Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America - Hardcover

Gross, Bertram

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0920057225 ISBN 13: 9780920057223

Publisher: Black Rose Books, 1982

Synopsis

This provocative and original look at current trends in the United States presents a grim forecast of a possible totalitarian future. The author shows how the chronic problems faced by the U.S. in the late twentieth century require increasing collusions between Big Business and Big Government in order to 'manage' society in the interests of the rich and powerful. 

This “friendly fascism”, Gross argues, will probably lack the dictatorships, public spectacles and overt brutality of the classic varieties of Germany, Italy and Japan, but has at its root the same denial of individual freedoms and democratic rights. No one who cares about the future of democracy can afford to ignore the frightening possibilities of Friendly Fascism.

This is certainly a strikingly prescient book for a Trump era.

About this title

Review:

At a time of escalating political uncertainty, when the forces of totalitarianism threaten once more to crawl out of the American woodwork, Friendly Fascism is a powerful tool- better yet, a weapon- that can help us avert a distinctly unfriendly future. - Alvin Toffler

First-rate...a fascinating, provocative job. Bertram Gross has written an important book, and it deserves the widest possible audiences. - Michael Harrington

This is the best thing I've ever seen on how America might go fascist democratically. Friendly Fascism offers a very clear exposition of where America is, and how we got there. - William Shirer

About the Author:

Bertram Myron Gross (1912 in Philadelphia - March 12, 1997 in Walnut Creek, California) was an American social scientist, Federal bureaucrat and Professor of Political Science at Hunter College (CUNY). He is known from his book 'Friendly Fascism' from 1980 and as primary author of the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act. Gross was born in Philadelphia. He received his B.A. in English and Philosophy, and his M.A. in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania. In the late 1940s, he started as a federal bureaucrat in Washington. From 1941 to 1945 he was a staff member of a number of Senate committees. Here he wrote the Roosevelt-Truman full employment bills of 1944 and 1945, which led to the Employment Act of 1946. From 1946 to 1952 he was executive secretary of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. In the 1950s, he moved with his family to Israel, where he served as an economic advisor in the Prime Minister's Office and as a Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University, where he established their program in Public Administration. He returned to the United States in the 1960s and joined the faculty of Syracuse University in the Maxwell School. In 1961-62, he was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Palo Alto; and, in 1962-63, he was the Leatherbee Lecturer at the Harvard Business School. In 1970, Bertram Gross was president of the Society for General Systems Research. From 1970 to 1982 he was Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Urban Affairs at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center.

About this edition

• Publisher: Black Rose Books
• Publication date: 1982
• ISBN 10: 0920057225
• ISBN 13: 9780920057223
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 440