Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

A. James Gregor

74 quotes

“Fascism's most direct ideological inspiration came from the collateral influence of Italy's most radical 'subversives' — the Marxists of revolutionary syndicalism.”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fascism . . . was the socialism of ‘proletarian nations.’”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Towards the end of the 1930s, few Fascist intellectuals denied that the social and political system put together in the Soviet Union substantially overlapped that fashioned by Fascism. Whatever distinctions were drawn, and however emphatically those distinctions were insisted upon, no Fascist intellectual failed to note the significant institutional and behavioral similarities of Fascism and Stalinism.”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Many of the principal theoreticians of Fascism, as we have seen, had been schooled in Marxism and, like Giovanni Gentile, demonstrated a competence in the material that won the admiration of Lenin himself. The fact was that the philosophical neo-idealism that served Fascism as its normative foundation shared its origins with orthodox Marxism through their common connection to Hegelianism… Like Marx, Gentile rejected the ‘liberal’ conviction that human beings are best understood as independent, self-sufficient monads, possessed of inherent freedoms, interacting only at their conveniences.”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As have been indicated, many Fascist theoreticians, throughout their active political lives, acknowledged the affinities between Fascism and Marxist-Leninism. There were even Italian Marxist-Leninists--including Nicola Bombacci, one of the founders of his nation's Communist Party--who conceived of Fascism as the only viable form of Marxism for economically retrograde communities.”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When Marinetti founded Futurism in 1909, he called for ‘incendiary violence’ that might drive Italy and Italians out of the ‘fetid somnolence’ of dolce far niente. He incited Futurists and their allies to the destruction of museums, monuments, and universities—to decimate everything that ‘stank of the past’… All of this was suffused with aggression and violence, with an appeal to slaps and blows, to culminate in an invocation to what he called the ‘beauty of battle,’ and the ‘hygiene of war.’”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fascism never served the interests of Italian business . . . there is no credible evidence that Fascism controlled the nation's economy for the benefit of the 'possessing classes.”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In order to create the appropriate material conditions, Lenin was prepared to make recourse not only to market arrangements, but to international capitalism as well. Not only was private property, private enterprise, and private profit largely restored in Lenin’s Russia, but Lenin appealed to international capitalism for assistance as well. He was prepared to offer generous concessions to foreign capitalism.”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“However extensively Lenin was prepared to creatively develop the Marxism he inherited, he was not prepared to ‘skip stages’ in achieving socialism. Socialism required, as prerequisite, the modernization and industrial development of its economic base. To create the missing material prerequisites, Lenin was prepared to fall back on a centrally supervised market-influenced program of state capitalism.”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is little serious doubt that the work of both Marxist and non-Marxist Austrian theoreticians found its way into the arguments of the vociani, the syndicalists, and ultimately those of Mussolini himself. The work of such thinkers is intrinsic to an understanding of Fascism as a variant of Marxism.”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thus, by 1925, both Leninism and Fascism, variants of Marxism, had created political and economic systems that shared singular properties… Both sought order and disciple of entire populations in the service of an exclusivistic party and an ideology that found its origins in classical Marxism… Both created a kind of ‘state capitalism,’ informed by a unitary party, and responsible to a ‘charismatics’ leader.”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Neither Stalinism nor Fascist totalitarianism would have been possible without the transmogrified Marxism, that infilled both.”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whether their ideological commitment was to proletarian communism, or the Nordic race, or the restoration of Italy to its proper place in the community of nations, they all chose the hierarchically structured, charismatically led single party state to pursue their ends—a state first fixed in the political doctrine by Fascism.”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Trump’s election to the presidency of the nation precipitated an unprecedented hysteria among establishment globalists and anationalists. The entirety of the communications, educational, and entertainment media has been, and resolutely remain, opposed to everything he proposes. Liberal control of the universities ensures the continued production of anti-Trump professors, journalists, lawyers, essayists and entertainers—so that when his support base diminishes in any measure, and for whatever reason, there are anti-Trump replacements ready to fill the vacancies.”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Uninhibited by reality, Trump’s opponents have chosen to attack the legitimacy of his presidency by charging him with “racism,” “homophobia,” “misogyny,” and the “promotion of violence.” Perhaps the most outrageous charge against Trump’s populism is that it is “fascist.” No other word in the lexicon of contemporary politics evokes so emphatic a repugnance. It conjures up images of racial oppression and genocide, against a background of absolute dictatorship and unrelieved oppression.”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thus, though the Fascist conception of property refused to countenance collective possession as such, individual ownership rights were understood to be strictly subordinate to collective discipline. It was not the individual ownership of property that concerned Fascists, but it subordination to collective control. Property was understood to perform social functions rather than to manifest individual rights. It was clear that the conception of property as a social function was broad enough to include socialization of the means of production, should that be required by the national interests as interpreted by the state.”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mussolini's revolutionary nationalism, while it distinguished itself from the traditional patriotism and nationalism of the bourgeoisie, displayed many of those features we today identify with the nationalism of underdeveloped peoples. It was an anticonservative nationalism that anticipated vast social changes; it was directed against both foreign and domestic oppressors; it conjured up an image of a renewed and regenerated nation that would perform a historical mission; it invoked a moral ideal of selfless sacrifice and commitment in the service of collective goals; and it recalled ancient glories and anticipated a shared and greater glory.”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fascism, National Socialism, Stalinism and Maoism were all species of a single genus, ‘totalitarianism.’ The resemblances they shared were cognitively more significant than the features that distinguished them. More significantly, perhaps, the features that originally distinguished one totalitarianism from another gradually abated over time. By the end of the century, Marxist-Leninist systems had begun to take on some of the major species-traits of Mussolini’s Fascism. All of this attests to the futility of attempting to identify Fascism, or fascism, with the political right. Fascism was neither essentially right-wing nor intrinsically ‘anticommunist.' Fascism was neither ‘anti-intellectual’ nor, in principle ‘irrationalist.’”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“While not a single Marxist ‘charismatic leader’ in the twentieth century made revolution in an advanced capitalist country (as Marx prescribed), or undertook the ‘withering away of the state’ (as both Marx and Engels insisted), or insured against the rule of elites (that both Marx and Engels identified as an essential of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’), or provide for the obligatory ‘rotation in office’ (again, as both Marx and Engels insured would be a post-revolutionary feature of socialist society), or resolved the problem of human ‘alienation’ (so emphatically lamented by the young Marx)—Western academics have never hesitated to directly associate Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, Castroism, and even the barbarism of the Khmer Rouge, with the philosophy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“With the redefinition of the goals of the revolution came a series of programmatic revisions. There was no longer any pretense of ‘proletarian’ or working class control of the means of production. Production, its organization, and its management were all state-governed. Labor unions became agencies of the state, ‘transmission belts’ for directives from the Kremlin. By the mid-1930s, Stalinism had created the most complex, hierarchical, authoritarian state structure in history. Together with the state, Stalin created one of the most impressive coercive machines ever. For national security, vast quantities of scarce capital and technology were invested in the Soviet armed forces. Never again was Russia to be defeated in battle because of its ‘backwardness.’”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As early as 1934, Fascists had argued that ‘in the course of its development, the Russian revolution has gradually given evidence of fully abandoning Marxist postulates and of a gradual, if surreptitious, acceptance of certain fundamental political principles identified with Fascism.’ Just as the National Syndicalists had suggested, Bolshevism could be viable only if it abandoned the substance of the Marxism it pretended was its inspiration. More than that, toward the end of the 1930s, serious Fascist theorists sought to emphasize the fact that Bolshevism, as a form of Marxism, had entirely misconstrued the challenges of the contemporary world. Soviet doctrinal literature continued to feature internationalist, democratic, anti-statist, and socialist themes—at a time when Stalinism was becoming increasingly more nationalist, authoritarian, and statist, and manifestly less socialist.”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was pervasive recognition that Stalinism, as a system, had ‘dialectically thrown overboard the principles in whose name’ the Bolshevisk Revolution had been undertaken, and that ‘Marxist-Leninist principles’ had been transformed into their ‘contraries,’ that is to say, the ideas that provide body and substance to the Fascism of Mussolini. Fascist theoreticians pointed out that organization of Soviet society, with its inculcation of an ethic of military obedience, self-sacrifice and heroism, totalitarian regulation of public life, party-dominant hierarchical stratification, all under the dominance of the inerrant state, corresponded, in form, to the requirements of Fascist doctrine.”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Trump took issue with all of that. He has sought to reanimate the United States with a soft, or sentimental (if well-armed) nationalism. His populism depicts the nation as an admirable cultural and historic continuity—neither biological nor class-based. It finds its strength not in a particular ideology, but in traditional symbols—in its history, its flag and its national anthem. His is a relatively benign form of nationalism. He is not a statist. His nationalism is neither aggressive nor expansionist. He will use, or invoke, the threat of violence whenever he is convinced (at times perhaps incorrectly) that the security, territory, or citizens of the nation are in jeopardy. Unlike other nationalisms, that of Trump’s United States has no specific racial reference; it has no irredentist claims on the territory of others, nor does it seek to secure external “vital spaces” to supply it resources.”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Within the next two dozen years China may well surpass the productive capacity of the United States. Its armed forces are growing with impressive rapidity. It poses a threat to United States dominance in the West Pacific and to the freedom of navigation through the choke points in the South China Sea. Its irredentist shadow falls across Japan, Taiwan, and the nations of Southeast Asia. In effect, like fascism, China is a classic instance of a “socialist,” nationalist developmental populism. The Chinese regularly remind us of the time when China was the Central Kingdom—the critical center of civilization. All of that suggests that rather than the imagined fascism of Trump’s populism—it is the populism of China that should occupy our serious attention.”
A. James Gregor (1929–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source