the State. It is perfectly logical that a new doctrine should utilise
the vital elements of other doctrines. No doctrine was ever born
entirely new and shining, never seen before. No doctrine can boast of
absolute "originality." Each doctrine is bound historically to
doctrines which went before, to doctrines yet to come. Thus the
scientific Socialism of Marx is bound to the Utopian Socialism of
Fourier, of Owen, of Saint-Simon; thus the Liberalism of 1800 is
linked with the movement of 1700. Thus Democratic doctrines are bound
to the Encyclopaedists. Each doctrine tends to direct human activity
towards a definite object; but the activity of man reacts upon the
doctrine, transforms it and adapts it to new requirements, or
overcomes it. Doctrine therefore should be an act of life and not an
academy of words. In this lie the pragmatic veins of Fascism, its will
to power, its will to be, its position with regard to "violence" and
its value.


10. The Value and Mission of the State.

The capital point of the Fascist doctrine is the conception of the
State, its essence, the work to be accomplished, its final aims. In
the conception of Fascism, the State is an absolute before which
individuals and groups are relative. Individuals and groups are
"conceivable" inasmuch as they are in the State. The Liberal State
does not direct the movement and the material and spiritual evolution
of collectivity, but limits itself to recording the results; the
Fascist State has its conscious conviction, a will of its own, and for
this reason it is called an "ethical" State.

In 1929 at the first quinquiennial assembly of the Regime, I said: "In