THE FASCIST 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 Maître 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 19 th
century was the century of
socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the 20 th
century must also be the
century of socialism, liberalism, democracy. Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are free
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to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the ” right “, a Fascist century.
If the 19 th
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 19 th
century traces its
origin back to the illuministic movement of the 18 th
century 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
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violence, and its value.