ABSTRACT: On 28th April 1963, elections were being held in Italy, in which the Radical Party did not take part, as it was just coming out of a crisis. However, it divulged a pamphlet, edited by Elio Vittorini, Marco Pannella and Luca Boneschi, containing the opinions of several intellectuals on the crisis affecting the parties of the Left, and on the possible solutions to end this crisis, through a "truly revolutionary" process capable of renewing the movements of the Left of the "Milan-Paris-Düsseldorf" triangle.

My vote aims more at rewarding the idea of a renewal, rather than the instruments that are currently operating to achieve it, says university Professor Mario Monteverdi,

The Italian novelist Umberto Eco states he will vote for the Italian Socialist Party, fearing that a utilitarian "opening" could blend the energies of a socialist opposition into the amnesty of a Social-democratic reformism...)

(THE RADICAL VOTE, April 10, 1963)

I WILL VOTE FOR THE PSI

Your questionnaire is too wide-ranging for someone like me, who carries out no specific political activity, to be able to answer it with a couple of formulas and having already cleared the single problems. I will therefore answer question n.7.

I will vote for the PSI. At the last political elections I voted PSI with the purpose of unlocking a situation that urgently needed to be loosened somehow. Today I would like to say that my vote assumes a more cautious, almost opposite sense. I am voting for the PSI because fearing that a utilitarian "opening" could blend the energies of a socialist opposition, which has an important role to play in the Italian political spectre, into an optimistic amnesty of a Social-democratic reformism.

My preferences will therefore go to those people who can guarantee, on behalf of the PSI, a certain severity and firmness in the future "opening" manoeuvres, such as to avoid leading it to easy adjustments with the system, while safeguarding its alternative function at all times.

And yet, while sensing the risks of its socialdemocratization, I will nonetheless vote for the PSI. Because I don't believe that in the present economic-structural situation and in the current international political circumstance, we can simply oppose an old-fashioned reactionary capitalism on the one side and a revolutionary alternative on the other side. If this were possible, then the alliances created with reformist purposes would become a target for classic criticism directed against socialdemocratic reformism.

But today we have on the one hand a capitalism which has plainly incorporated reformist needs, integrating them in its system, on the other hand a situation of coexistence, and the balance between the two blocks makes a plain and simple revolutionary alternative

extremely utopian. Furthermore, we must consider that the apparent progressivism of neocapitalism in industrial areas combines itself, in a country such as ours, with archaic situations of feudal exploitation and oppression; facing us to the necessity to intervene immediately, in any way, on human groups which must be given that minimum level of civilization enabling them to become conscious elements of a possible political exchange of ideas.

There is a limit within which there is nothing more revolutionary than a circulation of wealth and civilization. It is only at that condition that man thinks, criticizes, discusses. Hence the need for a Left-wing action capable of operating at different levels, combining an extreme inflexibility as to the ultimate principles and goals to a great tactical elasticity and a considerable aperture to different positions. To promote an internal evolution of the system in cases in which maintaining old schemes would result only in the stabilization of archaic and underprivileged situations; to oppose the system when its flexibility and "aperture" risk subtracting the socialist energies to the unitarian struggle of a Left-wing opposition.

I hope the PSI will prove capable of providing guaranties in this sense. I'm not saying I believe this: I'm saying I hope. And in the meantime, I am voting.