Jacob Salwyn Schapiro (December 19, 1879 – December 30, 1973) was a Professor Emeritus of History at the City College of New York.

Work

In his book, ''Liberalism and the Challenge of Fascism'', Schapiro set out to discuss the changes in both

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

and

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

. Schapiro contrasted the smooth evolution of liberalism in England to the violent swings back and forth between

reaction Reaction may refer to a process or to a response to an action, event, or exposure: Physics and chemistry *Chemical reaction *Nuclear reaction * Reaction (physics), as defined by Newton's third law *Chain reaction (disambiguation). Biology and m ...

and liberal forces in France. This historical violent dialectic in France, in Schapiro's argument, was what created the basic ideas of

Nazism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) i ...

. Schapiro's Definition of Fascism :"It would be a great error to regard fascism as a counterrevolutionary movement directed against the communists, as was that of the reactionaries against the liberals during the first half of the nineteenth century. Fascism is something unique in modern history, in that it is a ''revolutionary'' movement of the middle class directed, on the one hand, against the great banks and big business and, on the other hand, against the revolutionary demands of the working class. It repudiates democracy as a political system in which the bankers, capitalists, and socialists find free scope for their activities, and it favors a dictatorship that will eliminate these elements from the life of the nation. Fascism proclaims a body of doctrines that are not entirely new; there are no "revelations" in history." One thinker whose views Schapiro felt were proto-fascist was French anarchist

Pierre Joseph Proudhon Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (, , ; 15 January 1809, Besançon – 19 January 1865, Paris) was a French socialist,Landauer, Carl; Landauer, Hilde Stein; Valkenier, Elizabeth Kridl (1979) 959 "The Three Anticapitalistic Movements". ''European Socia ...

(1809-1865). This interpretation of Proudhon's philosophy was strongly challenged by Italian activist and author Nicola Chiaromonte, however.

Quotes

*"As nature abhors a vacuum, history abhors changes without origins, whether immediate or remote. Fascism did not spring fully grown from the chin of Mussolini".
—''Liberalism and the Challenge of Fascism'', pg 322

Writings

*''Modern and Contemporary European History, (1815–1928)'', publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co., The Riverside Press, Cambridge, MA, 1929. *''Liberalism and the Challenge of Fascism, Social Forces in England and France, (1815–1870)'', publisher: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., NY, 1949. *"Condorcet and the Rise of Liberalism", publisher:Harcourt, Brace and Company, inc, 1934. *"Anticlericalism: Conflict Between Church and State in France, Italy, and Spain", publisher: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., Princeton, NJ, 1967.

References

Historians of fascism Historians of Nazism 1879 births 1973 deaths Jewish American historians American male non-fiction writers American historians City College of New York faculty {{US-historian-stub