ABSTRACT: An essay on the nature and historical roots of the new Radicalism and a debate on the Radical problem with contributions from: Contributions by Gianni Baget-Bozzo, Giorgio Galli; Francesco Ciafaloni; Domenico Tarizzo; Ernesto Galli della Loggia; Brice Lalonde; Ugoberto Alfassio Grimaldi; Giuseppe Are; Alberto Asor Rosa; Silverio Corvisieri; Ruggero Orfei; Sergio Cotta; Federico Stame; Paolo Ungari; Giuliano Amato; Fabio Mussi; Giulio Savelli

(SAVELLI Publishers, October 1978)

Introduction (1375)

PART ONE

I. Politics and Society (1376)

II. The Accusations Against the Radicals (1377)

III. The Radicals As A Two-Front Party (1378)

IV. Radicalism And Socialism (1379)

V. Radicalism Or Marxism, Co-existence Or Techno-Fascism (1380)

PART TWO

A Debate On The Radical Problem (1381 > 1397)

"My faith in socialism (to which, I dare say, all my subsequent conduct testifies) has remained more than ever alive within me. In essence it has reverted to what it was when I first revolted against the old social order:a negation of traditions and destiny, even under the pseudonym of history;an extension of the ethical demand from the narrow individual and familiar

sphere to the entire domaine of human activity; a need for real fraternity; an affirmation of the superiority of the human being over all economic and social mechanisms that oppress him. With the passage of time there was added a reverent feeling toward that which in man tries unceasingly to surpass itself and is at the root of his insatiable anxiety. But I do not believe in professing a personal socialism in this way. The "insane truths"

now remembered are older than Marxism. Toward the second half of the last century they took refuge in the workers' movement born from industrial capitalism, and they continue to remain one of its most tenacious sources of inspiration. Every sincere socialist, even without realizing, carries it in him or herself. I have already expressed my opinion many times on the relations, never completely rigid and immutable, between the socialist

movement and the theory of socialism. They are the same relations that connect the schools of philosophy and the great historic movements. As studies progress, theories can waste away and be repudiated, but the movement continues. Yet it would be a mistake, with regard to the old dispute between doctrinarians and empiricists of the workers'organizations, to number myself among the latter. I do not conceive of socialist politics as indissoluably linked to a specific theory, but to a faith, yes. The more socialist "theories" try to be "scientific," the more

they are transitory; but socialist "values" are permanent. The distinction between theories and values is not yet clear enough in the minds of those who reflect on this issue, and yet it is fundamental. A school and a propaganda can be built on an assortment of theories; a culture, a civilization and a new type of co-existence between men can be founded on an assortment of values.

(Ignazio Silone, "Emergency Exit")

INTRODUCTION

"Radicalism is a new phenomenon of Italian politics, perhaps the pre-eminent new phenomenon. It is strange that it should be so little noticed." (Gianni Baget-Bozzo, "Radical Arguments")

"The question of radicalism occupies an important place again today ... because, in society and in ideas, radical positions, new and old, have spread." (Fabio Mussi, "Rinascita")

"While on various sides the hegemony of radicalism is now suggested ..., the term "radical" or "radical-socialist" is used by diverse sides as a definition if not actually a defamatory accusation.." (Ruggero Orfei, "Il Mensile")

In one of the new characteristics of Italian political debate, it is discovered that there exists, and has always existed, wrongly and dangerously undervalued, a "radical vein," a specific and important phenomenon in the cultural and political reality of our country.

In the attempts at a rapid recovery, we are questioned about

"radicalism" and the "new radicalism." What do they represent as deep currents of Italian society; to what needs do they respond; why they are twisted or twisted again; where can they lead. Beside the "Communist question," the order of the day since the PCI made a leap forward in electoral results in 1975, beside the "Socialist question," returned to the limelight by the Craxi leadership's revival of aggressiveness and what it seeks to represent, beside the "Catholic question," always at the center of the Italian political scene, there is also today a "Radical question," more than ever open and, implicity and explicity, the focus of attention of Italian politics and cultural policies.

The fact is that in the first half of the 1970s, the "official" political forces several times found themselves caught on the wrong foot and defeated or forced to win unwillingly by this reality -- the Radical Party -- always misunderstood, ignored, despised, considered irrelevent and inconsistent (the "so-called Radical Party", L'Unità used to write). From time to time, the "real" parties found themselves discovering that the

Radicals had the right view in their interpretation of the state of mind of public opinion. And noticing with embarrassment that, also through battles for rights postponed by the other forces of the left and the lay world but begun by the Radicals, public opinion revealed or little by little assumed unequivocably Radical orientations. In those years, there was first of all

Parliament's approval of divorce in 1970 and then the referendum of 1974, both successes of the Radical group, which had opened and carried forward that campaign along with a series of other actions to affirm civil rights.

The Radicals as a political force, although a minority and relegated to battles that other political forces considered sectoral, had now become a reality.

With 1976 and the election to Montecitorio of a band of "rose in the fist" parliamentarians and the success that followed in collecting millions of signatures on a project divided up for constitutional application through referendums, although only two referendums reached the popular test of 11 June 1978, awareness of the effective and significant Radical presence was widened and made general. The issue of the "new Radicals," who were successful in winning victory thanks to a dynamic political presence, was thus transformed over the years and in more recent months into the question of the "new radicalism," highlighted still more by the surprising (for the political class) results of the two referendums of '78 in which the positions held by the Radicals won the consensus of about one third ("Reale" law*) and by almost half (party financing) of the Italian electorate.

The original indifference toward the Radicals and the new radicalism was shattered in part by political reporting between 1974 and 1976. In a country like ours in which great attention is usually dedicated to the smallest and most transient political phenomena, it was above all the strength of the results won at the start of the 1970s that forced attention on this uncomfortable presence. At first, attention turned more to the form of Radical actions, captured by presumed "folkloristic" characteristics or sensationalism, than to the political content that the individual acts, campaigns and actions carried. It was said of the Radicals that, with exceptions, they used "excessive" methods, although for just ends, or else that their actions were praiseworthy provided that they remained confined to "superstructural" problems," which according to Marxist jargon means marginal. While Politics -- what is important and what counts -- concerns other things and cannot proceed in vehicles that do not have the characteris

tics recognized as "correct" and approved by the hegemonic power of the political system.

Thus, imposed by events, there began in those years a discussion of the radical phenomenon that, however, seizing on only one aspect of it, wound up by letting a large part of its characteristics escape, which resulted in substantial distortion of the whole. This was born largely from the inadequacy of the dominant political culture (Marxist, first of all) to come to terms with instruments fit for this new phenomenon.

The Radical affair, apart from being linked to old roots that go back to the Italian democratic tradition, is marked also by being the product of changes of the new advanced industrial society and, markedly, by that particular face it has assumed in Italy. Attempts to interpret and define the Radical phenomenon have had recourse, when they went beyond specific moments of struggle, to a category like "middle class minority" and a label like "intellectual" or "illuminating" force, evoking characteristics that only the deep ignorance of the facts

could have allowed to be resurrected from a wornout past. There were put in a single container, on the one hand, the roots of the new Radicals with those of the old Radicals of the 1950s or else, on the other hand, taking an opposite view, if the new radicalism was assimilated generically with the protester rebelliousness of the '68 and post '68 youth movements, ignoring, for example, the deep institutional care and the concrete mechanisms of reform that constantly moved the Radical hypotheses through these last 15 years.

All this and more still is the fruit of political and intellectual laziness -- or worst yet of superficially

liquidated will -- of so many who have the habit of arguing by plundering the arsenal of "accepted ideas" and of the screens good for all uses, above all when it is a question of contributing to hollow positions and political initiatives that are uncomfortable and with which they don't want to settle

accounts. Thus, supporters of the new Radicals, for example, are found to be kinds of qualunquisti who have done the '68 (Mussi, see Part Two); while others accept as good Cavallotti's reference points of 19th century radicalism to understand the new radicalism although with the use of articulated Marxist cultural politics, giving proof of little or no knowledge of the empirical data (Astor Rosa, see Part Two). And the brilliant exception of Baget-Bozzo does not serve to change this general picture. Baget-Bozzo (coming not for nothing from non-traditional political training) has tried, from the non-lay point of view, to understand the intentions and actions of the political radicalism of today, which is an answer to the emergence of a "radical society" marked by collective stimuli profoundly changed with respect to those that predominated in the past decades.

Such was still the situation some time ago, but now a debate has opened on interpretation that goes beyond pure contingency. There have been contributions and interventions in this sense both from radicals and from other sides.

Of the little written theoretical elaboration that marked the life of the group in its work, attempts have begun through a radical initiative to make the founding data of its politics explicit, which also helps the observer, the questioner or the more careless contradictor to no longer lack precision. The bimonthly Radical Arguments has been published for almost two years; in 1977, with the volume "The New Radicals," a work by some of us who today present these notes, there was an attempt to offer the first systematic contribution of historic and sociological analysis of the Radical Party and its role in Italian political life of the last 20 years. In May 1978, the first study congress officially dedicated by the party to

reflection on its way of being was held.

It is appearing, moreover, as a sign of a debate -- even if animated mainly by polemics -- that must take account of the nature of radical politics and of the basis on which it rests. L'Unità and Rinascita, L'Avanti and Mondoperaio, only by remaining the official organs of the traditional left, have not be able to do less in recent times than question themselves on the new radicalism confronting them, not only with radical actions but also with what they signify and constitute in more general terms. Echoing Berlinguer, who frequently expressed himself officially (at the 1976 congress and in following Central Committee meetings) against the "annoying" and "disruptive" "libertarian impulse" of attacking the left, Craxi held in his reply to the last PSI Congress that the Socialists must make the movements and the struggles for civil rights their own: "The

comrades of the Radical Party cannot think that for much longer we will accept the fate of their monopolistic claim to the great battles on the issues of abortion and civil rights that bear the signature of Socialist members of parliament. We will forcefully resume out action in the field of civil rights, of good causes in defense of the rights of man and of the environment ... ." An excellent proposal, even if everything still has to be checked, that nevertheless reveals the weight of the force of ideas embodied by the radicals in the non-Leninist and non-centralist left.

It is not only the interventions of politicians and their legitimate arguments that give weight to the debate under way but also the basic tendencies in society and their political expressions: the reluctance of an ever wider part of the country to accept the totalized party mediation expressed by traditional parties, revealed first in the last partial administrative elections and then in the 11 June referendum and in the border regional elections; the growing signs of malaise at the creation of forms of democracy that are "associated" (as defined by some Socialist intellectuals) or "organized" (according to the Communist definition); and the apparent detachment from the politics that started the debate on qualunquismo.

Well then, the question of the "new radicalism" is on the carpet. It goes beyond the Radicals, beyond the leadership represented in great part by Marco Pannella, beyond this or that episode of political struggle. The parties, the traditional politics, the analyses of the trends of society and the leaderships are beginning to have to reckon with -- and probably

will have to still more -- a different political culture. Appearing on the Italian scene in a "living" or "symbolic" form, very different from that through which the debates on political culture are recognized and legitimized, the new radicalism begins today to be recognized as one of the important tendencies of our time.

This book is comprised of two sections: our essay on the nature and the historic roots of the new radicalism and a collection of contributions by non-Radicals by whom the essay is launched. The second section, which is a collection of the writings of Gianni Baget-Bozzo, Giorgio Galli, Francesco Ciafaloni, Domenico Tarizzo, Ernesto Galli della Loggia, Brice Lalonde, Ugoberto Alfassio Grimald, Giuseppe Are, Alberto Asor Rosa, Silverio Corvisieri, Ruggero Orfei, Sergio Cotta, Federico Stame, Paolo Ungari, Giuliano Amato, Fabo Mussi and Giulio Savelli, does not constitute an appendix but is an integral part of the book of contributions because the writings are by our spokesmen, chosen as a sample of the broadest debate. They are intended to furnish the base for the longer discussion, ideally

interweaving our views with those of the intellectuals and politicians who have expressed themselves on the radical issue.

Many of the contributions have been published in Radical Arguments since April 1977 on the "polemics page" purposely prepared to feed the dialogue we consider necessary in the interests of the left and of the clarity of its various, even conflicting, positions. Corvisieri, Orfei, Amato, Mussi and Savelli are represented by writings that appeared in other publications following some political development. Thus they are precisely the sign of the topicality of the issues that they put forward. With our essay and the interwoven dialogue, through the spokesmen of Part Two, with the political and cultural world, we are trying to offer a contribution on the part of the Radicals that directly confronts the debate under way. It is the fruit of a discussion between four authors who are involved directly, if you like, in different levels of radical political experience and are also engaged in the attempt to explain its deep reasoning and the direction in which its experience is heading.

As with every collaboration, it is superfluous to underline that not all the details of the essay -- with its analyses, evaluations and information -- are totally shared by the four authors who, obviously, are jointly responsible for the general approach. On the other hand, the same cultural and scientific training, which for some supplements the common political

struggle, would have given place to different treatments if the book had been a single instead of collective production.

Therefore, the notes that follow are intended as a first attempt at organic reflection and interpretation of the new Italian radicalism (after the historic and sociological reflection of the volume "The New Radicals") on the occasion of intensified efforts, along with signs of interest, to liquidate the label of a presumed new qualunquismo.

From here, in terms of cultural politics we relaunch the title of the volume "Radical or Qualunqisti?" which deliberately accepts the challenge already faced positively on the part of the Radicals in terms of concrete results.

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

* Qualunquisti - a much-used term in Italian political parlance referring to an attitude of mistrust towards political parties and the party system in general.