ABSTRACT
Our study of present-day collective life has led us to adopt a certain number of constructive ideas which may serve as a basis for the constitution of a modern State. These ideas are:
That the finality of life is in man and not in the State.
That man’s aim in life—individual experience—-implies the greatest individual liberty possible.
That freedom of thought is as indispensable for the individual as for the State.
That inequality is natural and good, both for the individual and for the community.
That in functions the individual serves the State, while in values the State serves the individual.
That the functional State, i.e. the economic and financial State, must be organized as an efficient piece of machinery; but that, upon it, there must rise the moral and political State based on liberal and democratic principles.
That private initiative in economic matters is indispensable to liberty.
That the State has the right and the duty to set limits to both liberty and inequality, so that the more ambitious citizens do not become too powerful nor the more slothful too indigent.
That citizenship should be limited to active citizens carefully selected, and that the government should be an “aristocracy.”
That the State has sovereignty as a matter of common sense.
That this sovereignty is limited in all that concerns war, and that the State has no right to require military service in wars contrary to the international law prevailing.
That the natural and necessary form of the State is that of a unanimous organic democracy, towards which all contemporary democracy must tend if our civilization is to be saved.
