Arthur Koestler is most celebrated for his historical novel about the Moscow show trials, Darkness at Noon. And the book is indeed a deeply revealing look at the heart of totalitarianism in the twentieth century -- the more so if you do a side-by-side reading of the trial of the fictional Rubashov and the transcripts …
Structure, psychology, power
Political and social power involves the exercise of social resources to compel various kinds of unwilling behavior by others. What creates power in society? What are the sorts of social and structural factors that permit individuals to exercise power? And what features of personality lead a given individual to choose to use the instruments of …
Explaining large social formations: fascism
In a previous post I discussed the problem of explaining fascism. Let's return to this issue as a topic for historical and social inquiry. There are clearly a number of different explanatory questions we might have in mind: why did fascist movements emerge and gain popular support in the first three decades of the twentieth …
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Explaining fascism
Kevin Passmore's short introduction to fascism comes out at a good time (Fascism: A Very Short Introduction). Passmore does a great job of framing the problem. He poses a definitional question -- what is fascism -- and demonstrates that this apparently semantic issue requires careful historical and theoretical analysis. Arriving at a good definition of …
Understanding Society 