the sorcerer) arrives to save it. Other reviews cover this in greater depth. Highly recommended.

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading for anti-fascists. Like Losurdo, Landa's close reading of classical liberal philosophers underscores the elective affinities of liberalism and fascism.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very intelligently written and incisive book about the affinities between classical liberalism and fascism.