Fascism and Big Business

A comprehensive study of fascism as it evolved in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.

Daniel Guerin's classic work, first published in French in 1936, shows how fascism, far from being an aberration of mass psychology, arose from the specific conditions of a social system in crisis. At first covertly, then increasingly openly, layers of big business financed and promoted the fascist movements in Italy and Germany.

Guerin contrasts the fascists' initially radical anticapitalist demagogy with their moves to shore up the capitalist profit system once they form the government.

"The profound causes that drove the Italian and German industrialists to bring fascism to power may produce the same effects elsewhere," Guerin concludes.