ABSTRACT: In publishing an article by Vercours on the political confrontation taking place in France, »Sinistra Radicale [Radical Left, ed.] underlines the need of interesting oneself in the entire European context, in the sense of mutual solidarity of supranational liberalism. In fact, throughout Europe the liberal forces' aspirations and hopes for renewal are identical.
Sinistra Radicale exhorts everyone to refrain from becoming closed up in an unproductive provincialism, but to bring about other forms of political collaboration.
(SINISTRA RADICALE No. 3/4, January 1962)
It is not by accident that for the second time »Sinistra Radicale opens an issue with an article relating to the French situation, after »A Nuremberg For Colonialism by Jacques Vergés published in the last issue. The article by Vercors, resistance fighter and poet, induces important observations in us on the kind of political battle that is developing in France today, and not only in France but in all of Europe. If the issues of this battle are understood to be enclosed within national contexts, the French questions might not seem to be of interest to us. But if we understand them as part of the only context valid today, which is to say the context of mutual solidarity among European liberals and, what is more, the framework determined by the true present historical movement, in which the most important phenomena have generally shown themselves to be connected on a supranational level, they are the issues of our own moral and political commitment. This is what we believe to have learned from our exami
nation of current events, and it is what the democratic "nationalists", Italian and non-Italian, try studiously to ignore and to hide, and not the reactionaries of Europe who, on the contrary, for some time have been seeking connections and openings wherever possible.
Wherever differences occur between the language of Vercors and our own, they are rather insignificant. Like Sartre, Vercors speaks of Socialist revolution, and this is not an idea of ours. But we have identical hopes and aspirations for renewal. Vercors seems concerned with the "destiny" of France, whereas we are not interested in this indulgence of nationalist aspects which today are mere occasions for the political struggle fought on a vaster level. The terms which seem more appropriate to us today are the European ones and those of class solidarity within the sphere of European society. Vercors also seems to give special treatment to the party of Thorez. In this he seems to be slightly prone to tactical exploitation, even perhaps to hypocrisy. On the record, however, Vercors, Sartre and the large majority of French leftist intellectuals have denounced the rigid ruling class of the FCP [French Communist Party, ed.] and have always kept their distance from them and often opposed them. But they kno
w that in France today the democratic bulwarks against the non-libertarian forces must be composed of the united anti-Fascist forces of the left. In its precarious game of balances, Italian political life does not in reality offer any other outlets for an authentic revival of liberal development. Faced with a new Hungary, or with atomic blackmail, we know very well where our place is, and the Communists well know it too. But let them proceed with the process of de-Stalinisation and the rejection of bloc politics, and we, in the words of Salvemini, "will strike in unity". Moreover, we affirm that it is the task of us democrats, no less than of the Communists, to promote this process of advancing towards the political democracy of Communism and to lead them back to the essential historical values of western Europe. For us, this difficult and dialectically complicated process has already begun. To want to affirm that the goal is far off is only a way for driving it far off and negating it.
In coming issues we hope to be able to realise other forms of political collaboration - confident of being able to provide them with a structural base - with the "new left" and the "Committee of the Hundred", the English new left, groups of Swiss friends, and Spanish and Portuguese organisations with whom we have already initiated preliminary contacts. And soon we hope to be able to begin collaborating with the Tunisians of »Jeune Afrique , with the Moroccans close to the leftist trade union movement and Ben Barka, with the NLF [National Liberation Front, ed.], with whom our solidarity must not remain merely theoretical. Finally, we must understand that they and they alone are our valid partners in dialogue on the left, and that to avoid such a responsibility means only to loiter in provincialism and a myopically closed circle. To schematise the democratic struggle in terms of trite and used-up values means willy-nilly to become de facto conservatives who will only remain "enlightened" for a short time
longer, whereas it can be very easy to run aground in the shallows where there are already to be found the likes of Panfilo Gentile, Vittorio Zincone, the Longanesis and the Missirolis.
