ABSTRACT: An in-depth analysis of violence, the weapon of hunger strike, the first elections in which the Radical Party will take part in, the Left. Unlike what occurred in the other countries of Europe, the Italian Left - states Pannella - has always lost, for decades. The time has come to relaunch a program capable of proposing a renewed and united Left for power.

(Interview with "La Prova Radicale" - May 1976 from "Marco Pannella - Works and Speeches - 1959-1980", Gammalibri, January 1982).

Prova Radicale - Your last hunger strikes have been characterized not only by their extreme gravity - you went so far as undertaking a thirst strike, at the risk of your life - but also because this time, while you were struggling with your radical companions for the right to information, few people reiterated the usual charges of exhibitionism, folklore and so on. Some, however, judged that the risk was out of proportion to the objective.

Pannella - If people judge it reasonable to suffer the violence of the regime and let oneself be suppressed as political individuals, then we really exaggerated. However, many people have realized instinctively that it was essential to interrupt an illegality which has been lasting for decades, and open up the monopoly of information to everyone. These are essential and "dutiful" objectives for libertarians such as we are; and people have understood this very well, especially to the extent in which they have started to become aware of the complicity of the parties of the Left - and especially of the Communist Party - with the DC. They have realized that in such situation there is no choice: either we struggle, to the bitter end, or we become accomplices of the regime. But there was another "dutiful" objective for the Radicals: to break the censorship against their campaigns and their very political existence once and for all. This is no self-pitying autosuggestion; on the contrary, it is the refusal of that

sort of complicity which binds persecutors and persecuted. They must censor us, or else they would be forced to talk about us too often: for abortion, for drugs, for homosexuality and sexuality, antimilitarism, and so on; there is not a vital moment of this country in which we are not present. They censor us because we represent the alternative force to the regime; this is why, when they admitted us into television by force, we "pierced" the screen, as Umberto Eco put it (1).

In what sort of situation did we find ourselves instead? In the situation in which, while we had been excluded and censored for over a year, the PDUP (2) was admitted, the same way as the parties of the regime, into electoral and political party broadcasts. Why this gift to a party which has never struggled to "open" the RAI? The answer is simple: the PDUP arrived at the RAI at a moment in which, precisely thanks to our campaigns, it had become unsustainable to admit only the official parties of the regime. And since it was necessary to open up the monopoly, they chose the lesser damage: the former PSIUP. An old acquaintance, this PDUP-PSIUP-PCIUP: its creation had prompted many fears, but then it became clear that all this fear was misplaced. And so they let it in. And the PDUP behaved like the PSIUP: faced to a gift offered on a silver plate, it never dreamed of earning itself an easy popularity by refusing the corporative privilege which further isolated the forces outside of the regime. It swallowed gift

and plate, and played a trick on Avanguardia Operaia (3), excluding it from the electoral campaign last year. It is no chance that the PDUP's appearances on TV have never caused traumas for anyone.

You think I'm exaggerating? Let's see: its co-optation in the racket of the regime is motivated by the fact that last year it presented lists in two thirds of the electoral constituencies: a motivation which is clearly specious, also because it had been given 'a posteriori'. Otherwise, if this was a way to enter, we and others could have presented lists in two thirds of the constituencies, without giving a damn for the electoral campaign. TV is not the only gift it has received: there is also the exemption from the obligation to collect signatures for the presentation of the electoral lists, a privilege which had, to this moment, been reserved to the sole parties represented in Parliament. Even this motivation is false: the PDUP already had a representative in Parliament, and it matters little that this representative was elected in the lists of the Communist Party: today he belongs to the PDUP! In other words, it is as if a fascist or Christian Democratic representative joined the PDUP, or Lotta Continua (4

), or the Radical Party.

Prova Radicale - You speak of the PDUP as of one of the bureaucratic leaderships of the Left.

Pannella - Bureaucratic or not, how did the PDUP administer the consent it received? What battles did it conduct? People like Magri and Castellina are running an organization which is no longer homogeneous in its base; it is no chance that they are considered responsible and serious ideologues by the Communist Party...

Prova Radicale - What do you think about the electoral cartel of the extraparliamentary groups and of the partners which the PDUP has found, some very reluctantly?

Pannella - It would have been crazy and sectarian to multiply the schisms and cause a net loss of one million votes, as in 1972. Therefore I believe it was a good choice; also, these groups share common ideological roots, they belong to the post-1968 period, they have strategies with respect to the institutions...it is a good thing that they run together and acquire a minimum of representation and therefore of popular control. Among the partners, my impression is that the PSUP has more chances of expressing a general political reality in the outside, but with regard to the Communist Party it strikes as schismatic more than heretic. Avanguardia Operaia, on the other hand, seems to limit itself to an internal presence in specific social facts, without, for the time being, giving show of any authentic political originality. A different type of analysis should be devoted to Lotta Continua, which has more mixed characteristics and a certain amount of heresy; however, its capacity of engaging in a serious politica

l confrontation is very weak. In addition to that, even if it succeeded in imposing the electoral cartel on the PDUP, it made major concessions, as if it were afraid of counting itself.

Prova Radicale - About your hunger strikes: according to some, these are masochistic acts which are incompatible with your statements of love for life and generally of a "happy" struggle for socialism.

Pannella - As you may well imagine, I have an answer for that objection, which I have been perfecting: the difference between risking life and risking death. I am convinced that people die because they have lost interest in life. On the contrary those who refuse to see their life amputated, precisely because they find in it not resignation or castration, but hope, can risk to lose their life: it's a possibility. But if they win, they live better and more intensely than others. Let me add that risking one's life without risking other people's lives is a further progress in quality (even suicides often vaguely guess that they are risking other people's lives as well). I will make an example, to make the idea clearer. Who was really risking his life in Italy in 1937 or '38? Those who, imagining the logic of dictatorship and therefore knowing that war "was imminent", engaged in a dangerous battle to try to avoid millions of death? Or was it those who, for fear of an immediate risk, let themselves be destroyed to

gether with millions of others? Masochism? Masochism is accompanied by sufferance, bu feeling bad, that is, by the awareness of sufferance. My experience, on the contrary, is the same of all my companions, and it is that fasting causes no sufferance, at the most some discomfort. Some however, leave out masochism and speak about a self-destructive tendency. Well, everything is possible, even dying of joy; but personally I know I could not feel any better than I feel today, and that it would on the contrary be easy to feel worse physically, like most people, who pay for their forced renunciation to the elements of interest in life. Also, we should not forget that out hunger strikes are always collective, and therefore an experience of political growth.

Lastly, there is another element which is far from secondary: this method is effective, it works: and it agrees with our libertarian and nonviolent political formulation. We maintain that if the battle for socialism is violent, it foreshadows a movement, and therefore a society which is organized in a violent and authoritarian way.

Prova Radicale - And yet you have been accused of using hunger strike as a blackmail, in other words, of using violence yourself on other people.

Pannella - We don't go on hunger strikes to protest or to suffer, but to achieve an objective. Generally speaking, the objective pertains to other people's morality, not to ours; in other words, by fasting we do not ask to privilege a parliamentary bill; we ask that the bills that others have imposed or proposed be enforced. I will make myself clearer: we are not trying to make others accept our principles or our beliefs, we are asking the least of things: we ask the government of the city to respect its legality, and the reinstatement of the violated laws of democracy. In fact, it is the only answer we can give, if we except destruction, to a city which betrays its own laws. Where, therefore, are violence and blackmail?

Prova Radicale - Why, then, are these methods not adopted on a large scale?

Pannella - Because we are a nonconformist reality, an absolute minority with respect to today's prevalent values. But is is not true that these are not mass methods in principle; it depends on the ripening of certain processes. What I mean to say is that workers' strikes can be considered the first, major mass nonviolent demonstration, because they take place at a moment in which workers discover it is more productive to abstain from work than destroying machineries or killing the factory owner.

Prova Radicale - From hunger strikes we have come to the subject of nonviolence generally: another choice for which you have been strongly criticized.

Pannella - Much less now than in the past. In the same way, another ridiculous accusation has now fallen: that these methods are not "manly"...Let's face it: how come these critics of ours - let's call them violent - always lose? Where are the occupations of houses, the "red markets"? They lose because they use opportunist, activist strategies; because they represent the reality of a pure and simple riot: a plebeian reality, not yet a proletarian one, if we assume that the proletariat is the nonviolent populace.

What lies behind this difference of methods between us and the other forces of the Left? They believe in power; we aim at the decline of power, that is, of the ratio of violence of the institutions. Such process can only fulfil itself historically, not though the violent destruction of the authority, like the anarchists believe. Therefore, ours is an anti-centralization, anti-Jacobin position, with all the risks of they being used in a Jacobin way. This is what we mean by libertarianism: the decline of the authority as an effect of the growth of class consciousness and of socialism, not postponing until after the takeover of power.

Ours is therefore a different way of engaging in politics, of living, and of fighting.

Prova Radicale - In other words, you are saying that nonviolent methods are a socialist praxis, a successful praxis, which the traditional methods of the Left lack.

Pannella - What do the traditional forms of struggle communicate to the outer world? Molotov bombs communicate attack, violence, and even though we know they are harmless, in the eyes of the people they can justify the fact that the police react by shooting. The marches that block the roads do not disturb Agnelli, but the workers; and why should they have a positive effect? Are they lacking class consciousness? On the contrary, I believe they are aware of their rights, and if they say 'go to hell' it is a positive reaction.

To march in line in the street means occupying the city, a military parade, possession. There is a big crowd, there is the excitement of the crowd, of aggression, the authority that affirms itself on others because it is strong and violent. Therefore, what does the passer-by perceive? The shiver of red flags, obviously; but is identical to that which he feels at military parades. Apart from this, I can see nothing else in the economy of a procession. On the other hand, walking single file on the sidewalk, each with his banner (it is a fact which you administer personally, whereas during marches you don't even communicate with your companions) means writing a long and readable novel. At antimilitarist marches, the police recommended to remain single file in front of Redipuglia; and we agreed; a demonstration of three hundred banners, people passed by and read. A person who fasts says: "You're making fun of me, I am disarmed and I can do nothing else but underline it and denounce it".

Prova Radicale - Let's talk about the elections again; the Left is fully represented; PSI, PCI, the so-called revolutionary cartel, the Radicals. Why did you decide to run, and what is the position you intend to occupy?

Pannella - Why haven't we do so before, this is the question: for years we have been a qualifying political and historical reality; we represent the only current alternative to the corporative compromise which is the basis of the regime. Historically speaking, in Italy we have had the regime faction, the Christian Democratic faction, with its external factions: PRI, PSDI, PLI; the communist faction, from the position of Togliatti to the "historical compromise"; and then the void, thanks to the subordinate position of the socialists both during the period of centrism and in the period of the "Centre-Left". However, there has been a further faction, which manifested itself officially in the fifties: the radical one. That which presented itself as the communist heresy, after 1968, is a faction perceived especially by the press and in the productive structure, in the working classes proper.

If we look at the political reality of these thirty years, at the division of power between DC and PCI - the monopoly of government to the former, the monopoly of opposition to the latter - which represents the basis, we have to acknowledge that the radical faction, apart from its bourgeois subjective features, has represented the only reality in terms of crisis and alternative. To the extent, at least, in which it criticized the line of all the parties, trying to make the points of contradiction of the regime explode. It is no chance that the whole political leadership instinctively coalesced out of calculation against the intrusion of this element of crisis of the historical equilibrium. To come to more recent years, is is unquestionable that the representation of this perfect system, which is the characteristic of the regime, was broken precisely by the campaigns for civil rights. With divorce and the referendum, the coalitions and the very relations among the party directorates and their bases have chang

ed. Hence the need to prevent the radicals from developing their struggle inside the institutions. Hence the censorship, the political confinement.

We should therefore ask ourselves why this historical group, which succeeded in manifesting itself through the years with great political virulence, so as to mark the language and the general political confrontation, has not yet presented itself at the electoral confrontation. We are trying to do this now, as libertarians, who believe in the decline of the authority and therefore in the reduction of the political delegation. We could not continue to accept for five more years, all the while complaining about it, the isolation in which they tried to close us; we could not give up. At this point, the radical reality must succeed in being present in all the places where true confrontations take place, and therefore also in the institutions. All the more so in that while the other forces of the Left, the other Lefts, are more or less present in the "structural" confrontation, it is necessary and urgent to open our front in a collective sense. PSUP, Lotta Continua, Avanguardia Operaia have proved incapable of con

ducting a battle of penetration on the front of the institutions.

Prova Radicale - It is objected that the radicals' place is outside the institutions, because the radicals are more a movement than a party.

Pannella - What does this mean? Apart from the fact that we have always claimed our status of "political part" and therefore of a "party" - for this is the original meaning of the term - how can one say that we are an opinion movement? Ours is a movement of militants, we have always operated with dozens of hundreds of militants, we are more leninist than the others. This is only a joke of course, because in the current language the organization is always leninist.

Prova Radicale - Where do you think the party might find more support?

Pannella - Everywhere. The characteristic of a class conscious force is that of making class contradictions explode with every move. Our problem is always that of urging, so to say, the ripening of the lumpenproletariat into a proletariat, in aggregating, under the socialist hegemony, the truly liberal and democratic values. By means of our battles, man and woman - to underline two distinct conditions - the believer, the fascist, the man of order, the violent revolutionary, grow in their peculiarity, beyond the political or electoral superstructures of the moment, because we make the structural contradictions explode. So that these people join the PCI, the PSI, us, other groups, it doesn't matter: the important thing is they change side.

This is why PCI and PSI react by excluding us: it is sufficient to consider the events of the right to access to the RAI. The more we manage to inform, to make us known and judged, the more they react with fear and refusal. The radicals represent, potentially, a majority position, not a minority reality of the Left; as for divorce and abortion. Our political influence is undeniable; with our battles and a single representative in Parliament, Loris Fortuna (5), we influenced a Parliament, on divorce, we dragged the entire PCI on our positions; and we dragged everyone on abortion. I believe the Radical Party, with a unrestricted electoral campaign and with a normal use of public television, would surely be the fourth electoral force. We already are, and the other parties know it, just like they know that ten radical representatives would be enough to change Parliament. Take abortion for example: with a radical success at the elections, mass clandestine abortion would be put an end to, and Parliament would be m

ade to pass the best of laws which is realistically achievable.

Prova Radicale - But after abortion - it is a current question - what other mass battles could the radicals conduct?

Pannella - Let's consider the past years, where it seems that the only successful battle is abortion: there are also the battles on drugs, the RAI, cable TV, censorship, the eight referendums. What is the problem that explodes first? Over the latest years, abortion; but it could have been the Concordat, for example. And related to the Concordat are major issues: the elementary school system, the final relinquishment of the "historical compromise". What I mean to say is that when you have a series of projects like this one, which concentrate, each time, on a single project, you have a capacity of pressure so much greater than the institutions that there is no qualifying moment in which you are absent.

Prova Radicale - Does that include the economic field?

Pannella - Yes, economics as well. It is high time to drop these myths: the traditional or so-called revolutionary Left, which is supposedly full of economic projects, while the radicals wander about in the clouds. For example, what is the economic line of the PCI? It is nonexistent. And the other positions are equally insignificant. We, on the contrary, maintain a banal thing: that if you lack homogeneous forces for a different project of economic management you will never have a tax reform and any other economic reform. If you're not part of government, not one of the economic proposals of the Left survives, starting with the communist one. The demands of the Left in the economic field have always been the same for decades, not for years. And what for? The truth is that we and the entire Left have an unused economic science because we are not in power.

Even economics, therefore, is part of the general capacity of political action. For the radicals, the problem is to enhance their forces in order to relaunch a program of action valid for the next decade. I don't know whether we'll succeed, but at least we have proven to be the only one, in the Left, capable of building and implementing such a program. After all the Italian Left has always lost, for decades: it lost to the Liberals of Giolitti (6) and Salandra (7), it lost against the fascists, against the DC and it is still losing today. This is a record in Europe, because in the other European countries the Left wasted its victories. Isn't is time to change habits?

Translator's notes

(1) Umberto Eco (1932): Italian semiologist and writer. Author of the best-selling "Il nome della rosa" (1980).

(2) PDUP: Party for the Union of Proletarians.

(3) Avanguardia Operaia: Italian extreme Left extraparliamentary political group

(4) Lotta Continua: movement of the Italian extraparliamentary Left, established in Turin in 1969. In 1971 it created a homonymous newspaper.

(5) Loris Fortuna: Italian parliamentarian who introduced the bill on divorce which was passed by Parliament.

(6) Giovanni Giolitti (1842-1928): Italian politician. Liberal member of Parliament since 1882, minister of treasury with Crispi (1889-90), Prime Minister (1892-93), and then again from 1903 to 1913 with the exception of a few intervals (1905-6; 1909-11). During this period, he favoured economic development, supporting the industry and tolerating a peaceful growth of the workers' and socialist movement, nationalized the Railways, extended the assistance to the workers and established the universal suffrage for men (1913). After the war in Libya (1911-12), to block a possible socialist victory, he reached an electoral agreement with the Catholics (Gentiloni pact, 1913), which was among the causes of his fall. He returned on the political scene in 1919. Prime Minister (1920-21), he underrated the growing fascist movement, convinced that he could reassimilate it in the forms of the liberal state; he took a position of open opposition only after the assassination of Matteotti (1924).

(7) Antonio Salandra (1853-1931): Italian politician. Minister of Agriculture (1899-1900), of Finance (1906), and of Treasury (1909-10). Prime Minister ('14-16). In May 1915 he lead Italy into World War I, after having signed the treaty of London. He sided fascism.