ABSTRACT: The platform on which the Radical Party was founded in December, 1955. It states the purposes of this new political group that resulted from schisms in the left wing of the Liberal

Party. It brings together people who even originate in the Popular Unity Party (formed in 1953 to combat the majoritarian or so-called "swindle law") such as Leopoldo Piccardi; ex "actionists" who did not participate in other party activities after the Action Party was dissolved, such as Leo Valiani and Guido Calogero; prestigious journalists appearing in the newspaper "Il Mondo" such as Ernesto Rossi; numerous independent intellectuals, contributors and journalists; young university professors who had or were involved in political work on the university level through the Unione Golliardica Italiana (UGI) and representative and national bodies (UNURI, a univerity organisation).

The Radicals first priority is "the implementation of the Constitution and the effective instalment of a religiously unaffiliated (lay) and liberal state, the kind of state under law in which all citizens are equal before the law without religious or political discrimination and which guarantees liberty free of abuses by the government and the police." The fight against economic monopolies, social justice, maintaining the moral standards of public enterprises, integration in the European Common Market, school reforms - all these are the fields in which the Radical Party intends to be active according to its constitution and its platform.

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The condition into which Italian political life has fallen ten years after the time of great promise following the liberation has filled the country's liberal and democratic conscience with discontent and unrest. The lives of workers and thinkers is deeply disturbed by having noted that the collapse of the dictatorship has been followed by a timid democracy blocked by the inheritance of corrupt usages, weak in opposing incursions on the part of religious groups, extremists, government authoritarianism, and, lastly, incapable in its institutions of giving expression to the spirit of the new republican Constitution.

It is time however that a determined will to make amends should arise and concentrate the dispersed moral strength that held the country erect during the years of the Resistance to Fascism and the fight for liberation. And it is time to dedicate every effort to the creation of a political formation capable of proving at last that the commitments of men who are open and aware, who are united in the will to confront fundamental problems in the life of the country and to indicate their solutions according to the spirit of renewal of modern civilisation and the prodigious advances of science - that these commitments can give new life and new hope to the development of Italian society.

Many programs have been formulated in these last years by parties, groups and associations. The actual situations have made it possible to compare the promises with the realisations, the proposals and the resistance to them. The promoters of the new party, however, believe that consistency offers a proof of political commitment and, hence, do not believe that they are promising too much or in vain when they declare that they are determined to fight for the implementation of the Constitution and the effective realisation of a liberal and unaffiliated state, of that state under law in which all citizens are equal before the law without political or religious discrimination and that garnets liberty free from the abuses of the government and the police. Nor do they believe that they are speaking vainly when they declare their intention to fight to the bitter end and without quarter against special privileges and to block the formation of monopolies. They also intend to study ways to eliminate those which sti

ll exist uncontested and to put under public control those enterprises and conglomerations of riches that which bear the imprint of monopolies, natural or artificial,

industrial, commercial or land-owning, and to break up the overbearing political control which comes from them.

The promoters of the new party believe that only thus a truly free economy can develop in which the efforts of individuals can remain unimpeded by excessive power of organised groups, where all citizens can start off, as much as possible, on an equal footing, and where the imbalances among the various classes and regions of the country will be gradually reduced. And they are convinced that the function of the state is not only to eliminate wastefulness and to put all public spending under the direct control of parliament, but to radically reform the tax laws, making them clear and certain, accentuating their progressive character, lightening the burdens of the poorer classes and - at last - broadening the sector of direct taxation. Nor are they worried about being called collectivists if they declare that the state itself, once it's administrative and bureaucratic organs have been reformed and made immune from corruption and favouritism, has the right and the duty to intervene organically and permanently in

economic and social life. And this not only in the interests of the "defenceless categories", but also to promote those classes that still are standing at the gate of democratic life and are thus in danger of being subjected to - and in fact are subjected to - the whims and the penalties imposed by illiberal organisations.

The promoters of the new party are furthermore convinced that only in this way can we guarantee the vitality and expansion of the economy and a higher standard of living for the individual. And only in this way will it be easier to integrate Italy in the great economic sphere of the European Common Market.

The planks in this platform cannot refrain from taking into account the needed school reforms, which is also an indispensable premise for any development in civil conscience. A reform, that is, which will radically renew the Italian schools, eliminate the

the excesses of a "humanistic" misunderstanding and solicit technical and scientific education at the same time. A reform that will put a stop to religious impositions and reinstate the dignity and primacy of the Italian state schools. An action program, therefore, and not a long-term one. A work program that only wants to take into consideration a few essential problems, those that can be immediately confronted and begun to be solved within a reasonable term of four or five years.

The promoters of the "Radical Party of Liberal and Democratic Italians", convinced that the whole range of the country's political groups is in crisis, and that new sentiments, new stimuli, new ferment is brewing in our society, point to these themes as a point of encounter and convergence for all the political groups sharing a common ground and for those still dispersed - these promoters agree on the necessity of a quick and impassioned initiative that will finally raise our country to the condition of other modern Western democracies.

THE PROMOTING COMMITTEE