My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyfind two great cultures in sharp antithesis, you usually find, in the following age ofaction, some synthesis in practice between those two sharp antitheses which leads to apractical creed of action. This conception may seem to you to suggest, to some extent,a Spenglerian approach.'Why in this context did I refer to a Spenglerian approach?—for the concept of twoantitheses leading to a synthesis is clearly Hegelian; perhaps I thought that the spectreof Hegel would be too alarming for the English-Speaking Union. Goethe remarkedthat since Germans found him so difficult, he must be impossible for foreigners.Referring to Spengler, I continued:'It is quite true that the great German philosopher has probably done more than anyother to paint in the broad background of fascist thought. Not very much more thanthat. And possibly he is inhibited from coming nearer to the subject by his innatepessimism, which, in its turn, I would humbly suggest to you arises from his entireignorance of modern science and mechanical development. If you look through theSpenglerian spectacles, you are bound to come to a conclusion of extreme pessimismbecause they obscure the factor which for the first time places in the hands of man theability entirely to eliminate the poverty problem. And I believe it is our Germanphilosopher's misunderstanding of this immense new factor which leads him to hispessimistic conclusion. Nevertheless, that in no way invalidates his tremendouscontribution to world thought.'Before returning to Spengler and other concepts of philosophy I had some practicalremarks to deliver on the fascist attitude to life: 'We demand from all our people anover-riding conception of public service. In his public life, a man must behave himselfas a fit member of the State, in his every action he must conform to the welfare of thenation. On the other hand, he receives from the State in return, a complete liberty tolive and to develop as an individual. And in our morality—and I think possibly I canclaim that it is the only public morality in which private practice altogether coincideswith public protestation—... the one single test of any moral question is whether itimpedes or destroys in any way the power of the individual to serve the State. Hemust answer the questions: "Does this action injure the nation? Does it injure othermembers of the nation? Does it injure my own ability to serve the nation?" And if theanswer is clear on all those questions, the individual has absolute liberty to do as hewill; and that confers upon the individual by far the greatest measure of freedomunder the State which any system ... or any religious authority has ever conferred.'The fascist principle is private freedom and public service. That imposes upon us, inour public life, and in our attitude towards other men, a certain discipline and a certainrestraint; but in our public life alone; and I should argue very strongly indeed that theonly way to have private freedom was by a public organisation which brought someorder out of the economic chaos which exists in the world today, and that such publicorganisation can only be secured by the methods of authority and of discipline whichare inherent in fascism.'Here we are brought at once into collision with the fundamental tenets of socialismand liberalism. Socialism differs, of course, sharply from liberalism in its conceptionof economic organisation; but in philosophy I think there are few socialists or liberalswho would disagree that they really have a common origin if we go back far enough269 of 424