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

THEORY Of FASCISM 66 1
reveals, they mil so frame the laws and ordinances of the
State that they manifest the Forms of goodness and justice.
Obeying these law, subscribing to these ordinances, men will
realize the degree of goodness and justice which is possible
to ordinary human beings living on the earth. Fascist
leaders, on the contrary, select themselves; they do, indeed,
make claim to know what is good, but since no standard is
provided by reference to which their claim may be tested,
they manifest their superiority by determination and skill
in achieving and ruthlessness in exercising power. Power
is treated as if both for the individual and the State it
were itself a good. This view is explicitly maintained in
Nietzsche's philosophy, and is supported in the contemporary
world by theories of racial superiority which
maintain that certain peoples are racially superior to
others and ought, therefore, ta rule over them.
Secondly, the end for which government is exercised
in Plato's State is the well-being of the community as a
whole. This well-being is envisaged in terms of wisdom
for the few and justice for the many. Justice, the contented
doing of the job for which he is fitted, is the highest
morality of which the ordinary man is capable; but, Plato
would add, in living according to the laws and ordinances
which the Guardians have framed for him, he also achieves
such happiness as appertains to his nature; and that it
should enable him to do so is one of the objects, perhaps
the chief object, of the State, It is not true, then, to say
that Plato treats the ordinary man only as a means;
he is prepared to regard his welfiure as an end, though as
an end of inferior value.
The object for which rule is exercised in a fescist State
is the enhancement of the power of the few, the many
being regarded merely as the raw material over which the
power of the few is exercised and the means through which
it is achieved. As Fichte puts it, "The ignoble man who only
exists for the sake of the other must likewise sacrifice
himself". Thus, for Fascism, the subordination of the
individual to something other than himself becomes an