Jacob Salwyn Schapiro was a Professor Emeritus of History at the City College of New York

City College of New York

The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...

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Work

In his book, Liberalism and the Challenge of Fascism, Schapiro set out to discuss the changes in both England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

. Prof. Schapiro contrasted the smooth evolution of liberalism in England to the violent swings back and forth between reaction

Reactionary

The term reactionary refers to viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state in a society. The term is meant to describe one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is "radical". While it has not been generally considered a term of praise it has been adopted as a self-description by...

 and liberal forces in France. This historical violent dialectic in France, in Schapiro's argument, was what created the basic ideas of Nazism

Nazism

Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

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Prof. Schapiro's Definition of Fascism

"It would be a great error to regard fascism as a counterrevolutionary movement directed against the communists, as was that of the reactionaries against the liberals during the first half of the nineteenth century. Fascism is something unique in modern history, in that it is a revolutionary movement of the middle class directed, on the one hand, against the great banks and big business and, on the other hand, against the revolutionary demands of the working class. It repudiates democracy as a political system in which the bankers, capitalists, and socialists find free scope for their activities, and it favors a dictatorship that will eliminate these elements from the life of the nation. Fascism proclaims a body of doctrines that are not entirely new; there are no "revelations" in history."

Quotes

• "As nature abhors a vacuum, history abhors changes without origins, whether immediate or remote. Fascism did not spring fully grown from the chin of Mussolini".
  —Liberalism and the Challenge of Fascism, pg 322

Writings of Schapiro

• Modern and Contemporary European History, (1815–1928), publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co., The Riverside Press, Cambridge, MA, 1929.
• Liberalism and the Challenge of Fascism, Social Forces in England and France, (1815–1870), publisher: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., NY, 1949.
• "Condorcet and the Rise of Liberalism", publisher:Harcourt, Brace and Company, inc, 1934.
• "Anticlericalism: Conflict Between Church and State in France, Italy, and Spain", publisher: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., Princeton, NJ, 1967.