My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosley17 - The Ideology of Fascism : Science and CaesarismIDEAS in a void have never appealed to me; action must follow thought or politicallife is meaningless. The charge is sometimes made against me that my approach wasat once too intellectual and too rough, too highbrow and too popular, a confusionbetween the study and the street. According to this theory I fell between two stools,and my leadership was consequently misconceived. It is a criticism which shows amisunderstanding of reality in modern politics. Anyone who cannot see the essentialconnection between thought and action as a concerted whole is unfit for the crude andyet subtle business of real politics in the twentieth century. It is not only necessary tohave ideas but also to get them accepted and implemented. I have described theresults of this attempt within the old parties, and have reached the point in this storywhere we went beyond their world in a direct appeal to the mass of the people. Thendescended upon us the whole weight of the system in the organised smother, thedenial of all means of expression and publicity; also the ineluctable force of organisedviolence, which sought to deprive us of our only remaining means of persuasion, thespoken word at the public meeting. In retrospect I put again the key question: whatwere we to do, go home and call it a day?It is precisely at this point that intellect must finally decide whether to retire into theivory tower or to enter the street with all that this entails. Intellect, to be effective,must now unite with will; otherwise the idea remains in the void. The 'thought-deedman' described in The Alternative was the need of the hour. It is not an attractivephrase, and I am not in love with it myself, but it expresses concisely the primenecessity of the modern world: men who can both think and act. So far from thoughtand action being antithetical—as the criticism of combining economic policies withthe blackshirt movement suggested—they are essential complements in a creativewhole; their union is indispensable, vital to a new birth.In the light of contemporary experience this is undeniable. Communism todaycommands half the world. It rests on a combination of Marxian thinking andcommunist party action. If the idea had just rested behind the whiskers wouldanything more have happened? It was in fact carried forward to the conquest of halfthe globe by the most brutal, ruthless and unscrupulous methods of action humanityhas known; methods which, for reasons given, I believe will in the end be destructiveof the idea, but certainly embodying action in extreme degree.The superficial question may be raised whether the idea really had any relation to thiskind of action, since not one in a hundred of Communist Party members understandsMarxism, and not one in a million in the countries adhering to that creed has ever readMarx. Why then should this abstruse and far from popular doctrine have anything todo with the achievement at all? It is a superficial question, but it is difficult to answerwithout a psychological treatise which delves to the roots of human nature. In shortreply, no movement of the human mind and spirit goes far unless it is inspired by anidea which, for better or worse, is a reality. It may be as obscure and contorted asMarxian economic theory or as clear and simple as the Christian doctrine of love, butit must be a reality in the sense that it appeals to some deep feeling in human nature.When thought is obscure it must be translated into feeling to be effective. It isunderstood by an elite, and if it is a real and powerful idea it develops in them acertain attitude to life. This attitude is communicated to others who may not be265 of 424