ABSTRACT: The author makes a clear distinction between radicalism in terms of a collective idea and radicalism as a political power. The former contains the statement of the individual will to escape from the collective and state compulsions, and to fully decide of one's body. But this feeling of self-determination and self-defence normally leads to forms of violence. The Radical Party has the merit of having been an intermediary of those tensions and violent impulses of the radical society by means of non-violent physical action. This is the essence of the political creativity of Marco Pannella, who "has offered himself as an image and a representation of the outlet of violence in speech and gesture (...), that is, in the symbol, the primary instrument of the socialization of tensions".
Starting from this analysis, the author states that the natural ally of the Radical Party is the Christian Democrat Party, precisely because its political leadership is the only one that makes the Radical mediation of the drive toward revolt possible.
To the question, whether the Radical Party is a religious or lay force, the author answers that the Radical party cannot be considered the heir of ideological laity, which ends up by falling under the hegemony of the Leninist model, whereas it can be considered the expression of a religious but not Christian tension.
(Argomenti Radicali n. 1, 1 June 1977)
Radicalism is a new phenomenon in Italian politics: perhaps the new phenomenon par excellence. It is bizarre that it is so little remarked. And yet in Italy we have created a speciality of high journalism, politology, capable of analyzing the smallest details of any mysterious object concerning the Italian Communist Party, the Christian Democrat Party, and now even the Confindustria (2a) and the unions, who have become the dignified protagonists of the present political course. The fact that the kind of politics which pivots around the Italian Communist Party from a cultural point of view is more easily analysed is due to the fact that Marxism, albeit in its final fragmentation, is a cultural area that has been completely explored, that allows for no more surprises, and has become an area for the masses; it can, in other words, be considered in terms of a cultural datum, and therefore the object of a common operation and interpretation.
The European cultural production no longer identifies with Marxism; its last operation, the neo-Marxism carried out in the universities (and in the publishing field) in the sixties and seventies, is a concluded operation. After the humanist Marxism of Garaudy and the structural neo-Marxism of Althusser, after having recovered the dissident aspects of Leninism, everything seems to have been said. And the cultural production no longer seems to urge forms of creativity which identify with the peaceful trend of the Marxist language.
In terms of a cultural fact, Radicalism involves the extinction of Marxism as a language capable of operating a further renovation, and the exhaustion of that language's attitude to contain new thoughts.
But then, which alternatives is radicalism suggesting, what type of culture does it call for? Radicalism involves the recovery not of the subject (the dialectic of the conscience, as any element of the Hegelian tradition, is already directly or indirectly contained in the Marxist language: Sartre is the most evident example of this), but of the individual.
The term 'radical' takes us back to the individualist fervour of English rationalism, which was capable of operating a distinct political proposal, blending the struggle for the economic liberalism with that for the universal suffrage. But how very different the individual of the seventies of the XXth century is, as compared to the one of the thirties of the XIXth century! Last century's individual is the agent of a civilization of enlightenment, and even more, the ultimate expression of an orderly universe, instar machina. The choices of individual will, if left to their naivety, fulfil a universal order, represent reason, which had, until then, been kept a prisoner of opinion.
The individual of the seventies is an "atom", in the sense that he is the final residue of all possible divisions. Each political sacred order has been consumed in the "blood of Europe" with the end of tsarism and of the central empires: but the world was not destined to democracy: the colonial-bourgeois order of the XIXth Century prevailed in the XXth Century, only not to survive its victory. What Hegel saved of the Prussian state has become the atheist sacred region of the Soviet system, while the United Sates fluctuate between the incapability to cease being a European province and becoming an empire, and the need to offer a principle of order and of reference to the non-Soviet world. While the technological progress is showing its limits, and science is ceasing to appear as a shrine from which to draw "the magnificent destinies", which perspective is offered to reason, in order to rationalize, in a perspective synthesis, the fragmented mosaic of our present human condition?
In this impotence on the part of the historical reason, following the defeat of the metaphysical intellect, we must acknowledge the Radicals the merit of having discovered "that which remains"; the individual. An individual who, in himself, has no perspectives as regards a universal solution, but who wants the security of possessing his peculiar irreducible reality: the reality of his body.
It is important, at this stage, to make a distinction between radicalism in the sense of a collective feeling, and radicalism in the sense of a political force. Between the two there is the large gap that exists between a reality and its interpretation. Radicalism in the sense of a collective feeling is the resolve to assert the individual, amid the double decay of the common values and the social texture. The most barbarous phenomenon of this rediscovery of the individual is the tendency of the latter to take the law into his own hands. Group violence, which is justified in a revolutionary sense, is counteracted by an individual reply, which has no other assertion but self-assertion, expressed in terms of safeguard of one's person. On the other hand, a certain amount of elementary violence, which is in the air, can be explained by this double realization: of the eclipse of values and of the disintegration of society. From a higher point of view, the emerging of social bodies with a private structure (from i
ndustries to unions) and their tendency to become autonomous and to control the parties, the organs of the political values and the institutions that guarantee the community, represent the same drive.
The fact that the political Left is ill at ease confronted with these phenomena, even when they are internal phenomena, is easily explained. These phenomena, even if they are politically included in the left area, do not belong to that principle of the supremacy of the gender on the individual which is the constitutional basis of the left wing's prevailing guide-line: Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx. I believe that the fact that the theme of the metropolitan Indians was conceived in the right area has not been remarked: the saga of Black Elk was introduced in Italy by Rusconi and culturally presented by Elémire Zolla.
Political radicalism does not consist in this fact: it is its interpretation. If we understand the intentions of political radicalism correctly, they are aimed at the attempt to de-barbarize society's latent radicalism, and to somehow de-barbarize the emerging individualism.
Political radicalism therefore takes the shape of a mediation, which adapts to the most different realities; from the needs of the warders to those of the prisoners. It is significant that even the shopkeepers' need for security has been safeguarded. Feminism and freedom for homosexuals do not point to the political mediation of the radical party as far as contents are concerned, but are significantly contained in it because they are qualifying phenomena of what we called the radical society.
With what material did radicalism, and especially Marco Pannella, build the radical mediation? It is a meaningful fact that the instrument for this mediation has been the technique of non-violent action. This shows a remarkable intuition: the non-violent nature which the assertion of individualism in terms of possession of the body represents. The radical society contains in itself a violent dimension, and political radicalism, in order to mediate such dimension, must suggest physical but non-violent actions; a hunger strike, a significant banner, a bizarre gesture. This is the essence of Pannella's political creativity, who offered himself as an image and a representation of the outlet of violence both in speech and gesture. That is, in the symbol, the primal instrument of the socialization of tensions.
The Radical Party is not, therefore, a party, but a political form of a society which is different from the society whose political form was the ideological parties (the peak of these parties being the Leninist party). Its capacity is based on the culture of images, which allows for the ultimate effectiveness of the word or the gesture. The decaying of the party-association, with its bureaucratic structure, is occurring because of the new impact of the audio-visual culture, which offers space to the gesture and the representation.
The Radical Party's current manner of making politics represents not only the understanding of a new kind of society and of its problems, but also the intention of a new technique of political leadership.
The radical political problem is that of giving space not only to the most evident and protesting strata of society, but also to the needs of the former "masses", in the very area of the unions.
In a certain sense, the kind of demands that the Radical party has protected until now are also a limit and a restraint to its expansion. This refers to the problem of its relations with the other parties. I will say something that may be judged paradoxical, but according to me the Radical Party's natural ally is the Christian Democrat Party. On the one hand, because it is the type of political orientation that the Christian Democrat Party has given the country that made both the formation of a radical society and the formation of the Radical party possible: on the other hand, any other kind of management, more closely bound to the model of an ideological party, would make the exertion of the radical mediation more difficult. Violent tensions would be fought against in a different manner: the need and the possibility of a radical mediation would drop. There is an effective solidarity between the Radical Party and the Christian Democrat Party, a solidarity which manifests itself in the fact that both parties'
main opponent is the "historical compromise". In other words: the agreement between the Christian Democrat Party and the Radical Party manifests itself because of the Christian Democrat leadership's aversion for the historical compromise and in relation to this aversion. This effective solidarity is more than a simple possibility. The subtle strategic-tactical convergence in spite of the differences of the general statements between the Christian Democrat Party and the Radical Party is already a fact in Italian politics.
The correct functioning of a non-written alliance, covered, in fact, by a declaration of war, corresponds to the failure of all the attempts to make an alliance on the part of the Radical Party, namely that with the Republicans and the Socialists. The Christian Democrat Party, in spite of everything, is the party that is less so of all Italian parties, a party forged on the basis of civil society, a mediation party, like the Radical Party. In other words: the Christian Democrat Party, because it does not collaborate, beyond a certain level, with the Communist Party, not only ensures the political possibility of a party such as the Radical party, but also represents a certain level of effective political homogeneity with it.
From what I said above, it follows that we do not believe the Radical Party can be called a party of the Left, in the traditional sense of this expression, and we do not believe that its influence reaches only in this direction. On the contrary, we believe that the Radical Party has the possibility of expanding itself toward sectors that are normally considered of the Right, at any rate as a mental rather than social position. And it seems to us that the Radical Party is going toward this direction, even if perhaps not without some foreseeable crisis.
The problem of whether the Radical Party is a religious or lay force has been posed. The difficulty here is that of defining what is "religious" and what is "lay".
The techniques with which the Radical Party has carried out its battles come from the non-violent tradition, whose origin is religious but not Christian (Gandhi). This is important: it seems to us that the Radical Party cannot be considered the heir of the ideological laicism (which, being a party, ends up by being submitted to the hegemony of the Leninist model) if it will seek forms of action that appeal not only to reason, but also, and extensively, to the religious feeling. I don't think I can push myself further. This essay is already sufficiently proleptic (that is, with the presumption of anticipation: proleptic is a word that belongs to the theological jargon, I cannot help using it), as to read beyond words that are still to be written.
Translator's notes
(1a) Gianni Baget Bozzo: Catholic priest, political essayist, member of the European Parliament for the Italian Socialist Party.
(2a) Confindustria: General Confederation of Italian Industry, established in 1944.
