38
PARTISAN REVIEW
THOMAS THE CYNIC
I do. Mind you, Fascist leaders have not always resisted the
temptation of engaging in controversy, and have not always refrained
from putting forward political ideas and even practical proposals for
reforms. It was not thanks to these, however, that they triumphed.
The latter are the most ephemeral of their writings, and are of no in–
terest or value now, except to instruct the reader about fleeting mo–
ments in the development of Fascism. In Mussolini's writings you
will find the most contradictory statements even on such matters as
the fundamental conception of the state. "Down with the state in all
its forms and all its incarnations; the state of yesterday, of today, and
of tomorrow; the bourgeois state and the Socialist state. Nothing is
left for us, the last survivors of individualism, if we are to pass through
the present night and that of tomorrow, save the absurd but always
C!Jnsolatory religion of Anarchy." That is what he wrote in April,
1920. In August, 1922, he wrote that "the century of democracy is
finished. An aristocratic century, our century, succeeds the last. The
state of the many ends by again becoming the state of the few. The
new generations forbid democracy to eflcumber the path to the
future with its cadaverous mass." After the conquest of power he
sounded a different note. "For Fascism," he wrote, "the state is the
absolute, before which individuals and groups are only relative."
Such was the end of the parabola. I hope no one will dare to try
to explain Mussolini's success by the clarity of his ideas on the sub–
ject of the state. Hitler's attitude ro· the state differs froin that of
Mussolini's. "The state is a means to an end," according to Hitler.
"That end is the maintenance of the race." But these are purely verbal
differences, by which the actual totalitarian character of the two
states is in no way affected. In every other political ideology the
thing of fundamental importance is the conception of the state.
But in Fascist ideology of the period prior to the conquest of power
it is of only secondary importance. Contradictory statements are
made about it, and it is spoken of in vague mythological terms. Ro–
senberg in
Blut und Ehre
defined National-Socialism as "a move–
ment of the people based on a new and yet ancient and long-estab–
lished conception of blood-value." The blood-myth is "the secret
harmony between blood and soul." Being secret, it is unanswerable.
In the eyes of the faithful there is a supernatural quality about the
atmosphere in which the mysteries are celebrated. "It is almost a
transcendental world in which Hitler day by day fulfills his work
for Germany," Dietrich wrote. Mussolini for his part declared that
"we wish to save the values." He did not explain what values, so
everyone could think that they referred to himself. "We are against
