Paul Mason (1) (1960–)

Journalist and author Paul Mason turns to the past to see what worked — and what didn’t work — in the fight against fascism in the twentieth century. He confronts head-on the staggering failure of the German Left (both the Social Democrats and the Stalinists) to block the Nazis, even though the Left had millions of supporters and their own armed detachments with many thousands of members.

He finds inspiration in the experience both of Spain and France in the 1930s when fascism was stopped — at least temporarily — by Popular Fronts uniting the Left with parties of the liberal centre.

Mason is quick to acknowledge the failures of the orthodox Marxists and seeks insights in some unusual places, including Hannah Arendt and Wilhelm Reich, whose masterpiece, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, deserves a wide readership.

I finished reading this book on a weekend when Italian fascists stormed a national union headquarters in Rome, so the timing could not have been better.… (mere)

I was genuinely surprised by this book, which is the highest praise I have. I think the blurb by Gillian Tett is on the money (!?) when she recommends it to those who are both in favour of and who oppose capitalism as it currently exists.
There is an entire genre of books about the evils of neoliberalism (or whatever you're having yourself). Many are exhaustive - and exhausting - exercises in misery train-spotting. The next, superior group diagnose the causes of said macroeconomic and social misery. The very smallest group, and the best kind of books in this genre, are a response to the criticisms which can be levelled at the preceding groups, namely "so what" and "so, what next".
Mason diagnoses how we got to where we are, and because he has a plausible theory of where we were and where we might be now, he has some workable (if, admittedly utopian) or at least interesting proposals for where we might go next. I don't agree with everything he says, but he has made a significant effort to avoid the usual clichés, and even if you have read and know it all, he consistently leavens it with frequent nuggets of insight.
There is plenty I disagree with, and the material on Marx and the labour theory of value could conceivably have been either shortened somewhat, or made a bit more compelling. If this had been the case, though, there might have been a sense that this book lacked depth, but this is not the case. Recommended.… (mere)