My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyform in the modern world: 'Now you may say, and say perhaps with some truth, thatthese doctrines have been heard before, that this was the basis of Bonapartism, or togo back still further to its origin, was the basis of Caesarism.'It is, of course, true that fascism has an historic relation to Caesarism, but the modernworld differs profoundly from the forms and conditions of the ancient world. Modernorganisation is too vast and too complex to rest on any individual alone, howevergifted. Modern Caesarism, like all things modern, is collective. The will and talent ofthe individual alone is replaced by the will and ability of the disciplined thousandswho comprise a fascist movement. Every blackshirt is an individual cell of acollective Caesarism. The organised will of devoted masses, subject to a voluntarydiscipline, and inspired by the passionate ideal of national survival, replaces the willto power and a higher order of the individual superman. Nevertheless, this collectiveCaesarism, armed with the weapons of modern science, stands in the same historicrelationship as ancient Caesarism to reaction on the one hand and to anarchy on theother. Caesarism stood against Spartacism on the one hand and the Patrician Senateon the other. That position is as old as the history of the last two thousand years. Butthey lacked, in those days, the opportunities for constructive achievement which arepresent today, and the only lesson that we can derive from the previous evidence ofthis doctrine is simply this; that whenever the world under the influence of Spartacusdrifted to complete collapse and chaos, it was always what Spengler called the "factmen"who extracted the world from the resultant chaos and gave mankind very oftencenturies of peace and of order in a new system and a new stability.'It was done... by recognising certain fundamental facts of politics and of philosophy.Again, you have a certain wedding of two seemingly conflicting doctrines. We areoften accused of taking something from the Right and something from the Left. Well,it is a very sensible thing to borrow from other faiths; to discard what is bad and keepwhat is good; and directly you get away from the old parliamentary mind, you ofcourse see the wisdom of any such course. And fascism does, of course, takesomething from the Right and something from the Left, and to it adds new facts tomeet the modern age. In this new synthesis of fascism, coming rather nearer to ourimmediate situation, we find that we take the great principle of stability supported byauthority, by order, by discipline, which has been the attribute of the Right, and wemarry it to the principle of progress, of dynamic change, which we take from the Left.Conservatism... believes in stability and supports it by its belief in order: but whereConservatism has always failed in the modern world is in its inability to perceive thatstability can only be achieved through progress: that a stand-pat resistance to changeprecipitates the revolutionary situation which Conservatism most fears. On the otherhand, the Left has always failed to realise, thanks to its Rousseau complex, that theonly way to get progress is to adopt the executive instruments by which alone changeis made possible.'I was at this point weaving into fascist ideology my long-sustained synthesis of orderand progress.'... You can only have stability if you are prepared to carry through orderly changes,because to remain stable you must adapt yourselves to the new facts of the new age.On the other hand, you can only have the progress which the Left desires if you adoptthe executive instruments of progress. . . . 'Again you will say: "This is once moreCaesarism or Bonapartism. . . . The basic principles remain the same; and, therefore,271 of 424