explain the history of mankind
REJECTION OF MARXISM
Such a conception of life makes Fascism the resolute negation of the doctrine underlying
Marxian socialism, the doctrine of the so-called scientific and historic materialism which would
explain the history of mankind in terms of 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.