ABSTRACT: In expressing his skepticism on the effective possibilities of transforming the Radical Party into a transnational political subject, Angelo Panebianco maintains that this project clashes in Europe with the difficulty to "lead to a political unity an entity whose cultural basis is diversity", and with the States' resistance to create supranational State institutions capable of guaranteeing independently the respect of the law.

(Radical News N. 302 of 31 December 1987)

Compared to the previous speeches, mine will probably be the most conservative one. Conservative not in a political sense, but in the sense of more skeptical regarding the possibility of imagining politics on a transnational scale. I would like to start off with a historical reconstruction, a deliberately partial reconstruction of the radical history since the early '70s, touching on two or three points which I consider fundamental. This reconstruction has the advantages of an inside knowledge, but it obviously also has its limits, owing to the lack of a sufficient psychological distance from the object. I will advance two premises, premises touching on value, therefore political opinions. I believe the Radical Party has achieved the most successes - in terms of capacity to bring about changes - inasmuch as it has been the party which opposed the Italian anomaly, the specific aspects of the Italian case, and inasmuch as it succeeded in maintaining a balance and coherence between the two fundamental dimension

s of its policy, that which I will label as the liberal dimension of the radical cultural policy, and that which I will call, with another label, the dimension of nonviolence. The Radical Party is the party which pinpointed as the target of its political action the peculiarity of the Italian case, the limits of Italian democracy, assuming as a model at times that of a never achieved democracy, and other times - more effectively and concretely - that of the Anglo-Saxon democracies. It is precisely the reference Maffetone was making to Bertrand Russel, also because, no doubt, the Radical Party is shaped much more on British radicalism (whose source of inspiration is the doctrine of empiricism) than on French radicalism. In fact, one of the traditional terrains, from a cultural point of view, of the opposition between the Radical Party and the Italian Left consisted precisely in the antagonism between a movement which to some extent was shaped on the doctrine of empiricism and an essentially rationalist Left. T

he Radical Party opposed the Italian anomaly and tried, through action, to impose a culture of freedom, the expansion and the development of the rights of citizenship. In certain stages, which we will hereafter analyze, it managed to maintain a balance between the two dimensions of its political culture, the one which I called liberal, and which relates it to the historical tradition of Italian radicalism, in other words that part of liberalism which has always been defeated in this country (therefore not Minghetti, not institutional liberalism, but Cattaneo (1), the liberalism which Maffetone described as liberalism of movement or grass roots liberalism), and the dimension which I called the dimension of nonviolence. In my opinion, these two dimensions - mind you, I'm not trying to solve the question of defining the relation between nonviolence and liberalism from the point of view of the doctrine - in certain stages are integrated and harmonized, and in other stages they are not. Therefore, if I have to ra

pidly reconstruct, on the basis of these categories, the radical history since the '70s, I will fundamentally pinpoint three stages, plus a fourth one which is about to begin today.

The first stage develops along the '70s, the years of the party of civil rights, of the party that opposes the Italian anomaly on various levels; these are also the years in which the dimensions of the radical political culture are integrated or in any case harmonized.

The party of civil rights, however (and this aspect is often neglected in historical reconstructions) was not an end in itself. In those years, there was also a strategy, a political hypothesis which can be summarized in a slogan: the refoundation and unity of the Lefts; in fact, the objective was that of reconstructing the vast radical-socialist party in Italy. In 1979 there was a turnabout. I have said it several times and repeat it here: the elections of that year, a major electoral success for the Radical Party, also mark its political defeat. I believe that defeat, combined with the electoral success, still projects its shade on us. A new stage begins. The hypothesis of a vast radical-socialist party is temporarily set aside, and a stage opens dominated by the campaign against world hunger. In this stage, from my point of view, there is no longer that integration and balance between the two dimensions of the radical political culture; the nonviolent dimension clearly prevails. The Radical Party no longe

r characterizes itself as the party which struggles against the Italian anomaly, because the struggle against world hunger is the struggle against a serious, extremely serious problem which affects the North-South dimension and not the peculiarity of the Italian case. With its lights and shades, this battle ends, and in '84-85 the third stage opens. At that moment, the radical party recovers a political hypothesis which will translate concretely into the proposal of a lay-socialist front and in the project of reforming the electoral system. The latter project is not only a technical project, because the aim of introducing the majority system is that of discontinuing a consolidated practice, by introducing the principles of the liberal individualistic ethics inside a national political culture dominated by a collectivist type of ethics. The proposal of the uninominal system, in other terms, does not simply mean to solve a problem of governability, but also wants to break cultural patterns which affect the mec

hanism of representation. I believe it is clear to all that the elections of 1987 mark a new turnabout, a new interruption of that process aimed to upset and radically modify the Italian fate and therefore to change all the anomalous elements in the situation of our country. A new turnabout and a new defeat for the Radical party. I believe the debate on the transnational party is widely related to this fact. In chronological terms, one could easily object that in 1979 the campaign against world hunger was launched before the elections, during the electoral campaign itself, just as the proposal to create a transnational party was launched before the elections of 1987. However, the important thing, in my opinion, isn't so much the moment, but the meaning which these campaigns and proposals assume in a context transformed by the elections of '79 first and then of '87.

I will now analyse the problem of the transnational party proper. I apologize for being extremely conservative, cautious and scarcely inclined to embrace the theses according to which problems are supranational, international and transnational. This doesn't mean that certain or even many problems are not supranational, international and transnational. But clearly not all the problems which are really vital for any political system are of a transnational type.

For example, I believe the national political theatres are still extremely vital. They are vital because the political competition and most conflicts are raised and solved on a national scale. Obviously, one might object that this is exactly the bond which needs to be overcome, as problems become increasingly international. But in fact, it is not evident that the historical situations of interdepedendence necessarily lead to overcoming the national dimension. Europe has already experienced a stage which, according to many analysts, was characterized by a very strong economic interdependence, i.e. the stage of the British economic dominance at the end of the past century. At the time, however, it did not per se imply the end of the national States, nor did it make the choices taken on a national scale totally irrelevant. By this I simply mean to introduce an element of caution; obviously I don't mean to deny the existence of transnational problems.

A transnational party can mean (and does mean in certain senses) a European federalist party; in other words, a different expression to refer to the fact that the Radical Party will struggle with the means, the energies, the capacities with which it has struggled on divorce, abortion, world hunger and so on, to enact Spinelli's (2) project.

At this point, there emerge a series of problems which have partly been outlined: Europe could reveal too tight with respect to a series of major transnational issues. There is also a big theoretical problem: many traditional objections to Spinelli's project - but in fact to European federalism - have never been carefully examined by the federalists. The fundamental objection to the federalist project was that it aimed to give political unity to a Europe whose cultural identity was in fact characterized by diversity and division. In other words, according to this objection, that which Europe has achieved throughout the centuries has been possible precisely because unlike the other geopolitical areas, after Rome it has never experienced an imperial unity.

Proposing to lead to political unity an entity whose cultural basis lies in diversity means to some extent destroying that same European cultural identity which one wants to assert. I remember this objection because it cannot be easily overridden as some often try to do. What I'm saying is that if this is the transnational project, then I welcome the European federalist party, without forgetting that this means clashing against the ties and the limits which federalism has always encountered, in other words, with its incapacity to awake in Europe the aggregating political myth failing which political unifications are extremely difficult.

There is another point which only marginally touches a question but which should not be underestimated, also because it has to do with nonviolence. I believe the radicals have the right to claim that Altiero Spinelli is one of their fathers, if not founders. However, Spinelli, in his utopia, was a man of great realism. He was extremely careful in the military relations of force which underlay the possibility or the impossibility of political unifications (what should we do today with European defence?). This is connected to a problem which I believe cannot be ignored when defending - as should be done - the radical party's bond with the liberal principles and when this is claimed as the peculiarity, the fundamental contribution which the radical party has given also to the Italian Left. Maffetone is right when he says that liberalism, in its more genuine meaning, is the non-institutional liberalism, it is the liberalism which opposed civil society to the State. Obviously, however, he will agree with me on th

e fact that there can be no law without sanctions, and that one cannot propose rights without referring to the sanction of the State, to the existence of a monopolizer of the force that guarantees the rights. This is the reason for which international law is extremely different with respect to internal national law. Nor is community law, and this is proven by the fact that its force relies entirely on the national legislations accepting community law itself, that is, to their giving force of law to it and therefore the sanction of the State. Therefore, if the transnational party is the European party that aims to the construction of a supranational State institution and to reproducing a liberal democracy at that level (that multiethnic Europe of tolerance Manconi was talking about), in that case the integration or coherence between the two dimensions of the radical political culture can be maintained. But if it is not this, then I fear a big problem arises regarding concept and especially political action. H

ow can one assert new rights on a transnational scale if one cannot tie them down to some entity which upholds and enforces them?

I will conclude on one point. I don't wish to further analyze the problem of how the two dimensions of the radical political culture intertwined and with which results in the history of the radical party. However, I believe I can express my personal interpretation. I have always thought of nonviolence, and by this I do not mean to underestimate its meaning (I'm not talking about the techniques of nonviolence, which need to be judged according to a pragmatic means-end pattern, but of the principles) as a metaphor which somehow reminded us of the limits of historical liberalism, as an attempt to seek the bases of that public ethics which Maffetone was referring to. This is my personal interpretation which, I realize, may not be shared by many other radicals. So far all this can be valid, if the Radical Party is the party which operates against the Italian anomaly, all the while integrating all that needs to be integrated in terms of action on major international problems, I am convinced that new, happy seasons

of action are possible. Failing this, from my point of view the relation with Italian society and its problems becomes weaker,the balance between the two components of the radical political culture fails, whereas all the problems related to the action in supranational or transnational theatres need to be tackled, which still (still?) lack the vitality which is typical of the national political theatres.

Translator's notes

(1) CATTANEO CARLO. (Milan 1801 - 1869). Italian historian, essayist and politician. Editor of the "annali universali di statistica", founded a publication, "Il Politecnico" (1839-1844) for the circulation of scientific and technical knowledge in parallel with civil and social progress, underlining the role of the bourgeoisie and of modern capitalism. Exile in Switzerland in 1848, after the failure of the first war of Independence against Austria-Hungary. Supporter of the federalist-republican solution of the Italian unity.

(2) SPINELLI ALTIERO. ( Rome 1907 - 1982). Italian politician. During fascism, from 1929 to 1942, he was imprisoned as leader of the Italian Communist Youth. In 1942 co-author, with Ernesto Rossi, of the "Manifesto of Ventotene", which states that only a federal Europe can remove the return of fratricide wars in the European continent and give it back an international role. At the end of the war he founded, with Rossi, Eugenio Colorni and others, the European federalist Movement. After the crisis of the European Defence Community (1956), he became member of the European Commission, and followed the evolution of the Community structures. In 1979 he was elected member of the European Parliament on the ticket of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), becoming the directive mind in the realization of the draft treaty adopted by that parliament in 1984 and known as the "Spinelli Project".