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PARTISAN REVIEW
and Radical coalition in the French Chamber (the
Cartel des Gauches),
conservatives of all stripes rushed to defend the status quo from what
they feared to be a dress rehearsal for Gallic Bolshevism. Groups like
the
Legion,
the
Jeunesses Patriotes,
and the
Faisceau
,
far from being
variations on socialism, were part of a "middle class backlash to
Marxism and to the Third Republic that had allowed it to grow."
Soucy admits, however, that after the
Cartel's
defeat in 1926 and
measures taken by a new moderate government to end the financial
crisis, conservative support for right-wing groups declined and the
first wave of fascism ebbed . (His next volume will follow the second
wave through the Depression years and, one assumes, onto the
shores of Vichy.)
Individual chapters introduce the leaders, shock troops, and
financial backers of the principal fascist organizations, and concen–
trate on their impressive growth in the months following the
Cartefs
victory. Drawing on police records recently made available, as well
as on newspapers, manifestos and memoirs, Soucy studies the
fascists' words and deeds, their public promises and private agendas,
and maintains that only their rhetoric was radical leftist. Sweeping
attacks on plutocracy and bourgeois decadence might attract
disgruntled shopkeepers, but they were anemic plays at populism,
and they cloaked the essential goal: the defense of traditional conser–
vative interests and values.
A long chapter on the psychobiography of
Faisceau
leader
Georges Valois is disappointing in its reductionism, but other
passages, on women and fascism for example, are illuminating; for
Soucy, they support the view that reactionary ends were more im–
portant than radical pronouncements. While the
Jeunesses Patriotes
called for women's suffrage (still an unresolved issue, of course, in
pre-World War II France), all fascist groups required women to re–
main obediently domestic and bear children as prolifically as possi–
ble. The point is valuable but hardly proof of conservatism; for there
were few in France-left, right or center-who thought otherwise.
These insights, like Soucy's lists of the bankers and
businessmen who contributed to authoritarian organizations, con–
firm both the usefulness of his book and its shortcomings. Providing
solid information on origins and administrations, and a splendid
summary of rivalries and competition for funds and followers, the
author covers mostly old ground and paints familiar portraits of the
usual suspects . The right-wing predilections of that champagne and
cognac combination, Taittinger, Hennessy and Martel, were never
