Fascism: Towards a General Sociological Theory

Mark Gould, Haverford College
Jonah Benjamini, Independent Scholar
Joshua Gerstein, Independent Scholar

This paper is focused around three insights: I contend that we can explain the genesis of fascist movements if we conceptualize them as forms of patrimonialism (particularistic, personalistic political processes, even if bureaucratically grounded (a patrimonial bureaucracy)), as fundamentalisms (charismatic re-evocations of subterranean (Sykes and Matza), traditional hierarchical values within the context of (incipient) modernity), and forms of “disorder” (motivated violations of institutionalized norms, here those that reconstruct some component of social action) that proceed from within the state (i.e., where state actors violate institutionalized norms of authority) and are supported within the societal community/civil society (by significant portions of the political nation). If we think about fascism in these terms, we will have conceptualized it as something we can explain generally. In this paper, I formulate a general theory of revolution applicable to fascism, a general theory of fascism, and specify it to individual cases, to Nazism and to contemporary USA.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 63. Sociological Theory, History, and Identity