ABSTRACT: On 30 October 1966, the assembly for the socialist unification was held. The Socialist Party and the Socialist Democratic Party - which had parted with the schism of Palazzo Barberini in 1947 - created the Unified Socialist Party (PSU). However, more than a unification, this resulted in the summation between the apparatuses of the two parties. In July 1969, also as a consequence of the far but brilliant results obtained by the new party at the elections of 1968, a new separation took place, with the reinstatement of the two previous parties.

In this long article published by "Corrispondenza socialista" at the end of 1966, Pannella explains the position of the Radicals vis-à-vis such operation. The article also represents an exhaustive exposé of the Radical analyses and proposals.

(Corrispondenza socialista - December 1966 from "Marco Pannella - Works and speeches - 1959-1980", Gammalibri, January 1982)

The unified socialist party forms itself while the progressive Europeanization of our society engenders, in Italy as well, a more modern and demanding democratic and lay aspiration in the working masses. Century-old characteristics and defects of our country, connected to the dominance of counter-reformist and clerical cultural and social structures, are suddenly unveiled before the eyes of the masses of citizens, who recognize the authoritative and reactionary traditions that support the current regime.

The broader and deeper knowledge of the essential characteristics of civil societies expresses itself in the spontaneous denunciation of a political situation in which every person, worker or intellectual, student or pensioner, believer or atheist, feels less and less free and responsible. Opposite ideological crystallizations have to this moment intrinsically limited - apart from the obvious and preminent function carried out in this sense by clericalism - this form of conscience. "Liberalism" - exclusively focused on claiming a freedom which we could call "spare time", which was independent, in other words, from the analysis of the actual living and working condition which absorbs such a great part of our life - for decades upheld only concepts and forms of freedom whose exertion was historically forbidden, and continued to be forbidden, for the working classes. Thus, for populations in which illiteracy was still prevalent, the freedom to express or form individual ideas through freedom of press could not

but represent the echo of a forbidden world; and freedom of thought and of expression, closely linked to the freedom of research and study, substantiated itself into civil structures in which a public debate and discussion were possible only for small minorities; equality before the law was frustrated; the impossibility of experiencing it translated itself into the impossibility of acknowledging its character of safeguard of the rights of each person, ultimately preventing the use of the administration of justice; freedom of conscience and of religion could not but concern few people, occasionally touched by the religious polemics that crossed all civil societies but which excluded countries such as Italy. Thus, for not having wanted or managed to concretely uphold the freedoms historically denied to the majority of citizens, starting with working relations and their social implications, the liberalism which theorized the Legal State carried out a class discriminating function in Italy, and in practice used

its ideal heritage in this perspective.

At the same time, the socialist world, especially with the advent of the "October revolution", set aside its century-old tradition aimed at the political as well as economic emancipation of human beings, casting the ideals which historically embodied themselves into the desire to liberalize the modern world into oblivion, or even worse considering them uncomfortable and hostile ideals.

As I said before, Italian society today is becoming more European, is becoming more civilized. For example, look at what is happening with divorce. Families that are damned for centuries, children who have always suffered a condition of social minority, men and women who live for their children and for their heirs in a climate of constant fear and inferiority, hundreds of thousands of migrants or of people separated from migrants, who were willing, until yesterday, to consider their situation impossible to solve with human means, millions of citizens are now realizing what the clerical State means, what laicism and confessionalism mean, what citizens' rights mean, what a free or oppressed civil society mean. If it is true that they often concentrate on their specific aspirations which concern them more directly - their need for a laicization of the State - at the same time they recognize century-old oppositions, fundamental choices that were postponed in Italy only thanks to a rigidly catholic and populist c

onception of politics. Ultimately, it is politics themselves that millions of human beings are discovering for the first time, in all its importance, all its intelligibility, in its autonomy and force, be it good or bad. There is a general phenomenon of "participation" which seeks to express itself in institutional forms which are not represented in this State and perhaps even less in the traditional parties, in their current and evolving structure. And - this is the point - without the achievement of the citizens' "participation" to the public life there is no "consensus", there is no democratic force; at the most this will produce followers and subjects, occasional encounters, generic attraction, passive compliance, mistrustful resignation and, in the long run, rebellion and revolt.

Well, what is the link between this moment of civil progress for society and the fact of the unification? If they were coherent with the ideas they expressed for a year on "Corrispondenze Socialiste", many of the participants would agree that Nenni (1),

De Martino (2), Tanassi (3) and Orlandi (4) have proven to be totally indifferent vis-à-vis the citizens' requests for a serious renewal, and that they were concerned only about "freezing" and consolidating the bureaucratic isolation which already exists in the Socialist Party and in the Social Democratic Party. The unified party, in the intentions of those who wanted to foreshadow it through the ideological Charter and the chosen procedures, would have been far more provincial, archaic and impotent than the two parties already were. So much that, to achieve this operation, the minimum democratic guaranties that exist in the statutes and in the praxis of the Socialist Party and in the Social Democratic Party have been suspended, officially and bureaucratically creating the leading class of the unified party at all levels. This will mean the suppression of the internal debate until after the next political elections. Against whom has this principle of the irremovability of the leaders been proclaimed, if not

against those who had been called upon to join the new party (which should not have been the sum of the two preexistent parties)? Against what, if not against the new impulses, the new objectives that come from the base, connected to the changes under way in the Italian society? Against the "Social democratic" myth itself, which needs, at this point, to be controlled. Now that there is a greater and broader knowledge of this myth in our country, it too becomes dangerous for a leading class which has exhausted even its transformist capacities. This is why we shall not tell you, as the Communists, the socialproletarians and the socialists that left the Socialist Party in these weeks, that we do not support the PSU because we are contrary to the "socialdemocratization" of Italy. On the contrary, we shall start by underlining that in the procedures and the bureaucratic stages of the unification, those who are the main protagonists seem to be the least enthusiastic.

What do we commonly mean by social democracy? What is the essence of the recurring Scandinavian or British examples, which you yourselves evoke? Apart from all that is typical of a generically democratic and liberal force, by social democracy we mean a society in which the fulfilment of the fundamental human needs is guarantied by the community to each person for the very fact of being born. And it is guarantied in the absolute respect of the political democracy and of the lay civilization, consolidating the freedom of conscience, of thought, of expression and morals as inalienable freedoms which are protected and fostered by the State. A social democratic society is a society in which, according to many, man has overcome the traditional natural obstacles to his existence, those that are the consequence of nature, age, diseases, social and economic malfunctions, basing this victory on the liberties of each person. Generally speaking, these societies have achieved a social security plan which has lead to spea

k about "Welfare State", in which, in practice, old age is no longer a daily, mortifying bet on survival, in which work is guarantied and carried out in morally acceptable conditions, in which childhood is protected and educated, and diseases are cured. Let us accept this scenario, setting aside the hail of doubts and contradictions that are spontaneous faced to the serious problems the Scandinavian "social democratic" societies have to face. Well, these achievements can represent a legitimate perspective in a society such as ours; personally speaking, I am incline to consider them imperative and undelayable. Let us add that these achievements have been possible, have been obtained, through the political and party unity of the great majority of workers, which have always united in an alternative, lay and socialist force. There are no examples of "Welfare State" created in different political conditions, and even less in situations characterized by the schism of the workers' movement and by the systematic coo

peration with the bourgeois forces integrated by those parts of underproletariat that these same forces of the bourgeoisie often succeed in mobilizing. But because I know that all that has not been achieved can be achieved tomorrow or even today, it is worth further analysing the Italian reality such as the social democrats perceive it.

Who is in favour and who is against the achievement of a rational and organized public intervention in the field of welfare and assistance in our country, not only from an ideological point of view? Minister Mariotti, in denouncing the "lagers" which the clinics and the hospitals of this country often resemble, has shown a certain determination to achieve a reform of this sector. Well, who is it who immediately opposed this project? Those who own, manage, mismanage and mortify the sector of public assistance. For the most part, the latter are "charitable institutions", "religious" agencies, confessional organizations, that is, the instruments of the clerical claim on the monopoly of welfare. Nor is it just a historical heritage, which it would be easy to overcome; in fact it is a constant, daily action of destruction of all that which the State and public agencies had safeguarded during fascism, of a systematic pillage of the huge funds which the community spends each year chiefly on "boarding charges" and "

contributions" granted with such generosity and abundance as to have created, in these two decades, the most gigantic increase in the ecclesiastic or clerical patrimony from 1870 to date.

It is a commonly held opinion that budget difficulties prevent the State and the competent public agencies from creating its own welfare structures; but this is contradicted by the fact that the clerical world has created and is creating these structures, which are an evident and systematic source of further financial enrichment and social power, with public subsidies alone. From the more specific point of view of the social welfare and of the health agencies, the State has enabled - with the system it has chosen, under the pressure of the private interests which express themselves chiefly through the Christian Democrat Party - gigantic profits, which cannot be estimated if not in terms of sums that are comparable to the State budget itself, or to budget of the pharmaceutical industries, that is, one of the most profitable forms of exploitation of work and of citizens.

It is true that the Italian Social democrats have meddled in more than one sector over these last twenty years, and that a parliamentary inquiry under way shall shed light on the size of the profits and on the extent of the corruption. From a political point of view, everyone knows that this is one of the most shameful and sad moments of the current regime, to justify which it would be absurd and impudent to invoke the example of the mistakes made by the Labour parties. Is it with the "centre-Left", it is with the cooperation - albeit difficult and polemic - of the party of the Catholics, that it is truly possible to achieve the radical, difficult "social democratic reform" in this sector? Or is it not with the cooperation of all the parties and groups of the Left, starting with the Communists?

There is no Italian city in which the political destiny of the Christian Democrat leading class, of the Left or of the Right, is not chiefly built with the system of the clerical (private or semi-public) exploitation of childhood, of old age, of disease, of misery. Thus, in addition to the neo-worldly claim of the ecclesiastics, there is the need to survive of the ministers, the mayors, the provincial secretaries of the CHRISTIAN DEMOCRAT PARTY and of the dignitaries of the entire regime.

This is an example of a "Western" reform, of a democratic method, of a correct objective which becomes, as such, the element for a crisis in the "Centre-Left" and the object of compromises even before it is discussed in Parliament, whereas the unity of the parties of the Left could easily achieve it.

As far as the civil rights of the citizens are concerned, there have always been, in our country, degenerate social conditions in the family sector. For decades, our local "Leninists", with their "anti-bourgeois" polemic, and the "democratic" but "class-aware" socialists, have confined the problem of divorce, of a lay and autonomous State legislation in favour of the family, among the anticlerical myths of the bourgeoisie. As a consequence, for as many decades, the wealthy have had access to the Sacred Rota, to annulments and divorces, in a society in which internal and external migration have represented perhaps the most massive social phenomenon of these centuries. The illiterate migrants from Veneto and Calabria who migrated to the Americas left behind widows, women condemned to the slavery of misery and children and to material and moral solitude; in those areas, families became larger and larger, but they grew even more in the industrial triangle, in parallel with the phenomenon of illegitimate children

.

Suddenly, the initiative of a socialist parliamentarian, an autonomist of the "Right", Loris Fortuna (5), in parallel with the determined, hard, but suffocated radical polemic, supported by a movement of opinion (endorsed also by the isolated campaign of a "popular" newspaper), managed to propose the possibility of a solution to the country through Parliament. With whom do you want to carry it out, if you want to refuse it, unified socialist friends? With the Christian Democrats? Or will you insist on saying something which not even the communists, the Stalinists, dare to maintain, that is, that ours is a "catholic" and therefore immature country?

The housing problem...Another "social democratic" objective. But where, after so many years, is the urbanistic reform? Perhaps minister Mancini and his party partake "directly" in the particular interests which are destroying, as in the case of Agrigento, our cities, our countryside, our mountains, our beaches, that are chaining the social life to forms of outrageous town planning and are corrupting a large area of the political activity? I don't believe it is so, not for the moment at least. But where do the enemies of these reforms, those who should fight against them, live and thrive, disposing of a great social, political, economic power? Can the other groups and parties of the Left, in their different plans and methods, really not vote the urbanistic reform and those popular housing projects which Minister Mancini could propose in Parliament or which the unified party could elaborate in the interest of 99 per cent of the Italian population?

After twenty years of public housing (and it is worth recalling, in this case, the populist, nondemocratic and popular character of the Christian Democratic Party), which has given the results we all know, by what miracle will you be allowed to propose these reforms for these generations, giving up the habit of presenting the achievements of the European social democracy of the thirties and forties as the "paradise" for the Italian generations of the 21st Century? Once again, is the country not mature?

The above are but a few "practical" examples, linked to the policy of the possible things, the ones on which 95 per cent of Italian citizens, if asked, would express their consensus openly, overcoming ideologies and parties, totally refractory to your doubts and perplexities. The populist misunderstanding of all the socialist forces helps you in this sense: the fact that the underproletariat was ruled and manipulated by the clergy, and, through the clergy, by the industries, by the finance, by the corporative State, has always struck you as unimportant compared to the fact that the clerical authoritarianism in our country has also had fascist, monarchist as well as Christian Democrat expressions, as if this block could not have been foreseen by acknowledging the predominance of the clerical and counter-reformist forces of society.

I will leave other examples (whose sense is granted) to come to the ideal dimensions of the contemporary political struggle, which are so often invoked by the protagonists of the unification as determining for a "Centre-Left" society featuring a cooperation with the Christian Democrat Party and a separation with the communists.

Guy Mollet recently underlined that the schism between communists and socialists was caused and worsened by the claim of a Bolshevist International to impose the two dogmas of the inevitability of the war as a revolutionary means, and of the refusal of political democracy, considered the evil instrument of the bourgeoisie to the socialist movement. The automatic consequence was the set of appendices which we radicals have always fought against: the dictatorship of the single party of the proletariat, a revolutionary myth based on the moustache of Joseph Stalin and on the "reality" of socialism in a single country, a strategic itinerary divided into two stages (first socialist and then communist), an internationalism which became every day more fake ideologically and politically - even if morally and humanly understandable but not justifiable. This engendered on the one hand the story of the "socialbetrayers", worse than the fascists, and on the other hand the story (less theorized and on some occasions less

unjustified) of the Stalinist "atheists", worse than the conservatives.

But today? Today Mollet is right when he underlines that the motivations of the schism between communists and socialists broke down with the fall of Stalinism. Clearly, you cannot reasonably expect Longo (6) or Amendola (7) or Ingrao (8) to come up with a statement in which they reject the dictatorship of the proletariat or in which they accept the multiparty system in the socialist society or in which they reject war as a revolutionary means. They would have to be submitted to a truth test, or the inquisition would need to be extended to every other national, international or peripheral leader. On the other hand, you cannot expect them to clap their hands at you or to vote for you in Parliament until you side with Kennedy, Morse and the majority of U.S. politicians and democrats on the Vietnam war for your non-intervention in the polemic or for your all-out loyalty to the Atlantic Treaty or until you stop the public prayers which Pope Paul VI has said for peace. In this too, the backwardness compared to the

foreign policy of the Scandinavian social democracy and to the social democracy of the French democratic and socialist Federation is patent, and at the most there are groups of neutralistic reserve in the unified party, but still no explicit ferment of pacifism and socialist internationalism.

And this is an increasing isolation that the "new" party could discover with some delay. Everywhere, in these months, the parties of the socialist International are radically changing positions. Suddenly, many of them uphold positions that are far more to the Left than Nenni and De Martino. It is true that these people shift toward the right in a much swifter way as the shift toward the left; but the situation is worth recalling. In Austria, the Socialist Democratic Party stresses its neutralist positions. In France, Mollet openly states that the only unification the social democrats should pursue is the one with the communists. In Finland, for the first time since 1948, social democrats and communists are united with the government on a social democratic government. The Scandinavian social democratic electors in Norway, Sweden and Denmark endow the "extreme Left" parties of the opposition, communists and Left-wing socialists, with non-suspect increases. In Germany itself, Brandt and Wehner seek closer relat

ions with the SED.

Our unified socialists will no doubt be able to refuse the evidence of the increasing unity of objectives between communists and Social democrats, highlighted by the international situation no less than by the specifically Italian one for some time yet, with the use of tactics and delays. But not for long. From the battle against Tambroni (9) to the nationalization of electric power, from the election of Saragat (10) to President of the Republic to the workers' struggles of the metal and mechanical workers of the past years; from the Trabucchi case to the few other cases in which the Left upheld its dignity and that of the State before the citizens, there are already many examples taken from the recent political news.

The action of some of the most important governmental and parliamentary exponents of the unified party, known for their positions of rupture with the Communist Party, paradoxically seems to confirm that that which many communists and radicals and socialists had deemed useful in the Constituent assembly which was not held will be proclaimed by the political events. It is possible that Mancini draws his power of resistance and denunciation on Agrigento from the intention to deprive the Communist Party, the Radical Party and the socialproletarian movements of their function of protest. Clearly, by doing this, he shall acquire a few dozen thousands of votes in his constituency, increasing his popularity, and neutralizing some accusations of inefficiency and integration into the Christian Democrat Party that are launched against the governmental delegation of the Socialist Party. But ultimately, and in the long run, he will have contributed in a battle typical of the opposition: which is that of showing that the

responsibility of this regime and of the deterioration of democracy lies in the clerical world, and that today the enemy of every major battle for progress and a democratic safeguard is the Christian Democrat Party and not the communists.

The same occurs to Minister Mariotti: he no doubt hoped, in the past years, to accredit himself as the Italian spokesman of a social democracy which has guarantied, or is trying to achieve in Europe, vast social security plans and a welfare state. In many respects, all that is left of this project is a sign of the impudent clerical manipulation of social security and public welfare, with a few contaminations in the bureaucracy of an allied party. Once again, those same "unifiers", with their anticommunism, create the premises for new and deeper unitarian fronts for the constitution of their Italian "labour party" and against the Christian Democrat Party.

Then there is the initiative of the socialist Loris Fortuna, who for the first time in decades links socialism to an important lay battle. Let us presume that, in the beginning, Fortuna was concerned about providing the new party, which he is an all-out supporter of, a further point of advantage compared to the Communist Party, guilty of the constitutional disaster of art. 7. I am sufficiently well acquainted to Fortuna to know that this was not the main reason for his battle; but even if it had been, what would the result be today? This year the Communist Party had made incredible progress in this sense concerning this delicate problem, whereas the entire Christian Democrat Party, the entire clerical world are forced to confess the sinister reactionaryism which is the premise and the objective of their unity. And without Mancini and Mariotti, with their already serious political limits, with their contradictions which make them even more distant from expressing true reformist positions, without Loris Fortun

a, what would this "centre-Left" and this unified party be, if not the grave of all the initiatives and the proposals for reform and renewal matured in the fifties? The regions, the town-planning laws, the moralization of public life, the reform of the public schools and its enhancement, a policy of peace and autonomy, European federalism, a fiscal policy other than a version of the policy based on the block of the salaries, a decent fiscal policy instead of the current reprise of the indirect and direct taxation which is becoming more and more heavy for the lower classes?

This is why as Radicals we were not influenced, in our attitude toward the unification, from the opinions expressed by the PSIUP (11) and partly by the Communist Party. First of all, because we knew that the two parties that were merging had both been always social democratic, albeit imperfectly. And also because in society, the social democratic model, even if an insufficient and inadequate mechanism, is still revolutionary compared to the regime that rules us, and implies a break with the clerical populism and authoritarianism which is the greatest obstacle to the development of our country. Thirdly, because the way in which it has been created, bureaucratically, pre-establishing both its program, which in itself represents a programmatic "void", both its leading class, makes its anti-unitarian claims and its support to the clerical-based "centre-Left" vain.

Lastly, because perhaps the PSIUP on the one hand and the moderate opinion on the other are right, when they believe that most of the leading class which formed itself in these years in the PSDI and in the Socialist Party cannot see beyond the possibility of gaining more bargaining power compared to the Christian Democrat Party with the unification. But this is already a lot.

Do you want to deprive the clericals of the monopoly of public assistance? The only way to do it is "laicizing" it, subtracting it from the secular management of the Church and of the private economic forces related to it. There can be no other solution, in order to maintain and increase this acquired "power", but that of overcoming lobbyism and founding it on the control and management of the workers.

Let us assume that Nenni and Tanassi succeed in stonewalling Fortuna's project on divorce, at the same time asking the country to give them more votes and power to impose it in the next legislature; this would lay the foundations for an anticlerical and unified growth of the party's characterization. And so on. On the other hand, the party we are talking about strikes many as the "party of the President". Personally speaking, I have always been convinced that little importance has been given to the fact that it was Saragat, in a meeting with Togliatti not too long ago, who showed the communists and the Social democrats the same historical objective which Guy Mollet considers possible to pursue in a direct, explicit and immediate way: a single and common socialist party. It would be useless, out of stupid concerns of style, to say nothing about the fact that it was precisely the commitment of the most authoritative Italian socialist-democrat that ensured the permanence of a great part of the Socialist Party (

the unitarian and anti-Atlantic one) in the unification process, that gave more validity to the perspective of a lay and democratic socialist alternative, that enabled some to talk about a not too remote "retirement" of the leading class of the Social Democrat Party, albeit by means of bureaucratic promotions. Therefore, I believe I have given a few valid reasons to support the conviction, which is prevalent in my party, that the ideological and political void of the unification statement and the increasingly democratic and at times generically democratic "presence" of the communist resolutions of these last years represent a serious premise to a radical change in the relations between social democrats and communists in Italy as well. In 1967 it will be necessary to discuss explicitly on this unification, and not on others.

But, apart from these facts, other, less sensational but perhaps more interesting facts are undeniable. In the economic field, the difference that there is between the theses and the proposals of Leonardi, for example, and even of Barca, are not that distant from those advanced by Giolitti (12) or by the "team" of socialist and democratic technocrats who preside the Ministry of Budget, or of those who operate in the public sector, and can be considered simply as differences within a same party.

As far as the problems of school and family are concerned, the only differences that can be noticed are those that ensue from the participation in the government with the clericals of the former and from the parliamentary opposition of the latter...

Every day in Italy, in addition to the feelings of impotence and exclusion which has reduced the militant ranks of the Communist Party in the last twenty years, we need to add the more recent and dramatic one of those who, in their unionist and professional choices, have believed in the existence "within the State" of "control rooms" and of attitudes to use them, capable of guaranteeing substantial changes in the relations between the social classes and serious and responsible democratic reforms. Thus, we radicals, firmly loyal, in the professed intentions and in the political praxis of these years, to the objective of the unity and of the renewal of the Left to achieve the democratic and socialist alternative in Italy and in Europe, see that the objective of the unity is getting close, whereas that of the renewal, which is the necessary premise in order for the achieved unity to express itself in the takeover of power and the defeat of the reactionary and clerical forces, is becoming less realistic. In our

opinion, in terms of praxis, that which can potentiate the process of integration of the communist and non-communist Left is the recovery of a clear, alternative vision of the new society which we want to start building gradually, democratically, by means of reforms.

Let us briefly examine what type of problems the Left needs to tackle, faced to the phenomenons of our time.

The non-communist Left claims that the socialization of the communist regimes are not socializations, but only a passage to a bureaucratic State capitalism, with the necessary police and military appendices. This statements no doubt contains some truth. But how can we overcome the contradiction that arises when the socialist democratic forces cannot propose anything more than a progressive and limited transfer to State capitalism of privately-run productive sectors, and in any case basing the economy on two sectors that have repercussions on the immutability of the relations of production, in the State sector as in the private one? Nor can it be said that the theme of the socialist union today aims at a change in those relations, because we have not even reached the stage of the "people's capitalism" and of the popular shareholding of Ehrart and Malagodi, and not even of the "Welfare State", but the plain and simple ideological acceptance of the consumer society. Here, all the socialist forces must find an a

nswer - even the Communist Party, which, though seeking it, cannot find it despite its direct contact with the working masses and with the farmers, and despite the greater freedom of movement which it has being an opposition party. Moreover, the socialists cannot conceive of proposing policies and ideals that are valid only on a national scale or starting from a specific system. We need to find medium-range final indications apt to represent a common answer to the problems that originate from the two industrialized societies, the collective one and the capitalist one.

The recognition of the fact that fifty years after the "October Revolution", the armies remain the pillar of the "socialist" societies no less than of the "capitalist" societies, with all that this implies ideologically and structurally, almost incorporating the nationalist Jacobin heritage and the revolutionary Bonapartist myth more than the anti-militarist pacifism of socialism, could usefully enable to denounce the absolute inadequacy of the Communist Party's "pacifism", incapable of proposing anything but national neutralist positions, which are anachronistic and in any case behind time. This would reveal, with great possibilities of dialogue and useful criticism, the objective reasons for which the Communist Party has always opposed battles such as that for conscientious objection or other battles for the respect of other civil rights (birth control, divorce, reform of the judicial system, reform of the codes, reform of the army and of the police) as bourgeois and superfluous, and endorsed them belatedl

y.

Moreover, there is the problem of laicization, which in Italy is a matter of anticlericalism, on the subject of which the Italian social democracy seemed to have established the same enormous distance between itself and the European social democracy that there existed in the Christian world between the Catholic Counter-Reform and the protestant reform. No lay person is less guilty than the Italian social democrats because, having given up, on this point for lack of ideal conviction and ideological clarity, to a polemic on the principles, they enhanced their political action of subordinated cooperation with the clerical forces.

Thus, it becomes difficult and scarcely credible to accuse the communists, just as it was impossible to accuse us radicals of scarce lay conviction, of dogmatism and of persistent extraneousness vis-à-vis an essential component of the liberation movement of the Western working masses. Today the Communist Party is taking important steps in this direction, and at the last Congress, Longo finally admitted that the supreme and inalienable guaranty of democracy and of respect of religious beliefs and of its expressions lied in the rejection of the conception of an ideological State for the assertion of the laicity of the State. This is a truly final answer, because the problem of "providing" theoretic or practical guaranties to the clerical world to favour its modernization or its "progressivist" tendencies could not, if accepted, but call for a sort of integralist métayage, based on a populist interpretation of the modern social reality. Also, it is worth recalling the need to refuse the national dimension as th

e real context for the battle for power between the democratic workers' movement and its opponents, and as the dimension of the modern political battle.

From this point of view, communists and social democrats proceed with a dangerous parallelism. Not by chance and increasingly so, the social democrats risk appearing more like a "national product", a real structure of the State born from the romantic and bourgeois revolution than the organized expression of the political and social unity of ideals of the working classes of Western Europe. If, examined from the point of view of the political choices of Togliatti (13) and Stalin, Gramsci's (14) intuitions on the need to connect the farmers' battles with the workers' battles in order to achieve a vaster renewal movement resulted in an impossible "national course" to socialism, based on an attempt to establish a dialogue between "communists" and "catholics", it is no less true that the socialists who refused the Third International never proved to recognize the historical, objective, international and necessarily revolutionary unity between the workers of the European industrial triangle represented by the Ruhr

, the East and North of France and Northern Italy. And, if they have been europeanists, they have been so in an inconsistent and contradictory way, focusing exclusively (not only because of the attitude of nationalist isolation of the communist movement in Italy and in France) on the diplomatic solution, destroyed by De Gaulle. The logic of the national States is not that of dissolving themselves through painless treaties, but that of consolidating themselves; the opposition of a single French nationalist alone was enough to demolish the fragile giant diligently and patiently built by the Catholics and the socialists, by the more advanced forces of European neo-capitalism and by the representatives of the majority of trade unions in Europe. It is especially the communists who repeat, like the social democrats, that the day of the revolutionary reprise in Europe will be that in which the workers of the Fiat, of the Renault, of the Volkswagen, will strike together, for the same reasons, on the same day.

There are many thousands of people in Italy, socialists, communists, socialproletarians, radicals, social democrats, republicans, democratic independents, who ponder these things, and often agree on them. That which is typical today of the Radicals of the Radical Party, and which is the essence of the political difference that exists between them and the militants of the Socialist, Communist, Republican Party and of the PSIUP, is the belief that a progress can be made in this direction if these convictions and remarks are made into a reason of explicit and manifest unity rather than an unexpressed reserve in the militant action of every day, to be advanced on a "more suitable occasion" of the other parties. It is on this that years ago we based a militant activity which some tried to suffocate with drastic conspiracies of silence. This was the ground for the alliances with the PSIUP and with the Communist Party against the "Centre-Left" no less that the heavy excommunications and the manipulation attempts wh

ich one or the other at times used against us. And this, despite the hostility of the bureaucrats or the supercilious irritation of some "leaders" was the base for common, important battles with the governmental Left, such as that for the election of a non-clerical President, or those in which we challenged the continuous accusations of treason which our allies launched against the autonomists of the Socialist Party or against the Republican Party, recalling our true opponent, supporting the attempts of Mariotti, Mancini, or the parliamentary venture of Loris Fortuna. And, to conclude, this was also the base on which we hope to unite soon, achieving a vaster, deeper and more effective unity. Support the unification? It is fine for those friends and comrades who lived these years with a painful, comprehensible and guilty reserve or inertia, but not for us. Do you really, comrades socialists, think we could barter our modest entry with Tanassi or Brodolini, provided they wanted to?

What would we say? What would we talk about? Really, we could not remain silent for two or three years on the problems of housing, hospitals, laicity, Concordat, divorce, elderly and children, schools and politics, international politics and military structures, pensions and medical assistance, European federalism and clerical Europe, democracy in and of the democratic parties. Or we could do so only accepting the title of organic intellectuals (of the "Centre-Left" or of the Communist Party, it makes no difference) and talking about all this in the alienating structures which the editorial industry reserves for the "controversies" between the "fine experts" of socialism; otherwise, we would betray the title of party of the "anti-communist" unification and the title of the "irreversible Centre-Left".

Translator's notes

(1) Pietro Nenni (1891-1980): Italian politician. A socialist since 1921, editor of l'"Avanti!" (1923-25), fled to France in 1926, where he was the protagonist of the socialist unification ('30) and of the pact of unity of action with the communists ('34). Secretary of the Italian Socialist Party in 1943 and from '49 to '64, Vice Prime Minister ('45) and Foreign Minister ('46-47. During the sixties he supported the alliance between the Socialist Party and the Christian democrat Party, was Vice Prime Minister ('63-68), and Foreign Minister ('68-69). Elected senator for life in 1970.

(2) Francesco De Martino (1907): Italian politician. Secretary of the Socialist Party from 1964-66 and from '72-76 (joint secretary of the unified Socialist Party, '66-70); Vice Prime Minister ('68-72).

(3) Mario Tanassi (1916): Italian politician. Secretary of the Social Democrat Party (1963) and co-secretary of the Unified Socialist Party ('66-69), Minister of Defence ('68-69; '70; '70-72; '73-74), convicted by the Constitutional Court for corruption for the Lockheed scandal.

(4) Flavio Orlandi (1921): Italian politician. Secretary of the Social Democrat Party (1972-75).

(5) Loris Fortuna: Exponent of the Socialist Party, one of the promoters of the law for the legalization of divorce.

(6) Luigi Longo (1900-1980): Italian politician. Communist, inspector of the international brigades during the Spanish civil war, created the Garibaldi partisan brigades in 1943. One of the organizers of the insurrection of April 1945. Succeeded Togliatti as Secretary (1964-72) and later President of the Communist Party.

(7) Giorgio Amendola (1907-1980): Italian politician. Joined the Communist Party in 1929, of which he was one of the leaders during the Resistance and after the war.

(8) Pietro Ingrao (1915): Italian politician. Exponent of the Communist Party, President of the Chamber of Deputies (1976-79).

(9) Fernando Tambroni (1901-1963): Italian politician. Minister of the Interior (1955-59) and of Budget ('59-60), Prime Minister ('60). Was forced to resign following a popular protest.

(19) Giuseppe Saragat (1898-1988): Italian politician. Socialist, exile during fascism, was minister in the first Bonomi government (1944) and President of the Constituent Assembly ('46). In January 1947, he guided the split of the Socialist Party's right wing, establishing the PSLI (Italian Socialist Workers' Party) and then the Social Democrat Party. Vice Prime Minister (1947-50: 1954-57), supported the Centre-Left and was Foreign Minister (1963-64). President of the Republic (1964-71), then President of the Social Democrat Party.

(11) PSIUP: Italian Socialist Party for the Union of All Workers. Party created in 1943 from the fusion of the Socialist Party with the movement of proletarian unity.

(12) Giolitti: Socialist exponent.

(13) Palmiro Togliatti (1893-1964): Italian politician. Secretary of the Italian Communist Party from 1927 unto his death, he lived abroad for long periods, in Moscow as a member of the Secretariat of the Comintern and in Spain during the civil war. On his return to Italy in 1944, he launched the Communist Party's national policy, with the association with the other antifascist forces, with the acknowledgment of the role of the Catholics, and the participation in the governments from '44 to '47. Minister on several occasions, after the elections of 1948 he headed the opposition of the Left. He established the premises for the Italian Communist Party's autonomy vis-à-vis the USSR.

(14) Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937): Italian politician and intellectual. Member of the Socialist movement since 1913, organizer of the weekly "L'Ordine Nuovo", was one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party (1921). Became Secretary of the Party in 1924, founded the daily newspaper "L'Unità" (1924) and consolidates his position at the Congress of Lion. Advocated an alliance between the industrial proletariat of the North and the poor farmers of the South. Arrested by the fascist government in 1926, he died in 1937 in Rome.