READINGS ON FASCISM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM Selected by Members of the Department of Philosophy, University of Colorado ALAN SWALLOW Denver PREFATORY NOTE The ensuing readings are presented to encourage the student to clarify his thinking on social philosophy. He will accordingly need to determine whether the readings contain a more or less coherent body of ideas which constitutes a social philosophy. He will also need to raise the more far-reaching question whether the ideas are acceptable. To arrive at any satisfactory answer to this latter question, he will necessarily have to compare the ideas of fascism and their practical meanings with the alternatives, real and ideal, that are the substance of live philosophical issues. CONTENTS The Doctrine of Fascism by Benito Mussolini The Political Doctrine of Fascism by Alfredo Rocco The Philosophic Basis of Fascism by Giovanni Gentile National Socialism by Raymond E. Murphy, Francis B. Stevens, Howard Trivers, Joseph M. Roland National-Socialism and Medicine by Dr. F. Hamburger Selected Bibliography THE DOCTRINE OF FASCISM By BENITO MUSSOLINI From the ENCYCLOPEDIA ITALIANA. Vol. XIV The English translation of the "Fundamental Ideas" is by Mr. I.S. Munro, reprinted by his kind permission from "Fascism to World-Power" (Alexander Maclehose, London, 1933). FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS. 1. Philosophic Conception. Like every concrete political conception, Fascism is thought and action. It is action with an inherent doctrine which, arising out of a given system of historic forces, is inserted in it and works on it from within. It has therefore a form co-related to the contingencies of time and place; but it has at the same time an ideal content which elevates it into a formula of truth in the higher region of the history of thought. There is no way of exercising a spiritual influence on the things of the world by means of a human will-power commanding the wills of others, without first having a clear conception of the particular and transient reality on which the will-power must act, and without also having a clear conception of the universal and permanent reality in which the particular and transient reality has its life and being. To know men we must have a knowledge of man; and to have a knowledge of man we must know the reality of things and their laws. There can be no conception of a State which is not fundamentally a conception of Life. It is a philosophy or intuition, a system of ideas which evolves itself into a system of logical contraction, or which concentrates itself in a vision or in a faith, but which is always, at least virtually, an organic conception of the world. 2. Spiritualised Conception.