SUMMARY: Following the debate on non-violence and in particular

that of fasting taken from the document by Marco Pannella, Giovanni Negri and Luigi del Gatto (published in the previous issue of Lettera Radicale), Negri solicits "sleeping democrats" to reflect on the faults and limits of "real democracy"; Eughenja Debrianskaja emphasises that democracy is not a static entity but a dynamic process in which non-violence can play a decisive role; Giuliano Pontara states the difference between hunger protests and political fasts.

(Presentations on the same topic by Roberto Cicciomessere, Sergio D'Elia, Angelo Panebianco, Alex Langher, Carmine Benincase, Luigi Manconi, Angiolo Bandinelli and Giovanni Bianchi will be published in the following issues of Lettera Radicale).

THE SLEEP OF DEMOCRACY

by Giovanni Negri

In a recent article Gianni Vattimo anlyses the "immaginario collettivo" evoked by the revolution of the East in us "Westerners".

The end of the cold war, the falling of walls and chains, the recognition of the superiority of the democratic model, give us peace and security. But the curiosity and expectations lie elsewhere, in concern for the rapidity and volume of change in those societies compared to the degeneration and the status quo of our "democratic society"; and Vattimo reasonably concludes that "in reality, even we here in the West would like to be capable of changing radically, not to let democracy put itself off in a painless way, but not for this reason less inexorable, in the triumph of cynicism, faithlessness, of corruption accepted as a minor ill ...". If we therefore think with anxiety and curiosity of what may come out of the ruins of real socialism, it is also because we are more or less aware of, and feel ourselves more subject sudditi to "real democracy" than protagonists of live democracy.

It is pleasant to think that Hungary or the Soviet Union, with greater freshness and innocence, is looking not for something that we already have but something that even we lack, despite greater well-being and happiness than the peoples of the East.

But it is precisely on the basis of this analysis that the transnational intuition of the radicals is appropriate. More rarely and with great difficulty it succeeds in becoming directly political (in the sense of breaking the political struggle with the force of provoking confrontation) but defines the indispensable framework of the new democracy, beyond whose dimensions no democratic solutions are possible for prolems that do not respect national boundaries.

Placed also in the same ambit are the difficult attempts, and the first steps to a non-violent initiative that we have laid underway in the last few days, with Marco Panella and other colleagues, inviting one to a more mature reflection on the crucial question of "the power of information" and of its exercise.

It is not at all paradoxical that in Moscow and Prague demonstrations were staged in front of Western embassies revindicating the right and liberty of information. Atleast it is not more paradoxical than a demonstration held in Rome or in Brussels for liberty and civil rights in the east. It was not a matter of contingent support with difficult electoral proofs conducted in the west in an a-democratic condition, in which not only is the management of information questionable, but also the calculations of ballots and votes. It was not sought to so much "protest" against censure and discriminations through these demonstrations and fasting, so much as placing a problem - in political, and not merely in academic or abstract terms - that is faced on the transnational level, and therefore also in the countries that we live in.

We live in a democracy that is faulty and degraded by the theoritical and practical absence of the new State of Rights and the new balance of powers that effectively operate in contemporaneous societies. The classical scheme of the tripartition of powers (executive, legislative judicial) has suffered the eruption of a mediate power that arose domineeringly in this century, upto the point of contemporaneously the functions of exercising heavy conditioning of other powers, and as a powerful vehicle of consensus control. It is not the only major anomaly of traditional democracy, but the harmony of dialectic democracy - seen as the fruit of a complex system of control between powers - is today crushingly compromised by a power that is in fact uncodified and unregulated.

If this is true in the East and West, more so will it be in the society of communication and superimposition of reality and appearance; it continues to be the object of research but is descreasingly addressed in political and legislative terms. And yet we see imbalances and errors every day. The absence of protection guarantees of the identities of collective persons or of one individual lead to the abolition of entire political social minorities, often to the demolition of the image without possibility of redemption. Penalties, sanctions, correctives, counterbalances, and instruments of control are non-existent or inpracticable. The logic of brutal power prevails, with an authoritative ethic, prohibitionist in the broad sense, while the democratic institutes lose value and role from the voting to the Parliament stage. This is the reality wherein one feels impotent. Neither is it discounted that the radical party can be the seat of reflection and action on this central matter of "real democracy", that can

manage to effectively operate efficiently on the transnational level, that an articulate, collective non- violent initiative is mature, different from that what we are used to know, and directed to the respect of the democratic legality that even our constitutions solemnly sanction. Still, reflecting on this, one and all of us, will not really harm us. As in many other occasions the radical thrust could perhaps stir the many "sleeping" democrats, lost in repression and inertia.

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

by Evghenja Debrianskaja

Talking about democracy as an end leads to doubt: can there really be an end?

Democracy is not a static thing, but a dynamic process, where the tendency is to establish a complex of constitutional guarantees that offer the maximum political, civil and economic freedom to a group of persons or to an individual. In order to attain the desired result, one needs first of all to possess the aspiration to obtain something.

Unfortunately we need to recognise that we live in a country where, for many years, the escalation of violence on the part of the leaders, used as an official instrument for the resolution of political and economic problems, have generated terror and apathy amongst the population.

Can we today affirm that the idea of liberty, love and justice are common to the majority of our citizens?

Despite the transformations evident in the Soviet way of thinking and despite the words rights, liberty, democracy fills up official and non-official speeches, it would be hasty and short- sighted to sustain it.

Even though the West has attained a certain level of guarantee for its own citizens, it continues to sink into "non being" and is not in a position today to represent a perfect model of its system, or to express forms of protest as regards the Soviet empire, thanks to which the process of democratic tranformation in the East would be irreversible.

There is the feeling that humanity, accepting the formula "after me the deluge", has adopted this as its slogan, and that single movements of opinion are not in a position to drive it back.

The policy of institutions that move capillarly condemn entire nations to misery and hunger while the ecological balance, threatens them with extinction following this policy.

In this situation we carry a voice of love and hope in defence of those of whom non-violence, love, the thirst of justice have become reasons for living, and we call to all those who unite with us, to challenge hate, war and non-communicability.

FASTING AND NON-VIOLENCE

Giuliano Pontara

Professor of Philosophy at the University of Stockholm, Pontara is one of the greatest students of Gandhi. He has edited one of the widest and complete anthologies on Gandhi for Einaudi.

Mahatma Gandhi, who not only used fasting as a method of politicial struggle and non-violence (satyagraha) on several occasions, but was also an authoritative theoretician, wrote the following lines: "The majority of fasts are not absolutely reconducive to the ambit of satyagraha but are, as they are generally called, hunger strikes undertaken without any preparation and consciousness." He added that "if these are repeated too often, they can also lead to loss of dignity and the efficacy that they could possess, and fall into ridicule." (M.K. Gandhi, Theory and Practice of Non-Violence, Einaudi, 1973 and subsequent editions, p. 189). Fasting, like strikes, boycotts, and many other methods of struggle, can be taken on by anyone, for any purpose, to attain any end. As a method of struggle, fasting per se is a non-military method: it is neither a violent nor a non-violent one, but could become one or the other depending on how it is used.

In speaking about fasting as a method of political struggle, it is important to differentiate a hunger protest from that, what we for brevity call political fasting. A hunger protest is that undertaken to call the attention of determinate people or more generally of public opinion, in a dramatic way, upon determinate circumstances or determinate facts that are viewed as intolerable. They seek to exercise a certain moral pressure, to awaken consciences, or to make known certain facts or situations that they wish to denounce through the suffering that a faster or fasters voluntarily and publicly submit themselves to. Since no conditions are made that the others should accept in order to break the fast, the hunger protest does not as a norm imply constrictions.

Political fasting is fasting undertaken with the aim of carrying out determinate and precise objectives whose implementation depends upon those against whom the fast is directed upon. They can easily perceive the situation created by the faster or fasters as a coercive one, as a situation where they are faced with a choice from alternatives that have a negative value: accede to the conditions laid down by the faster or fasters, or else assume the responsibility of their suffering or even their deaths with all the consequences that this would entail. Undoubtedly, despite the intentions of Gandhi, some of the fasts undertaken by him were perceived by those it was aimed at as coercive acts against them; and it is also true that in certain situations those against whom Gandhi fasted ceded to the conditions laid down by him not because they were convinced of its justice, but because they were afraid of the consequences of a prolongation of the fast by the Mahatma. A second characteristic that differentiates th

e political fast from that of protest, is that what we may call irreversibility: to be effective to the maximum, the political fast must be a fast unto death in the sense that no temporary terms are previously given for its cessation, which depends exclusively upon the acceptation, on the part of the adversary against whom the fast is undertaken, of the conditions laid down by the faster or fasters (some of the Gandhian fasts were of this nature). This characteristic in turn tends to be a coercive one.

Based on how much and in what measure these two characteristics of coercion and irreversibility are present in political fasting, this method presents itself as one of struggle that, atleast in the ambit of a self-styled non-violent movement, must be prepared with much attention, taking care that this includes all those requesites that are considered essential for any non-violent action. This is to be ensured on the basis of a very clear formulation of the non-violent conception of which it is a supporter. Particular clarification must be made if non-violence simply means any method of struggle that is not military, or abstaining only from physical violence, or if it means something more. We need to also clarify if they are forms of constraints compatible with the non-violent concept that it supports, or rather non-violent forms of constrictions, and in case the answer is affirmative establish the conditions that a political fast must satisfy to result in the absence of violence constrictions. Lastly,

I would like to underline that, in my opinion, political fasting, as opposed to hunger protests, should be used only as a last resort (as was always used by Gandhi).

Because it embodies the characteristic of irreversibility, as outlined above, this is a very serious matter because it can take away the lives of those who fast and place those against whom the fast is directed under great responsibility. Or it may not have the quality of irreversibility and in this case, becomes used too often. It would then lose its efficacy and end in ridicule, as Gandhi warned.