exterior safety but it is also the keeper and the transmitter of the spirit of the people, as it was elaborated throughout the ages, in its language, customs and beliefs.  The State is not only the present, but it is also the past and above all the future.  The State, inasmuch as it transcends the short limits of individual lives, represents the immanent conscience of the nation.  The forms in which the State expresses itself are subject to changes, but the necessity for the State remains.  It is the State which educates the citizens in civic virtues, gives them a consciousness of their mission, presses them towards unity; the State harmonizes their interests through justice, transmits to prosperity the attainments of thoughts, in science, in art, in laws, in the solidarity of mankind.  The State leads men from primitive tribal life to that highest expression of human power which is Empire; links up through the centuries the names of those who died to preserve its integrity or to obey its laws; holds up the memory of the leaders who increased its territory, and of the geniuses who cast the light of glory upon it, as an example for future generations to follow.  When the conception of the State declines and disintegrating or centrifugal tendencies prevail, whether of individuals or groups, then the national society is about to set.”

11.  The Unity of the State and the Contradictions of Capitalism.

From 1929 onwards to the present day, the universal, political and economical evolution has still further strengthened the doctrinal positions.  The giant who rules is the State.  The one who can resolve the dramatic contradictions of capital is the State.  What is called the crisis cannot be resolved except by the State and in the State.  Where are the ghosts of Jules Simon who, at the dawn of Liberalism, proclaimed that “the State must set to work to make itself useless and prepare its resignation?” Of MacCulloch who, in the second half of the past century, proclaimed that the State must abstain from ruling?  What would the Englishman Bentham say today to the continual and inevitably-invoked intervention of the State in the sphere of economics, while, according to his theories, industry should ask no more of the State than to be left in peace?  Or the German Humboldt according to whom an “idle” State was the best kind of State?  It is true that the second wave of Liberal economists were less extreme than the first, and Adam Smith himself opened the door—­if only very cautiously—­to let State intervention into the economic field.

If Liberalism signifies the individual—­then Fascism signifies the State.  But the Fascist State is unique of its kind and is an original creation.  It is not reactionary but revolutionary, inasmuch as it anticipates the solution of certain universal problems such as those which are treated elsewhere:  1) in the political sphere, by the subdivisions of parties, in the preponderance of parliamentarism and in the