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.”
[…] 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 may 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 developments 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. If liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells
government.
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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.
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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 20 th
century Italy
by agitating outgrown ideologies of the 19 th
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.
Carl Cohen ed., Communism, Fascism and Democracy: The Theoretical Foundations (New York 1972) pp. 328-339.