ABSTRACT: After the war, the Left set aside antimilitarism, which had been an essential theme of prefascist socialism. The Resistance had extoled the armed popular revolution, while the partisan had become the model of a thrilling political militancy. Resistance and realism dismiss the libertarian positions. The Jacobin Togliatti [2] and the "non-demagogic" PCI [3] members of the Constituent Assembly. The amendments for conscientious objection are rejected; the Catholic world condemns the heresy of conscience, and banishes the objectors as members of a sect; the PCI, instead, contributes to rejecting an amendment signed by Pertini [4], among others, which establishes that "in the budget of the State, military expenses should not exceed the expenses for Public Education, except in the case of a parliamentary law in force for no more than a year". Then comes the opportunism of the coalition front. The Jehova's Witnesses are alienated; the Catholic civil disobedience between prophetism, radicalism and fundament

alism. The Perugia-Assisi march. The Committee for nuclear Disarmament (CND): the birth of an International? No to the diplomacy based on détente: in both societies, the military structures represent one of the fundamental principles of the authoritarian State. Converting these structures into peace structures is the condition to achieve the progress of the single peoples and of the international community. On the basis of this important, first acquisition of objectives and methods, an analysis and a history of the radical libertarian and nonviolent antimilitarism in the sixties, through the battles for the recognition of conscientious objection.

(LA PROVA RADICALE N.1 - AUTUMN 1971)

After the fall of fascism, the left was determined to dismiss every reason of conflict and controversy regarding the subject of antimilitarism, which had been so essential for the prefascist socialism, and so deeply rooted in the libertarian popular tradition. The Resistance and the National Committee for the Liberation of Italy (CLN) had extoled the popular and armed revolution, while the partisan had become a model of a thrilling political militancy; the democratic armies and the communist armies had been necessary to overthrow fascism and recover freedom; ultimately, the ones who were really absent from the antifascist battles seemed to be precisely the libertarian socialists, while the Catholics' new realism and loyalism prevented them from returning to positions which had characterized their political commitment at the time of World War I. Diplomatic reasons relative to the role of the left and its international position prevented an in-depth reflexion on the importance of the military structures in rec

ent and remote history, and on their influence on society and on the State.

The history of the relinquishment of this battle can, however, start with the recording of some speeches, of a pacifist or more strongly antimilitarist tone, held during the sessions of the Constituent Assembly, and of their defeat.

During the sessions of the subcommittee (1st, "rights and duties of the citizens", president Tupini, secretary Grassi, members Amadei, Basso, Cevolotto, Corsanego, De Vita, Dossetti, Angela Gotelli, Leonilde Jotti [5], La Pira, Lucifero, Mancini, Marchesi, Mastrojanni, Umberto Merlin, Moro [6], Togliatti), during the discussion of what was to become, in the final draft, article 52 of the fundamental law of the Republic, MP Basso proposed the following text:

"All citizens are expected to offer personal services to the State for military service and labour". The proposal wasn't even taken into consideration.

But during the committee, the PCI, speaking through its most authoritative exponent, Palmiro Togliatti, immediately outlined (during the discussion of the article on citizens' military duties) the direction in which it was to operate in this field in the future, without hesitations. MP De Vita had suggested that the new Republic adopt the system based on the voluntary service instead of the draft. This thesis, while buttressed to some extent from the experience of the Anglo-Saxon countries, was insufficiently documented in terms of possible developments in Italy. However, on this occasion Togliatti assumed an attitude to explain and justify his refusal of the De Vita proposal, which had relevant consequences and effects. Togliatti said that with the voluntary system, "there would no longer be an entire population which takes up weapons and is ready to protect the country, but a category of professionals...", potentially dangerous for the institutions themselves. On 22 May, the Assembly discussed the text of

article 52, developed by the commission. The debate highlighted a considerable antimilitarist presence, with a clear prevalence of PSI and PSLI. None of the amendments or additional commas proposed in this sense was accepted. The first amendment was introduced by MPs Cairo (PSLI), Chiaramello (PSLI), Calosso (PSI) and others. It said the following: "the military service is not compulsory. The Republic, in compliance with the international conventions, will apply the perpetual neutrality". In his addresses, MP Cairo declared himself openly "pacifist". Then MP Caporali (PSLI) proposed an addition to the second comma of the article, which, if accepted, would have introduced the principle of conscientious objection ("those who object to it on grounds of philosophical and religious reasons of conscience are exempted from servong the army". It was an obsolete way of expressing it, both in the formulation and in the substance, but it corresponded to the general level of awareness on this issue, also on an internati

onal scale. However, MP Merlin (DC) said he could not accept the addition as such because, he said, "there is no...sect of conscientious objectors in Italy" (1). With this type of statements, the Italian official Catholic world immediately made one of its fundamental choices, on the one hand preventing the introduction of the right to the "heresy" of conscience in the institutions, and on the other confining the protestant world (whence the objection to the armed military service came, internationally) into the ghetto of the "sects". The assembly rejected the bill; among those who voted in favour there was MP Paolo Rossi. The additional comma proposed by Calosso, Chiaramello, Pertini, M. Matteotti and others was rejected even more clearly - in the debate before the vote. The comma proposed the following: "in the budget of the State, the expenses for the armed forces cannot exceed the expenses for public education, unless there is a law of Parliament in force for no longer than a year". The proposal, which wa

s greeted with irony, was called "demagogic" by MP Laconi, while the communist group joined the faction that voted against. The military service was lastly laid down as compulsory, even though it was to be carried out "in the limits and conditions established by the law". Thus, the new Republic dropped its last opportunity to assert and institutionalize new civil rights and new forms of relations between citizens and State which would have represented an advanced sphere of antimilitarist struggle, refusing the introduction, in the subsequent article of the Constitution, of the principle according to which "when public powers violate the fundamental liberties and rights guarantied by the Constitution, citizens have the right and the duty to resist such oppression".

Apart from this debate, it is hard to reconstruct which political or cultural forces had already opened, at that moment, a debate in society on the subject of militarism and pacifism. Capitini's initiative was clearly expanded, as an open expression of the reflexions of a book, "Elements of a religious experience" (2), which was published during fascism thanks to the efforts of Benedetto Croce [7] (Laterza 1937), which had affirmed a civil alternative of non-violence, of "open religion" and therefore - basically - of antiauthoritarian and antimilitarist "dissent" against the authoritarian, militarist and class-discriminating ideology and praxis of society and the institutions, "liberal" and fascist at the same time, which governed the country. In 1947-7, the "Movimento di Religione" organized by Capitini and others, proclaimed to be involved in "an action against the war, in a teaching and a praxis of nonviolence...". In 1947, Capitini wrote:

"we have formed the first group of a large Italian association of war resisters...", whose objective was the active commitment for "conscientious objection against the war" and for its recognition. It is likely that even the old Ezio Bartalini joined this group; during the first decades of the century, Bartalini had had a strong influence on the socialist milieu, stirring, with his battles and his articles ("La Pace"), broad positions of intransigent and marked pacifism, as the archives of the police of the time witness.

Along with him, we should also mention don Mazzolari, who, during the fascist epoch, opposed the nationalism of the Church, its fundamental support of fascism and its ideology of "war", and basically favoured a "civil disobedience" in the name of that Christian radicalism which, particularly outside of Italy, had started to characterize the Catholic world (Claudio Baglietti, exiled in Geneva during fascism for refusing the military service, was also Catholic). But generally speaking, the confused, radical religious and antiauthoritarian ferment and debate, promoted in those years by Capitini (and by Tartaglia), was stifled both by the dominant idealistic culture (Croce: "War...is at the heart of reality, inconceivable without war..."), and by the "realism" of the Left.

In the meanwhile, after the crisis which followed the war, the militarist reaction re-emerged, also owing to the turn represented by the cold war climate and the recreation of opposed military blocks. The adhesion to the NATO marked the country's rearmament, and the ideology of the "democratic army" itself was dismissed to the advantage of the ideology which considered the army as the banner of civilization, etc. Capitini's nonviolence never freed itself from the blackmail raised against it, i.e. of simply representing the utopia of a purely religious sect. The initiative on "peace", therefore, soon became the propagandistic instrument of the coalition movement, through the campaigns promoted bu the Partisans of Peace. In all of its campaigns, the movement accurately avoided resuming Togliatti's formulation of the "democratic army" or of the "citizens-in-arms". This indication, while typical of the communist world, and though it was resumed again during the Constituent Assembly, sparked no debate or initiati

ve on the part of the Left. Once it assumed a "national" aspect, it also relinquished the debate, and in practice accepted the fact that the movements of the Right monopolized the sector.

For years, the "Jehova's Witnesses" supplied the military prisons and the courts with plenty of material for free exercise and use. Conscientious objection was the "protest", the sign of "dissent" and of total refusal of the worldly society and its laws of this religious minority, whose roots were to be found - geographically but perhaps also culturally speaking - mostly in the rural, subversive and traditionally antistate world of the religious revivals in the style of David Lazzaretti or of the neo-Judaism of Gargano. As an extreme minority which rejected any debate and confrontation in terms of history and institutions, it expressed its conflict with the associated structures and with the State through this total protest, through the refusal of carrying weapons. The military chaplaincy's attitude toward the "Jehova's Witnesses" was one of indifference and intolerance, and it never used a bit of charity or understanding for this hated sect; indifference, if not open intolerance, was what the Left, absorbed

as it was in far different problems, felt for these odd people. And yet, it is thanks to them that conscientious objection has become a relevant and political problem. Apart from the motivations, which were obviously not "political", the presence of a group of "outcasts" who refused to accept compromises on a problem of conscience, and who were capable of risking, for that problem, a serious and costly conflict with the established authority, with the establishment, with authoritarian laws and conservative structures for the simple fact of not admitting exceptions, of tolerating no infractions or protests, was an important fact. In the period in which a fiery polemic was sparked by the publication of a modest book, "L'armata s'Agapò", during which the most reactionary sectors continued to extol the military ideology, the "Jehova's Witnesses" represented, in practice, the only antimilitarist presence of a certain consistence. In 1948-1950, there was also the conscientious objection of Pietro Pinna. The latte

r was supported in his action by 33 British labour parliamentarians, with a petition that was rejected very firmly by the Prime Minister De Gasperi [8] himself. Pinna's objection marked the reprise of the libertarian antimilitarist origin, in a Gandhian or radical Christian form. In proposing, together with MP Umberto Calosso, a law for the recognition of conscientious objection precisely after the condemnation of Pinna, MP Igino Giordani (DC) grasped the explosive political meaning of this isolated act. "The case" - he explained - "started with the institution of the compulsory service in Europe and with the socialist currents; it emerged with socialism itself: the first conscientious objectors were those socialists who, already in the past century, refused to serve the army on account of their internationalism". And the court of Turin ruled that this conscientious objection, with its pacifist motivations, had given rise to "a vast echo and a noxious effect of disintegration in the military sphere, with an

obvious danger that such facts could repeat themselves". Father Messineo, for his part, supported the most conservative reactions, bitterly attacking the very hypothesis of conscientious objection as contrary to the hierarchic and authoritarian ideology of the Church. Two parliamentary bills, one developed by Capitini and Jemolo on request of the Italian League for the Rights of Man, the other introduced by MPs Basso, Targhetti, Paolicchi and other socialist members of Parliament, marked, during these years, the insufficient progress of the battle. Both projects failed, however, chiefly in the task of showing the political conscience and the public opinion the essential points necessary to turn the pacifist commitment into an essential moment for the acquisition of larger, new civil liberties in a State which, while starting to pose itself a series of "social" issues through the new forms of State capitalism, nonetheless preserved its authoritarian, clerical and profoundly illiberal structures, even after th

e fall of fascism. Strong residues of discretionary power remained in the two bills (in a more marked way in Basso's compared to the Capitini-Jemolo one) for the commissions and the competent military courts-martial. The Capitini-Jemolo bill had the merit of being the first one to advocate the constitution of an alternative civil service replacing the military one. The innovation paved the way for a more advanced battle, which, however, only truly antimilitarist forces resumed and continued years later. An alternative civil service, capable of being a point of reference for all those who, regardless of their beliefs and motivations, "automatically" requested the right to objection, would have (and should have) been the historically adequate answer of a serious left-wing battle aiming to reduce - and in the long run abolish - the huge power of the military structures on the civilian and peace structures. Capitini's indication was correct; however the political initiative to support it was non-existent. All th

e following legislative formulations for the acknowledgment of some form of conscientious objection preferred to "mediate" with the obvious needs of the conservative sphere, limiting conscientious objection to the cases recognized by more or less militarized commissions, through an inquisitorial, illiberal and fundamentally restrictive mechanism, or in any case making the disarmed service into a punishment, as it was made to last as much as twice the time of the armed military service. The Italian left basically showed limits and a lack of courage and clarity in those circumstances, committing itself exclusively to the improvement of a legislation which did not prevent hundreds of young people from absurdly filling the prisons.

1962 was the year of the case of Giuseppe Gozzini, who justified his refusal to serve the army with the theses of the evangelic radicalism, and therefore raised a violent debate in the Catholic world. Gozzini refused conscientious objection. In his view, it was the expression of a "prophetism" or of an "abstract" pacifism, as well as a demonstration of pure individualism which he considered condemnable. His, he said, was a protest against world hunger and the iniquity of the poor and the exploited in Italy and in the world. A year later, in an article on "Il Giornale del Mattino", commenting on the sentence against Gozzini, Father Balducci, active in that Florentine church where Don Milani and the crisis of the "Isolotto" were already operating, supported Gozzini, attacking the Catholic theory of the "fair war". Moreover, basing himself on more recent statements of the hierarchy, according to which a total war would have had the characteristics of an "unfair" war, Father Balducci consequently deducted that i

n such case, the Catholics would have had not only the right, but even the "duty" to desert. For these statements Father Balducci was sentenced to eight months of prison for apology of a crime.

The onset of this "heresy" already contained elements which were to fuel much of the "Catholic dissent" years later. Quite aptly, W. Dorigo on "Questitalia" highlighted the extremist components ("the temptation" - he wrote - "toward a left-wing evangelic extremism"), but the problem obviously should have been posed in other terms. Gozzini's conscientious objection forced once more the civilian and military authorities (the problem didn't exist for the religious ones, obviously (3)) to make choices and decisions that were relevant "institutionally". Gozzini's and Balducci's condemnation raised problems - just like a few years previously the case of the Bellandis, who were denounced to the public opinion by the bishop of Prato, and which the Italian judiciary refused to condemn - which should have urged the Italian left to an open confrontation on the subject of civil liberties. The latter should have warned that, by supporting these Catholic dissidents, it would have fulfilled a fundamental task for the growt

h of the conscience and of the civil institutions. The gravity of this problem and the urgent need for a strong commitment emerged from the attitude held by the judiciary and the civil authorities. The sentences against Balducci and Gozzini were maintained, but the former was released on probation, and the latter was saved by the usual ad hoc amnesty. This prevented them from becoming, to some extent, the "martyrs" of an ideal heresy, of a civil dissent. An event which could have created, in other words, a clash and a confrontation in the country and in the institutions, was thus avoided. Despite the "communist applauses" for Gozzini and Balducci, denounced by the conservative press, this initiative's only echo and political consequence was the introduction of new parliamentary bills for the recognition of conscientious objection on the part of single members of Parliament and of circumscribed and limited forces (Pistelli, DC; Basso, Psi; Paolicchi, PSI; and others), which were also rejected. In fact, it is

to be noticed that the communist applauses for the objectors had no serious and concrete political consequences, and that the bills were not signed by any communist deputy; it is nonetheless important to underline that certain Catholic spheres started to feel the need to divert the drive of the Catholic objection toward more controllable areas, in order to avoid schisms and separations inside the Catholic front. The Christian democrat Pedini was the author of the only bill that was approved, a bill which enabled only certain privileged categories (privileged for culture, "morality" and conformism) to replace the military service with a period of social "assistance" in the developing countries. This was devised with the purpose of defusing the discontent of certain "intellectual" cadres, in the general belief that conscientious objection was a need felt by cultural and politicized élites.

At the national Council of the Radical Party of November 1960, the left-wing faction proposed a draft resolution which, "in the face of the problems of peace which currently represent the very legitimation the foreign policy in the world", urged the party and the left-wing forces to an initiative promoting the "atomic and conventional disarmament of the entire European continental area", with the consequent abolition of the armies in the countries of this area", the "denunciation of the NATO military alliance (the non-renewal at the expiry of 1961) and of the WEU" and the "proclamation of the right to insubordination and to civil disobedience for all citizens who do not accept the policy of rearmament, of war, of division and competition of national states which belong to their class enemies and which necessarily pursue objectives that clash with the international unity of the working and democratic forces..." The draft statement on foreign policy, on "atomic and conventional disarmament, and the policy for

peace" of the radical left also contained an appeal for the "federation, or in any case the common organization of all socialist, popular and revolutionary movements that struggle for the establishment of a regime of freedom in Western Europe". Antimilitarism, to be recovered through a concrete policy of the institutions for "atomic and conventional" disarmament, and through a serious indication of unilaterality, was thus proposed to the left as the common and unifying objective. In the history (or in the chronicle) of the Italian left, this position was new, and represented a complete separation from the past.

It is up to us to carry out an analysis of the positions of the left on the problems regarding foreign policy. We will briefly mention some, which at the time were significant and premiment. On the one hand there was the PCI, which, having refused the "Greek way" to the acquisition of power, could not or did not want to provide, in those years, indications other than a consent to the U.S.S.R.'s policy, both during the stage of the cold war and when a stage of coexistence was opened: therefore, it attacked NATO on a "diplomatic" level, but proposed no alternative to the Italian rearmament. This position was matched, as the opposite "choice of civilization", by the pro-NATO position of most of the so-called "democratic left", which was fundamentally pro-American but with reactionary tones (opposing, for example, to the Algerian war of liberation and essentially supporting France and England at the time of the Suez affair). Thirdly, the "neutralist" position (represented by Pietro Nenni [9] and later on by Erne

sto Rossi [10]) was relatively successful; according to this position, Italy was to leave the Atlantic block on positions of "equal distance" enacted by certain countries, namely the "nonaligned" ones (Yugoslavia, for example). Each of these positions basically appealed to considerations of "realism" and convenience, taking for granted the effective impotence of the Italian democratic forces to take more advanced or innovative initiatives or proposals.

Faced to these - and with strong polemic accents against them - the radical left started a critical reflexion and aimed at broader objectives, such as - according to the radical left - to represent a necessary and undelayable moment in the recovery of a new autonomy of the historical left as a whole. The years between 1960 and 1964 were in any case years characterized by debates, during which matters of considerable breadth were handled, with a political confrontation which covered problems such as the European disarmament and the exit from the NATO, the German issue, the policy of the blocks, still considered as a cause of unstable equilibrium, and therefore the object of possible political initiatives, the attitude toward Gaullism, Nasserism, etc. One of the subjects of the conflict was Italy's joining or not the "multilateral force", the project for a "conventional" European army suggested by the U.S. to the European countries. The so-called democratic Left was extremely active regarding the "multinationa

l" or "multilateral"; it opposed atomic rearmament, also on moralistic grounds, and believed it could defend with a clear conscience a project which charged the European countries with the task of preparing "first containment" forces based exclusively on conventional weapons and armies, which could not, according to the proposers, promote a true and modern "power policy".

The thesis of the radical left on the struggle against the armies and militarism found space for debate on these subject. In 1964, at a meeting of the Gaetano Salvemini [11] Movement in which the thesis of the possibility and validity of the project for a "multilateral force" was endorsed by exponents of the "democratic lefts", the radicals on the contrary insisted on the weakness and the limits of such a formulation; beneath the realism of the acceptance of a "second choice", of a "reserve line" faced to the threat of a proliferation of nuclear weapons, the "multilateral" force in fact would have served the purpose of giving more power to and rearming the French, German and Spanish armies, i.e. the armies of countries characterized by right-wing or reactionary governments; and, on the other hand, it was to be obvious that these same armies could not reject or ignore technological progress, the renewal of the potential in a nuclear sense and direction. Ernesto Rossi and the socialist Benzoni endorsed this po

sition, albeit with different arguments.

The radicals' appeal urging the debate on foreign policy to overcome the abstractedness of certain formulations and the elitism of restricted power groups, of the bureaucracies and of the apparatus, and to become a moment of ideal conflict in society objectively clashed with the slow, insufficient, tiresome revival of openly pacifist positions, which in those years started to give signs of greater activity and vitality.

In 1962 there were at least three centres of "pacifist" initiative in Italy: the Italian section of the War Resisters International, the Italian section of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the Centre for non-violence, established and headed in Perugia by Aldo Capitini. Of the three, the latter was the strongest and most original. On 24 September 1961, the first pacifist demonstration took place, organized by Capitini: the Perugia-Assisi "march of peace". Capitini's initiative assumed the real "leadership" of a varied movement, which included the structures of the traditional left, particularly the communist one (Partisans of peace, and so on), the pacifist and religious groups (protestant minorities above all), the new conscientious objectors, the radicals of the left as well as libertarians presences. It was the drive of these various forces which lead the bureaucracies of the traditional movement of the left to endorse and participate, so as to prevent the formation of an autonomous political group in

such a delicate field. Ernesto Rossi, speaking at the demonstration of Assisi, maintained that the Italian democrats were to finally confront the problem of the U.S. bases in Italy. The final motion expressed its rejection of the cold war and of the policy of the blocks, and supported instead the potentiation of the U.N. and a total and controlled disarmament ("the progressive development of disarmament and control must advance in parallel"). The press covered the march, which had been considerably successful in terms of participation, in a deformed and restrictive way, underlining aspects which were relatively secondary, such as the anti-American attitude and the massive communist presence: for obvious reasons linked to the situation of cold war, every position which was less than pro-NATO appeared, or was made to appear, as related to the PCI. After the march of Assisi (4), many other marches were organized, and took place, often with a vast participation, in various cities: Cagliari, Bologna, Modena, Fer

rara, Marzabotto, Pesaro, Milan, et cetera.

But already during the second one, from Camucia to Cortona, which was characterized by the participation of delegations of the municipal administrations (March of the 100 municipalities), it was easy to notice a diminution in the renewal and political commitment, which were both diverted toward more harmless forms of generically unitarian, propagandistic pacifism, and less and less up-to-date with respect to the political problems they had been promoted for. Party bureaucracies and apparatus combined triumphalism and opportunism, so that these initiatives soon appeared and became useless.

Generally speaking, the formation of the pacifist groups corresponded to the new creativity which developed among the new and old international movements; the War Resisters International, which for decades, in its numerous and often effective national delegations, had been carrying on the struggle for the recognition of conscientious objection, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Committee for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the committee of 100 (the result of a "radical" schism from the CND, and whose leader was Bertrand Russell) or, in America, the SANE and the first groups of black initiative (Bayard Rustin, etc). And it was following the initiative of the European Federation against Nuclear Weapons that an international conference of the various groups was held in Oxford in January 1963. The objective of one of the presidents of the federation, Collins, was that of extending the organization for the antinuclear campaign on a global scale. The appeal for the adhesion was also addressed to the strict pacif

ist movements and antimilitarists, but obviously Collins wanted to contain its drive, so as to preserve a moderate character for the future International, limited to the specific objective. The multifarious and vigorous movement against war, in other words, was to focus on the initiatives considered most appropriate to support a pressure campaign on the governments, the same initiatives promoted by the majority of the CND and which had characterized the major public demonstrations (Easter Marches, etc.). At that moment, an essential problem for the CND's antinuclear activists was also that of creating regular relations, on the basis of a strong position, with the World Peace Movement, promoted directed by the communist parties in support of the U.S.S.R.'s policy, and which a year before has summoned the World Peace Meeting in Moscow (5).

The Oxford meeting was attended by representatives of international antinuclear, pacifist and antimilitarists movements (Tony Smythe and Devi Prasad for the WRI, the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, etc) and national ones (A.J. Muste, Committee for non violent action, USA; Homer Jack, SANE, USA; Bayard Rustin, War Resisters League; USA; Student Peace Union, USA; Linus Pauling, Society for Responsibility in Science, USA; Ritchie Calder, CND, GB; Peter Cadogan, Committee of 100, GB; Claude Bourdet, PSU, France; Gregory Lambrakis, Committee for Peace, Greece; Gunther Anders, Hiroshima Committee, Austria; Abbey Paul Carrette, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Belgium; SDS, Federal Republic of Germany; Frank Boaten, Continuing Committee of the Accra Assembly; Sarva Seva Sangh, India; Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, etc).

The Italian delegation was one of the strongest ones, organized and representative of the Italian Peace committee; apart from Andrea Gaggero, Ernesto Treccani (PCI) and Aldo Putelli (Italian Association of War Resisters), four radicals participated: Marco Pannella [12], Ida Sacchetti, Giuliano Rendi [13] and Angiolo Bandinelli. Under the determining radical pressure, the delegation's line was that of trying to aggregate an effective, solid International, "open to the will of the movements of the base", and of widening its policy beyond the well-known moderate and antinuclear positions, to the pacifist and antimilitarist ones. Only thus, according to the delegation, "would it be possible to direct the movement in a strictly antimilitarist sense, and give it the necessary force to become dangerous for its opponents and lose its generically humanitarian character" which it undoubtedly had in many of its components. The conference appointed a continuing committee until the following assembly, a committee which r

epresented the most active groups of the British, American, Scandinavian, Italian and German pacifism. One important result of the conference was that despite the pressure of some of the Americans, the conference set no limits to the access of other forces of the new International, refusing to define the capacity of "nonaligned" in unacceptable and discriminating terms, as various associations had initially requested.

The Italian delegation introduced a political document of its own, only a minimum part of which was accepted and assimilated into the conference's final document, and fundamentally altered in its meaning. The delegation's document said that "The creation of a common international organization of pacifist and antinuclear movements fulfils a historical need which the most recent international events and trends have contributed to making more obvious and urgent. Now that the cold war is over, and that the doctrinal positions and the interests which caused it have been defeated, the two major world powers seem to unite in the attempt to negotiate peacefully and to carry out a common action to contain every forms of extremism, whatever its origin. Our task is to support this policy with all our forces, and to protect it from any risk of relinquishment.

However, peace can only be the result of contingent diplomatic agreements. The pacifist and antinuclear movements believe that a purely or prevalently moralistic request for peace is obsolete. The new international organization in which they unite intends to promote and carry out a constructive and dynamic battle so as to progressively remove the very causes of war, the institutions and the state structures destined for this purpose. In every country of the world, peace must acquire the characteristic of an institution, and the concrete form of precise structures".

Regarding this task and this ideal, the two societies which until yesterday seemed radically and lethally opposed - the communist one and the bourgeois one - now have to confront a common problem, which we hope will be faced with a common, fraternal awareness of its fundamental elements. "In both societies, the military structures represent one of the main bases of the State". Converting these structures into structures of peace, converting the military service into civil service, is the condition for the progress of the single peoples and of the international community.

...Moreover, the antinuclear campaign can only highlight the fundamental contradiction of all those, government officials or politicians, who try to replace the atomic arsenal by potentiating the conventional arsenal, or, in any case, by maintaining and modernizing the national or integrated armies. Unfortunately, scientific progress applied to the armies cannot be stopped, until these continue to exist. On the contrary, often even the progresses of atomic research for peaceful purposes are currently administered by the armies...". Despite the unsatisfying conclusion of the conference, the Italian delegation decided to abstain rather than vote against.

The essential problem, for the radicals, was that of the developing the antimilitarist battle internationally and obtaining acknowledgment of its internationalist character. The International Conference for Disarmament and Peace, established in Oxford, represented, according to the radicals, an important progress. With various motivations, the other members of the Italian delegation also agreed to support the Confederation. The Oxford Conference, which underlined on an international scale a moment of expansion and activity of forces which at the time - and precisely on the problem of disarmament and peace - started to emerge as an essential component of what was later to be called the "new left", coincided with a period of intense initiatives also in Italy. The Italian pacifist and antimilitarist forces also tried to create a unitarian structure or articulation. The Italian Conference on Peace (January 1962) represented the attempt to achieve this objective. The result obtained, however, was neither effectiv

e not long-lasting, as it could have. Precisely at a moment in which local structures were starting to emerge in the country, capable of promoting initiatives of a certain relevance such as the marched for peace to protest against NATO facilities, the experiment was suddenly discontinued. In 1962, the Italian Peace Movement had also been formed, which in its majority supported the positions of the Italian Communist Party and generally speaking the Soviet diplomatic line (its secretary at the time was MP Velio Spano). The Italian Movement for Peace was created after a national meeting on the problems of disarmament, which was held in Florence and introduced by reports by Lucio Libertini, Velio Spano, Aldo Capitini, Giuliano Rendi, Paolo Vittorelli and Giovanni Favilli.

The situation in which the meeting was held was characterized by the international debate on the problem of disarmament. The Geneva Conference was being held in that period, with the participation for the first time of neutralists and of a number of minor powers of the two blocks. "But precisely for this reason - the radical Giuliano Rendi said in his report - it is extremely generic and ineffective to establish general disarmament as the objective of a European pacifist action (making general disarmament into the objective of the pacifists' requests and action). The political forces that carry out this type of action...inevitable rely exclusively on the desire of peace of both superpowers...The political solution we have to work for is that of a bilateral, atomic and conventional plan of the European area, from the boundaries of the Soviet Union to the Atlantic....The European lefts, and in particular the communist left, with which we are willing to carry out not only a debate, but also a co-operation on th

e fundamental reasons of the pacifist and democratic action in Western Europe, should realize that...the logic and the requirements of the Soviet Union's power policy do not coincide with the reasons of the development of democracy and peace in Western Europe...We need to give an effective and unitarian objective to the pacifist, democratic and left-wing forces of Western Europe. The immediate commitment we are suggesting is for Italy to take a stance against the atomic armament of NATO; for the government of the Italian republic not to favour, during the meetings of the Six, the Gaullist hegemony in the Europe of the homelands...; for the agreement with the United States for the missile bases in Italy to be denounced...These objectives should be set in the context of a national neutralism. We really believe that the effective dimension in which the political struggle for democracy and for peace takes place today is the European one" (6).

The pacifist movement which merged with the Italian Meeting for Peace offered a varied pattern of interests and forces. However, the local initiatives were numerous, and especially in the beginning, relevant, such as to represent a promising start for a movement with the force to characterize itself in an autonomous way and to assume political responsibilities. One example, taken from a local experience, can give an idea of the difficulties and inner divisions in the organism. In April 1963, a "march for peace march" was held, promoted by the "Committee for the atomic and conventional disarmament of Europe", an organ where radicals and non-radicals operated (7), and through which they participated in the national (and Roman) peace meeting. Despite the fact that it was reserved to cadres alone, a procession of over one thousand people crossed the streets of the city, with the presence of other organized groups; the demonstration was not endorsed by the Italian Movement for Peace, because an agreement was not

reached, during the preparation, on the conditions of participation of the various groups: the radicals insisted on the maximum freedom of presence and of political indications, whereas the Italian Movement for Peace asked for a preventive control of the political indications and of the slogans. The Conference of Peace was short-lived. In a meeting of the Central Committee held in Florence in May 1964, it was already clear that the unitarian organism could not operate effectively. In part, these difficulties were the result of objective shortcomings and uncertainties of Capitini's leadership, who relied on a mediation decided by the unanimity of the vote for the possibilities of an effective development of the organism (8).

The problem of unanimity in the fundamental political decisions - while the local initiatives continued to develop and would have called for more and more advanced objectives - was the obstacle which caused the end of every possibility for the Conference to express itself on any problem. Thus, it found itself facing a "coalition" structure in terms of facts, structures, methods and even atmosphere. In August, the Radical Party, after a controversy that lasted at least a year, withdrew from the Conference together with the group headed by Capitini and the Italian Movement for Peace (Velio Spano and Mencaraglia), deciding to participate in an autonomous way in the International Confederation of Peace and Disarmament. Capitini had already resigned as president.

The line held by the Conference during the previous year obviously favoured the Italian Peace Movement, which did not like the Conference to express its own political will; however, while this objective was comprehensible for the movement controlled by the PCI, the mistake made by the other components, of accepting such a sabotage, was serious, and represented the essential reason for which the attempt ceased. In October of that year, the Italian conference took no stance on the question of the Chinese atomic bomb, while, in previous years, the pacifists had taken a strong univocal stance against it, as against the French atomic explosions in the Pacific.

The debates, the clashes, the initiatives of these years ended with the crisis of the movement, but also with the defeat of the conservative positions of the traditional left, and particularly of the PCI. The marches of peace themselves had shown, through the mobilization and the interest shown by vast areas of the population, that the commitment of the democratic masses against the war was possible, and simply needed serious and constant objectives, and represented a moment of unification. However, as this popular tension was gradually deviated toward merely propagandistic objectives, it started to decline, dissatisfied with the emptiness of the generic slogans, with the absence of debate and the incapacity of the leading classes to aggregate and give political outlet to the popular commitment. The forces that had contributed to these initiatives with serious and advanced political objectives were marginalized, and labeled as "sectarian". The autonomous experiences, the conferences, the local committees and

every diversified experience was dismissed with the purpose of isolating these experiences for good. Antimilitarism was denounced as a reason for the detachment from the "masses", as "sectarianism", etc. In April 1965, a "March for Peace and Vietnam" was scheduled to take place In Rome. The organizing committee included, among other groups, the Peace Movement and the Committee for Atomic and Conventional Disarmament. The latter, during an assembly, made the following requests: 1) the responsibility of the political contents of the demonstration was to be the result of the decisions of a special, vast committee, representative of all adhering groups; 2) the demonstration was to express in equal proportions and with identical motivations the aggression against Vietnam and against St. Domingo. The two proposals were rejected, owing especially to the opposition of the Italian Movement for Peace; the Committee for Atomic and Conventional Disarmament was forced to withdraw from the demonstration. A similar episod

e of intolerance occurred, back in June 1967, in Milan, against the "antimilitarism" of the radicals, who therefore left the "Committee of Milan".

The following were fundamentally considered as "sectarian": 1) the clear-cut opposition against rearmament and armies, both atomic and conventional; 2) the promotion of a unitarian struggle against militarism, wherever it emerged; 3) the strong opposition against atomic proliferation, promoted both by the socialist and by the capitalist countries.

However, the movement for peace, in its two different components, had acquired a certain force and capacity of mobilization. It was at this point that the U.S. "escalation" in Indochina offered the possibility of diverting the pacifist struggle at the service of a mere sign of solidarity for the war of liberation of North Vietnam. While the objective was in itself acceptable, the conditions of the mobilization devised by the party leadership and organs were such as to represent a regress in the struggle and in its specific and immediate objectives. The struggle against atomic or conventional armaments was not even mentioned. The anti-NATO commitment disappeared from the slogans, after disappearing from the political debate. At a moment signed by the beginning of the Soviet-Chinese confrontation on the strategy of the struggle for national independence in the countries of the Third World and of Latin America, the coalition type of propagandistic structures remained without a credible line or indications. Like

empty skeletons, they lost all credit both in the eyes of the so-called "avant-garde" and of the popular masses. In the ashes of this contradictory and multifarious experience, which had been incapable - because of the resistance of the diplomacies and of the apparatuses - of becoming a vast, authentic antimilitarist popular movement, the humanitarian, more or less "universalist" pacifism, still not linked to serious political battles, was also overwhelmed. The avant-garde mocked both the propagandistic mise-en-scènes of the traditional lefts and this "humanitarian" and inoffensive presence. Outside of Italy, Martin Luther King and his movement left a heritage of struggles and civil commitment which proved capable of effectively confronting the new indications of revolutionary violence copied on the experience of the guerrilla warfares, namely the one in Vietnam; in Italy, the traditional pacifism lacked the strength to sustain such a major clash.

The antimilitarist initiative thus relied on minor groups, extraparliamentarians, isolated individuals. And yet, precisely in those years, it radicalized, assumed a stronger autonomy, opened a considerable inner debate and a debate with other forces, it progressed toward politically more precise positions, it made itself known to the public opinion, both in its meaning, and in the sacrifices it demands of all those who choose it.

Military and civil authorities, judiciary, found themselves facing groups capable of political and ideal elaboration, of an incisive activity, often of a certain breadth. It is thanks to these groups that, at this point, pacifism and antimilitarism are no longer mistaken with the propagandistic attitudes of the PCI, or of a renewed and persistent coalition movement. The programmatically non-violent, "Gandhian" or radical-Christian group itself, on the other hand, showed capacities of political progress, as proven over the last years by the declarations of conscientious objection of several Catholics, who rekindled, with their attitude, essential problems pertaining to civil rights, and severely attacked the class-discriminating system and society and its repressive expression - the military structures. Even when they radically politicized the motivations for their initiatives, most of the antimilitarist groups that emerged and operated in those years remained linked to a fundamentally non-violent "praxis" an

d "method": a non-programmatic and "ideological" nonviolence; in other words, a "humanitarian" nonviolence, an active source of direct conflicts with the institutions, an adequate means to achieve something every day. Every trial faced, every sit-in or demonstration, every declaration of conscience, has represented an attack against authoritarian, repressive habits and behaviours, which were deeply rooted in the police, in the judiciary and in the military structures. We cannot give a detailed account of the activity of all the groups. Therefore, we will only give a series of "profiles" of those for which there are sufficient data.

In Bergamo the "Pacifist Committee carried out an "intense, serious activity, which for some time made it the strongest organized political group of the city. Later this group changed into "Antimilitarist Collective". In addition to publishing two bulletins of considerable circulation, "We shall overcome" and "Signornò" (the latter representing the organ that connected the various antimilitarist groups), the collective promoted initiatives and demonstrations, including a popular assembly in a civic theatre (November 1969), during which Lino Taschini declared himself conscientious objector in front of 600 people. Conscientious objectors Antonio Riva and Sergio Cremaschi also belonged to the group of Bergamo.

In Mestre, the antimilitarist initiative was represented by the "Non-Violent Movement", which, together with other groups in the region, members of the League for Conscientious Objection (Padua, Verona, Conegliano, Venice), promoted and collected the 50,000 signatures necessary to introduce a parliamentary bill for the recognition of conscientious objection. One of the documents which the group printed and circulated rekindled the Luxembourg antimilitarist and anti-imperialist trend. In Venice there operated the "International Cultural Circle"; in Verona, where the Catholic Enzo Melegari objected, there was the "Movement of Lay people for Latin America of the C.E.I.A.L.". Recently the movement circulated a pamphlet on conscientious objection containing ecclesial ("conscientious objection also against the laws of the Church?") and nonviolent ("we could verify whether the various forms of nonviolence, such as strike, civil disobedience, moral resistance, are "invincible weapons" in the hands of the poor, since

no one can rule if people do not obey. Nonviolence is the weapon of the poor, because anyone can use it: women, children, the old, because it relies on the moral forces of man rather than on physical, technical or financial capacities") elements, which raised questions on the fairness and the repression of the antimilitarist protest.

States the document: "It seems to us that the Courts-Martial, in the context of the discretionary quality of its powers, carry out repressive choices, because: 1) they refuse to send the trial records concerning the objectors to the constitutional court (9) which should examine them and decide whether the ordinary law on the draft, which does not provide for conscientious objection, is constitutionally legitimate; 2) when a conscientious objector is condemned, he is always denied the extenuating circumstances provided for by article 62 No. 1, i.e. of "having acted for reasons of particular moral and social relevance"; 3) conscientious objectors and arrested and imprisoned before being tried and sentenced; as soon as the Military Procurator's Office receives the denunciation of the refusal to serve the army, it issues an arrest warrant, even if this is not compulsory". An "open letter" to the parliamentarians, the local and provincial councils of Verona (which declared to be in favour of conscientious objecti

on) was circulated in a flysheet, signed, among others, by the following groups: S.Bonifacio Cultural Centre, Cultural Centre of Valpolicella, Don Milani Group, Third World group, Group of FUCI members, Missionary League, Emmaus Movement, Pax Christi Movement, FGCI, PSI Youth federation, GLI, Movement of young Christian Democrats (10).

Operating in Turin as of 1968 is the European Peace Corps, the result of a combination of various experiences and, as of October 1970, a section of the non-violent movement. In 1969 the first group operated in support of conscientious objectors Antonio Riva, Sergio Cremaschi, and then of Sergio Zardoni. On 14 April, it managed to organize a street demonstration with 500 people. On 30 January 1970, the European Corps organized a demonstration to draw the attention on the campaign to burn the call-up notice notice in front of the offices of the military district; and other demonstrations, when Nando Paganoni and Valerio Minnella were tried (8 denunciations for public defamation and for inciting the militaries to disobey the laws) or for 4 November. It mobilized lately in support of conscientious objector Giuseppe Peila, from Rivarolo. It circulates "booklets" containing antimilitarist documentation. Members of the group are objectors Alberto Clerico, Gianni Pistoi, Stefano Brusasco. The second group, establish

ed recently, active in promoting the "non-violent presence", publishes a fortnightly bulletin, "Satyagraha", and above all organizes workshops and initiatives on nonviolence and amtimilitarism. In Condove, in the district of Turin, the "Group of non-violent action of Val Susa", formed by factory workers, started a debate inside the Moncenisio factory of Condove, whose workers, approximately 800, signed a declaration of refusal to build weapons or war material (the Moncenisio factories occasionally receive orders of this kind).

In Bologna there are the "Non-violent groups", which rely on a press organ of the MPL; in Loreto (Ancona) an "Antimilitarist collective" was recently established. In the last months in Naples there has been an increasing activity on the part of the libertarian "Neapolitan Antimilitarist Group". One of its members, the anarchist (FAI) Ciro Cozzo, objected with strong political motivations (he was charged for "insulting the armed forces"); its activity earned it the enrolment of about 100 militants. It carried out its initiatives especially in the poor neighbourhoods, with debates, distribution of fly sheets, demonstrations, for which activities the group was denounced several times.

The "Group of Pacifist Action" was formed in Sulmona in February 1967. The group's long activity was characterized by demonstrations, distribution of fly sheets and, as usual, denunciations. One of its most active members, Mario Pizzola, drafted and circulated two documents: one regarding the military regulations, the other on the military industries in Italy, and recently declared to be a conscientious objector. In January 1971, the group promoted the "1st national workshop on militarism", together with the International Antimilitarist Movement, attended by delegations of almost all Italian pacifist and antimilitarist groups. It also prints a bulletin, "GAP". Episodes related to the antimilitarist initiative occurred at various stages in Pisa (Ernesto Rossi group), in Bologna (Andrea Accolti, Gianfranco Gamberini, Antonio Ghibellini, indicted for "instigating the military to disobey the laws", Vegetti, Pesce, Secciani, Valerio and Mauro Minnella, for crimes of instigation and insult), in Brescia (Non-Violen

t Movement), Peschiera, Gaeta, Pescara, Imperia, etc.

Objectively speaking, the initiative of these groups has strongly contributed to rekindling the subject of antimilitarism in the traditional political forces. In these last two years, for example, antimilitarist positions and initiatives have been promoted by the sections of the Republican Party's Youth Federation. During its 27th national congress in Rimini in 1969, it passed the following order of the day: "The FGR, supporting the courageous and coherent battle which has been carried out for years against the military establishment with the sacrifice and personal dedication of the anarchist, radical and nonviolent groups, declares its full support to the recognition and the propaganda of conscientious objection, and the progressive conversion of the military structures into civilian structures, truly at the service of the population. Moreover, the FGR declares to be ready, at all levels (national, regional, local) to carry out a continuous and constant action in order to achieve the above mentioned objecti

ves, thanks to the co-operation of all antimilitarist and pacifist groups". In almost all cities where the FGR is present, there have been demonstrations or stances on this line, autonomously or in co-operation with other groups.

The activity of Pietro Pinna and of the nonviolent movement (in the aftermath of Capitini's teaching) is closely linked to the history of the programmatic pacifism. The movement played an important role in the debate on conscientious objection, and promoted specific initiatives. The magazine "Non-violent action" has recently become the organ of connection and information of all non-violent movements. The most recent initiatives promoted by Pinna and his group "with the purpose of extending the front of conscientious objection to the military service" is the appeal for the restitution of the discharge papers. "We will inform the public opinion of this new step made by the antimilitarist opposition during a mass demonstration". The collection of the discharge papers is still under way, promoted by the Movement in Perugia (11). The MIR, a religious, multiconfessional movement, is also divided into local groups. It keeps relations with foreign countries, and represents the Italian section of the "International F

ellowship of Reconciliation". In the past years, it concentrated its action on the following subjects: 1) school of non-violence; 2) formation of an information centre on non-violence, on the causes and the effects of the war, etc; 3) demonstrations, sit-ins, distribution of fly sheets, etc; 4) struggle for the juridical acknowledgment of conscientious objection. At the annual assembly of 1971, the elected national committee was formed as follows: Fabrizio Fabbrini, president; Hedi Vaccaro, secretary; Franco Onorati, treasurer; Domenico Sereno Regis, Piedmont; Luigi Rosadoni, Florence; Simonetta Salacone, Rome; Tonino Drago, Naples; Vincenzo Rizzitiello, Lucania; Beatrice Borne, "Christian Service", Riesi and Sicily; Massimo Bernardini, Milan; Alfonso Apostolico, Battipaglia; Valdo Benecchi, Bologna. The assembly also discussed the "conscientious objection to military taxes" of a couple from Sarzana, the Manuetis, who were sentenced for this initiative.

Most of these groups and experiences already had the opportunity, on several occasions, of working together on common projects, or mobilizing on initiatives promoted by one or the other: a dense network (considering the scarcity of means) of mutual information enables to overcome the difficulties and multiply the energies. An attempt to organize a unitarian nucleus of connections was also started, with the creation of the "International Antimilitarist Movement" (MAI), where the adjective obviously represents a political indication, not a structural reality. The MAI was established in Bologna in September 1969, based on the principles "no to the armies" and "recognition of conscientious objection" and with the participation of anarchists, believers, followers of non-violence, radicals and pacifists. The publication "Signornò" was meant to be the means for a common connection. Its first initiative was the diffusion, for the 4th of November, of a manifesto approved by all groups, which meant to protest against

the military celebrations held that day and to fight against the military structures. The MAI, however, never managed to overcome the existing divergences of formulation, and to replace the reality of an effective infrastructure of services with an internal debate, the results of which were predictable from the beginning. The refusal to serve the army on the part of the young men of the Belice Valley, on the other hand, needs to be examined outside of these experiences and activities. After the earthquake in 1968, the popular committees which had carried out a hard struggle for local development (the project of the damn on the Belice river) opened a campaign for the reconstruction of the areas damaged by the earthquake. At the end of 1969, popular assemblies decide not to pay for "electricity, water, radio and TV" as a protest against the inactivity and the indifference shown by the "outlawed State" toward the people damaged by the earthquake. The disobedience campaign subsequently became harsher, and on 31

January 1970 two young men from Partanna raise the problem of whether it was fair to serve the army for a State so patently incapable of fulfilling its duties. The anti-draft movement spread in the villages of the valley, and on 4 January the young men collected 1,000 signatures of solidarity. In March of the same year, a document was passed unanimously by the inter-municipal popular assembly of Belice, held in S. Ninfa, in which the young men considered themselves "exonerated from the military service". This "nonviolent protest" meant to be an "open challenge" against the officials in Rome, and an effective way of "raising the public opinion" against the "current policy of devastation which, while squandering Lit. 2,000 billion and over 130 million of working days a year for military structures", is incapable of promoting an effective civil development of the country, and particularly in the depressed areas. The signatories declared to be ready to "face the penalties provided for by the law". In April the "

anti-draft committee" sent a letter "to the organizations and groups operating against violence and exploitation", which insisted on the fact that the refusal to serve the army was not the result of "moral or religious reasons", but of the "need to struggle" for survival. Demonstrations were subsequently dispersed by the police, which started a serious action of intimidation against the signatories or the most active of them, and of persuasion towards the families. Among the statements of solidarity with this initiative, an interesting one came from the Sicilian immigrants in Switzerland, in May 1970. On 1 June, about 400 people participated in a demonstration. Among the young people of the committee, Vito Accardo was arrested on 11 June, and transferred to the military prison of Bracciano, where he refused to wear the uniform. He was therefore indicted for disobedience. The initiative of the Belice valley urged the unions, for the first time, to take a stance on the problem. The FlM-CISL, during its 3rd org

anizational assembly (30-6-1970), expressed it sympathy with the movement, and invited the provincial structures to discuss "civil disobedience" in the factories. Almost in parallel, the FIOM-CISL expressed its more generic support. In total, 19 people from the Anti-draft Movement were indicted.

Organized by the Group of Pacifist Action and by the International Antimilitarist Movement, a meeting was held in Sulmona in the first three days of January 1971 (12) on the subject of militarism and on the "political implications of militarism". The problems which the meeting meant to discuss were rather far-reaching: 1) The definition of antimilitarism; 2) Antimilitarist struggle and struggle against the system (link between the army and the other structures of society, militarism, capitalism and class struggle, etc; 3) Military situation and military policy in Italy, functions of the Italian Army; 4) Abolition and democratization of the army (this subject includes the professional army, the struggle inside the barracks, the relation between antimilitarism, conscientious objection and civil service; 5) Relations between the antimilitarist movement and the forces of the extraparliamentary and antiparliamentary left; 7) Conversion of the military structures into civilian structures; 8) Action plan.

The meeting was attended by representatives of about twenty groups (Piedmont, Lombardia, Liguaria, Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Tuscany, Umbria, Marche, Abruzzi, Latium, Apulia, Campania, Lucania, Sicily). The results of the meeting were soon published; in any case, it is important to underline some of the points that emerged during the debate: 1) The refusal of the law for the recognition of conscientious objection as it was emerging during the debate in the senatorial committee (we will analyse this law further on); 2) the quasi unanimous recognition of the fact that antimilitarism represents essentially a political position, which does not mean simply the struggle against the "degenerations" of the military power; 3) An open discussion on the "antimilitarist" value of those positions which, during the class struggle and the struggle against the system, also advance the needs for a struggle "in the army", against those who believe that the battle for conscientious objection and the nonviolent method are still t

he most effective means, while not the only ones, of the antimilitarist struggle "against the armies". During the debate on the latter point, there was a discussion on the position of the militants from "Lotta Continua" [14] which circulated the supplement "Proletarians in Uniform". They are the positions and the initiatives of one of the components of the Students Movement which formed the above mentioned group after the crisis of the movement.

"Proletarians in uniform", a supplement of "Lotta Continua", opened, from within the students' schism, a debate and a specific initiative "against the army" and "in the barracks", which was parallel to the ones carried out in the schools, in the factories and in the city: "The army is the factory owners' last bastion to contain the struggles of the exploited: it is already used today to preside Sardinia (13), to occupy Calabria, to ensure blackleggery during the strikes, to intervene in national calamities not with functions of support, but of control of the infuriated populations, as in the region of Biella and in the Belice valley. Proletarians in uniform versus other proletarians: an invention of the owners which has always been successful and no longer should...". The task of the struggle "in the barracks" is, therefore, "the unification of the proletariat, against the divisions and the oppositions (categories, uniforms, diplomas, etc)..."

Apart from engaging in a controversy with the "revisionists" (14), which it considered guilty of betraying this front, "Lotta Continua" also strongly attacked both pacifists and antimilitarists for the initiative on conscientious objection. This opened an important debate which was bound to have consequences on the progress of the antimilitarist struggle.

The indication of the "proletarians in uniform" was not an antimilitarist indication, such as this struggle was conceived by the majority of other groups. It was a tactical, non-strategic "antimilitarism" which, while perceiving the contingent need to struggle "in" or against the armies (not against the "military structures") of the regimes and of the "capitalist systems", did not tackle the issue of the influence, including the revolutionary influence, of the army on the civilian structures. In any case, the collection of "Proletarians in uniform" represents the first attempt to carry out a microsociological study of the "military society" as the starting point for the political struggle and initiative.

The exemplification of a direct source (letters from the barracks, etc), of the human and civil condition of the soldier, of the repression existing in the barracks, represents an achievement for the whole democratic movement and for the workers' movement: "Caserma Salomone - General Headquarters, Padua. Saturday 16 January all the drivers refused the evening meal: the immediate objective of this hunger strike was the improvement of the food..."; "November, Trapani. At the CAR, drinkable water is available only from 21:30 to 22:00...On the evening of the fourth day, the soldiers of the 7th company, part of the 3rd company and of another one, throw plates out of the window onto the courtyard...". "Rolando Nardi, a worker from Milan, engineer of the Spaccamela, 1st BTG, 1st comp., was arrested after he was discovered writing graffiti on the wall during his shift...". "Palermo. I'm writing through Lotta Continua to all comrades, military and non. On 8 February, private Andrea Salerno died of meningitis...At thi

s point, only thanks to the insistence of the colleagues (that is of us), Dr. Di Giorgio ordered to hospitalize Salerno at the military hospital of Palermo, where he died of meningitis on the following day...". "Today they punished me with twenty days of C.P.R. for having bought a book on Che Guevara which, in their opinion, caused political turmoil...". Other facts, characterized by a strong political orientation, add to these: "Naples. During the first days of November, the students of the Bernini Professional Institute occupied the school and invaded the military district with the purpose of obtaining a postponement of the draft, writing graffiti against the army...". "Pavia. (Caserma Rossani) a private risks a sentence of six years of hard prison for having shown no..."respect" for a marshal. Sunday 10 January, placed before the alternative of going to mass or shoveling snow, he refused to accept a similar blackmail...".

The most serious and sensational denunciation, which is more likely to stir a vaster initiative, is the one relative to private Beck Peccoz, sentenced for having read and distributed "Lotta Continua" to three more soldiers (15). The thesis of Lotta Continua is: "We need to create a background on the soldiers' struggle, a structure of self-defence...We need to use these trials as moments of clarification and attack against the army..." "We are in the condition to guarantee an efficient legal assistance to these soldiers...". And therefore: "We are already seeing a convergence in the struggles, which expresses itself in the refusal of the hierarchy, in the struggle against the "noxiousness", on the request for freedom of press, freedom of meeting and of expression, in the struggle against the segregation in the barracks...".

It is a subject which objectively enhances the antimilitarist struggle in those aspects that pertain to the struggle for "civil rights" as the necessary indication toward that "decay" of the "power" that historically belongs to the new lefts (16).

The situation we have tried to illustrate, while incomplete and insufficient, can be useful to give a valid idea of the extension which the antimilitarist action has assumed in considerable sectors of militants, and of the type of problems, debates and analyses which it has raised. While we perceive - as we will to explain further on - the relevance assumed lately by the question of conscientious objection, and of the drive caused by the new, unexpected politicization of a problem which seemed doomed to remain limited to the sphere of "religious" and moral interests, of the new mobilization of active and determined militants, we need to recognize that perhaps the twenty-year attempt made by the left, the party bureaucracies and the moderate and reactionary forces, to deny the very existence of an antimilitarist drive in the country, has basically failed. And it has failed precisely thanks to these groups, which are apparently isolated and in fact are more and more capable of involving in their initiative, la

rger and larger parts of citizens, workers and democrats.

The limit of these groups is the precariousness of their existence, undoubtedly linked, as well as to the objective roughness of an initiative which always clashes, in the trials and sentences, with the repressive apparatus, to the difficulty of conducting a serious and in-depth analysis of the phenomenon of militarism in modern, industrial society; a difficulty which sometimes leads some of the militants to modify their commitment, to abandon the specific objective - the antimilitarist struggle - for other fronts, considered more satisfying, more "advanced", in the struggle "against the system". It is the case of the "Antimilitarist Collective" of Bergamo. In early 1971, the Collective was dissolved. Antonio Riva refused the initiative of conscientious objection, which he had previously actively promoted. And, in the context of the International Civil Service, he promoted a campaign of opposition, basically endorsing the arguments of "Lotta Continua", In Bergamo the antimilitarist initiative ceased complete

ly.

Translator's notes

[1] BANDINELLI ANGIOLO. (Chianciano 1927). Writer. Former member of the Partito d'Azione; secretary of the Radical Party in 1969, 1971 and 1972; he was also treasurer of the party for five years. In 1979 local councillor in Rome, deputy in the ninth legislature. For many years, editor of several radical publications ("La Prova Radicale", "Notizie Radicali", etc), author of essays and articles relative to the history and the theory of the party, many of which are contained in the book "Il radicale impunito". Writes for newspapers and magazines and for Radio Radicale with notes and editorials.

[2] TOGLIATTI PALMIRO. (Genua 1893 - Yalta 1964). In Turin he cooperated with A. Gramsci, among the founders of the Italian Communist Party, which he was secretary of from 1927 until his death. Exiled in Russia, he was member of the secretariat of the Comintern, and played an important role in Spain during the civil war. Back in Italy in 1944, he launched a "national" policy based on the fact of voting the Lateran pacts, clashing with the lay forces of the country. Member of government from 1944 to 1947, also as minister. After the elections of 1948, he monopolized the opposition's role, but he also favoured a "dialogue" with the Christian Democracy and the Catholic world, without ever breaking with the Vatican. His project of an "Italian way to socialism" did not achieve its fundamental objective, and on the contrary lead to a stalemate in the political system, preventing the Left from acquiring any "alternation" in power from the Christian Democratic Party.

[3] Italian Communist Party.

[4] PERTINI SANDRO. (Stella 1896 - Rome 1990). Italian politician. Socialist, was imprisoned and exiled during the fascist regime.. From 1943 to 1945 he participated in the Resistance. Secretary of the Socialist Party, deputy, president of the Chamber (1968-1976), President of the Republic (1978-1985).

[5] JOTTI NILDE. (Reggio Emilia 1920). Exponent of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). The companion of P. Togliatti. President of the Chamber from 1979 to 1992.

[6] MORO ALDO. (Maglie 1916 - Rome 1978). Italian politician. Secretary of the Christian Democratic Party (1959-65), mastermind of the Centre-Left policy. Several times minister as of 1956, Prime Minister (1963-68, 1974-76) president of the Christian Democratic Party as of 1956, he favoured the participation of the Communist Party (PCI) in the government, outlining the hypothesis of a so-called "third stage" (after those of "centrism" and "centre-left") of the political system. He was kidnapped by the Red Brigades on 16 March 1978 in Rome and found dead on 9 May of the same year.

[7] CROCE BENEDETTO. (Pescasseroli 1866 - Naples 1952). Italian philosopher, historian and writer. After a short period in which he was attracted by the ideas of Marx, together with Giovanni Gentile he was responsible for the idealistic and Hegelian revival of the end of the past century. Antifascist, fundamentally a liberal-conservative, after the war he joined the Liberal Party and was part of one of the first governments formed after fascism. During fascism, he had a great influence on important sectors of the youth. As a philosopher, he has a claim to fame for his studies of aesthetics and logics as well as for his reform of Hegelian dialectic. Author of important historical works ("Storia d'Europa nel secolo XIX", "Storia d'Italia dal 1871 and 1915", etc), in which he supports the liberal development of Europe before the war, versus the "crisis" of post-war totalitarianisms.

[8] DE GASPERI ALCIDE. (Pieve Tesino 1881 - Sella di Valsugana 1954). From Trentino, Catholic deputy at the Austrian Parliament in 1911. After World War I, the region passed to Italy, and De Gasperi became member of the Italian Party in 1921 in the Popular Party, which he was secretary of from 1923 to 1925. During fascism he worked in the Biblioteca Vaticana. He reorganized the Christian Democratic Party and became secretary of it in 1944. Prime Minister in 1945, signed the peace treaty of 1947. Once he obtained the confirmation of the Lateran Pacts, he managed to exclude the parties of the Left from the government, which assumed a stable centrist form.

[9] NENNI PIETRO. (Faenza 1891 - 1980). Italian politician. At first republican, as of 1921 socialist. Editor of the party's newspaper, "L'Avanti!", exiled in France, in 1930 he masterminded the reunification of the socialist movements, and in 1934 the pact of unity of action with the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Secretary of the PSI in 1943 and from 1949 to 1964, deputy Prime Minister (1945), and Foreign Minister (1946-47). He organized the organic agreement with the PCI, and suffered the electoral defeat of 1948. Lenin Prize for Peace, he gradually took an independent position, and in the '60s struggled for a government of centre-left with the DC (Christian Democratic Party); with the centre-left he was deputy Prime Minister (1963-68) and foreign minister (1968-69). Senator for life in 1970.

[10] ROSSI ERNESTO. (Caserta 1897 - Rome 1967). Italian journalist and politician. Leader of "Giustizia e Libertà", in 1930 he was arrested by the fascist regime and remained in prison or exiled until the end of the war. Author, together with Spinelli, of the "Manifesto di Ventotene", and leader of the European Federalist Movement and of the battle for a united Europe. Among the founders of the Radical Party. Essayist and journalist, from "Il Mondo" he promoted vehement campaigns against clerical interference in the political life, against economic trusts, industrial and agrarian protectionism, private and public concentrations of power, etc. His articles were collected in famous books ("I padroni del vapore", etc). After the dissolution of the Radical Party in 1962, and the consequent split from the editor of "Il Mondo", M.Pannunzio, he founded "L'Astrolabio", whence he continued his polemics. In his last years he joined the "new" radical party, with which in 1967 he launched the "Anticlerical Year".

[11] SALVEMINI GAETANO. (Molfetta 1873 - Sorrento 1957). Italian historian and politician. Socialist since 1893, he founded the weekly "L'Unità", which soon became an important seat of debates. In 1925 in Florence, together with the Rosselli brothers, he founded the clandestine antifascist publication "Non mollare". Subsequently he fled abroad (to the U.S.), where he promoted antifascist information campaigns.

[12] PANNELLA MARCO. Pannella Giacinto, known as Marco. (Teramo 1930). Currently President of the Radical Party's Federal Council, which he is one of the founders of. At twenty national university representative of the Liberal Party, at twenty-two President of the UGI, the union of lay university students, at twenty-three President of the UNURI, national union of Italian university students. At twenty-four he advocates, in the context of the students' movement and of the Liberal party, the foundation of the new radical party, which arises in 1954 following the confluence of prestigious intellectuals and minor democratic political groups. He is active in the party, except for a period (1960-1963) in which he is correspondent for "Il Giorno" in Paris, where he established contacts with the Algerian resistance. Back in Italy, he commits himself to the reconstruction of the radical Party, dissolved by its leadership following the advent of the centre-left. Under his indisputable leadership, the party succeeds in

promoting (and winning) relevant civil rights battles, working for the introduction of divorce, conscientious objection, important reforms of family law, etc, in Italy. He struggles for the abrogation of the Concordat between Church and State. Arrested in Sofia in 1968 as he is demonstrating in defence of Czechoslovakia, which has been invaded by Stalin. He opens the party to the newly-born homosexual organizations (FUORI), promotes the formation of the first environmentalist groups. The new radical party organizes difficult campaigns, proposing several referendums (about twenty throughout the years) for the moralization of the country and of politics, against public funds to the parties, against nuclear plants, etc., but in particular for a deep renewal of the administration of justice. Because of these battles, all carried out with strictly nonviolent methods according to the Gandhian model - but Pannella's Gandhi is neither a mystic nor an ideologue; rather, an intransigent and yet flexible politician -

he has been through trials which he has for the most part won. As of 1976, year in which he first runs for Parliament, he is always elected at the Chamber of Deputies, twice at the Senate, twice at the European Parliament. Several times candidates and local councillor in Rome, Naples, Trieste, Catania, where he carried out exemplary and demonstrative campaigns and initiatives. Whenever necessary, he has resorted to the weapon of the hunger strike, not only in Italy but also in Europe, in particular during the major campaign against world hunger, for which he mobilized one hundred Nobel laureates and preeminent personalities in the fields of science and culture in order to obtain a radical change in the management of the funds allotted to developing countries. On 30 September 1981 he obtains at the European parliament the passage of a resolution in this sense, and after it several other similar laws in the Italian and Belgian Parliament. In January 1987 he runs for President of the European Parliament, obtain

ing 61 votes. Currently, as the radical party has pledged to no longer compete with its own lists in national elections, he is striving for the creation of a "transnational" cross-party, in view of a federal development of the United States of Europe and with the objective of promoting civil rights throughout the world.

[13] RENDI GIULIANO. (1927 - 1979). Brother of the above. Scholar, liberal and then radical militant, essayist. Among the founders of the Radical Party.

[14] LOTTA CONTINUA. One of the most important and widespread political movements of the extreme left, established in 1969 in Turin. In 1971 it created the homonymous newspaper, which became immediately popular. It detached the extraparliamentary Left from the laborite prejudicial, penetrating the youth and students' milieu, the conscripts, the prisons, etc. Its chief leader was the journalist and writer Adriano Sofri.