The faces of Janus

Library Journal

The Roman god Janus represents beginnings and endings, the gateway to all knowledge. Gregor (political science, Univ. of California, Berkeley; Phoenix: Fascism in Our Time), who has written extensively on fascism, takes issue with 20th-century historians who make fascism and communism the opposing faces of Janus. OCLC WorldCat indicates the availability of over 600 works on fascism in the 1990s, but Gregor is the first to use Marxist theory systematically to bend the political spectrum from a linear to a circular form. That is, fascism and communism meld into each other. Fascism had its origins in communism, and communism exhibited facets of fascism from its inception. Since the Soviet empire broke up, its logical course is toward fascism. The real political spectrum Gregor sees is democratic and nondemocratic: "The fact is that what is now spoken of as `communofascism' and `Stalinofascism' serves as testimony to affinities long recognized by those who have refused to place the revolutions of the twentieth century on a continuum from Left to Right." Gregor uses the repetition of key points to convince his audience but uses subtle changes in each new chapter to move his argument forward in small increments. Recommended for all political science collections, this book supplements The Black Book of Communism (LJ 11/1/99).--Harry V. Willems, Southeast Kansas Lib. Syst., Iola Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\