On the Differences between the Fascist and Nazi Conception of the State
(APRIL 1941)
As many people know, one point where the Fascist conception differs from
the National Socialist one concerns the idea of the state in its relation to the idea
of the nation. The goal of these notes is to characterise this difference, to see to
what point it is real and finally to examine and clarify the viewpoint from which
a real or possible difference can be overcome. Naturally, this is a question of a
simple contribution to a complicated problem, which deserves a fuller treatment.
Fascism affirms the ‘moral personality’ of the state and the priority of the
state before the nation. We can refer to well-known expressions of the Duce
himself: ‘Fascism reaffirms the State as the only true expression of the
individual’; ‘for the Fascist, all is comprised in the State and spiritual or human
exists — much less has any value — outside the State’; ‘the nation does not beget
the State, according to the decrepit naturalistic concept which was used as a basis
for the publicists of the national states in the Nineteenth century. On the
contrary, the nation is created by the State, which gives the people, conscious of
their own moral unity, the will, and thereby an effective existence’; ‘The Fascist
state organises the nation’.[1]
About the ‘people’ so dear to democratic ideology, Mussolini speaks as of a
‘mysterious entity’, in the sense of a myth, of something flimsy and unreliable.
This is why he says that ‘regimes can be called democratic which, from time to
time, give the people the illusion of being sovereign, whereas the real and
effective sovereignty exists in other, and very often secret and irresponsible
forces’.[2] Finally, Mussolini reaffirms the spirituality of the state: ‘The State as
conceived and enacted by Fascism is a spiritual and moral fact since it gives
concrete form to the political, juridical and economical organization of the
country. Furthermore this organization as it rises and develops, is a
manifestation of the spirit’.[3] ‘The State, inasmuch as it transcends the short
limits of individual lives, represents the immanent conscience of the nation.’[4]
‘The Fascist State, the highest and the most powerful form of personality is a
force, but a spiritual one. It reassumes all the forms of the moral and intellectual
life of man.’[5] In this sense, Mussolini speaks of the state as of a form of the
nation’s ‘entelechy’.’ It is the ‘soul of the soul’. ‘It is inner form and norm.’
We have intentionally taken these expressions from Mussolini’s ‘Doctrine of
Fascism’.[6] It is therefore a question of fundamental official views, not of phrases
taken from speeches delivered on one occasion or another.
Passing now to the National Socialist conception, we shall refer equally
directly to the words of Hitler that are contained in Mein Kampf. It is necessary,
however, to make an etymological preface concerning the meaning of the
German word Volk, a word that has various connotations. It can mean nation,
people, stock, and even race. ‘People as race’ would perhaps be the most suitable
translation. In contrast with the Fascist conception, the National Socialist one is
characterised by an emphasis given to the Volk, the people, and the race, as
opposed to the state. Hitler writes, ‘[T]he State is not an end in itself but the
means to an end. It is the preliminary condition under which alone a higher
form of human civilization can be developed, but it is not the source of such a
development. This is to be sought exclusively in the actual existence of a race
which is endowed with the gift of cultural creativeness. There may be hundreds
of excellent States on this earth, and yet if the Aryan, who is the creator and
custodian of civilization, should disappear, all culture that is on an adequate level
with the spiritual needs of the superior nations today would also disappear.’[7]
‘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.’[8] Hitler continues, ‘The
vessel can have a meaning only if it preserves and safeguards the contents.
Otherwise it is worthless. Hence the supreme purpose of the ethnical State is to
guard and preserve those racial elements which, through their work in the
cultural field, create that beauty and dignity which are characteristic of a higher
mankind.’[9] On the other hand, a state can be described as not corresponding to
its mission, and therefore evil, when, ‘in spite of the existence of a high cultural
level, it dooms to destruction the bearers of that culture by breaking up their
racial uniformity’.[10]
Here, naturally, we can notice a certain repositioning of the problem. It is less
a question of the state per se than of the human material destined to play the
most important part in it. In all events, the negation of the personality of the
state is clear here, since it is conceived as the simple tool of the Volk, the peoplerace.
This negation is reflected in the lack of a true authority, raised high over the
nation. Dux[11] and Führer are usually considered as analogous expressions. They
are analogous from the etymological viewpoint, because the Latin ducere, from
which Dux comes, corresponds to German führen, from which Führer. There is,
however, a difference.
Let us disregard the fact that the Fascist Dux is the head of the government,
not the head of state, since this latter function belongs to the monarchy, which
represents the stability and continuity of the government, of the stock, and
tradition. Even ignoring this fact, the Führer is rather different from the Dux
because he has the authority — literally — of a ‘guide’. He is less someone who
dominates and more someone who guides or directs. He is less someone who
creates than someone who interprets and stands at the head of a ‘people’,
assuming this function almost through a mandate and common agreement. Die
Weihe des Führertums ist das Volk.[12] This phrase characterises this state of
affairs: the Führer draws his legitimacy and authority from the Volk. This is why
in Italy — with good reason — the word ‘socialism’ always preserves a suspect
and unpleasant connotation, which it does not have in Germany, where it figures
in the name of the Party, which is called — let us not forget it — National
Socialist, i.e., national and socialist.
It is worthwhile to examine this difference between the two ideologies in the
area of law. Point 19 of the Nazi Party’s platform contains the following words:
‘We ask that a German common law replace Roman law, the slave of a
materialistic world order.’[13] In order to understand what ‘Roman law’ means
here, we refer to the view of Helmut Nicolai.[14] For Nicolai, Rome at its origins
acknowledged a law still permeated with virility and ethical responsibility, but
the mixing of blood and races in an ethnic chaos took place in Rome’s first
period. On top of this now ruined substance, covered with Levantines, Africans,
and Metics,[15] rose the Roman imperium like an enormous, soulless state
machine. Next to it, no longer possessing any connection with blood, ‘Roman
law’ took form. This ‘Roman’ law is therefore supposed to rest on a political
unity that is foreign to peoples and rules them from outside. It developed on
positivistic, rationalistic, and universalistic bases, with abstract formulations of
laws as rigid in the letter as they were arbitrary and easy to disregard in any
practical terms. ‘In the Roman juridical conception’ — Nicolai continues — ‘law
is what the arbitrarily discriminating power of the state decrees. In the racist
conception, on the other hand, law is an eternal ethical greatness that stands
above the powers of the state and cannot be changed by the state. In the Roman
conception, right is what stands in the law — positum, whence “positivism”. In
the racist conception, law is only what conforms to an eternal juridical idea. In
the first conception, what can be justified with the letter is legal; form yields place
to content. The star that guides us in the first is conformity to paragraphs; in the
second it is conscience.’ Naturally, it is not a question of the consciousness of
natural law, which is general and equal for all, but a consciousness that is
differentiated and conditioned by race.
Let us therefore return to race as the source of juridical forms, and so also
of whatever ‘positive’ element exists in the state structure. The consequence is a
curious interaction between law and racism — racism as race hygiene. This is the
reason for the motto: Verteidigung der Rasse durch das Recht — that is, defence
of the race by means of the law. Already in 1926, the German Minister of Justice,
Hans Frank, proclaimed as law ‘everything that works for the advantage of the
Volk, the people-race’ and as ‘anti-law everything that is harmful to it’. Falk
Ruttke[16] goes even further. ‘More than defending the race by means of law, it is
a question of consolidating and reinforcing German blood with respect to the
theory of race and heredity’, since, by speaking this way, the active element of the
measures to be taken would be much more prominent than a purely defensive
one. This point is a logical consequence of removing the positive element from
the idea of law. Alfred Rosenberg had already mentioned this ancient Indo-
Aryan expression: ‘Law and unlaw do not walk around and say: We are this. Law
is what Aryan men discover to be right.’[17] He then added, ‘This is an allusion to
a primordial wisdom forgotten in the present day that law is a blood related
scheme. It is a system of religion and art. It is linked for eternity to a certain
blood with which it appears and with which it passes away.’[18] From this
viewpoint, Ruttke is right when he says that it is not up to the law to defend the
race, but rather from the reintegration of the race the reintegration of the law
must follow. Only the man who is pure of race will be able to have the right sense
of the law — naturally, not law in general, but the law that is adapted to the
people to which he belongs.
In these terms, there would seem to be a real difference concerning the views of
Fascism and National Socialism on the state and law. Is it a question of an
antithesis, or of differences that allow the possibility of a reciprocal integration
and deepening of both viewpoints?
We have already mentioned the part changing perspectives play in such
differences. The Nazi conception can be said to proceed from the viewpoint of a
revolution still taking place, while the Fascist conception rather suggests the
viewpoint of a revolution that is already consolidated, and so intent on giving life
to lasting and stable forms.
We note that both viewpoints are opposed to the purely juridical conception
of sovereignty. As Costamagna[19] has mentioned in this journal, a juridical
conception differs from a political conception by its no longer attributing
sovereignty to a man or a group of men, but to the so-called independent entity
that wants to be acknowledged in the personality of the state. Basically, the
juridical doctrine has been accepted because it claims to lead to an impersonal
solution of the problem of power, and because it presented the advantage that
the holder of power, whoever he might be, could not claim to exercise power on
its own account, but rather in the interest of the society, so that its own
possession of power becomes illegitimate when it loses sight of its goal. But even
with this interpretation, which is of a democratic complexion and which has
been added by Michoud,[20] there still remains the problem of the form of a given
juridical system, a problem that constitutes the eternal stumbling block of the
formalistic and positive conception of law. It still poses, that is, the problem that
relates to law’s principium individuationis,[21] of the ‘sufficient reason’ through
which law and, finally, the state itself have one given form and not another in its
actual structure.
National Socialism particularly emphasises the forces that determine this
form, which cannot fall from heaven (at least where it is no longer a question of
traditional cultures in the higher sense), but which is created by men and races of
men. From this viewpoint it is correct to say that the state and law represent
something secondary in respect to the quality of the men who are their creators.
Laws are good to the extent that they remain forms that adhere to the original
demands and tools fitted to strengthen and confirm those forces that have
awakened them to life. This, however, is also the Fascist viewpoint.
Fascism certainly does not accept as its own either the view of an impersonal
‘juridical sovereignty’ or that of ‘Roman law’ as the National Socialists interpret
it, however abusively. The state whose sovereignty and primacy Fascism
proclaims is not something abstract or automatic. To prove this is the fact that,
apart from the supreme reference point, the source of all legitimacy that is
constituted by the monarchy (which, however, is itself not impersonal and
abstract, but a supremely personalised reality) — apart from this, behind the
Fascist state stands the Fascist movement and party, and this state is the
revolutionary state, that is, the state renewed by Fascism.
If we want to find differences, the problem would therefore have to be moved
to another level. Since both National Socialism and Fascism acknowledge a
dynamis, a deep force that establishes and animates the state and is the deep
principle of its authority and sovereignty, it is a question of defining the nature
attributed in both cases to this dynamis, or ratio existentiae,[22] so to speak, of the
state in its concreteness. The ‘myth’ of National Socialism, in this respect, is the
race or race-people, as we have seen. It is a question here of understanding what
is meant and not being satisfied with simple words.
Let us return to Mussolini’s ‘Doctrine of Fascism’, and precisely to the ninth
paragraph of the first part. Having already described the people as a ‘mysterious
entity’, Mussolini repeats that ‘Fascism for this reason is opposed to the
democracy which identifies peoples with the greatest number of individuals and
reduces them to a majority level’.[23] He affirms, on the other hand, a qualitative
conception, a conception of the ‘most coherent and truest form and is therefore
the most moral, because it sees a people realised in the consciousness and will of
the few or even of one only; an ideal which moves to its realisation in the
consciousness and will of all. By “all” is meant all who derive their justification as
a nation, ethnically speaking, from their nature and history, and who follow the
same line of spiritual formation and development as one single will and
consciousness’. Mussolini adds, ‘not as a race nor as a geographically determined
region, but as a progeny that is rather the outcome of a history which perpetuates
itself; a multitude unified by an idea embodied in the will to have power and to
exist, conscious of itself and of its personality’. He concludes, ‘This higher
personality is truly the nation, inasmuch as it is the State.’[24]
Does this confirm the difference between the two movements, especially and
specifically with reference to race? We do not believe so. Fascism too has claimed
racism, but not, however, the racism that is a myth with a zoological base. Nor
should race mean for us, through an unfair interpretation, a new way for the
democratic deviation or socialising ideologies to appear.
The nation and the state cannot be ‘race’ in the naturalistic sense, as has been
affirmed not only by Mussolini but also by the most intransigent German racists,
because they recognise precisely and without difficulty that all nations
corresponding to today’s states are not ‘races’, but mixtures of different races.
Mussolini’s view is as follows: there is a generic quality that can be called ‘nation’
or even ‘nation-race’, which is not purely anthropological and is found diffused
in all components of a given political unity, so to speak, in different quantities
and amounts. This makes it possible to think that, while in some it is latent and
obstructed, in others it is more actual, more self-conscious, and more realised,
until it becomes absolute and pure in an elite or a leader, and is manifested as
precise consciousness and precise will to power and life. In a current with a base
that is also ethnic and racial, as stock, and defined by the same line of spiritual
development and formation, this elite then becomes the central and dominating
thread, the element that transforms and reawakens and, concerning other parts,
is the soul as an animating force that is also formative and which provides the
body’s self-awareness. The state’s sovereignty and its priority in respect to the
‘people’ and the nation are symbols for this action of the elite and a chief.
Does a fundamental difference exist in these terms between the Fascist idea
and the National Socialist one? The difference is not fundamental, unless we
make of race, on which National Socialism insists so much, a mythic entity, like
the democratic ‘people’ Mussolini speaks of so ironically. Even concerning
Germany, what does race basically mean? We just now mentioned that German
racists admit that even their own people is a mixture of races. Some will say that
it is not a question of race in general, but of the Aryan race and then, actually, the
Nordic race. In fact, Hitler talks about the Aryan race as the creator of cultures,
and more specifically he thinks that the Nordic race — one of the six principle
races contained in the German mixture — has this quality to an eminent degree.
But here too it is necessary to get to the bottom of the matter. The Aryan quality
is the requirement for full German citizenship, for being the Volksgenosse or
‘stock companion’, who enjoys all civil and political rights as opposed to being a
simple member of the German state, a Staatsangehöriger.[25] This ‘Aryan’ quality
is defined in purely negative terms. To possess it, it is enough to be not entirely
Hebrew, or to be from the races of colour, nor to have the blood of these races in
one’s own ancestors as far as the third generation back. At best, a clause has been
added which insists on one not having any hereditary illnesses that would
provoke sterilisation, or to show those congenital inclinations that are defined in
Germany as the so-called ‘asocial’ qualities. But all these traits are too
insignificant for purity of race. Is this enough only because there is direct
evidence of what is true law, beyond every ‘positive’ law and because it is possible
to contribute to the highest spiritual elevation of the state?
Should we speak, instead of Aryan in general, rather of ‘Nordic’? Then we
shall have to pose the problem of selection, since the German race is not
composed of Nordic elements alone, as conversely Nordic elements are found in
other nations that are not German. No one in Germany is so radical as to draw
all the conclusions that follow from the thesis that the Nordic race is the superior
one, which would mean that only members of this race could be entrusted with
either the administration of law or the work of the development of the National
Socialist state. Even if the supreme hierarchies of this state are composed of
‘Aryan’ elements, they are certainly not composed exclusively, at least so far, of
purely Nordic elements.
There is another point. In a speech he delivered in 1933 in Nuremberg, Hitler
correctly acknowledged that the Nordic physical form can be found without the
corresponding spiritual elements, so that, in this respect, the final criterion must
be given by examining the attitude of soul and spirit, of character, and of works.
He is admitting discrimination within the Nordic element itself. Finally, we
should recall the assertion of one of the best-known German racists and
supporters of the Nordic thesis, L F Clauss,[26] who has acknowledged that racial
purity should not be conceived in terms of the collectivity, that is, numerically
and statistically, but rather in terms of purity of type. Even if all the individuals
of a given ethnic group can be called Nordic in a general sense, only a few are
truly Nordic and manifest this race in a pure and perfect form.
These statements correspond almost to the letter with Mussolini’s, when he
talks about an idea that ‘is realised in the consciousness and will of the few’,
although ‘an ideal which moves to its realisation in the consciousness and will of
all’.[27] Some will point out that there is an explicit reference to race in National
Socialism. This is true. But, as we have said just now, Hitler himself ends up
acknowledging that, when all is said and done, the true and decisive criterion of
race must be sought in the spiritual element. This is why an in-depth
examination ‘race’ as found in Nazi political ideology will conclude that it is a
simple myth which corresponds to no precise reality, with the meaning more or
less of a synonym for a people liberated from Hebrew and half-breed elements,
and separated from its own pathologically doomed factions. Otherwise, it refers
to the elites which create states and give form to nations, more or less, which is
what Fascism is talking about.
Despite this, it is certain that National Socialism gives a special emphasis to
the biological element, on the one hand, and to the values of loyalty, honour, and
a direct and anti-bureaucratic dependence between men and men and leaders
and followers on the other, limiting everything that is formalistic juridical
legalism with precise political interventions. This difference, however, will tend
to become increasingly attenuated after Fascism, too, has officially laid claim to
the racist idea. If it follows this idea coherently, analogous values will gradually
become significant among us as well, a development that will only be a benefit
for our revolution, which has been blocked in so many sectors by ‘positivistic’,
‘officious’, and intellectualistic dross, and by a style, disregarding the race of the
body, we cannot always call ‘Aryan’.
On the other hand, it is undeniable that the National Socialism of fascist
ideology will be able to receive more than one stimulus to pass from the dynamic
phase, of which its views still betray the influence, to a more ‘classic’ phase, in
which attention will be paid most especially to the objective conditions for the
definition of a stable and, in its own way, ‘positive’ order, freed from
circumstances and revolutionary developments. Perhaps the consequences of the
war, once it has been won, by the very fact of assuring to Germany its vital space,
will permit the marginalising of certain excuses for socialisation, in which the
ideology of our ally still indulges at times for tactical reasons and for the
purposes of internal propaganda. Hopefully it will encourage her to come to a
clearer and more Roman conception — but at the same time more consistent
with the best German tradition — of the function of dominion and ducere.
[1] ‘The Doctrine of Fascism’, pp. 29–30, 43.—Ed.
[2] Ibid., p. 37.—Ed.
[3] Ibid., p. 41.—Ed.
[4] Ibid., p. 42.—Ed.
[5] Ibid., p. 31.—Ed.
[6] In 1932 an article, ‘The Doctrine of Fascism’, was published under Mussolini’s name. This was an official article which was
composed by the philosopher Giovanni Gentile and approved by Mussolini and published in the Enciclopedia Italiana 14, and
which was included in Mussolini’s Opera Omnia, volume 34. It has been regarded as the most definitive statement of Italian
Fascist doctrine. The full text is available at www.gutenberg.org/files/14058/14058-h/14058-
h.htm#THE_DOCTRINE_OF_FASCISM.—Ed.
[7] Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, translated by James Murphy (London: Hutchinson, 1939), p. 211.—Ed.
[8] Ibid., p. 213.—Ed.
[9] Ibid., p. 213.—Ed.
[10] Ibid.—Ed.
[11] Latin: ‘duke’.—Ed.
[12] ‘The people is the consecration of leadership.’—Ed.
[13] This comes from the ‘25 Points’ that were announced as the fledgling Party’s programme by Hitler on 24 February 1920.
Although never officially abrogated, most of its points were forgotten after the Party took power.—Ed.
[14] Helmut Nicolai (1895–1955) was a German lawyer who was a member of the Nazi Party and who was prominent in the early
years of Nazi rule, especially in drafting the Nuremberg racial laws. He drew the ire of the Party in 1935, however, when he
suggested that the power of the Führer should be limited by a council and that the Nazi Party should dissolve itself once its tasks
had been completed. He was charged with treason, but, confessing to his crimes, was pardoned, but was excluded from all
political or Party offices.—Ed.
[15] Metics were people who resided in the city-state of Athens but who were not Athenian citizens.—Ed.
[16] Falk Ruttke (1894–1955) was a German jurist who helped to draft the Nazi eugenics laws.—Ed.
[17] Alfred Rosenberg, The Myth of the Twentieth Century (Torrance, California: Noontide Press, 1982), p. 126.—Ed.
[18] Ibid.—Ed.
[19] Carlo Costamagna (1881–1965) was a Fascist intellectual who published the political journal, Lo Stato (The State), to which
Evola contributed. He was also one of the signatories of the 1938 Race Manifesto of Fascism. Costamagna argued that the state
should not rely on force to obtain the loyalty of its subjects, but rather should become the moral example for the people to
follow.—Ed.
[20] Léon Michoud (1855–1916) was a French jurist who specialised in administrative law.—Ed.
[21] Latin: ‘principle of individuation’, by which a thing is distinguished from other things.—Ed.
[22] Latin: ‘sufficient reason’. In some philosophical doctrines, the idea of sufficient reason stipulates that everything that exists has
a reason for doing so.—Ed.
[23] ‘The Doctrine of Fascism’, p. 30.—Ed.
[24] Ibid.—Ed.
[25] ‘Citizen’.—Ed.
[26] Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss (1892–1974) was a German ethnologist who had been a student of Edmund Husserl. His idea that
race was more a matter of the spirit than of biology, although still classifiable, was quite influential upon Evola. He travelled
extensively in the Middle East, studying Arab culture, and he became a Muslim. Although initially hailed by the National
Socialists for his advocacy of the superiority of the Nordic soul, he later fell out of favour with them since his racial theories were
at odds with the Nazis’ purely material definition of race, and his work was banned by them in 1942. Clauss further opposed
them in more practical terms by hiding a Jewish colleague in a hidden room in his house, thus rescuing her from deportation, a
deed for which he was posthumously lionised by the state of Israel.—Ed.
[27] ‘The Doctrine of Fascism’, p. 30.—Ed.