140
WALLACE K ATZ
group," by which he means a society which seU-consciously endorses
offensive war in the face of a real or imagined challenge
to
its internally
antagonistic class structure and its independent sovereignty ; and
in
a
more philosophical vein, as an ideology which radically opposed "tran–
scendence"-that is, the great tradition of Western thought which, from
Plato through Hegel to Marx, conceives of man as "transcending"
his
finite and discretely particular condition by reaching out towards the
freedom of the whole, toward the totality of eternal and infinite
existence. These three levels are related because fascism was but one
form-an historically late and more radical form--of reaction against
the emancipatory process of "bourgeois society." Both liberalism and
Marxism are philosophies which derive from "bourgeois society" and
which call-the former, to a lesser extent; the latter, to a much greater
degree-for practical as well as theoretical transcendence-for political
liberty, economic and social justice, in addition to "spiritual freedom. "
Fascism as a Weltanschauung was an outgrowth of conservatism,
that tradition of thought which grew up in opposition first to liberalism
and then to Marxism, and, at least at its outset, it seemed to share with
conservatism its devotion to traditional institutions such as the army
and the church and, generally, its resistance to practical transcendence.
But here the connection between conservatism and fascism ends, for
fascism was the offspring of historical conditions which necessarily made
its resistance to transcendence far more extreme than that of con–
servatism. Fascism as an historical experience was the product of the
First World War, the "earthquake" which erupted out of the nationalist
tensions and social antagonisms of the prewar years. Rather than con–
taining the destructive powers of nationalism and socialism, the war,
especially in its later stages, and as a consequence of the impossible
treaty which brought it to an end, made them stronger. Fascism was
thus characteristic of an era which, poised between the double threat of
nationalistic war and social revolution, called forth an extreme response.
As a self-conscious reaction to the threat of a Marxist revolution which
demanded total practical transcendence, fascism moved past conservatism
to deny all forms of transcendence-theoretical as well as practical- and
to
affirm, instead, the ultimate war of destruction, the "life-and-death
struggle of the sovereign, martial, inwardly antagonistic group." Fascism
was, as Nolte says, "the most desperate assault ever made upon the
human being and the transcendence within him." In espousing destruc–
tion for the sake of destruction itseU, it revealed its true nihilistic
character-its despair and emptiness, its lack of substantive purpose.
Hence its defeat, rather than indicating that our tradition has been
"usurped," signifies an affirmation of the very values and possibilities
