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b. Globally Competing Ideologies. 2001. The Encyclopedia of World History

The victorious powers in World War I were committed to differing forms of democratic liberalism. The World War I settlement reflected this ideological position. The global terms were set by the U. S. president WOODROW WILSON, in an ideological liberal internationalism committed to the self-

determination of peoples, democratic political systems, relatively capitalist market economies, and

peaceful resolution of international conflicts by public negotiation. The League of Nations was the manifestation of this ideology. Although Great Britain and France were less committed to the international aspects, they maintained their own democratic parliamentary systems and supported efforts to create and maintain them elsewhere in Europe. Germany was reconstituted in the Weimar

Republic, and in the other new states established in Central and Eastern Europe, parliamentary

systems were established. Significant economic difficulties in all of the democracies and growing political divisions among the parties led to increasing pressures for more authoritarian leaders, and in a number of countries dictators came to power. In the continuing democracies, the Depression forced major changes involving significant government intervention in the economy. Democratic socialism became a major force in Britain and France, and the New Deal of President Franklin Roosevelt, beginning in 1933 in the U.S., was a major transformation of the economy of the U.S. The economies of the liberal democracies were increasingly mixed economies, combining aspects of capitalism and socialism in an emerging democratic welfare state system. During World War II, the Axis powers represented the authoritarian alternative to liberal democracy. When they were defeated, the Allied

powers established constitutional democratic systems in Italy, Japan, and the parts of Germany

under occupation by American, British, and French forces. In the Western world, after major setbacks during the interwar period, liberal democracy, in modified capitalist and socialist economic systems, emerged after World War II as the dominant sociopolitical ideology.

The Encyclopedia of World History, Sixth edition. Peter N. Stearns, general editor. Copyright © 2001 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Maps by Mary Reilly, copyright © 2001 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

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b. Communism. 2001. The Encyclopedia of World History

Reference > The Encyclopedia of World History

VI. The World Wars and the Interwar Period, 1914–1945 > A. Global and Comparative Dimensions > 1. Emerging Global Relationships > b. Globally Competing Ideologies > 1. Western Ideological

Competitions > b. Communism

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CONTENTS · SUBJECT INDEX · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD The Encyclopedia of World History. 2001.

b. Communism

The philosophy and sociopolitical ideology of Karl Marx (1818–83) provided the basis for the major ideological alternative to liberal democracy in the 20th century. Building on a materialist

interpretation of history, Marxists developed a vision of a society in which production and distribution were controlled by the community in a collectivized economy. The working class was to be the major vehicle for achieving this goal, and class interests rather than national identities were seen as primary. When the member parties of the Second International supported their national governments in World War I, the International was dissolved. An explicitly communist alternative was defined by

LENIN (Vladimir I. Ulianov), who led a radical faction of the Social Democratic Party that had

been formed in Russia in 1898. In the Russian Revolution of 1917, Lenin's faction, the Bolsheviks, came to power and was reorganized as the Communist Party in 1918, which was the sole party in the emerging Soviet Union. Lenin created the THIRD INTERNATIONAL (Comintern) in 1919 as the structure for organizing global revolution and coordinating efforts of Communist parties around the world. Parties of the extreme left from 37 countries attended the second congress of the Comintern in 1920. During the 1920s, formal Communist parties were founded in many countries of Asia, including Turkey, Iran, India, China, and Japan, in Latin America, in the Middle East, and in most European countries. Although no other countries became Communist systems in the interwar era, the Soviet Union emerged as a major world power. Leninist communism became a major alternative to and competitor with Wilsonian liberal democracy.

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b. Communism. 2001. The Encyclopedia of World History

Communist-democratic conflicts quickly developed. Great Britain, France, and the U.S. intervened

militarily in the Russian civil war in 1918–19 to prevent the consolidation of Bolshevik rule of Russia but failed. In the efforts to establish new states and create a new international system at the end of World War I, there were important but unsuccessful Communist efforts to gain control in many places. In Germany, the Spartacist group, which advocated a Communist state, led a series of uprisings in 1919–20 against the emerging Weimar Republic and was defeated. Communist attempts to gain power in the new republic of Austria (1919) and Bulgaria (1923–25) were unsuccessful. The Communist dictatorship of Béla Kun in Hungary lasted only a few months in 1919. In Iran (Persia), Persian nationalists and social democrats received support from the Bolshevik regime in establishing a short-lived Soviet Republic of Gilan in 1920. The new Communist Party in China cooperated with the Kuomintang regime until a major split in 1927, and the Communists went into revolutionary opposition.

Communist “threat.” Although Communist parties did not succeed in winning control of any

countries in the interwar era, they represented the most visible global opposition to democratic

liberal regimes. This led at times to periodic waves of fear of Communist revolutions in democratic

countries. In the U.S. during the Red scare of 1919–20, thousands of people were arrested as suspected Communist revolutionaries. In Great Britain, the publication of the so-called Zinoviev

letter in 1924, exposing an alleged Communist conspiracy, contributed to the overwhelming electoral

victory of the Conservatives over the more socialist Labour Party. Fear of communism was an important reason why many people supported the emergence of the authoritarian regimes of

Mussolini in Italy and Hitler in Germany. In 1933, Hitler charged the Communists with setting the Reichstag fire (See Feb. 27), which partly destroyed the German parliament building. The alleged danger of a Communist revolution was the rationale for the suspension of constitutional liberties and the granting of special powers to Hitler. The most effective response to Communist threats, real and imagined, was thought by many, even in the liberal democracies, to be more authoritarian policies. By the 1930s, the real ideological competition was frequently seen as being between communism and various forms of fascism, with liberal democracies believed to be in decline. This situation was strengthened by the economic conditions of the Great Depression.

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c. Fascism. 2001. The Encyclopedia of World History

Reference > The Encyclopedia of World History

VI. The World Wars and the Interwar Period, 1914–1945 > A. Global and Comparative Dimensions > 1. Emerging Global Relationships > b. Globally Competing Ideologies > 1. Western Ideological

Competitions > c. Fascism

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CONTENTS · SUBJECT INDEX · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD The Encyclopedia of World History. 2001.

c. Fascism

Fascism developed as the third major competing ideology of the first half of the 20th century. It was not simply an assertion of dictatorial or military rule, nor was it a socially conservative perspective, although many conservatives preferred it to either communism or democratic liberalism. Fascist

movements that emerged after World War I took a number of different forms, but they shared an

ideological perspective that subordinated the individual to the state, opposed class struggle, and affirmed nationalist identities and a corporate state. Structures were elitist rather than egalitarian, and there was an emphasis on the role of the great leader. The first major Fascist leader to come to power was MUSSOLINI in Italy, who became prime minister in 1922 and seized full power by 1926. Other states came under the control of dictators in the interwar period, including Poland (1926), Lithuania (1926), Portugal (1932), and Estonia (1934). The most important Fascist-style regime was established in Germany during the 1930s by the NAZI MOVEMENT led by HITLER. Fascist-style governments also came to power in Greece in 1936 under General Johannes Metaxas, and in Spain with the victory in 1939 of the Falange led by Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. In

Argentina, a group of military officers impressed by Nazi achievements seized power in 1943, and

their dominant leader, Juan Perón, established a Fascist-style dictatorship in 1945. In JAPAN a distinctive statist authoritarian regime developed in the interwar era, and it established ties with the major European Fascist states in the late 1930s. Fascist-style movements also developed in a number of countries: the Iron Guard, founded in Romania in 1927; the “Black Shirts” of Oswald Moseley in Great Britain (formed in 1932); Young Egypt (the “Green Shirts”), formed in Egypt in 1933.

Elsewhere, including in the U.S., many people became convinced that some form of authoritarian fascism was necessary in the face of the Communist challenge and the difficulties of the Depression.

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c. Fascism. 2001. The Encyclopedia of World History

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