34
PARTISAN REVIEW
being possible, so that they should not disturb the higher manifesta–
tions of ·the spirit with their complaints and tumults." The spirit,
gentlemen, is at work even when it does not show itself in the street.
Hitler has defined the idea as "the pole-star of searching humanity."
The masses must be given something other than dry arguments. Hitler
said in one of
his
speeches that it was necessary to create "a new faith
for the great searching and erring masses, which would not desert
them in
this
time of bewilderment, a faith by which they would swear
and build." It would therefore be wrong to see something tyrannical
and blind in the relations between leader and led. Everyone has
his
own function.The function of the masses is instinct, that of the leader
is clear sight. Nevertheless the path is a common one. "For the re–
markable thing about all great reforms," Hitler wrote in
M ein Kampf,
"is that at first they have only one single champion, though many
millions of supporters. Their goal has often been the deepest, most
heart-felt aspiration of hundreds of thousands for centuries, until
someone has come forward as its"\ herald and standard-bearer, and
helped it forward to victory clothed in a new idea." Is
this
a pe–
culiarity of Fascism or National-Socialism? Not at all. Goebbels stated
in
Signale der neuen Zeit:
"History shows that the great world move–
ments have always arisen when the leaders have been able to unite
their followers on a quite simple and easily intelligible point." It is
true that Marx claimed to give a scientific basis to the Socialist move–
ment, and the latter may even have been of some use to the Socialist
leaders, but even the Socialists have always used simple and primitive
slogans to set the masses in motion. The German Communist Clara
Zetkin says in one of her books that she once asked Lenin if he did
not believe that the illiteracy of the Russian peasants had aided the
victory of Bolshevism, and Lenin promptly agreed. Fundamentally
Fascism behaves in the same way. "We had no intention," Goebbels
wrote in
Wesen und Gestalt des Nationalsozialismus,
"of basing our
views on a scientific foundation. Our object was to put them into
practice. Posterity will recognize our ideas from our deeds, and not the
reverse." The achievements of Fascism in Europe are already so tre–
mendous that there is abundant material for its scientific justification.
I am convinced that in every country in which a Fascist party takes
the field in future it
will
appeal not only to the instinct of the masses
but also to the scientific clarity that results from experience. Corp–
orativism, for example, is a system of the organization of produc–
tion the superiority of which can be scientifically demonstrated.
Fascism showed signs of uncertainty at first, and it has proceeded
experimentally in various fields, but it discovered its characteristic
institutions in the end. Why should we refuse to deduce scientific prin-
