of classes, would prove as fatal to society as abnormal growths are to living organisms.  Freedom therefore is due to the citizen and to classes on condition that they exercise it in the interest of society as a whole and within the limits set by social exigencies, liberty being, like any other individual right, a concession of the state.  What I say concerning civil liberties applies to economic freedom as well.  Fascism does not look upon the doctrine of economic liberty as an absolute dogma.  It does not refer economic problems to individual needs, to individual interest, to individual solutions.  On the contrary it considers the economic development, and especially the production of wealth, as an eminently social concern, wealth being for society an essential element of power and prosperity.  But Fascism maintains that in the ordinary run of events economic liberty serves the social purposes best; that it is profitable to entrust to individual initiative the task of economic development both as to production and as to distribution; that in the economic world individual ambition is the most effective means for obtaining the best social results with the least effort.  Therefore, on the question also of economic liberty the Fascists differ fundamentally from the Liberals; the latter see in liberty a principle, the the Fascists accept it as a method.  By the Liberals, freedom is recognized in the interest of the citizens; the Fascists grant it in the interest of society.  In other terms, Fascists make of the individual an economic instrument for the advancement of society, an instrument which they use so long as it functions and which they subordinate when no longer serviceable.  In this guise Fascism solves the eternal problem of economic freedom and of state interference, considering both as mere methods which may or may not be employed in accordance with the social needs of the moment.

What I have said concerning political and economic Liberalism applies also to Democracy.  The latter envisages fundamentally the problem of sovereignty; Fascism does also, but in an entirely different manner.  Democracy vests sovereignty in the people, that is to say, in the mass of human beings.  Fascism discovers sovereignty to be inherent in society when it is juridically organized as a state.  Democracy therefore turns over the government of the state to the multitude of living men that they may use it to further their own interests; Fascism insists that the government be entrusted to men capable of rising above their own private interests and of realizing the aspirations of the social collectivity, considered in its unity and in its relation to the past and future.  Fascism therefore not only rejects the dogma of popular sovereignty and substitutes for it that of state sovereignty, but it also proclaims that the great mass of citizens is not a suitable advocate of social interests for the reason that the capacity to ignore individual private interests in favor of the higher demands of