GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

644 ETHICS AND POLITICS: THE MODERNS
Tyranny, according to Major Barnes, is the triumph of
evil; freedom is emancipation from sin, a sentiment which
T. H. Green might have echoed. Government ought,
therefore, to be in the hands of the best available people,
that is to say of those people who know die moral law,
since only under such men will the mass escape tyranny
and achieve freedom. Just as it is the business of " the best "
to rule in accordance with the moral law, so the State
may be concaved to have a moral object, namely, that
of fulfilling the moral law, from which it follows that, since
a government which is baaed upon a sectional, party or
majority vote will be concerned with the promotion of
selfish interests, such a government will negate the object
of the State. Hence democracy, majority rule and the party
system must be rejected and any activity which threatens
the realization by the State of its true end, namely, that
of fulfilling the moral law, must be prohibited. Conse-
quently government has a "positive duty" I am quoting
from Major Barnes "in accordance with such lights as
it possesses, to aim at stamping out even if prudence
dictates that the process should be gradual by the sanction
of its laws every form of activity which is anti-social, anti-
patriotic, anti-moral and anti-religious'*.
Following Rousseau and the idealist theory of the
State, Italian Fascism proceeds to identify the will to
discern and to apply the moral law, the will, that is, to act
rightly, with the General Will. Hence those who discern
and apply the moral law are the repositories and inter-
preters of the General Will. Government, then, should
be the prerogative of "the best " in a community. Imbued
by nature with a high moral purpose, trained so to discipline
themselves that they may be able to realize the purpose
that imbues them, they will direct the policy of die State
in such a way as to promote the reign of die moral law
among the citizens who are subject to their government.
Such are the fundamental ethical principles from which
Italian Fascism derives the political principle of aristocratic
government*