From the father of modern fascism, my cretinous cousin Benito, comes the philodoxical justification of anything and everything you want to do. Of course, you must sell your soul in the bargain.
In case you're in a hurry, or you're a lazy dumbass, or you're a fascist, here's Mussolini's synopsis of the whole shebang:
“Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”
Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, [Insert fascist here], call your office.
Mussolini - THE DOCTRINE OF FASCISM - world future fund
(This article, co-written by Giovanni
Gentile, is considered to be the most complete articulation of
Mussolini's political views. This is the only complete official
translation we know of on the web, copied directly from an official
Fascist government publication of 1935, Fascism Doctrine and
Institutions, by Benito Mussolini. This translation includes all
the footnotes from the original.) Subtitles in article have been
put in by us to make the article more readable.
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THE DOCTRINE OF FASCISM
BENITO MUSSOLINI (1932)
(ONLY COMPLETE OFFICIAL TEXT ON THE INTERNET)
Like all sound political conceptions,
Fascism is action and it is thought; action in which doctrine is
immanent, and doctrine arising from a given system of historical
forces in which it is inserted, and working on them from within (1).
It has therefore a form correlated to contingencies of time and
space; but it has also an ideal content which makes it an expression
of truth in the higher region of the history of thought (2). There is
no way of exercising a spiritual influence in the world as a human
will dominating the will of others, unless one has a conception both
of the transient and the specific reality on which that action is to
be exercised, and of the permanent and universal reality in which the
transient dwells and has its being. To know men one must know man;
and to know man one must be acquainted with reality and its laws.
There can be no conception of the State which is not fundamentally a
conception of life: philosophy or intuition, system of ideas evolving
within the framework of logic or concentrated in a vision or a faith,
but always, at least potentially, an organic conception of the world.
SPIRITUAL VIEW OF LIFE
Thus many of the practical expressions
of Fascism such as party organization, system of education, and
discipline can only be understood when considered in relation to its
general attitude toward life. A spiritual attitude (3). Fascism sees
in the world not only those superficial, material aspects in which
man appears as an individual, standing by himself, self-centered,
subject to natural law, which instinctively urges him toward a life
of selfish momentary pleasure; it sees not only the individual but
the nation and the country; individuals and generations bound
together by a moral law, with common traditions and a mission which
suppressing the instinct for life closed in a brief circle of
pleasure, builds up a higher life, founded on duty, a life free from
the limitations of time and space, in which the individual, by
self-sacrifice, the renunciation of self-interest, by death itself,
can achieve that purely spiritual existence in which his value as a
man consists.
The conception is therefore a spiritual
one, arising from the general reaction of the century against the
materialistic positivism of the XIXth century. Anti-positivistic but
positive; neither skeptical nor agnostic; neither pessimistic nor
supinely optimistic as are, generally speaking, the doctrines (all
negative) which place the center of life outside man; whereas, by the
exercise of his free will, man can and must create his own world.
Fascism wants man to be active and to
engage in action with all his energies; it wants him to be manfully
aware of the difficulties besetting him and ready to face them. It
conceives of life as a struggle in which it behooves a man to win for
himself a really worthy place, first of all by fitting himself
(physically, morally, intellectually) to become the implement
required for winning it. As for the individual, so for the nation,
and so for mankind (4). Hence the high value of culture in all its
forms (artistic, religious, scientific) (5) and the outstanding
importance of education. Hence also the essential value of work, by
which man subjugates nature and creates the human world (economic,
political, ethical, and intellectual).
This positive conception of life is
obviously an ethical one. It invests the whole field of reality as
well as the human activities which master it. No action is exempt
from moral judgment; no activity can be despoiled of the value which
a moral purpose confers on all things. Therefore life, as conceived
of by the Fascist, is serious, austere, and religious; all its
manifestations are poised in a world sustained by moral forces and
subject to spiritual responsibilities. The Fascist disdains an “easy"
life (6).
The Fascist conception of life is a
religious one (7), in which man is viewed in his immanent relation to
a higher law, endowed with an objective will transcending the
individual and raising him to conscious membership of a spiritual
society. "Those who perceive nothing beyond opportunistic
considerations in the religious policy of the Fascist regime fail to
realize that Fascism is not only a system of government but also and
above all a system of thought.
THE IMPORTANCE OF TRADITION
In the Fascist conception of history,
man is man only by virtue of the spiritual process to which he
contributes as a member of the family, the social group, the nation,
and in function of history to which all nations bring their
contribution. Hence the great value of tradition in records, in
language, in customs, in the rules of social life (8). Outside
history man is a nonentity.
REJECTION OF INDIVIDUALISM AND THE
IMPORTANCE OF THE STATE
Fascism is therefore opposed to all
individualistic abstractions based on eighteenth century materialism;
and it is opposed to all Jacobinistic utopias and innovations. It
does not believe in the possibility of "happiness" on earth
as conceived by the economistic literature of the XVIIIth century,
and it therefore rejects the theological notion that at some future
time the human family will secure a final settlement of all its
difficulties. This notion runs counter to experience which teaches
that life is in continual flux and in process of evolution. In
politics Fascism aims at realism; in practice it desires to deal only
with those problems which are the spontaneous product of historic
conditions and which find or suggest their own solutions (9). Only by
entering in to the process of reality and taking possession of the
forces at work within it, can man act on man and on nature (10).
Anti-individualistic, the Fascist
conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts
the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of
the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal, will of
man as a historic entity (11). It is opposed to classical liberalism
which arose as a reaction to absolutism and exhausted its historical
function when the State became the expression of the conscience and
will of the people. Liberalism denied the State in the name of the
individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing
the real essence of the individual (12). And if liberty is to he the
attribute of living men and not of abstract dummies invented by
individualistic liberalism, then Fascism stands for liberty, and for
the only liberty worth having, the liberty of the State and of the
individual within the State (13). The Fascist conception of the State
is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can
exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism, is
totalitarian, and the Fascist State - a synthesis and a unit
inclusive of all values - interprets, develops, and potentates the
whole life of a people (14).
No individuals or groups (political
parties, cultural associations, economic unions, social classes)
outside the State (15). Fascism is therefore opposed to Socialism to
which unity within the State (which amalgamates classes into a single
economic and ethical reality) is unknown, and which sees in history
nothing but the class struggle. Fascism is likewise opposed to trade
unionism as a class weapon. But when brought within the orbit of the
State, Fascism recognizes the real needs which gave rise to socialism
and trade unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or
corporative system in which divergent interests are coordinated and
harmonized in the unity of the State (16).
Grouped according to their several
interests, individuals form classes; they form trade-unions when
organized according to their several economic activities; but first
and foremost they form the State, which is no mere matter of numbers,
the suns of the individuals forming the majority. Fascism is
therefore opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to
the majority, lowering it to the level of the largest number (17);
but it is the purest form of democracy if the nation be considered
as it should be from the point of view of quality rather than
quantity, as an idea, the mightiest because the most ethical, the
most coherent, the truest, expressing itself in a people as the
conscience and will of the few, if not, indeed, of one, and ending to
express itself in the conscience and the will of the mass, of the
whole group ethnically molded by natural and historical conditions
into a nation, advancing, as one conscience and one will, along the
self same line of development and spiritual formation (18). Not a
race, nor a geographically defined region, but a people, historically
perpetuating itself; a multitude unified by an idea and imbued with
the will to live, the will to power, self-consciousness, personality
(19).
In so far as it is embodied in a State,
this higher personality becomes a nation. It is not the nation which
generates the State; that is an antiquated naturalistic concept which
afforded a basis for XIXth century publicity in favor of national
governments. Rather is it the State which creates the nation,
conferring volition and therefore real life on a people made aware of
their moral unity.
The right to national independence does
not arise from any merely literary and idealistic form of
self-consciousness; still less from a more or less passive and
unconscious de facto situation, but from an active, self-conscious,
political will expressing itself in action and ready to prove its
rights. It arises, in short, from the existence, at least in fieri,
of a State. Indeed, it is the State which, as the expression of a
universal ethical will, creates the right to national independence
(20).
A nation, as expressed in the State, is
a living, ethical entity only in so far as it is active. Inactivity
is death. Therefore the State is not only Authority which governs and
confers legal form and spiritual value on individual wills, but it is
also Power which makes its will felt and respected beyond its own
frontiers, thus affording practical proof of the universal character
of the decisions necessary to ensure its development. This implies
organization and expansion, potential if not actual. Thus the State
equates itself to the will of man, whose development cannot he
checked by obstacles and which, by achieving self-expression,
demonstrates its infinity (21).
FASCIST STATE AS A SPIRITUAL FORCE
The Fascist State, as a higher and more
powerful expression of personality, is a force, but a spiritual one.
It sums up all the manifestations of the moral and intellectual life
of man. Its functions cannot therefore be limited to those of
enforcing order and keeping the peace, as the liberal doctrine had
it. It is no mere mechanical device for defining the sphere within
which the individual may duly exercise his supposed rights. The
Fascist State is an inwardly accepted standard and rule of conduct, a
discipline of the whole person; it permeates the will no less than
the intellect. It stands for a principle which becomes the central
motive of man as a member of civilized society, sinking deep down
into his personality; it dwells in the heart of the man of action and
of the thinker, of the artist and of the man of science: soul of the
soul (22).
Fascism, in short, is not only a
law-giver and a founder of institutions, but an educator and a
promoter of spiritual life. It aims at refashioning not only the
forms of life but their content - man, his character, and his faith.
To achieve this propose it enforces discipline and uses authority,
entering into the soul and ruling with undisputed sway. Therefore it
has chosen as its emblem the Lictor’s rods, the symbol of unity,
strength, and justice.
POLITICAL AND SOCIAL DOCTRINE -
EVOLUTION FROM SOCIALISM
When in the now distant March of 1919,
speaking through the columns of the Popolo d'Italia I summoned to
Milan the surviving interventionists who had intervened, and who had
followed me ever since the foundation of the Fasci of revolutionary
action in January 1915, I had in mind no specific doctrinal program.
The only doctrine of which I had practical experience was that of
socialism, from until the winter of 1914 - nearly a decade. My
experience was that both of a follower and a leader but it was not
doctrinal experience. My doctrine during that period had been the
doctrine of action. A uniform, universally accepted doctrine of
Socialism had not existed since 1905, when the revisionist movement,
headed by Bernstein, arose in Germany, countered by the formation, in
the see-saw of tendencies, of a left revolutionary movement which in
Italy never quitted the field of phrases, whereas, in the case of
Russian socialism, it became the prelude to Bolshevism.
Reformism, revolutionism, centrism, the
very echo of that terminology is dead, while in the great river of
Fascism one can trace currents which had their source in Sorel,
Peguy, Lagardelle of the Movement Socialists, and in the cohort of
Italian syndicalist who from 1904 to 1914 brought a new note into the
Italian socialist environment - previously emasculated and
chloroformed by fornicating with Giolitti's party - a note sounded in
Olivetti's Pagine Libere, Orano's Lupa, Enrico Leone's Divenirs
Socials.
When the war ended in 1919 Socialism,
as a doctrine, was already dead; it continued to exist only as a
grudge, especially in Italy where its only chance lay in inciting to
reprisals against the men who had willed the war and who were to be
made to pay for it.
The Popolo d'Italia described itself in
its subtitle as the daily organ of fighters and producers. The word
producer was already the expression of a mental trend. Fascism was
not the nursling of a doctrine previously drafted at a desk; it was
born of the need of action, and was action; it was not a party but,
in the first two years, an anti-party and a movement. The name I gave
the organization fixed its character.
Yet if anyone cares to reread the now
crumpled sheets of those days giving an account of the meeting at
which the Italian Fasci di combattimento were founded, he will find
not a doctrine but a series of pointers, forecasts, hints which, when
freed from the inevitable matrix of contingencies, were to develop in
a few years time into a series of doctrinal positions entitling
Fascism to rank as a political doctrine differing from all others,
past or present.
“If the bourgeoisie - I then said -
believe that they have found in us their lightening-conductors, they
arc mistaken. We must go towards the people... We wish the working
classes to accustom themselves to the responsibilities of management
so that they may realize that it is no easy matter to run a
business... We will fight both technical and spiritual
rear-guirdism... Now that the succession of the regime is open
we must not be fainthearted. We must rush forward; if the present
regime is to be superseded we must take its place. The right of
succession is ours, for we urged the country to enter the war and we
led it to victory... The existing forms of political representation
cannot satisfy us; we want direst representation of the several
interests... It may be objected that this program implies a return to
the guilds (corporazioni). No matter!. I therefore hope this assembly
will accept the economic claims advanced by national syndicalism …
Is it not strange that from the very
first day, at Piazza San Sepolcro, the word "guild"
(corporazione) was pronounced, a word which, as the Revolution
developed, was to express one of the basic legislative and social
creations of the regime?
The years preceding the march on Rome
cover a period during which the need of action forbade delay and
careful doctrinal elaborations. Fighting was going on in the towns
and villages. There were discussions but... there was something
more sacred and more important... death... Fascists knew how to die.
A doctrine - fully elaborated, divided up into chapters and
paragraphs with annotations, may have been lacking, but it was
replaced by something far more decisive, - by a faith. All the same,
if with the help of books, articles, resolutions passed at
congresses, major and minor speeches, anyone should care to revive
the memory of those days, he will find, provided he knows how to seek
and select, that the doctrinal foundations were laid while the battle
was still raging. Indeed, it was during those years that Fascist
thought armed, refined itself, and proceeded ahead with its
organization. The problems of the individual and the State; the
problems of authority and liberty; political, social, and more
especially national problems were discussed; the conflict with
liberal, democratic, socialistic, Masonic doctrines and with those of
the Partito Popolare, was carried on at the same time as the punitive
expeditions. Nevertheless, the lack of a formal system was used by
disingenuous adversaries as an argument for proclaiming Fascism
incapable of elaborating a doctrine at the very time when that
doctrine was being formulated - no matter how tumultuously, - first,
as is the case with all new ideas, in the guise of violent dogmatic
negations; then in the more positive guise of constructive theories,
subsequently incorporated, in 1926, 1927, and 1928, in the laws and
institutions of the regime.
Fascism is now clearly defined not only
as a regime but as a doctrine. This means that Fascism, exercising
its critical faculties on itself and on others, has studied from its
own special standpoint and judged by its own standards all the
problems affecting the material and intellectual interests now
causing such grave anxiety to the nations of the world, and is ready
to deal with them by its own policies.
REJECTION OF PACIFISM
First of all, as regards the future
development of mankind, and quite apart from all present political
considerations. Fascism does not, generally speaking, believe in the
possibility or utility of perpetual peace. It therefore discards
pacifism as a cloak for cowardly supine renunciation in
contradistinction to self-sacrifice. War alone keys up all human
energies to their maximum tension and sets the seal of nobility on
those peoples who have the courage to face it. All other tests are
substitutes which never place a man face to face with himself before
the alternative of life or death. Therefore all doctrines which
postulate peace at all costs are incompatible with Fascism. Equally
foreign to the spirit of Fascism, even if accepted as useful in
meeting special political situations -- are all internationalistic or
League superstructures which, as history shows, crumble to the ground
whenever the heart of nations is deeply stirred by sentimental,
idealistic or practical considerations. Fascism carries this
anti-pacifistic attitude into the life of the individual. " I
don't care a damn „ (me ne frego) - the proud motto of the fighting
squads scrawled by a wounded man on his bandages, is not only an act
of philosophic stoicism, it sums up a doctrine which is not merely
political: it is evidence of a fighting spirit which accepts all
risks. It signifies new style of Italian life. The Fascist accepts
and loves life; he rejects and despises suicide as cowardly. Life as
he understands it means duty, elevation, conquest; life must be lofty
and full, it must be lived for oneself but above all for others, both
near bye and far off, present and future.
The population policy of the regime is
the consequence of these premises. The Fascist loves his neighbor,
but the word neighbor does not stand for some vague and unseizable
conception. Love of one's neighbor does not exclude necessary
educational severity; still less does it exclude differentiation and
rank. Fascism will have nothing to do with universal embraces; as a
member of the community of nations it looks other peoples straight in
the eyes; it is vigilant and on its guard; it follows others in all
their manifestations and notes any changes in their interests; and it
does not allow itself to be deceived by mutable and fallacious
appearances.
REJECTION OF MARXISM
Such a conception of life makes Fascism
the resolute negation of the doctrine underlying so-called scientific
and Marxian socialism, the doctrine of historic materialism which
would explain the history of mankind in terms of the class struggle
and by changes in the processes and instruments of production, to the
exclusion of all else.
That the vicissitudes of economic life
- discoveries of raw materials, new technical processes, and
scientific inventions - have their importance, no one denies; but
that they suffice to explain human history to the exclusion of other
factors is absurd. Fascism believes now and always in sanctity and
heroism, that is to say in acts in which no economic motive - remote
or immediate - is at work. Having denied historic materialism, which
sees in men mere puppets on the surface of history, appearing and
disappearing on the crest of the waves while in the depths the real
directing forces move and work, Fascism also denies the immutable and
irreparable character of the class struggle which is the natural
outcome of this economic conception of history; above all it denies
that the class struggle is the preponderating agent in social
transformations. Having thus struck a blow at socialism in the two
main points of its doctrine, all that remains of it is the
sentimental aspiration, old as humanity itself-toward social
relations in which the sufferings and sorrows of the humbler folk
will be alleviated. But here again Fascism rejects the economic
interpretation of felicity as something to be secured
socialistically, almost automatically, at a given stage of economic
evolution when all will be assured a maximum of material comfort.
Fascism denies the materialistic conception of happiness as a
possibility, and abandons it to the economists of the mid-eighteenth
century. This means that Fascism denies the equation: well-being =
happiness, which sees in men mere animals, content when they can feed
and fatten, thus reducing them to a vegetative existence pure and
simple.
REJECTION OF PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY AS
A SHAM AND A FRAUD
After socialism, Fascism trains its
guns on the whole block of democratic ideologies, and rejects both
their premises and their practical applications and implements.
Fascism denies that numbers, as such, can be the determining factor
in human society; it denies the right of numbers to govern by means
of periodical consultations; it asserts the irremediable and fertile
and beneficent inequality of men who cannot be leveled by any such
mechanical and extrinsic device as universal suffrage. Democratic
regimes may be described as those under which the people are, from
time to time, deluded into the belief that they exercise sovereignty,
while all the time real sovereignty resides in and is exercised by
other and sometimes irresponsible and secret forces. Democracy is a
kingless regime infested by many kings who are sometimes more
exclusive, tyrannical, and destructive than one, even if he be a
tyrant. This explains why Fascism - although, for contingent reasons,
it was republican in tendency prior to 1922 - abandoned that stand
before the March on Rome, convinced that the form of government is no
longer a matter of preeminent importance, and because the study of
past and present monarchies and past and present republics shows that
neither monarchy nor republic can be judged sub specie aeternitatis,
but that each stands for a form of government expressing the
political evolution, the history, the traditions, and the psychology
of a given country.
Fascism has outgrown the dilemma:
monarchy v. republic, over which democratic regimes too long dallied,
attributing all insufficiencies to the former and proning the latter
as a regime of perfection, whereas experience teaches that some
republics are inherently reactionary and absolutist while some
monarchies accept the most daring political and social experiments.
In one of his philosophic Meditations
Renan - who had prefascist intuitions remarks, "Reason and
science are the products of mankind, but it is chimerical to seek
reason directly for the people and through the people. It is not
essential to the existence of reason that all should be familiar with
it; and even if all had to be initiated, this could not be achieved
through democracy which seems fated to lead to the extinction of all
arduous forms of culture and all highest forms of learning. The maxim
that society exists only for the well-being and freedom of the
individuals composing it does not seem to be in conformity with
nature's plans, which care only for the species and seem ready to
sacrifice the individual. It is much to be feared that the last word
of democracy thus understood (and let me hasten to add that it is
susceptible of a different interpretation) would be a form of society
in which a degenerate mass would have no thought beyond that of
enjoying the ignoble pleasures of the vulgar."
REJECTION OF EGALITARIANISM
In rejecting democracy, Fascism rejects
the absurd conventional lie of political equalitarianism, the habit
of collective irresponsibility, the myth of felicity and indefinite
progress.
DEFINITION OF FASCISM AS REAL DEMOCRACY
But if democracy be understood as
meaning a regime in which the masses are not driven back to the
margin of the State, and then the writer of these pages has already
defined Fascism as an organized, centralized, authoritarian
democracy.
REJECTION OF ECONOMIC LIBERALISM -
ADMIRATION OF BISMARCK
Fascism is definitely and absolutely
opposed to the doctrines of liberalism, both in the political and the
economic sphere. The importance of liberalism in the XIXth century
should not be exaggerated for present day polemical purposes, nor
should we make of one of the many doctrines which flourished in that
century a religion for mankind for the present and for all time to
come. Liberalism really flourished for fifteen years only. It arose
in 1830 as a reaction to the Holy Alliance which tried to force
Europe to recede further back than 1789; it touched its zenith in
1848 when even Pius IXth was a liberal. Its decline began immediately
after that year. If 1848 was a year of light and poetry, 1849 was a
year of darkness and tragedy. The Roman Republic was killed by a
sister republic, that of France. In that same year Marx, in his
famous Communist Manifesto, launched the gospel of socialism.
In 1851 Napoleon III made his illiberal
coup d'etat and ruled France until 1870 when he was turned out by a
popular rising following one of the severest military defeats known
to history. The victor was Bismarck who never even knew the
whereabouts of liberalism and its prophets. It is symptomatic that
throughout the XIXth century the religion of liberalism was
completely unknown to so highly civilized a people as the Germans but
for one parenthesis which has been described as the “ridiculous
parliament of Frankfort " which lasted just one season. Germany
attained her national unity outside liberalism and in opposition to
liberalism, a doctrine which seems foreign to the German temperament,
essentially monarchical, whereas liberalism is the historic and
logical anteroom to anarchy. The three stages in the making of German
unity were the three wars of 1864, 1866, and 1870, led by such
"liberals" as Moltke and Bismarck. And in the upbuilding
of Italian unity liberalism played a very minor part when compared to
the contribution made by Mazzini and Garibaldi who were not liberals.
But for the intervention of the illiberal Napoleon III we should not
have had Lombardy, and without that of the illiberal Bismarck at
Sadowa and at Sedan very probably we should not have had Venetia in
1866 and in 1870 we should not have entered Rome. The years going
from 1870 to 1915 cover a period which marked, even in the opinion of
the high priests of the new creed, the twilight of their religion,
attacked by decadentism in literature and by activism in practice.
Activism: that is to say nationalism, futurism, fascism.
rengten
The liberal century, after piling up
innumerable Gordian Knots, tried to cut them with the sword of the
world war. Never has any religion claimed so cruel a sacrifice. Were
the Gods of liberalism thirsting for blood?
Now liberalism is preparing to close
the doors of its temples, deserted by the peoples who feel that the
agnosticism it professed in the sphere of economics and the
indifferentism of which it has given proof in the sphere of politics
and morals, would lead the world to ruin in the future as they have
done in the past.
This explains why all the political
experiments of our day are anti-liberal, and it is supremely
ridiculous to endeavor on this account to put them outside the pale
of history, as though history were a preserve set aside for
liberalism and its adepts; as though liberalism were the last word in
civilization beyond which no one can go.
THE FASCIST TOTALITARIAN VISION OF THE
FUTURE
The Fascist negation of socialism,
democracy, liberalism, should not, however, be interpreted as
implying a desire to drive the world backwards to positions occupied
prior to 1789, a year commonly referred to as that which opened the
demo-liberal century. History does not travel backwards. The Fascist
doctrine has not taken De Maistre as its prophet. Monarchical
absolutism is of the past, and so is ecclesiolatry. Dead and done for
are feudal privileges and the division of society into closed,
uncommunicating castes. Neither has the Fascist conception of
authority anything in common with that of a police ridden State.
A party governing a nation
“totalitarianly" is a new departure in history. There are no
points of reference nor of comparison. From beneath the ruins of
liberal, socialist, and democratic doctrines, Fascism extracts those
elements which are still vital. It preserves what may be described as
"the acquired facts" of history; it rejects all else. That
is to say, it rejects the idea of a doctrine suited to all times and
to all people. Granted that the XIXth century was the century of
socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the XXth
century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy.
Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are free to believe that
this is the century of authority, a century tending to the "
right ", a Fascist century. If the XIXth century was the century
of the individual (liberalism implies individualism) we are free to
believe that this is the "collective" century, and
therefore the century of the State. It is quite logical for a new
doctrine to make use of the still vital elements of other doctrines.
No doctrine was ever born quite new and bright and unheard of. No
doctrine can boast absolute originality. It is always connected, it
only historically, with those which preceded it and those which will
follow it. Thus the scientific socialism of Marx links up to the
utopian socialism of the Fouriers, the Owens, the Saint-Simons ; thus
the liberalism of the XIXth century traces its origin back to the
illuministic movement of the XVIIIth, and the doctrines of democracy
to those of the Encyclopaedists. All doctrines aim at directing the
activities of men towards a given objective; but these activities in
their turn react on the doctrine, modifying and adjusting it to new
needs, or outstripping it. A doctrine must therefore be a vital act
and not a verbal display. Hence the pragmatic strain in Fascism, it’s
will to power, its will to live, its attitude toward violence, and
its value.
THE ABSOLUTE PRIMACY OF THE STATE
The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is
its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its
aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups
relative. Individuals and groups are admissible in so far as they
come within the State. Instead of directing the game and guiding the
material and moral progress of the community, the liberal State
restricts its activities to recording results. The Fascist State is
wide awake and has a will of its own. For this reason it can be
described as " ethical ".
At the first quinquennial assembly of
the regime, in 1929, I said “The Fascist State is not a night
watchman, solicitous only of the personal safety of the citizens; not
is it organized exclusively for the purpose of guarantying a certain
degree of material prosperity and relatively peaceful conditions of
life, a board of directors would do as much. Neither is it
exclusively political, divorced from practical realities and holding
itself aloof from the multifarious activities of the citizens and the
nation. The State, as conceived and realized by Fascism, is a
spiritual and ethical entity for securing the political, juridical,
and economic organization of the nation, an organization which in its
origin and growth is a manifestation of the spirit. The State
guarantees the internal and external safety of the country, but it
also safeguards and transmits the spirit of the people, elaborated
down the ages in its language, its customs, its faith. The State is
not only the present; it is also the past and above all the future.
Transcending the individual's brief spell of life, the State stands
for the immanent conscience of the nation. The forms in which it
finds expression change, but the need for it remains. The State
educates the citizens to civism, makes them aware of their mission,
urges them to unity; its justice harmonizes their divergent
interests; it transmits to future generations the conquests of the
mind in the fields of science, art, law, human solidarity; it leads
men up from primitive tribal life to that highest manifestation of
human power, imperial rule.
The State hands down to future
generations the memory of those who laid down their lives to ensure
its safety or to obey its laws; it sets up as examples and records
for future ages the names of the captains who enlarged its territory
and of the men of genius who have made it famous. Whenever respect
for the State declines and the disintegrating and centrifugal
tendencies of individuals and groups prevail, nations are headed for
decay". Since 1929 economic and political development have
everywhere emphasized these truths. The importance of the State is
rapidly growing. The so-called crisis can only be settled by State
action and within the orbit of the State. Where are the shades of the
Jules Simons who, in the early days of liberalism proclaimed that the
"State should endeavor to render itself useless and prepare to
hand in its resignation "? Or of the MacCullochs who, in the
second half of last century, urged that the State should desist from
governing too much? And what of the English Bentham who considered
that all industry asked of government was to be left alone, and of
the German Humbolt who expressed the opinion that the best government
was a lazy " one? What would they say now to the unceasing,
inevitable, and urgently requested interventions of government in
business? It is true that the second generation of economists was
less uncompromising in this respect than the first, and that even
Adam Smith left the door ajar - however cautiously - for government
intervention in business.
If liberalism spells individualism,
Fascism spells government.
The Fascist State is, however, a unique
and original creation. It is not reactionary but revolutionary, for
it anticipates the solution of certain universal problems which have
been raised elsewhere, in the political field by the splitting up of
parties, the usurpation of power by parliaments, the irresponsibility
of assemblies; in the economic field by the increasingly numerous and
important functions discharged by trade unions and trade associations
with their disputes and ententes, affecting both capital and labor;
in the ethical field by the need felt for order, discipline,
obedience to the moral dictates of patriotism.
Fascism desires the State to be strong
and organic, based on broad foundations of popular support. The
Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than
in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth
of the country by means of its corporative, social, and educational
institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces
of the nation, organized in their respective associations,
circulate within the State. A State based on millions of individuals
who recognize its authority, feel its action, and are ready to serve
its ends is not the tyrannical state of a mediaeval lordling. It has
nothing in common with the despotic States existing prior to or
subsequent to 1789.
Far from crushing the individual, the
Fascist State multiplies his energies, just as in a regiment a
soldier is not diminished but multiplied by the number of his fellow
soldiers. The Fascist State organizes the nation, but it leaves the
individual adequate elbow room. It has curtailed useless or harmful
liberties while preserving those which are essential. In such matters
the individual cannot be the judge, but the State only. The Fascist
State is not indifferent to religious
phenomena in general nor does it maintain an attitude of indifference
to Roman Catholicism, the special, positive religion of Italians. The
State has not got a theology but it has a moral code. The Fascist
State sees in religion one of the deepest of spiritual manifestations
and for this reason it not only respects religion but defends and
protects it. The Fascist State does not attempt, as did Robespierre
at the height of the revolutionary delirium of the Convention, to set
up a "god” of its own; nor does it vainly seek, as does
Bolshevism, to efface God from the soul of man.
Fascism respects the God of ascetics,
saints, and heroes, and it also respects God as conceived by the
ingenuous and primitive heart of the people, the God to whom their
prayers are raised.
The Fascist State expresses the will to
exercise power and to command. Here the Roman tradition is embodied
in a conception of strength. Imperial power, as understood by the
Fascist doctrine, is not only territorial, or military, or
commercial; it is also spiritual and ethical. An imperial nation,
that is to say a nation a which directly or indirectly is a leader of
others, can exist without the need of conquering a single square mile
of territory. Fascism sees in the imperialistic spirit -- i.e. in the
tendency of nations to expand - a manifestation of their vitality. In
the opposite tendency, which would limit their interests to the home
country, it sees a symptom of decadence. Peoples who rise or rearise
are imperialistic; renunciation is characteristic of dying peoples.
The Fascist doctrine is that best suited to the tendencies and
feelings of a people which, like the Italian, after lying fallow
during centuries of foreign servitude, are now reasserting itself in
the world.
But imperialism implies discipline, the
coordination of efforts, a deep sense of duty and a spirit of
self-sacrifice. This explains many aspects of the practical activity
of the regime, and the direction taken by many of the forces of the
State, as also the severity which has to be exercised towards those
who would oppose this spontaneous and inevitable movement of XXth
century Italy by agitating outgrown ideologies of the XIXth century,
ideologies rejected wherever great experiments in political and
social transformations are being dared.
Never before have the peoples thirsted
for authority, direction, order, as they do now. If each age has its
doctrine, then innumerable symptoms indicate that the doctrine of our
age is the Fascist. That it is vital is shown by the fact that it has
aroused a faith; that this faith has conquered souls is shown by the
fact that Fascism can point to its fallen heroes and its martyrs.
Fascism has now acquired throughout the
world that universally which belongs to all doctrines which by
achieving self-expression represent a moment in the history of human
thought.
APPENDIX FOOTNOTES
1. Philosophic conception
(1) If Fascism does not wish to die or,
worse still, commit suicide, it must now provide itself with a
doctrine. Yet this shall not and must not be a robe of Nessus
clinging to us for all eternity, for tomorrow is some thing
mysterious and unforeseen. This doctrine shall be a norm to guide
political and individual action in our daily life.
I who have I dictated this doctrine, am
the first to realize that the modest tables of our laws and program
the theoretical and practical guidance of Fascism should be revised,
corrected, enlarged, developed, because already in parts they have
suffered injury at the hand of time. I believe the essence and
fundamentals of the doctrine are still to be found in the postulates
which throughout two years have acted as a call to arms for the
recruits of Italian Fascism. However, in taking those first
fundamental assumptions for a starting point, we must proceed to
carry our program into a vaster field. Italian Fascists, one and
all, should cooperate in this task, one of vital importance to
Fascism, and more especially those who belong to regions where with
and without agreement peaceful coexistence has been achieved between
two antagonistic movements.
The word I am about to use is a great
one, but indeed I do wish that during the two months which are still
to elapse before our National Assembly meets, the philosophy of
Fascism could be created. Milan is already contributing with the
first Fascist school of propaganda. It is not merely a question of
gathering elements for a program, to be used as a solid foundation
for the constitution of a party which must inevitably arise from the
Fascist movement; it is also a question of denying the silly tale
that Fascism is all made up of violent men. In point of fact among
Fascists there are many men who belong to the restless but meditative
class.
The new course taken by Fascist
activity will in no way diminish the fighting spirit typical of
Fascism. To furnish the mind with doctrines and creeds does not mean
to disarm, rather it signifies to strengthen our power of action,
and make us ever more conscious of our work. Soldiers who fight fully
conscious of the cause make the best of warriors. Fascism takes for
its own the twofold device of Mazzini : Thought and Action u. (Letter
to Michele Bianchi, written on August 27, 1921, for the opening of
the School of Fascist Culture and Propaganda in Milan, in Messaggi e
Proclami, Milano, Libreria d'Italia, 1929, P. 39).
Fascists must be placed in contact with
one another; their activity must be an activity of doctrine, an
activity of the spirit and of thought. Had our adversaries been
present at our meeting, they would have been convinced that Fascism
is not only action, but thought as well (Speech before the National
Council of the Fascist Party, August 8, 1924, in La Nuova Politica
dell'Italia, Milano, Alpes, 1928, p. 267).
(2) Today I hold that Fascism as an
idea, a doctrine, a realization, is universal; it is Italian in its
particular institutions, but it is universal in the spirit, nor could
it be otherwise. The spirit is universal by reason of its nature.
Therefore anyone may foresee a Fascist Europe. Drawing inspiration
for her institutions from the doctrine and practice of Fascism;
Europe , in other words, giving a Fascist turn to the solution of
problems which beset the modern State, the Twentieth Century State
which is very different from the States existing before 1789, and the
States formed immediately after. Today Fascism fills universal
requirements; Fascism solves the threefold problem of relations
between State and individual, between State and associations, between
associations and organized associations. (Message for the year 1
October 27, 1930, in Discorsi del 1930, Milano, Alpes, 1931, p. 211).
2. Spiritualized conception
(3) This political process is flanked
by a philosophic process. If it be true that matter was on the
altars for one century, today it is the spirit which takes its place.
All manifestations peculiar to the democratic spirit are consequently
repudiated: easygoingness, improvisation, the lack of a personal
sense of responsibility, the exaltation of numbers and of that
mysterious divinity called n The People a. All creations of the
spirit starting with that religious are coming to the fore, and
nobody dare keep up the attitude of anticlericalism which, for
several decades, was a favorite with Democracy in the Western world.
By saying that God is returning, we mean that spiritual values are
returning. (Da the parte va it mondo, in Tempi della Rivoluzione
Fascista, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 34).
There is a field reserved more to
meditation upon the supreme ends of life than to a research of these
ends. Consequently science starts from experience, but breaks out
fatally into philosophy and, in my opinion, philosophy alone can
enlighten science and lead to the universal idea. (To the Congress of
Science at Bologna , October 31, 19,26, in Discorsidel 1926. Milano,
Alpes, 1927, p. 268).
In order to understand the Fascist
movement one must first appreciate the underlying spiritual
phenomenon in all its vastness and depth. The manifestations of the
movement have been of a powerful and decisive nature, but one should
go further. In point of fact Italian Fascism has not only been a
political revolt against weak and incapable governments who had
allowed State authority to decay and were threatening to arrest the
progress of the country, but also a spiritual revolt against old
ideas which had corrupted the sacred principles of religion, of
faith, of country. Fascism, therefore, has been a revolt of the
people. (Message to the British people; January 5, 1924, in Messaggi
e Proclami, Milano, Libreria d' Italia, 1929, p. 107).
3. Positive conception of life as a
struggle
(4) Struggle is at the origin of all
things, for life is full of contrasts: there is love and hatred,
white and black, day and night, good and evil; and until these
contrasts achieve balance, struggle fatefully remains at the root of
human nature. However, it is good for it to be so. Today we can
indulge in wars, economic battles, conflicts of ideas, but if a day
came to pass when struggle ceased to exist, that day would be tinged
with melancholy; it would be a day of ruin, the day of ending. But
thaver discloses new horizons. By attempting to restore calm, peace,
tranquility, or. A would be fighting the tendencies of the present
period of dynamism. Ore must be prepared for other struggles and for
other surprises. Peace will only come when people surrender to a
Christian dream of universal brotherhood, when they can hold out
hands across the ocean and over the mountains. Personally I do not
believe very much in these idealisms, but I do not exclude them for I
exclude nothing. (At the Politeama Rossetti, Trieste, September 20,
1920 in Discorsi Politici, Milano, Stab. Tipografico del « Popolo d'
Italia » , 1921, p. 107).
(5) For me the honor of nations
consists in the contribution they have severally made to human
civilization. (E. Ludwig, Talks with Mussolini, London, Allen and
Unwin, 1932, p. 199)
4. Ethical conception
I called the organization Fasci
Italiani Di Combatimento. This hard metallic name compromised the
whole program of Fascism as I dreamed it. Comrades, this is still our
program: fight. Life for the Fascist is a continuous, ceaseless
fight, which we accept with ease, with great courage, with the
necessary intrepidity. (On the VIIth anniversary of the Foundation of
the Fasci, March 28, 1926, in Discorsi del 1926, Milano, Alpes, 7,
p.98 You touch the core of Fascist philosophy. When recently a
Finnish philosopher asked me to expound to him the significance of
Fascism in one sentence, I wrote in German: ((We are against the
“easy life"! (E. Ludwig: Talks with Mussolini, London, Allen
and Unwin, 1932, p. 190).
5. Religious conception
(7) If Fascism were not a creed, how
could it endow its followers with courage and stoicism only a creed
which has soared to the heights of religion can inspire such words as
passed the lips, now lifeless alas, of Federico Florio. (Legami di
Sangue, in Diuturna, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 256).
6. Historical and realistic conception
(8) Tradition certainly is one of the
greatest spiritual forces of a people, inasmuch as it is a successive
and constant creation of their soul. (Breve Preludio, in Tempi della
Rivoluzione Fascista, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 13)
(9) Our temperament leads us to
appraise the concrete aspect of problems, rather than their
ideological or mystical sublimation. Therefore we easily regain our
balance. (Aspetti del Dramma, in Diuturna, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p.
86).
Our battle is an ungrateful one, yet it
is a beautiful battle since it compels us to count only upon our own
forces. Revealed truths we have torn to shreds, dogmas we have spat
upon, we have rejected all theories of paradise, we have baffled
charlatans white, red, black charlatans who placed miraculous drugs
on the market to give a happiness n to mankind. We do not believe in
program, in plans, in saints or apostles, above all we believe not in
happiness, in salvation, in the Promised Land. (Diuturna, Milano,
Alpes, 1930, p. 223).
We do not believe in a single solution,
be it economical, political or moral, a linear solution of the
problems of life, because of illustrious choristers from all the
sacristies life is not linear and can never be reduced to a segment
traced by primordial needs. (Navigare necesse, in Diuturna, Milano,
Alpes, 1930, p. 233).
(10) We are not and do not wish to be
motionless mummies, with faces perpetually turned towards the same
horizon, nor do we wish to shut ourselves up within the narrow hedges
of subversive bigotry, where formulas, like prayers of a professed
religion, are muttered mechanically. We are men, living men, who wish
to give our contribution, however 'modest, to the creation of
history. (Audacia, in Diu turna, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p.233)
We uphold moral and traditional values
which Socialism neglects or despises; but, above all, Fascism has a
horror of anything implying an arbitrary mortgage on the mysterious
future. (Dopo due anni, in Diuturna, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 242).
In spite of the theories of
conservation and renovation, of tradition and progress expounded by
the right and the left, we do not cling desperately to the past as to
a last board of salvation: yet we do not dash headlong into the
seductive mists of the future. (Breve preludio, in Diuturna, Milano,
Alpes, 1930, p. 14) Negation, eternal immobility, mean damnation. I
am all for motion. I am, one who marches on (E. Ludwig, Talks with
Mussolini, Lot Jon, Allen and Unwin, 1932, p. 203).
7. The individual and liberty
(11) We were the first to state, in the
face of demo liberal individualism, that the individual exists only
in so far as he is within the State and subjected to the requirements
of the state and that, as civilization assumes aspects which grow
more and more complicated, individual freedom becomes more and more
restricted. (To the General staff Conference of Fascism, in Discorsi
del 1929, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 280).
The sense of the state grows within the
consciousness of Italians, for they feel that the state alone is the
irreplaceable safeguard of their unit and independence; that the
state alone represents continuity into the future of their stock and
their history. (Message on the VIIth all anniversary, October 25,
1929, Discorsi del 1929, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 300).
If, in the course of the past eight
years, we have made such astounding progress, you may well think
suppose and foresee that in the course of the next fifty or eighty
years the onward trend of Italy, of this Italy we feel to be so
powerful, so full of vital fluid, will really be grandiose. It will
be so especially if concord lasts among citizens, if the State
continues to be sole arbitrator in political and social conflicts, if
all remains within the state and nothing outside the State, because
it is impossible to conceive any individual existing outside the
State unless he be a savage whose home is in the solitude of she
sandy desert. (Speech before the Senate, May 12, 1928, in Discorsi
del 1928, Milano, Alpes, 1929, p. 109).
Fascism has restored to the State its
sovereign functions by claiming its absolute ethical meaning, against
the egotism of classes and categories; to the Government of the
state, which was reduced to a mere instrument of electoral
assemblies, it has restored dignity, as representing the personality
of the state and its power of Empire. It has rescued State
administration from the weight of factions and party interests (To
the council of state, December 22, 1928, in Discorsi Del 1928,
Milano, Alpes, 1929 p.328).
(12) Let no one think of denying the
moral character of Fascism. For I should be ashamed to speak from
this tribune if I did not feel that I represent the moral and
spiritual powers of the state. What would the state be if it did not
possess a spirit of its own, and a morality of its own, which lend
power to the laws in virtue of which the state is obeyed by its
citizens?
The Fascist state claims its ethical
character: it is Catholic but above all it is Fascist, in fact it is
exclusively and essentially Fascist. Catholicism completes Fascism,
and this we openly declare, but let no one think they can turn the
tables on us, under cover of metaphysics or philosophy. (To the
Chamber of Deputies, May 13, 1929, in Discorsi del 1929, Milano,
Alpes, 1930, p. 182).
A State which is fully aware of its
mission and represents a people which are marching on; a state which
necessarily transforms the people even in their physical aspect. In
order to be something more than a mere administrator, the State must
utter great words, expound great ideas and place great problems
before this people (Di scorsi del 1929, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p.
183).
(13) The concept of freedom is not
absolute because nothing is ever absolute in life. Freedom is not a
right, it is a duty. It is not a gift, it is a conquest; it is not
equality, it is a privilege. The concept of freedom changes with the
passing of time. There is a freedom in times of peace which is not
the freedom of times of war. There is a freedom in times of
prosperity which is not a freedom to be allowed in times of poverty.
(Fifth anniversary of the foundation of the Fasci di Combattimento,
March 24, 1924, in La nuova politica dell'Italia, vol. III, Milano,
Alpes, 1925, p. 30).
In our state the individual is not
deprived of freedom. In fact, he has greater liberty than an isolated
man, because the state protects him and he is part of the State.
Isolated man is without defence. (E. Ludwig, Talks with Mussolini,
London, Allen and Unwin, 1932, p. 129).
(14) Today we may tell the world of the
creation of the powerful united State of Italy, ranging from the Alps
to Sicily; this State is expressed by a well-organized, centralized,
unitarian democracy, where people circulate at case. Indeed,
gentlemen, you admit the people into the citadel of the State and the
people will defend it, if you close them out, the people will assault
it. (speech before the Chamber of Deputies, May 26, 1927, in Discorsi
del 1927, Milano, Alpes, 1928, p. 159).
In the Fascist regime the unity of
classes, the political, social and coral unity of the Italian people
is realized within the state, and only within the Fascist state.
(speech before the Chamber of Deputies,
December 9, 1928, in Discorsi del 1928,
Milano, Alpes, 1929, p. 333).
8. Conception of a corporative state
(15) We have created the united state
of Italy remember that since the Empire Italy had not been a united
state. Here I wish to reaffirm solemnly our doctrine of the State.
Here I wish to reaffirm with no weaker energy, the formula I
expounded at the scala in Milan everything in the state, nothing
against the State, nothing outside the state. (speech before the
Chamber of Deputies, May 26, 1927, Discorsi del 1927, Milano, Alpes,
1928, p. 157).
(16) We are, in other words, a state
which controls all forces acting in nature. We control political
forces, we control moral forces we control economic forces, therefore
we are a full-blown Corporative state. We stand for a new principle
in the world, we stand for sheer, categorical, definitive antithesis
to the world of democracy, plutocracy, free-masonry, to the world
which still abides by the fundamental principles laid down in 1789.
(Speech before the new National Directory of the Party, April 7,
1926, in Discorsi del 1926, Milano, Alpes, 1927, p. 120).
The Ministry of Corporations is not a
bureaucratic organ, nor does it wish to exercise the functions of
syndical organizations which are necessarily independent, since they
aim at organizing, selecting and improving the members of syndicates.
The Ministry of Corporations is an institution in virtue of which, in
the centre and outside, integral corporation becomes an accomplished
fact, where balance is achieved between interests and forces of the
economic world. Such a glance is only possible within the sphere of
the state, because the state alone transcends the contrasting
interests of groups and individuals, in view of co-coordinating them
to achieve higher aims. The achievement of these aims is speeded up
by the fact that all economic organizations, acknowledged,
safeguarded and supported by the Corporative State, exist within the
orbit of Fascism; in other terms they accept the conception of
Fascism in theory and in practice. (speech at the opening of the
Ministry of Corporations, July 31, 1926, in Discorsi del 1926,
Milano, Alpes, 1927, p. 250).
We have constituted a Corporative and
Fascist state, the state of national society, a State which
concentrates, controls, harmonizes and tempers the interests of all
social classes, which are thereby protected in equal measure.
Whereas, during the years of demo-liberal regime, labour looked with
diffidence upon the state, was, in fact, outside the State and
against the state, and considered the state an enemy of every day and
every hour, there is not one working Italian today who does not seek
a place in his Corporation or federation, who does not wish to be a
living atom of that great, immense, living organization which is the
national Corporate State of Fascism. (On the Fourth Anniversary of
the March on Rome, October 28, 1926, in Discorsi del 1926, Milano,
Alpes, 1927, p. 340).
9. Democracy
(17) The war was revolutionary, in the
sense that with streams of blood it did away with the century of
Democracy, the century of number, the century of majorities and of
quantities. (Da che parte va il Mondo, in Tempi della Rivoluzione
Fascista, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 37)
(18) Cf. note 13.
(19) Race: it is a feeling and not a
reality; 95 %, a feeling. (E. Ludwig, Talks with Mussolini, London,
Allen and Unwin, 1932, p. 75).
10. Conception of the state
(20) A nation exists inasmuch as it is
a people. A people rise inasmuch as they are numerous, hard working
and well regulated. Power is the outcome of this threefold principle.
(To the General Assembly of the Party, March lo, 1929, in Discorsi
del 1929, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 24).
Fascism does not deny the State;
Fascism maintains that a civic society, national or imperial, cannot
be conceived unless in the form of a State (Stab, anti-Slato,
Fascismo, in Tempi della Rivoluzione Fascista, Milano, Alpes,
1930, p. 94).
For us the Nation is mainly spirit and
not only territory. There are States which owned immense territories
and yet left no trace in the history of mankind. Neither is it a
question of number, because there have been, in history, small,
microscopic States, which left immortal, imperishable documents in
art and philosophy. The greatness of a nation is the compound of
all these virtues and conditions. A nation is great when the power of
the spirit is translated into reality. (Speech at Naples, October 24,
1922, in Discorsi della Rivoluzione, Milano, Alpes, 1928, p. 103). We
wish to unity the nation within the sovereign State, which is above
everyone rid can afford to be against everyone, since it represents
the moral continuity of the nation in history. Without the State
there is no nation. There are, merely. human aggregations. subject to
all the disintegration's which history may inflict upon them. (Speech
before the National Council of the Fascist Party, August 8, 1924, in
La Nuova Politica dell'Italia, vol. III; Milano, Alpes, 1928, p.
269).
11. Dynamic reality
(21) I believe that if a people wish to
live, they should develop a will to power, otherwise they vegetate,
live miserably and become prey to a stronger people, in whom this
will to power is developed to a higher degree. (Speech to the Senate,
May 28, 1926).
(22) It is Fascism which has
refashioned the character of the Italians, removing impurity from our
souls, tempering us to all sacrifices, restoring the true aspect of
strength and beauty to our Italian face. (Speech delivered at Pisa ,
May 25, 1926, in Discorsi del 1926,
Milano, Alpes, 1927, p. 193).
It is not out of place to illustrate
the intrinsic character and profound significance of the Fascist
Levy. It is not merely a ceremony, but a very important stage in the
system of education and integral preparation of Italian men which the
Fascist revolution considers one of the fundamental duties of the
State: fundamental indeed, for if the State does not fulfill this
duty or in any way accepts to place it under discussion, the State
merely and simply forfeits its right to exist. (Speech before the
Chamber of Deputies, May 28, 1928, in Discorsi del 1928, Milano,
Alpes, 1929, p. 68).
TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.
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