Decalogue of the Fascist Family (1939)

By Carlo Ravasio

1. The family is the first cell of the race. Individuals alone represent only scattered atoms, perhaps capable of living, but incapable of making and transmitting life.

2. The family is the unit of measure of the nation's material and moral power; it is the people reduced to its minimum divisor. Below that there is nothing except the individual. The individual, even if he numbers in the millions, is neither the people nor history.

3. The Fascist State rejects the principle of the nation as a group of citizens; it conceives the nation only as a group of families.

4. The young citizen has nothing but duties; and the first duty is to create the family. Once the family is made, you begin to accrue rights.

5. We must abandon the old "bourgeois" concept, according to which it is necessary to achieve a so-called "high position" in society first, before thinking about starting a family. According to this logic the poor should never marry. Instead, the Fascist State can prevent people from attaining high positions if they have not started a family yet: this is a good social, racial and moral measure.

6. The family does not start with marriage; it starts with the birth of the first child.

7. The family is the State in its tiniest expression; it is a miniature guild.

8. Man's first and highest responsibility is the responsibility of the family; as the head of the family, he is the first and highest hierarch of the race.

9. The family is the sanctuary and the altar of the race; love is its religion and its light.

10. When we speak of the family, we must add the word "Fascist"; this adjective completes and guarantees the noun.