Neither Right nor Left

Zeev Sternhell is Leon Blum Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the author, with Mario Sznajder and Maia Asheri, of The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution.

• AcknowledgmentsPreface to the Paperback EditionIntroduction11From One Prewar Period to Another322The Revolution of the Moralists663An Ingenuous Fascism: Georges Valois and the Faisceau904The Idealist Revision of Marxism: The Ethical Socialism of Henri De Man1195A Socialism for the Entire Nation1426Planism, or Socialism Without a Proletariat1877Spiritualistic Fascism213Conclusion266Notes305Bibliography381Index401

"The issues raised by Sternhell's extraordinary book have rarely been so rigorously and systematically presented. His argument may be summed up in a single statement: the penetration of fascism into French society, particularly among the intellectuals, was far deeper than historians since the war have recognized... The immense documentation he has collected, the force of his argument, the audacity and the sweep of his project, the courage with which he has thrown light upon some of the darkest regions of the French past--all this is an important step in a reappraisal without which the historical consciousness of France may not be able to face this past in its full import... "--Saul Friedlander, The New Republic "In Neither Right Nor Left Sternhell seeks to show that France, instead of remaining impermeable to the political culture of fascism, was its seedbed... He has refined a highly controversial, though far from implausible, interpretation of the roots of European fascism."--Richard Wolin, Dissent "Few books on European history in recent memory have caused such controversy and commotion... Sternhell has reconstructed and documented as no one before him the emergence and organizational development of a revolutionary right during the years before 1914... Muscular in its arguments, courageous in its opinions, meticulous in its documentation, [this book] lays down an interpretative challenge that no future study of French culture and politics in the 1930s will be able to ignore."--Robert Wohl, Journal of Modern History