Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

active expression of that faculty or favourable circumstances permit it.
From these facts the following conclusions may be drawn:
The State is only a means to an end. Its end and its purpose is to preserve and promote a
community of human beings who are physically as well as spiritually kindred. Above all, it
must preserve the existence of the race, thereby providing the indispensable condition for the
free development of all the forces dormant in this race. A great part of these faculties will
always have to be employed in the first place to maintain the physical existence of the race,
and only a small portion will be free to work in the field of intellectual progress. But, as a
matter of fact, the one is always the necessary counterpart of the other.
Those States which do not serve this purpose have no justification for their existence. They
are monstrosities. The fact that they do exist is no more of a justification than the successful
raids carried out by a band of pirates can be considered a justification of piracy.
We National Socialists, who are fighting for a new philosophy of life must never take our
stand on the famous 'basis of facts', and especially not on mistaken facts. If we did so, we
should cease to be the protagonists of a new and great idea and would become slaves in the
service of the fallacy which is dominant today. We must make a clear-cut distinction between
the vessel and its contents. The State is only the vessel and the race is what it contains. The
vessel can have a meaning only if it preserves and safeguards the contents. Otherwise it is
worthless.
Hence the supreme purpose of the folkish State is to guard and preserve those original racial
elements which, through their work in the cultural field, create that beauty and dignity
which are characteristic of a higher mankind. We, as Aryans, can consider the State only as
the living organism of a people, an organism which does not merely maintain the existence of
a people, but functions in such a way as to lead its people to a position of supreme liberty by
the progressive development of the intellectual and cultural faculties.
What they want to impose upon us as a State today is in most cases nothing but a
monstrosity, the product of a profound human aberration which brings untold suffering in
its train.
We National Socialists know that in holding these views we take up a revolutionary stand in
the world of today and that we are branded as revolutionaries. But our views and our
conduct will not be determined by the approbation or disapprobation of our contemporaries,
but only by our duty to follow a truth which we have acknowledged. In doing this we have
reason to believe that posterity will have a clearer insight, and will not only understand the
work we are doing today, but will also ratify it as the right work and will exalt it accordingly.
On these principles we National Socialists base our standards of value in appraising a State.
This value will be relative when viewed from the particular standpoint of the individual
nation, but it will be absolute when considered from the standpoint of humanity as a whole.
In other words, this means:
The quality of a State can never be judged by the level of its culture or the degree of
importance which the outside world attaches to its power, but that its excellence must be
judged by the degree to which its institutions serve the racial stock which belongs to it.
A State may be considered as a model example if it adequately serves not only the vital needs
of the racial stock it represents but if it actually assures by its own existence the preservation
of this same racial stock, no matter what general cultural significance this statal institution
may have in the eyes of the rest of the world. For it is not the task of the State to create
human capabilities, but only to assure free scope for the exercise of capabilities that already