ABSTRACT: The text of the speech given by the attorney Leopoldo Piccardi during the last National Council of the Radical Party (December 14/15, 1957) on the following themes: the Resistance, the clerical danger, reconstruction of the state, the abolition of prefects, the fight against monopolies, the agrarian problem, the party-controlled state administration.

(A Radical Party pamphlet, printed on March 22, 1958)

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What I shall give here is a brief, improvised talk about the party's programme which natural lays no claims to exhausting the subject. I shall limit myself to giving you some bits of information, also in the name of the Study Committee, on the progress of our work in this sector, and a few indications on the line our party's programme takes in the coming electoral battle according to what appears to me to be the general opinion and consensus of all our members.

As you know, we have a rather ambitious plan - to make a programme, that is, which does not simply list a few points indicated by letters or numbers as is usually done, but a logically worked-out programme that deals point by point with the major aspects of the country's political and economic life. As you can see, it was a big ambition, and you will have already become aware of this when we have spoken to you about it on other occasions. In essence, it was according to our plans a question of doing something that might be similar to the Fabian efforts, to cite a famous example. We got down to the job with broad collaboration even on the part of people who are not members of our party but who are somehow a part of the sphere - I do not want to use the word ideological, but of ideas and opinions in which our party moves. The difficulties we have encountered are of the kind we had foreseen and perhaps even worse. In this period we have, however, received some reports and I believe that these have been al

ready distributed to all the sections in order to get the opinions and observations of all our members. I do not know if these have been gathered as yet, and I would like to recommend that it be done as quickly as possible. However it seems highly unlikely to us that in the short time left before the elections we can get the volume ready to be printed and distributed in a rush. This too because we want the volume to be the expression of opinions which, even if formulated on a purely personal level so as not to involve the party too much, will still have a certain correspondence with the way most of our members see things.

Therefore we must face this election battle, probably without this weapon which would have been most useful to us. Of course we do not imagine that elections are won by publishing books. Even if we were to have this volume it would furnish us with propaganda material for all those who are participating in the election, but its usefulness could not exceed certain limits.

Those who are familiar with elections know very well how thoroughly problems can be handled during electoral meetings. Therefore we believe that the most important thing is to indicate a few major directives of our propaganda, directives which should be as concrete as possible. And I think that we will achieve this result simply by following our instincts which are perhaps more concrete than the ones of those who are active in other political parties. Together with concreteness, we are also distinguished from others by a lack of demagogy, and in this regard too we need do nothing other than follow our instincts which is not demagogic. Thus we will already end by going into details much more than is normally tolerated by the public when it gathers in the squares during election campaigns.

It is not easy to say in a few words what ought to be the major directives of our election propaganda. But my job is made easier if one keeps in mind that however much ours is a party of problems, that however much we may want to turn our political activities into the indication of possible solutions, our proposals are only valid to the degree that they connect up with a political line. Thus you already find our fundamental platform in the report of our Secretary, our good friend Mr. Olivetti, who, in reminding you of the major party directives, has also told you what line our election propaganda must take.

The Resistance

I would say, to sum up our position in a few words, that our party begins with the consciousness of the state of complete ruin in which our country found itself at the moment of Fascism's coming to power. We do not deceive ourselves into thinking that the Fascist dictatorship came about by chance: we are all aware that if Fascism was able to come to power it was because the old Italian state was by then completely worn out and destroyed. We know that Fascism did nothing for constructing a new Italian state. We all believed that the end of Fascism, the struggle for liberation, the Resistance and the return to a democratic life would have made possible the reconstruction of the Italian state. But unfortunately this action was blocked by powerful forces and found too that there was very little energy in Italy to actuate it. Thus our position is that of a party which is not revolutionary because we are convinced that a revolutionary situation does not exist in Italy; a party that is not classist because, as

ide from our ideology, we do not believe that there is a class in Italy capable by itself of creating a new social and state context; a party that believes one must gather together all the available energy in the desperate attempt to reconstitute the Italian state.

Thus our political and electoral battles go in two directions: to mobilise all the energy still existing in Italy to actuate our fundamental goal; contend with the forces that oppose the reconstruction of the Italian state. The first problem presents us with that aspect of the current political struggle with which the most recent manifestations have made you familiar - I mean to say the problem of uniting again the forces unleashed by the Resistance, by the fight against Fascism, to make them effective, to put them again into the forefront: that struggle for the defence of anti-Fascist values and the Resistance which just at this time have had highly significant moments. And you have seen that the PR has been in the front line of this struggle because it considers it fundamental.

We are jointly responsible in full for what is happening, we participate in all the meetings in which that same policy of reviving the values of the Resistance is taking shape. We shall proceed with our usual clarity because it is not our habit to create confusion: we have said and continue to say that we are ready at any time to celebrate the values of the Resistance with all those who participated in it, but with some of those people we are not disposed to go one step beyond this duty of celebrating the common struggle.

I would say that at this point it is the government's responsibility. And it would be a good idea for us all to begin speaking clearly to the government. We believed that the job of fighting Fascism and the struggle for liberation had ended with the fall of Fascism and the liberation of the national soil. We are surprised and embittered to see that these problems are still alive and that today we must take up the fight again. And it puts us all into an awkward position to have to take part in an alliance that does not correspond to our present political positions. Let the government, let the DC [Christian Democrats, ed.] consider if it is worth their while to make the Italian political struggle revert to an obsolete phase when there are so many quite different urgent problems to attend to.

Excuse this digression inspired by the passion that animates us at this moment, but there is no doubt that one of the most important aspects of our election campaign must be the constant call to anti-Fascist forces and the fight for liberation in which we give recognition only to the forces with whose help one can attempt to reconstruct a new democratic state in Italy. The positive part of our programme is not exhausted in this campaign for the defence of anti-Fascist and Resistance values, but this is undoubtedly one of its main structural supports.

The Clerical Danger

Besides this task of stimulating and mobilising the forces that can contribute to the reconstruction of the state, we have the job of defending this Italian state in the throes of rebirth against the forces that threaten it. This task would seem to present two aspects, but in reality it take one direction only. One might think of the need to defend our democracy against the attacks of reviving Fascism. But to tell the truth, this is not an eventuality that worries me much, and I would hope that it does not worry you either. We need not concern ourselves today with a struggle against Fascism: a positive fight for putting anti-Fascism and the Resistance back to good use contains within itself that just degree of reaction that there can be to the stubborn provocations of groups which have no importance in themselves and which serve interests against which we need not react in other ways. But the most important feature of our fight, of our defence of this Italian state aborning against the dangers which thr

eaten it is, the only feature that counts, is the fight against the clerical danger. We will never tire of fighting this battle. Here in front of me is our friend Ernesto Rossi who could sum up his life in this way: up to a point the struggle against Fascism, and from that point on the fight against clericalism. A life well spent. We should not be afraid of hearing it said - either by adversaries or by friends - that we have remained fixed on positions that have been overcome a century ago, that we are antiquated people, that we are people who don't understand today's problems. The problem of laicism is today's problem, whatever these "moderns" say about it: because it is not enough for priests to go on motor-bikes and nuns to drive to be modern. Much more is required. We are persuaded that we are the "modern" ones, because the problem of defending the democratic state against each and every theocratic concept, and above all against that old theocratic idea that inspired the temporal power of the Church, is

a struggle that is still current. It is the struggle fundamental to the entire Italian situation.

I go around speaking here and there these days about the need of holding a reunion of the Resistance, and little by little as I speak I am more and more convinced that it is useless to blame Zoli (1) for not authorising the reunion. The fact that Zoli doesn't do it means that he is a servant of the ecclesiastical hierarchies. No one can say in good faith that Zoli is a Fascist: these are the kinds of things one can say for polemical purposes and with very meagre results. If the Hon. Mr. Zoli, our Prime Minister, cannot give expression to what have always been his sentiments, if he is nailed down to a position which he evidently does not like, it is because he is a slave to forces for whom the distinction between Fascism and anti-Fascism is irrelevant. The history of the Church - and friend Rossi has demonstrated this amply - is not our history. It was not our history when Italy was created, because Italy had to be created against the will of the Church. Nor did Fascism find an adversary in the Church w

hich, on the contrary, gave it ample support. It would really be too much at this point to expect that the Church should take a rigidly anti-Fascist position, should defend the state against Fascism. Evidently for that sector of Italian life Fascists and anti-Fascists are all the same as long as they genuflect at the opportune moment. And since this propensity to genuflect is more easily to be found today in the other sector rather than ours, or in sectors close to ours, we are not at all surprised at the preference of the Holy Mother Church and that of the party she inspires for certain circles that are not to our liking.

The fight against nuclear power must be fought to the end. I think that in the election campaign this will truly be our mark of distinction because we shall talk about it without pulling any punches, without restraint, expressing everything we think about the party that represents the clerical sector of Italian life and what there is behind it. The alliance we make with the PRI [Republican Party, ed.] will not impede this action, on the contrary, I am certain it will make it more effective. However that may be, let it be quite clear that this is our position and nothing will make us deviate from it.

For the purpose of an election campaign, I think that this is indication enough. We have certain ideas about the relations of Church and State. All of you know the volume that contains the acts of the »Friends of Il Mondo in which many of us have had the occasion to express our thoughts. Therefore you know the orientation of our group concerning a possible solution of a permanent nature of the relations of Church and State. But it is unlikely that you will have the chance to concern yourself during the election campaign on the more concrete aspects of the problem: whether one must maintain an attitude of rigorous opposition to the Concordat, whether one must push separatism to the extreme, or whether one should accept the solutions that represent a compromise between jurisdictional spheres and separatism, etc. In an election campaign all of this gets lost. What it is important that should not get lost is the aspect of defending the state, of anti-clericalism understood not as antipathy towards a partic

ular sector of Italian life but as the elementary need for the reconstruction of the state. As we shall see, all the other problems can be reduced to this.

Reconstructing the State

When we speak of the schools, the problem of the relations between Church and State is in the very foreground: the right of the state to educate is a prerogative that cannot be contested if we really want to reconstruct the state. The right of the state to provide assistance is another fundamental prerogative of the modern state. If we are disposed to cede the right of assistance to the Church and let them do it with our money, reducing the business to the level of simple charity, then the state is finished. As I said before, this is truly the keystone of all our discourses.

When we speak of defending the democratic state against the forces that threaten it, we cannot forget another of our favourite subjects which is on the same level, however much it may appear to belong to a different sphere, that is to the economic one. I am speaking of the fight against monopolies. The Italian state will never arise as long as there are forces, whether they call themselves spiritual or economic, capable of aborting its birth or of demolishing its structures little by little as they are timidly constructed. The fight against monopolies will be another of the major directives of our election propaganda.

Starting out from these premises, we could arrive at more concrete problems which are always problems of reconstructing the state. Because in using as leverage the forces that we are trying to reawaken with renewed anti-Fascist propaganda and the values of the struggle for liberation, and with an implacable fight against all the forces opposed to the rebirth of the democratic state, we should aim at affirming our views concerning the structure and functioning of the state. Here, of course, the problems crowd around us: and it would be most difficult to give them thorough treatment on the level of election propaganda. Rather we will have to concentrate on giving a few general indications. To reconstruct the state means to do it from within, rebuild its structures, and above all set up again an administration worthy of the name. However I have had the following experience very often: when you speak of the problems of state administration, the public immediately feels that it is being subjected to a highly

technical subject in which it is not interested. Therefore we must be satisfied with making just a critique - and we can do that in good conscience - of all the governments which have followed upon each other since the Liberation, because all of them have shown that they were absolutely unaware of this problem, and when they have tried to confront it they staged that comedy which was called bureaucratic reform. Not all of you will have had the patience or the interest in studying its details, but if you have you will have noticed that it is really the most ignoble fraud that has been perpetrated in this period. The governments that have followed upon each other since the Liberation have not only been unable to put in order the chaotic situation of our administration and the organisation of the state in general, they have allowed it to decline and worsen continually. For this reason we can rightly say that the Italian state today has fallen lower than it ever was, even during Fascist times. This then is a ba

ttle that we can wage with a clear conscience, because all of the governments we have had until now have given us ample occasion and justification for it.

The Abolition of the Prefects

In this matter there may be a few points that we cannot be exonerated from dealing with because they have a certain resonance even among a large public. I allude primarily to the problem of the regions. This is a delicate issue on which opinions can partially diverge. But in saying this I do not mean to renounce expressing my opinion that the regions are one of the essential tools of the democratic Italian state. All the more essential in that the regions are the presuppositions for the abolition of the prefects for which we ought to fight without any hesitation. Not even the fact that the Communists have taken this fight as their watchword will make us hesitate. Unfortunately it frequently happens that those people try to steal our thunder, but this should not stop us in our tracks. The institution of the regions and the abolition of the prefects are two intimately connected problems: the more one thinks about it the more evident it becomes.

The modern state has become so complex and complicated that it justifies two opposite needs at the same time: that of the maximum centralisation and the maximum decentralisation. In the functions exercised by a modern state there is room for both tendencies. But for us sincere democrats the only decentralisation that deserves to be defended is the kind based on the reality of local communities. True decentralisation is that of the towns, I do not say of the provinces because when we get as far as the regions we become aware that the provinces are superfluous for our organisation. The towns and the regions are the natural basis of decentralisation - not the prefects. What is based on the institution of the prefects is a false decentralisation which is not democratic, which does not function technically. As long as one remains in the field of administrative functions entrusted to state bureaucratic organs, centralisation is inevitable: state administration obeys the same laws of any other modern organisat

ion, of any enterprise, and so is fated for centralisation. The attribution of functions to bureaucratic organs, such as the prefecture, means to make them more arbitrary, not to decentralise them in the only sense that can correspond to the needs of democracy. Thus, for my part, I believe that we can wage openly the fight against the prefects and not in the demagogic manner of the Communists who, while proclaiming that the prefects must be chased away - a slogan they stole from Luigi Einaudi (2) - are fighting for the creation of new provinces. Only yesterday they battled for the province of Isernia. At this moment when there are so many reasons for criticising the government, the government is under accusation for not having created a new province in the Molise region: the province of Isernia. This is, of course, no terrain of ours. I don't know if the question of the provinces will come into play or not, but one thing is certain, that cost what it will, we will not assist any of these small ambitions or l

ocal vanities which tend to make our country more and more conservative, more and more reactionary. The provincial organisations are only one of the many tools which are utilised by a certain middle class used to exploiting the lower classes in order to make comfortable little niches for themselves, of modest economic advantage, but still enough to satisfy the limited desires of a middle class with few resources such as are typical of certain Italian regions. On this matter no indulgence. But the battle for the regions and the abolition of the prefects must be fought. There is no point in my giving you reasons for this battle. You all know what is going on in the field of sphere of local administration, you know what the function of the prefect now is, this electoral agent who presents himself under the false banner of an impartial administrator and under this cover perpetrates the most unspeakable judgements, forgetting even the most elementary norms of decorum and dignity. I would say that the office of pr

efect should be suppressed for the moral reason, if for nothing else, that it is not legitimate for the state to reduce a public function to such a degree of degradation.

The Fight Against the Monopolies

I believe that as far as the state organisation is concerned it is not easy to say much more during an election campaign. Of course there will be plenty to say about the economic sector. In this field we must above all continue the battle of which I spoke, the battle against the monopolies. For this fight we do already possess an effective weapon in the bills presented by our friend Villabruna and representatives of other parties with whom we are trying to start on a solution to the problem. I think that during an election campaign it will be necessary to go further. In the conference on monopolies clearly stated our position: we do not deny the needs of modern economy which often lead to great concentrations of financial means and of materials, but we believe that all the opportune measures must be taken to avoid their influence having too much weight on the state, thus impeding its democratic functioning. And in the extreme case, when there are no other possibilities for defence, we are ready - we who

are not Socialists - even to opt for the nationalisation of certain sectors. In our conference we advocated the nationalisation of the telephones, a problem whose solution is now under way, and we indicated clearly that our next goal was the nationalisation of electric energy. This is an issue which, in my opinion, must continue to be debated in the country. It is an issue which will be ripe for action quite soon, because the governments of the pre-Fascist era were already aware of the direction in which modern society was moving and they arranged things so that by means of taking back expired concessions the state could rapidly acquire control of these basic productive sectors. Now we are rapidly reaching the expiration of the concession for public water, a truly decisive moment, in which the question of the nationalisation of electric energy must be clearly brought up. And we must do it with the consciousness that in posing this problem we are not acting as the followers of ideas which are not ours, that

we are not letting ourselves be guided by the mimicking of Socialist positions. The nationalisation of electric energy has been adopted in the majority of modern countries, including those where Socialist ideas do not prevail. It is a measure imposed by the present development of the economy, and therefore it is something we can demand on the basis of a rigorous application of our principles. And I think it is a subject which cannot fail to awaken echoes among our voters because we are not turning our attention to those very few people who have interests in common with the electrical groups, but we are turning to a public indifferent to the cost of the electric bill with which they are presented at the end of the month. This public of the middle class, artisans, small merchants, cannot fail to be sensitive to this question: and to them a vast sector of industry that draws no advantage from the electrical monopoly would also pay attention if it had more political and economic intelligence. The monopoly of ele

ctrical energy is exercised in the interests of those producers and that limited sector of big industry, of those industrial bosses, of whom Ernesto Rossi has drawn an unforgettable picture.

But with respect to economics, we should take advantage of the elections in order to wage two battles which unfortunately are defensive ones. One of them is linked up to the battle for the nationalisation of electric energy. Because the problem of nationalising electric energy, which in itself it might have been possible to postpone for a few years, becomes urgent now that nuclear energy has entered the picture. I remember that in speaking with representatives of that Social Democratic Party, that vaunts its classist and Marxist nature, we heard someone say: "You are just a bunch of time-wasters taking up the cudgels for a problem which is out-dated: soon we will have nuclear power and we will nationalise that and the question will be resolved". Nuclear energy came and that party was happy with the Cortese project which has nothing at all to do with nationalisation. This, as I have said, is a defensive battle, because if Italy should lose the nuclear power fight, which unfortunately is technical enough

in character to escape the attention of the masses, the political and economic destiny of Italy will be marked for a certain period. I strongly believe in the importance of these concrete facts. We often get lost in the discussion of general ideas and principles while someone is realising concrete facts which can no longer be cancelled. The day in which the monopolies in Italy are re-established for another fifty years - let us not delude ourselves - the battle for democracy will be, perhaps not lost, but much harder than it would have had to be.

Another defensive battle we will have to fight is that of the registration of securities. Our past governments have until now always tried to act in secret, thus behaving in the usual way which is certainly not crystal clear and which recalls schools which we do not love. It has always been said: But of course - the registration of securities! You have it, but think about abolishing it, and so on.

While all this was being said, there was some minister acting in the opposite direction, who showed his sympathy for those who agitate for the destruction of the system. In this way we have reached the point of having the gall to come before the Constitutional Court with arguments that will seem downright laughable to our attorney colleagues present here today. And when the Constitutional Court rejected the instance, we read in the newspapers severe and harsh comments against this supreme organ of the state which had the courage to make short shrift of so important a question. On this matter of the registration of securities all that was possible had been done to make the outcome inevitable: by tolerating the agitation of the exchange agents, which is still going on, and by the declarations of individual politicians and members of the government, a situation has been set up in which, while not revealing the fact, the state of mind of the large mass of people is already resigned. There are certain times

when one need only toll the knell in order to bring about the death of the thing whose end one desires. One wanted the end of the registration of securities, one continued to ring its knell for years and now it is really dead in the opinion of most Italians. Thus we must wage this defensive battle, and once again we can do so effectively, because among our friends there are those who have concerned themselves most competently with this problem: from Bruno Visentini (3), who has fought valiantly for the registration of securities for years, to Tullio Ascarelli (4) who has made an original contribution to the question by recognising the defects of the present system and suggesting ways to avoid them, all without giving up the registration of securities for all the essential purposes it serves, most of all that of fiscal progressiveness.

Another topical subject is that of the set up of state-owned industries, of the Ministry of State Economic Participation, of unhooking the state-owned companies from Confindustria [National Confederation of Industries, ed.] - a subject of which you are perfectly well aware and on which it is clear what positions we can take. We have never been in favour of socialising the country's economy, but we have always recognised that modern state has the ineluctable tendency to perform important functions in the economic field. Corresponding to this tendency, if only in a casual way, is the formation of what are called state shareholdings. The Ministry of State Economic Participation is a first, coarse attempt to organise this sector in some way, which allows the state to assert its controlling position for its own ends. Our propaganda cannot help but be particularly favourable to detaching the state companies from Confindustria, about which friend Scalfari (5) even quite recently wrote extremely sensible thing

s in the pages of »L'Espresso and for which we must keep on fighting because it is a matter in which one part of Italian society, the economic potentates, are showing all of their arrogance. I remember having heard a high government official say: "These gentlemen call the state by its first name". If it were only a question of that! By now the state is being told: "you have no right to manage your own companies, we need your companies, they must be part of our organisations, they must present us with the means for waging political campaigns, even for campaigning against the state-owned industries". All these discourses are garbed in constitutional objections and passionate defences of freedom which sound false on the lips of those who use them for special interests.

The Agrarian Problem

Another subject of great importance, which for many years now Prof. Antoni has been calling to our attention, is that of agriculture. Friend Carandini (6), with all of his experience, spoke about it a short time ago, developing a sacrosanct criticism of the action that the government has been taking in recent years. And sacrosanct is everything he has written about the absurd and contradictory systems the government has used in handling the agrarian economy; sacrosanct are the criticisms made of the land reforms, even though in the end, from a political point of view, we cannot condemn it for its political and social repercussions. The worst defect of the land reform remains the conception that has inspired it and which definitely comes from the clerical world, the conception of a small property that barely allows a family of farmers to survive, which keeps it in forced isolation, far from social spheres, and thus in a condition of not being able to cause trouble. The land reforms are the expression of

a policy that does not tend to raise the masses to a higher cultural and economic level, but aims only at keeping them quiet. And this is certainly not our policy, because ours is one that tends to arouse energy, even when it is a matter of energy that could present some dangers. We are a party that runs risks: that is the characteristic position of the Radicals. Thus we can usefully develop our critique of the government's agrarian policy and we can, in this field too, raise a protesting voice against the exploitation of the reforms for political ends. Because we all know that the reform agencies, which ought to function mainly on a technical level, are also nothing other than election tools which play their partisan roles in the most shameless way, discriminating among the farmers according to their political opinions and imposing the patronage system.

I think that as far as agriculture is concerned these ideas will suffice for election propaganda.

There is another big issue which is not easy to deal with in part of a session or even in an entire conference: that of foreign policy. On the main lines of this question we are all in agreement. None of us has any doubts about what ought to be our position in the world. On this we all agree. But when we go on to study the issues of the day, the Middle East, Suez, etc., divergences may appear. But these are not really issues for the election campaign. What is important is to indicate a line. We will say how far we are from the Communists who would like to attribute to us methods which are not ours, draw us into a system which is not our system. This we will state in the clearest possible way. On the other hand we cannot help but lament all the prevarications and contradictions of this government which today does one thing and tomorrow another, invents a kind of neo-Atlantic policy, and a kind of theory for the Middle East, and then kind of eats all their words, giving in to the vacillating inspirations

of the various groups that dominate within and without the DC. This critique of the government policy could be made in a most useful way and with full consciousness of being well founded.

The Party Patronage System

A basic matter for propaganda will also be that great moral problem for today's Italy which I have left for last because I think it will set the tone for all our discourses. We are not people used to what is called, with a very ugly word, political speculations. But it is not our fault if we must engage in moral polemics against the Christian Democratic governments which have persisted in offering more and more grounds for this depressing quarrel. The state of corruption of the politicians, the bureaucrats, and the administration have become something indescribable. There was one French Catholic who said that the Christian Democrats had orientalised Italy, meaning by oriental the worst examples that once came from the Levant. This is the present situation and we will have to speak about it at great length. Just as we will have to speak at length of the abuse of power for party purposes. I believe this to be one of our battles. We might perhaps try to formulate those concrete proposals that sometimes ser

ver to fix the attention on the essence of a problem and on the means that can lead to their solution. Today in Italy we have reached this point: that the abuse of power for partisan goals is the only source of the parties' financial resources. Since a party has been in power for a long time, that party cuts itself the biggest piece of the pie. Some smaller parties and some in the opposition who do not have the good fortune to form part of the government, draws more limited benefits from its intervention in local agencies. By now all of this is a part of our customs; I would say that is almost admissible. When the Hon. Mr. Zoli declared in Parliament with his charming scepticism that a party that had left the government ought to have suspended publication of its newspaper, he did nothing more but put his finger on the point we have reached. A party such as ours, which has never been part of the government, and if it had been would certainly have clean hands, today finds itself in that inferior condition whic

h everyone knows. But to have clean hands means having the courage to say things that no one else can say.

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) Zoli, Adone - (Cesena 1887 - Rome 1960) - President of the Christian Democratic Party (1954 - 60) and Prime Minister in 1957.

2) Einaudi, Luigi - (Carru 1874 - Rome 1961) Statesman and economist, exiled under Fascism, president of the Bank of Italy from 1945, Budget Minister under the fourth De Gasperi government, he held down inflation with a restrictive monetary policy while encouraging reconstruction with a liberal policy. President of the Republic from 1948 - 1955.

3) Visentini, Bruno - (Treviso 1914) - An economist, ex president of Olivetti, and a prominent member of the Republican Party whose president he has been since 1979. He was Minister of Industry from 1974-76.

4) Ascarelli, Tullio - (Rome 1903 - 1959) - Jurist and innovator in commercial law studies with his books »Problemi giuridici and »Saggi di diritto commerciale .

5) Scalfari, Eugenio - (Civitavecchia 1924) - Journalist, managing editor of the weekly »L'Espresso from 1966 to 1968. Founder and managing editor of the Rome daily »La Repubblica since 1976.

6) Carandini, Nicolò - Scion of a noble Roman family, he was Italy's first ambassador to London after the war and one of the founders of the Radical Party.