/pol/ - International /Pol/itics & /Bant/er

1
"The Doctrine of Fascism" (1932)
by Benito Mussolini
ike 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. 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. 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.
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. 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 selfsacrifice, 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 19th century. Antipositivistic 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.
Hence the high value of culture in all its forms
(artistic, religious, scientific) 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.
The Fascist conception of life is a religious one, 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.
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