LIBRARY INDEX CARD

ABSTRACT: "What is a regime? For Mario Boneschi it is »a political system in which one part exercises power according to its partial conceptions with no possibility for change, by using force on the political institutions or side-stepping them, but in any case creating a system which is neither free nor democratic. " With these words Paolo Pavolini introduces this volume which is about the debate held at the Conference of »Gli Amici del Mondo (1) [The Friends of Il Mondo] - the eighth in a series - held in Rome on January 31 - February 1, 1959 (entitled "Towards A Regime").

As Paolo Bonetti reminds us (»Il Mondo 1949/66, Bourgeois Reason and Illusion, Laterza 1975), the conference returns to the theme already handled in the VIth Conference (Rome, April 6-7, 1975) dedicated to the relations between Church and State in the search for ways "to conduct a liberal battle for the »assurance of legality and the safeguarding of the sovereignty of the State". According to Pavolini, the Conference "did not even discuss if in Italy a regime does or does not exist", taking for granted that by now the country was being governed directly by the Christian Democrats, covered by the Church and dominated by "the priests, the big industrialists and the high bourgeoisie". Today's conservative regimes have no need of carrying cudgels or using "brutal tyranny". They do not repudiate the law: they violate it in silence".

After the analyses of Boneschi comes the report of Leopoldo Piccardi who (still in Pavolini's opinion) "proposed nothing really new". In fact his requests tend towards attributing "greater powers" to "intermediate bodies" and taking then away from "government officials and delegates": in this way one can lend a hand to reconstructing a State that is falling apart. Ascarelli, however, "replies to Piccardi by expressing his doubt about the efficacy of these provisions". For La Malfa the problem is that of the political forces being disposed to fight for the objectives mentioned.

Finally, Ernesto Rossi (2) presented the Conference with a "complete reform project for the RAI-TV" [the state radio and tv, ed.] tending to bring the agency back to its proper tasks.

NOTE: The Conference (and thus the volume made up of its documents) is very important. For the first time the Radicals of »Il Mondo make such massive use of the term "regime" to define the political system ruling in Italy and hinging on the Christian Democrats. In short, in these theses there is a first awareness of a reality that is taking shape in much different forms from that of a distinctly Western democracy, and also from those hoped for by a large part of the review's authentically liberal group.

For the rest, the definition is not calmly accepted by everyone within the group. In particular, it is rejected by those who began to glimpse in the centre-left (3) alliance the possibility of democratic growth: and among them, most decisively, by followers of La Malfa (4) such as Giovanni Ferrara (5). Obviously on the opposite side there were such figures as E. Rossi. There is, therefore, among "Gli Amici del Mondo" a split in opinion that - this was 1959 - would soon lead to the crumbling of the group and of the Radical Party itself - a crumbling that was only opposed by Pannella's (6) left which will assume and make entirely its own that definition of "regime" as applied to the Italian system.

Contents of the volume: Introduction, by Paolo Pavolini. The Crisis in the Institutions by Mario Boneschi (discussion and rebuttal). For a Reform of the RAI-TV, by Ernesto Rossi (discussion). Appendix: The final motion of the Conference; A bill for the reform of hte RAI.

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) Il Mondo - Weekly review of politics and culture founded in Rome in 1949 by Mario Pannunzio. For seventeen years it was the expression and symbol of hte best lay, liberal, Radical and democratic Italian tradition. A large number of its journalists were among the founders of the Radical Party. It ceased publication in 1966 and started up again by Arrigo Benedetti in 1969. Later it was turned into a weekly economic review.

2) Rossi, Ernesto - (Caserta 1897 - Rome 1967). Italian statesman and journalist. A leader of »Giustizia e Libertà [an anti-Fascist movement] he was arrested and convicted by the Fascists in 1930. He remained in prison or in confinement until the end of the war. With A. Spinelli he wrote the »Manifesto di Ventotene and led the European Federalist Movement in the fight for a united Europe. He was among the founders of the Radical Party. An essayist and journalist, he promoted from the pages of »Il Mondo a lively campaign against clerical interference in political life, against the economic potentates, industrial and agrarian protectionism, the concentration of public and private power, etc. His articles were collected into famous books (»I padroni del vapore etc.) After the dissolution of the Radical Party in 1962 and the ensuing rupture with the managing editor of »Il Mondo M. Pannunzio, he founded the review »Astrolabio from whose pages he continued his polemics. During his last years he establishe

d close ties with the "new" Radical Party with which he collaborated in launching the "Anti-Clerical Year" in 1967.

3) centre-left - A political alliance that arose in 1962 comprising the DC (Christian Democrats), the PSDI (Social Democrats), the PRI (Republican Party) and for the first time the PSI (Socialists). It governed the country, except for brief intervals, until 1976.

4) La Malfa, Ugo - (Palermo 1903 - Rome 1979) Italian statesman, one of the founders of the Partito d'azione (Action Party) in 1942, he later joined the Republican Party (1948) and changed its physiognomy in the attempt to make of it the modern liberal party connected to the forces of production. He was the party secretary from 1965 to 1975 and then its president. He has held several ministerial posts and has been vice prime minister (1974 - 1976). He was one of the fathers of commercial liberalisation after the war,

5) Ferrara, Giovanni - (Rome 1928) - University professor, essayist, Italian statesman. A Republican, he has also been a senator. An editorial writer for the Rome daily »La Repubblica . He and his brother Maurizio are the sons of the lawyer Mario Ferrara, a representative of the best Italian liberalism and radicalism between the world wars.

6) Pannella, Marco - Pannella, Giacinto called Marco (Teramo 1930). At this time President of the Radical Party's Federal Council. He was one of the party's original founders. At twenty he was national university representative of the Liberal Party, at twenty two President of the UGI, a university student's union of lay convictions, at twenty three President of the UNURI, a national union of Italian university students. At twenty four, in students movement and Liberal Party circles, he warmly urged the foundation of the new Radical Party which was established in 1954 by prestigious cultural figures and political groups of minority democrats. He has been active in the party except for a period (1960-1963) when he was Paris correspondent of the daily »Il Giorno . In Paris he made contacts with the Algerian resistance. Once back in Italy he took up the reconstruction of the Radical Party which had been dissolved by its own leaders due to the birth of the centre-left. Under his unquestioned leadership the par

ty promoted (and won) important civil rights battles that introduced into Italy divorce, conscientious objection, the vote for eighteen-year-olds, important family law reforms, etc. It fought for the abrogation of the Concordat between Church and State. He was arrested in Sophia in 1968 while demonstrating in defence of Czechoslovakia invaded by Stalin. He opened the party to the new homosexual organisation (FUORI) and encouraged the formation of the first green and ecological groups. For years the new Radical Party organised difficult campaigns proposing numerous referendums (about twenty in the course of the years) for the moral reform of the country and of politics, against public financing of political parties, against nuclear plants, etc. But in particular it worked for a thorough reform of the administration of justice. Because of these battles, all conducted with rigorous non-violent methods of Gandhian inspiration - his Gandhi being neither a mystic nor an ideologist, but rather a statesman both rigo

rous and flexible - he was put on trial various times and was generally acquitted. From 1976 on, when he ran for the first time, he has always been elected to the Chamber of Deputies, twice to the Senate and twice to the European Parliament. He has run on various occasions and been elected to the Municipal Councils of Rome, Naples, Trieste and Catania where he conducted exemplary battles and initiatives. When necessary he has gone on hunger strikes, not only in Italy but elsewhere in Europe, in particular during the course of the great campaign against extermination by hunger in the world. During this campaign he mobilised about a hundred Nobel Prize winners and prominent scientific and cultural figures for the sake of obtaining a radical change in the direction and management of the funds destined for developing countries. On September 30, 1981 he obtained a vote in the European Parliament on a resolution going in that direction and following this analogous laws in the Italian and Belgian Parliaments. In Ja

nuary 1987 he ran for President of the European Parliament, obtaining 61 votes. At the present time the Radical Party has decided not to run candidates of its own in Italian national elections and is working for establishing itself as a trans-party and trans-national party with the aim of promoting a federalist United States of Europe and civil rights throughout the world.