ABSTRACT: Curcio (1) and comrades on the one hand, Presidents, ministers, generals, authors and instigators of State-organized terrorist attacks on the other, all practice the same ideology: they believe that the end justifies the means, and that victory calls for death. According to the Radicals, the means foreshadow the ends. The Radical Party will not use its share of public funds for its initiatives. The regime is afraid, and so are the bureaucrats of the parties of the Left: people should not know that Terracini (2), Lombardi (3) and Mancini (4) support the radical initiatives. The censorship of the newspapers of the regime is not the only one: there is the censorship of "Il Manifesto" (5) as well; the representatives of the latter newspaper, after having received a billion in public funds, are mentioned in the seats of the institutions as exemplary opponents of convenience. With their opportunism, they poison and cause the crisis of the "revolutionary" Left; now they should know that they can no longer

count on the silence of the radical Left. 12 and 13 May: procession toward the places where signatures are collected for the referendums.

(LOTTA CONTINUA, 8-9 May 1977)

Curcio and comrades believe that murdering in war, civil or not, is not a murder; that murdering the enemy, class enemy or other, is not murder; that murdering the real or presumed, direct or indirect culprit is not a murder; that murdering the murdered is not a murder.

I see the danger, not the scandal. Curcio and companions draw these beliefs from very far and very near. For centuries, theologians and State and Church philosophers have been building this culture, these morals, this politics. Murdering for the State, the Nation, the Class, the Party, the Revolution, the Church, murdering for the well-being of all, murdering the body to save the soul of the murdered one as well as one's own; the theme - with variations - is always the same, and it unites factions that are otherwise opposed in terms of interests, cementing them in factuality, in methods, in destruction, in death. The authors, the instigators, the accomplices of the State-organized terrorist attacks, Presidents of the Republic, Prime Ministers, ministers of the interior and of defence, generals of the SID (6), all practice this ideology. So do Curcio and comrades. The former and the latter believe that the end justifies the means, that the form of the battle does not foreshadow the form of the victory, and th

at victory calls for death.

SPLASHING THE "MONSTER" ACROSS THE FRONT PAGE: ONE DAY COSSIGA (7), ANOTHER DAY CURCIO

It is no chance that this system of ours is reaching a formal, geometric perfection. All (or almost all) the parties are united by professions of values and by the identification of immediate objectives and common, converging programs. Every day, the front pages of the newspapers contain the account of the murders and of the murderers. Positive or negative heroes, it matters little. All the "monsters" have been splashed across all the front pages.

The system reaps that which it sowed. One day Cossiga, another day Curcio, more often than not both, together, and with equal evidence. Even the plundering kings and viceroys needed "bandits" to impose their increasingly heavy taxes, to "save" the people from them, recruiting it, starving it, organizing the "cour des miracles" of the soldiers and slaves versus the "cour des miracles" of the rebels and destitutes, legitimating in this war their power, strengthening it, perpetuating it.

For thirty years, Andreotti (8), Cossiga, the government, the class in power, the regime, have assassinated the Constitution, their own legality, the justice and honesty of democracy as well as the population, with murderous and anticonstitutional laws, or have left the direct culprits unpunished and free.

Curcio and comrades murder old lawyers and young policemen, magistrates and Carabinieri.

Once again, I can't see the scandal. The unifying ideology is that which teaches and maintains that violence can be opposed only with violence, and that attacking is nothing but a form of legitimate preventive defence, that life can arise from death, that death (one's own and other people's) can be a condition of life. I see the danger, yes, because Andreotti belongs to the history of the oppressors, because Curcio belongs to the history of the oppressed, that is, to our history, to the history we participate in and which cannot be assumed when it is convenient, and rejected when it becomes inconvenient. I fear the danger we are running: the system could succeed in making us similar to it in terms of faces, holidays, weapons, beliefs. It could win from an ideological and cultural point of view, directly and indirectly corroborating ideologically subordinate components, inborn in its culture and strategy.

Therefore we recognize that those among the comrades of the Red Brigades (9) and even of the NAP (10), and those exponents of "Autonomia Operaia" (11) who are not double agents, paid, provoked, monitored and controlled by national and international security services, that they have won some of their sad, terrible and mortal battles. Those same battles - we fear - that the regime needed them to win to oppose the impending danger of a socialist, libertarian, democratic, nonviolent alternative, based on the immense force of the masses of proletarians, of workers, of democratic men and women, on their peaceful natural and by now compulsory "illegality" versus the laws and the men of the regime.

THE RADICAL PARTY WILL NOT USE ITS SHARE THE PUBLIC FUNDS THAN ARE GIVEN TO THE PARTIES

But while these companions struggle by murdering, collecting billions thanks to the kidnappings which they succeed in carrying out here and there, becoming "powerful" for the means and fears (of the people, certainly not of Agnelli (12), Moro (13) or Andreotti), acquiring arsenals, dying and risking death, the Radical Party decided yesterday not to use a single penny of the billion in public funds which are given to the parties for its activity and for the collection of signatures on the referendums (which might this way be canceled), as it plans in the very near future to discontinue its activity, overwhelmed as it is by the weight of three million lire spent or necessary to offer the country this occasion for an alternative struggle and political outcome. This was decided above all by the thousand radical companions whose month-long non-stop work in cooperation with hundreds of comrades from Lotta Continua (14), the MLS and the bases of the PDUP (15) and of Autonomia Operaia, has enabled 320.000 electors t

o endorse the requests of referendums to abrogate the infamous fascist and Christian democratic laws with 2.500.000 certified signatures (of the 6 or 5.5. which are necessary) in 37 days. It is no chance that attempts are being made, these days, to build further and more arrogant repressive, murderous and suicidal regulations for the republican democracy.

WE BELIEVE THE MEANS FORESHADOW OR INFLUENCE THE ENDS

Principles should be upheld precisely at moments when it is difficult to apply them: it is then that they are valid and should be affirmed. Deciding not to touch the money of the financing of the regime when one does not need them is something everyone can do. This is why either we raise 300 million through self-financing within a shirt period of time, or we will have to acknowledge our failure.

This is why we will try to multiply the tables, in order to collect money and subscriptions as well as signatures. We will once again empty our pockets to draw out every single penny. Once again we will raise the flag of poverty among the people, so that they may recognize it and gather round it.

It is increasingly probable that we will not make it with these common referendums, comrades of Lotta Continua, readers of this newspaper; but this is why it is still possible to make it. The regime knows it, and is afraid of this: it doesn't mention it in its papers except to publish the falsifying and arrogant attacks of the newspaper of the FIAT.

The RAI keeps silent and deforms facts to such a point that even the parliamentary committee of supervision has protested unanimously against the suppression of all honesty on the part of "socialists" like Barbato and Zavoli, Fichera and Paolo Grassi. The journalists of "L'Espresso" (16), envious and liars, have been forced to tolerate the fact that Camilla Cederna (17) tried to publish a page of honesty and truth amid the thousand pages which serve the profits of the historical compromise, after having fully exploited their previous earnings from the Centre-Left.

This is why we are nonviolent: because we refuse to murder, be murdered, build our lives and our society on the deception that our and other people's death can represent its basis. But the authority can spare its indignation and scandal against Curcio: if we allow him to, let him go on murdering. However, he should refrain from trying to appear different from his real self, that is, a murderer. The more he murders, the more it seems that the parties of the oppressed approach him to "control" them, to make then at least change program.

We want our comrades alive. Alive against the white deaths, the deaths on the workplace, the deaths caused by disease, poverty and despair, the State-organized massacres, alive versus the killing of their soul, which is ultimately nothing but the right to hope, justice, democracy, order and peace.

We want our comrades alive: for this and for the comrades who die around him, we don't like Curcio, who risks turning into a living dead. Very soon, I fear, the "nonviolent, radical danger" will be denounced by the comrades of the P38s and of the Red Brigades as the worst of all dangers. Already in the past, the Stalinists practiced the tragic and inevitable sport of killing the followers of Trotsky or Bucharin with greater ferocity than they killed the social democrats or anarchists because they were "worse than the fascists". There are risks to be denounced, a serious debate to be opened, before the "mass media" of the majority parties manage to fully promote the antagonist which they have chosen on purpose: the negative "hero", the front-page "monster", who thus becomes the compulsory "model of development" of thousands and thousands of young and old who struggle with unemployment, social alienation, pensions, class and State violence.

THE REGIME IS AFRAID

The bureaucrats of the historical compromise and of the emergencies are afraid of letting their militants know that Umberto Terracini, Riccardo Lombardi, Giacomo Mancini, hundreds among the socialist and communist representatives, among the unionist of the UIL (18), of the CISL (19), of the CGIL (20) everywhere are supporting our battle, are endorsing it and defending it also with the contribution of their autonomy, of their critical and reasoned adhesion. Thus, "L'Avanti!" (21) and "L'Unità" (22) censor more the communists and the socialists than the radicals and the members of Lotta Continua. The regime, the parties of Andreotti's majority, know that it is still possible for a constitutional nonviolent, popular and democratic bomb to explode, a hundred times more powerful than the bomb of divorce and abortion which twice upset their plans, interrupted two legislatures and caused the collapse at the Left of the Italian electorate between 1974 and 1976.

If we succeeded, the Christian Democrat Party would need to come to terms not with the "programs" of Berlinguer (23) or Craxi (24), which it declares to be ready to manage in its own, but with a compulsory program based on an immediate and demanding legislative work of constitutional reform and application precisely on those points which regard freedom and public order, civil rights and democratic liberation, against which it is about to obtain the most dangerous successes.

12 AND 13 MAY: TWO DAYS OF STRUGGLE

The demonstrations of 12 and 13 May in Piazza Navona, Rome, called officially two hours after Cossiga's prohibition, for the eight referendums, for the campaign for the collection of signatures, should represent a new occasion of struggle to overcome the increasing difficulties which face us. We will carry them out, together with the militants of Lotta Continua, of the movement, of the MLS, and those who carry on this battle every day.

CENSORSHIP: THE ONE PRACTICED BY THE REGIME AND THE ONE BY IL MANIFESTO

But we refuse - it should be very clear - any common demonstration with the national and Roman leaders of the PDUP and of any other organization which, like that one, competes with the censorship and the violence of the regime versus the success of the signature collection. Everything we have done and denounced these weeks against the RAI, against the regime press, is all the more valid for "Il Manifesto". The latter, which alone has incorporated over a million in public funds from the State, which is mentioned in all the seats of the Chamber and of the regime as exemplary opponents of convenience, which, with its opportunism, has poisoned and caused the crisis of the revolutionary and revolutionist Left, should know it can no longer count on the tolerance and on the silence of the Radical Left. Also because of the miserable game which they play every day on the lives and struggles of their militants and comrades of the base. The P38s, the Red Brigades and the NAP, certain albeit rare militants from Autonomi

a Operaia, are the fruit of a despair, an anger which they have received a sad tribute from their policy.

I believe the Radical militants will be able to show, together with the militants from Lotta Continua and the other communists, socialists, libertarians, democrats, that they know how to use the weapon of this campaign for the referendums with greater skill than they use the weapon of the "justice maker", that is, murdering the opponents.

For the coming days, for a few weeks more, there is no other militant choice that counts, that can translate itself into an alternative, socialist and communist victory.

ON 13 MAY, PROCESSION TOWARD THE CENTRES OF COLLECTION

Let us further specify the necessary intervention time: on 13 May, on the anniversary of the victory of the referendum on divorce, there will be a strike in all the universities and schools. Everyone will join in to reach the centres where signatures are collected. If the students move with this objective, leaving the demonstrations against Andreotti, Cossiga and Malfatti (25) to other days, weeks and months, they will have prepared, also for next year, levels of conflict and negotiation force with parties and unions, with the reformist Left, which had never been achieved before.

Without the sabotage of the PDUP and the distraction of the students movement, in Spring of 1974 we would probably have collected the signatures for the abrogation of all the main Christian Democratic and fascist laws, and would have won these referendums two years ago.

Translator's notes

(1) Renato Curcio: leader and founding father of the Red Brigades. Currently serving a life sentence.

(2) Umberto Terracini (1895-1983): among the founders of the Italian Communist Party; imprisoned during fascism (1926-43), from 1947 to '48 he was president of the constituent assembly.

(3) Riccardo Lombardi (1901-1984): Italian politician. Among the founders of the Partito d'Azione, after the war he joined the Socialist Party, which he was President of in 1980.

(4) Giacomo Mancini (1916): Secretary of the Italian Socialist Party (1970-72), several times minister.

(5) Il Manifesto: political movement created around the homonymous monthly, established in 1969 by exponents of the Communist Party (A. Natoli, R. Rossanda, L. Pintor, L. Magri), who were later expelled by the party. In 1977 the monthly magazine became a daily newspaper and for some years was the organ of the Party of Proletarian Union (PDUP). It later became independent.

(6) SID: Italian Intelligence Service established in 1966. Dissolved in 1977, it was replaced by the SISMI.

(7) Francesco Cossiga (1928): Italian politician. Minister of the Interior (1976-78) and Prime Minister (1979-80), currently President of the Republic.

(8) Giulio Andreotti (1919): Italian politician. Christian Democrat, minister of the Interior (1954), of Finance (1955-58), of Treasury (1958-59), of Defence (1959-66; 1974), of Industry (1966-68), of Budget (1974-76). Prime Minister from 1972 to 1973 and from 1976 to 1979. Currently Prime Minister.

(9) Red Brigades: extreme Left clandestine terrorist organization which developed in Italy as of 1969. Responsible for kidnappings, the injuring and murder of magistrates, policemen and carabinieri, journalists, industrial and political leaders, in 1978 kidnapped and assassinated Christian Democratic leader Aldo Moro.

(10) NAP: extreme Left terrorist organization.

(11) Autonomia Operaia: Extreme Left political movement, active in Italy during the second half of the seventies. After reaching its peak in 1977, in 1979 it was accused of connivance with terrorism.

Some of its exponents were tried.

(12) Agnelli: family of Italian automakers. Giovanni (1866-1945), founder (1899) of the FIAT. Giovanni known as Gianni (1921), nephew of the previous, president of the FIAT as from 1966 and President of the Confindustria from 1974 to 1976. Umberto (1934), brother of Gianni, managing director (1970-76) and vice president (as of 1976) of the FIAT.

(13) Aldo Moro (1916-1978): Italian politician. Secretary of the Christian Democratic Party (1959-65), minister on several occasions, Prime Minister ('63-68), he was the mastermind of the Centre-Left policy. Foreign Minister ('69-74), Prime Minister ('74-76), President of the DC since 1976, he favoured the participation of the Communist Party in the government. He was kidnapped by the Red Brigades on 16.3.78 and found dead on 9.5.1978.

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

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

(16) L'Espresso: Italian political, cultural and financial weekly magazine established in Rome in 1955.

(17) Camilla Cederna (1911): Italian journalist and writer. "La voce dei padroni" (1962), "Signore & signori" (1966), Sparare a vista" (1975), "Giovanni Leone" (1978).

(18) UIL: Italian Federation of Trade Unions, established in 1949 by social democratic and republican unionists who had left the CGIL.

(19) CISL: trade union established in 1950 by Christian Democrat unionists.

(20) CGIL: Italian General Confederation of Labour, established in 1906 as CGL by reformist elements of the Socialist Party. Dissolved by the reformist leaders in 1927, during fascism it was kept alive by the clandestine communist initiative in Italy and by Bruno Buozzi in Paris, until the reconstruction of the unitarian labour union CGIL in 1944. It is the most important labour union.

(21) L'Avanti!: socialist daily newspaper established in Rome in 1896; suppressed by the fascists in 1926, it resumed regular publications in 1944. Official organ of the Italian Socialist Party.

(22) L'Unità: daily newspaper of the Italian Communist Party established in Turin in 1924.

(23) Enrico Berlinguer (1922-1984): Italian politician. Secretary of the Communist Youth federation (1949-56), member of Parliament as of 1968, secretary general of the Communist Party from 1972 to 1984.

(24) Bettino Craxi (1934): Italian politician. Former Secretary of the Italian Socialist Party and former Prime Minister.

(25) Malfatti: Christian Democratic politician.