Entire Volume 17 issue 1 - Journal of World-Systems Research ...

275 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH
movement,” Riley contends “was connected with the tendency of democratic forces to split and
fragment. This tendency, in turn, was the result of the absence of a conservative pole with a
strong hegemonic project against which the democratic forces could articulate a counterhegemonic
project” (pg. 200).
As a result of the failure of hegemony, fascism emerged as the resolution to the organic
crisis that mired Italian, Spanish and Romanian politics in shortsighted, sectarian disputes.
Fascism, Riley contends, emerged as authoritarian movement positioned against liberalism but
not democracy. To support the controversial and counterintuitive claim that fascism represented
authoritarian democratic movements in these cases, Riley notes that fascists relied on the
language of civil society to position themselves as the true representatives of nation and co-opted
civil society’s social networks as the organizational resources to enliven their movements.
Fascists idealized civil society as a zone of spontaneous cooperation that could only fully bloom
when freed from the fetters of politics. Where liberal states failed to represent the complex of
associations that made up modern societies, fascism sought to directly mobilize interest-based
associations to either replace the liberal state or supplement it with more representative but less
politicized institutions.
How fascism consolidated is directly related to civil society development. Italian fascism,
like Italian civil society, was more autonomous. Terming it party fascism, Riley notes the Partito
Nazionale Fascista and affiliated groups exerted pressure on Mussolini that pushed him into more
radical positions. For example, fascist insurgency caused Musolini to abandon his pragmatic
alliance among Italian industries, fascist syndicates and reformist socialists. Mussolini capitulated
to squadrists, and moved to more radical positions, as Italian fascism emerged from below. In
Spain, fascism relied on the social networks of Catholicism and, unlike Italy, had no separate
fascist party structure. Riley terms this fascism traditionalist, as Spanish fascism rejected the view
of the party as a pedagogical institution and held up the monarchy, the family and the church as
the appropriate channels through which to represent the nation. Romanian fascism was divided
among two competing tendencies, a party fascism associated Corneliu Codreanu’s Liga Apărării
Naţional-Creştine (League of National Christian Defense) and a statist fascism led by King Carol
II. Reflecting Romanian’s state-led civil society, party fascism lacked a popular support base in a
union movement or confederation of agrarian cooperatives. Carol’s attempt to create statist
fascism from above overtook party fascism, which folded rather than imposing fascism from
below.
Before explicitly drawing out the full ramifications of his study, Riley considers two
alternative explanations: (1) Barrington Moore’s thesis on fascism as an alliance among the state,
a medium-strength bourgeoisie and labor-repressive agrarians under the pressure of economic
competition and peasant and worker unrest; and (2) the Weberian thesis, which emphasizes the
persistence of an authoritarian old regime in an advanced industrial society as the key element
behind fascist regimes. The Weberian thesis quickly falls apart when applied to Riley’s cases, all
of which were oligarchic liberal regimes. Italy and Romania, most dramatically, had no “old
regime” from which to draw. Moreover, Riley’s three cases pose empirical problems for Moore’s
thesis too. In Italy, the labor-repressive agrarians remained sequestered in the politically
marginalized south; in Spain, elite factionalism and regionalist nationalism fragmented the elite
and prevented any effective coalition; while, in Romania, the PNT’s successful land reform
liquidated the labor-repressive agrarians as class. From here, Riley considers positive cases for
Moore’s thesis, Germany and Hungary and then applies his own civil society thesis as counter-