We must reject, therefore, the socialistic solution but we cannot allow the problem raised by the Socialists to remain unsolved, not only because justice demands a solution but also because the persistence of this problem in liberal and democratic regimes has been a menace to public order and to the authority of the state.  Unlimited and unrestrained class self-defense, evinced by strikes and lockouts, by boycotts and sabotage, leads inevitably to anarchy.  The Fascist doctrine, enacting justice among the classes in compliance with a fundamental necessity of modern life, does away with class self-defense, which, like individual self-defense in the days of barbarism, is a source of disorder and of civil war.

Having reduced the problem of these terms, only one solution is possible, the realization of justice among the classes by and through the state.  Centuries ago the state, as the specific organ of justice, abolished personal self-defense in individual controversies and substituted for it state justice.  The time has now come when class self-defense also must be replaced by state justice.  To facilitate the change Fascism has created its own syndicalism.  The suppression of class self-defense does not mean the suppression of class defense which is an inalienable necessity of modern economic life.  Class organization is a fact which cannot be ignored but it must be controlled, disciplined, and subordinated by the state.  The syndicate, instead of being, as formerly, an organ of extra-legal defense, must be turned into an organ of legal defense which will become judicial defense as soon as labor conflicts become a matter of judicial settlement.  Fascism therefore has transformed the syndicate, that old revolutionary instrument of syndicalistic socialists, into an instrument of legal defense of the classes both within and without the law courts.  This solution may encounter obstacles in its development; the obstacles of malevolence, of suspicion of the untried, of erroneous calculation, etc., but it is destined to triumph even though it must advance through progressive stages.

Historical Value of the Doctrine of Fascism

I might carry this analysis farther but what I have already said is sufficient to show that the rise of a Fascist ideology already gives evidence of an upheaval in the intellectual field as powerful as the change that was brought about in the XVII and XVIII centuries by the rise and diffusion of those doctrines of ius naturale which go under the name of “Philosophy of the French Revolution.”  The philosophy of the French Revolution formulated certain principles, the authority of which, unquestioned for a century and a half, seemed so final that they were given the attribute of immortality.  The influence of these principles was so great that they determined the formation of a new culture, of a new civilization.  Likewise the fervor of the ideas that go to make up the Fascist