Ideologies in the Age of Extremes , livre ebook

Ideologies in the Age of Extremes
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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IDEOLOGIES IN THE AGE OF EXTREMES
Liberalism, Conservatism, Communism, Fascism 1914–91
Willie Thompson
 
 
 
First published 2011 by Pluto Press
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Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © Willie Thompson 2011
The right of Willie Thompson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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To the memory of Douglas Bain 1939–2010
Friend and comrade
 
 
 
Contents

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction: Definitions and argument
I   AGE OF CATASTROPHE 1914–45
1.
Economic and social developments
2.
Liberalism
3.
Conservatism
4.
Communism
5.
Fascism
II   GOLDEN YEARS 1945–73
6.
Economic and social conditions
7.
Liberalism on the right
8.
Liberalism on the left
9.
Communism
10.
Conservatism and fascism
III   CRISIS 1973–91
11.
Economic and social conditions
12.
Liberalism and conservatism coalesce
13.
Communism
14.
Fascism
15.
Aftermath
Notes
Index
 
 
 
Acknowledgements

The idea for this volume emerged out of a History module that I designed and taught at Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. My thanks are therefore due to my former colleagues and students, and others outside the university with whom I discussed the ideas developed here. In this connection, thanks are especially due to Professor Keith Shaw for the organisational assistance which enabled the volume to be completed.
I am extremely grateful for the encouragement and assistance of David Castle, my editor and perceptive critic, at Pluto Press, as well as Anne Beech, Pluto’s Managing Director. Thanks also to Myra Macdonald who read the text and made many valuable improving suggestions. All errors of fact and interpretation are, of course, my own.
 
 
 
Abbreviations

AIB
Ação Integralista Brasileira (Brazilian Integralist Action)
AKEL
Anorthotikó Kómma Ergazómenou Laoú (Progressive Party of Working People)
AKS
Akateeminen Karjala-Seura (Academic Karelia Society)
ANI
Associazione Nazionalista Italiana (Italian National Association)
BBC
British Broadcasting Corporation
BJP
Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People’s Party)
BNP
British National Party
BUF
British Union of Fascists
CCF
Congress for Cultural Freedom
CD
Christian Democracy
CDU
Christian Democratic Union
CIA
Central Intelligence Agency
CIO
Congress of Industrial Organizations
CP
Communist Party
CPC
Communist Party of China
CPCz
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Komunistická strana Československa, KSČ)
CPGB
Communist Party of Great Britain
CPI (M–L)
Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist)
CPSU(B)
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), (Kommunisticheskaya Partiya Sovetskogo Soyuza)
CPUSA
Communist Party USA
DC
Democrazia Christiana (Christian Democracy)
DNVP
Deutschnationale Volkspartei (German National People’s Party)
ECCI
Executive Committee of the Communist International
EEC
European Economic Community
ELAS
Ellinikós Laïkós Apeleftherotikós Stratós (Greek People’s Liberation Army)
EU
European Union
FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
G7
Group of Seven (industrialised nations, including Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the USA)
GATT
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GDR
German Democratic Republic
GRECE
Groupement de recherche et d’études pour la civilisation européenne (Research and Study Group for European Civilization)
IKL
Isänmaallinen Kansanliike (Patriotic People’s Movement)
IMF
International Monetary Fund
IRA
Irish Republican Army
KGB
Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security)
KPD
Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Communist Party of Germany)
LO-S
Landsorganisationen i Sverige (Swedish Trade Union Confederation)
MP
Member of Parliament
MRP
Mouvement Républicain Populaire
MSI
Movimento Sociale Italiano (Italian Social Movement)
NATO
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NEP
New Economic Policy
NLF
National Liberation Front
NSDAP
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party, Nazi Party)
NSM
National Socialist Movement
OAS
Organisation de l’armée secrete (Organisation of the Secret Army)
OPEC
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
PCE
Partido Communista de España (Communist Party of Spain)
PCF
Parti Communiste Français (French Communist Party)
PEN
Poets, Essayists and Novelists
PNF
Partito Nazionale Fascista (National Fascist Party)
PSI
Partita Socialista Italiano (Socialist Party of Italy)
RSDLP
Russian Social Democratic and Labour Party
SA
Sturmabteilung (Storm or Assault Division)
SAP
socialdemokratiska arbetareparti (Social Democratic Labour Party of Sweden)
SPD
Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany)
SR
Social Revolutionary
SS
Schutzstaffel (Protection Squadron)
UN
United Nations
USA
United States of America
USSR
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
WACL
World Anti-Communist League
WTO
World Trade Organization
 
 
 
Introduction Definitions and argument

DEFINITIONS
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 it acquired very different connotations, both positive and negative.
Neutrally defined, ideology could be regarded as an interconnected system or structure of basic belief applicable to particular social or cultural collectives – one which incorporates conscious beliefs, assumptions and unthinking modes of perception – through which its adherents view the world around them, the interactions and the life processes in which they are engaged. The concept is certainly sometimes employed in that sense, but it must be admitted that this is not the most frequent usage or, as Terry Eagleton expresses it, ‘Nobody would claim that their own thinking was ideological, just as nobody would habitually refer to themselves as Fatso. Ideology, like halitosis, is in this sense what the other person has.’ 1
Karl Marx in the nineteenth century used it to mean a false consciousness, generally in the sense of the misperception of human creations for natural realities, ‘a solution in the mind to contradictions which cannot be solved in practice’; 2 in other words, mystification – yet the twentieth-century state which claimed him as its historical inspiration, the Soviet Union, used the term in a positive sense when applied to its own forms of perception and thinking. ‘The falsity of bourgeois ideology is not due to its ideological character but rather to its bourgeois origin.’ 3 One of communism’s bitterest enemies, the rather spooky organisation Moral Re-Armament, took the mirror-image position, declaring around 1960 that the West must adopt an equivalently powerful ideology (that is, Moral Re-Armament) in order to successfully oppose communism.
If ideology is to be treated as a neutral concept, there is a strong argument that the ‘commonsense’ of any culture – the taken-for-granted framework of assumptions, habits, metaphysical, social and political beliefs – could be regarded as ideology, a mode of consciousness therefore which is all-pervasive, which none of us can escape, no matter whether we are on the left or right of politics, religious believers or committed secularists, cultural sophisticates, football fanatics or celebrity obsessives – or even if we never give a thought to any of these matters.
However, the notion that ideology is a concept that can be applied to anybody anywhere at anytime in all history is something very different from the meaning which it came to take on in the twentieth century, mostly one of negative connotations – and the particular dimension here is one of politics and, more specifically, of political contestation in an arena where what is at stake is not simply the issue of who will ride on the gravy train, but of challenge