SUMMARY: an essay on the nature and the historical roots of the new radicalism and a debate on the Radical issue with contributions from Baget-Bozzo, Galli, Ciafaloni, Tarizzo, Galli della Loggia, Lalonde, Alfassio Grimaldi, Are, Asor Rosa, Corvisieri, Orfei, Cotta, Stame, Ungari, Amato, Mussi, Savelli.

(SAVELLI Publishers, October 1978)

INDEX:

PART ONE

I Politics and Society (1376)

II Radicals Accused (1377)

III The PR 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 Issue (1381 > 1397)

"The Lower Middle Class Radicals

What does it mean in the Italy of today to make "lower middle class" politics, as the first of the accusations directed against the radicals sounds? And what sense has established the relation between a social stratum and a political force that would represent its interests and values?

At the time when the crisis of the parties in their ability to respond exhaustively to the demands society formulates is under discussion, one must also ask oneself whether the crisis of the political system may not also be a crisis of social

representation. If the link between belonging to a specific

social class and belonging to a political movement has ever been

useful as a general instrument of interpretation, we think that

today, it is less and less a key to a satisfactory reading of the

relations between society and politics.

Class limits which in a proto-industrial phase still had

substance,not only social but also anthropological are becoming

less clear, more interwoven and more complex. This is because

the main places for social conflict have changed and are

changing, consequently multiplying the ruling structures which

are currently in force in our society.

Let us give the word to Alain Touraine, from whom we can simply borrow the definitions of several characteristics of the advanced industrial society, (defined as post-industrial") which for the most part also concern the Italy of our day. The French

sociologist writes: "The ruling class is defined by the

management of the production apparatus. Technocrats are the

directors of the major organisations which make use of scientific

and technical progress and which are run in accordance with the

rules for monitoring complex systems. These organisations impose

their "domination" on society overall, monopolising the resources

that could serve one area of social life, or respond to one type

of social requirement, to their own advantage or to increase

their power. These decision-making structures are frequently

associated with the state which allows them to extend their

domination beyond the limit of the foods or services they produce

... This new kind of domination can no longer be defined through

the exploitation of the worker but in a much broader way through

the manipulation of demand, the deterioration of living conditions, monopolisation of resources and the capacity for

making decisions ... We are used to defining the dominated class

as a category of workers, and this is why we find it hard to

realize that the extension of this domination to social and

cultural life as a whole, obliges us to define the dominated

class in more general terms and to pay attention to other

problems and other categories than those of former times (...)

"The importance of life outside work is only the counterpart of

the penetration of social domination beyond that of production,

in information, in consumption, etc." (Alain Touraine, "The

Production of Societies" Bologna, Il Mulino, Pp. 218, 220, 221,

222).

The mechanical transposition into ranks, classes and party is inadequate. As a reference point and categories for

interpretation, notions are used which are different from those

which the unrefined Marxist has widely distributed, independently

from the historic and time content to which they could be

applied. Direct economic incentives as motives for social

struggle are extenuated, and opposition to the existing regimes

assume forms of "cultural resistance" also due to factors other

than economic. The consequent aggregations of antagonistic

movements pass through a range of various factors.

This is why the behaviour of those who wish obstinately to

interpret political strife today as a game of great structures in

functional relation to the social classes which meet and clash in

their representation of specific interests, ends by being a

distorted interpretation of reality which contributes to keeping

the political system blocked.

Anti-Radical polemics are also rooted here. Already Togliatti

(and seeking parallels in history, we could refer to the Gramsci

of "The Risorgimento" and the Marx of "The Class struggle in

France") turned to the Party of action of the Resistance and of

the post-war period, and to the Radical Party of the 50s, warning

them of representing the interest of the progressive middle-

class, and stressing the use of not conceiving other forms of

political representation that were not class-oriented. Thus

today too, in the view of the organised democracy and the

historic compromise, each party "must" be the expression of a

class position: a view whose parody finds its match in the

"realized socialism" of some of the popular democracies of the

East, in which parties of peasants, or Catholics, etc. have been

invented, artificially to make political and social systems

correspond. In turning to the new Radicals, challengers and

opponents, are continuing to make that "identification between

Radicalism and the lower middle-class" which has become an

unproven axiom and never demonstrated even on the empirical

sociological level.

History (and historical interpretation) in this case is repeating

itself. Yet again the same thing that happened to Radicalism at

the end of the 19th century has occurred whereby Marxist

historians have often reasoned according to a rather curious

"class" logic: taking for granted that the Radicals are the

political expression of the lower bourgeoisie, on the basis of

their political behaviour (thus on the basis of a purely

"superstructural" analysis they have invented the "objective

interests" of the lower middle-class itself, rediscovering them

triumphantly mirrored - surprise, surprise - in the orientation

of the Radicals.

Analyses of this type are constantly repeated and it is not

difficult to find examples of them. Asor Rosa directly

established the link between the Radicalism of Cavallotti and

that of Pannella: "the Radical illusion of fighting against the

'system' without clearly referring to class positions has a long

history in our country ... Today radicalism expresses the revolt

of a minority sector of the Italian middle-class against the

risks of a state centralisation which would pass through the

compromise of the great political forces of the masses and lead

to the reaffirmation or even the "increase of eminently individual freedom" (Asor Rosa, see part 2). Also Ruggero Orfei,

who was not a Marxist, adopted the same customary categories of

interpretation: "... the crucial point, which prevents radicalism

and socialism from being combined, at least durably, lies in the

fact which is completely historical and cultural but also has a

real basis, of the subsistence of an original historical

divarication. That is, radicalism is born from the left, even

the extreme left, of the middle-class. Socialism is born as the

political expression of the proletariat" (Orfei, see part two).

Having given fought battles in the name of freedom, which the

other forces, including lay forces, had always to reckon with;

the result that these instances deemed "illuministic", have been

verified in the country when it was possible to verify their

consensus directly by means of referendums; efforts to create a

political and institutional opening for the portions of movements

and behaviour translatable into regulated transformations: of

all this it has been said and insisted upon that "middle-class"

positions and initiatives are being dealt with, or "lower middle-

class", because they have been proposed by Radicals, and conversely, are possible for Radicals because they are of a non-

proletarian and "non-structural" nature. The old and worn axiom

is being repeated, that political judgement changes reciprocally

on the basis of doctrinal reconstruction as well as of the

historical-political theme, according to sociological definitions

to justify the one term of the statement with the other.

"Structure and superstructure", "working class", "middle-class", these are the terms to which with greater or lesser extent Marxist critics (and they are not alone) end up using in their definitions and analyses of the new radicalism. It is necessary to ask oneself whether these categories, in the context of the radical phenomenon, in the actual situation are relevant as the means of interpretation; and whether, continuing to invoke them, in reality there is not a risk of arguing with concepts which are all based on a notable degree of abstraction.

There is considerable doubt as to whether it is still possible to

speak - and indeed if it ever was - of the working class in

general as the class which embodies the alternative values of the

process of social change and to refer to it as the compulsory

yard stick for measuring social conflicts and phenomena. The

historic left, despite the fact that its social and electoral

composition has been deeply changed, continues to support such an

interpretation which resembles mythology more every day. And even

a large part of the new left - or at least of the groups who

tried and failed, to build their political fortunes on the wave

of the movements of the last decade - has assumed the working

class mythology as a motivating force, having to realize

subsequently the extent to which it results in fictitious facts.

It is enough to remember here, since it is not the place to carry

out a full-scale analysis, that in the last decades the working

class itself has suffered notable transformations in quality and

in quantity. In fact it has widely diversified on the very

inside, so that the industrial proletariat - to whom the

function of social avant-garde is usually attributed - has

increasingly been reduced to a rather restricted section of the

proletariat; and, at the same time, the overall weight of

industrial workers has also been reduced, and will presumably

tend to decrease in the future in the social and occupational

stratification of modern industrial societies, including those

in Italy.

If these objective modifications render the theory of the class which is the focus of general interest even more of a problem than it was in the past, even less credible is the reproposal of the various "working-class mythologies" which have nourished Marxist lefts, both old and new. A young Italian sociologist who has focused attention on the relation between social movements and political systems, has written on this: "To nourish the generic myth of the centrality of the working class without clarifying the level of the system to which reference is being made, whether to relations of class or political relations,

whether to mature capitalism as a whole or to single individual

cases, becomes henceforth a purely ritualistic exercise. This

ambiguity can cost the left twice as much. On the one hand, of

not using to the full and in an explicit way the potential for

pressure and political change in the organised working class,

keeping the illusory image of a compact class capable of causing

a general upheaval of the system alive for purely ideological

purposes, on the other, of underestimating, ignoring or even

repressing the emerging expression of new class conflicts. It is

obvious that in the specific case of Italy, any possible

transformation passes through a relationship that has yet to be

defined, between the political representation of the working

class as one of the hinge-pins of the political system, and the

new movements", Bologna, Il Mulino, 1978, 9.255).

The appearance of new conflicts and their extension to different places in the social fabric brings new protagonists to the fore. The same social and political dynamics of the last decade to demonstrate that next to the working class fighting spirit - where and when it has been manifested - many other collective subjects struggling for specific release from particular oppressive, repressive or authoritarian situations should be recognised. The economic "structures" and the cultural, political and personal "superstructures" - to use categories which have become jargon - have been overlapped, and in many cases one has even been substituted for the others in their roles as the central social spring for the process of transformation. So much so that even when the class factor, as it is traditionally understood, preserves its importance as the decisive spring for social and political action, it probably derives such a character by virtue of the cultural aspect which deeply penetrates the directly material

aspect. To return to the concrete data which concern the Italian situation in recent years, it has appeared increasingly obvious that if a leftist attitude really wants to avoid being abstract, it should take into account "in the same way" a variety of elements in the situation and in this context should consider together political and economical, cultural and civil factors with their reciprocal connections, without attributing a decisive value to a single factor alone. The difficulties and the crises of the left in Italy today seem also to stem from the illusion, adhered to in these years of global programmes which in political terms, have been the transposition of the ideological process of reduction to unity.

The "Qualunquisti" Radicals

The debate on "qualunquismo", which has been going on now for a whole season, is related from more than one point of view to the debate on "radicalism", associating explicitly or implicitly the two terms both in the conceptual as in the directly political dimension. After recognising that in the country a new anti-party mood is in the wind, and after observing that this is due to a lot of factors variously considered entirely negative or as a tangle of just requirements and regressive urges, more than one indicates in the Radicals the force that would tend to take the bull by the horns seeking a political space that it would not have otherwise.

This is the theory advanced by Asor Rosa who, differently to

other communist exponents and intellectuals, completes an

articulated analysis of the phenomenon. To summarise his theory:

first, that the part of the country where tension is the

greatest, is resentful and diffident in the face of the direction

taken on June 20, 1976; secondly, that such a challenge hit the

parties and also the Italian Communist Party (Pci); third, that

the Pci is hit because it accepted to work within institutions;

fourth, that there is a contradiction between the "presence in

Italy of a strong and organised democracy" (parties) and the

spreading of disillusionment; fifth, that the cause should be

sought in the "closure of the political system in itself" which

leaves many people outside the "power game" . The paradox would

lie precisely in the fact that the "unequalled and positive

strength of the organisations ends in many cases by appearing as

a hostile limit, an instrument for prevarication when facing

sectors which are not organised by society". The Christian

Democrats and Radicals would obtain satisfaction from situations

such as these: "The Radical manoeuvre (in all its components) -

Asor Rosa argues - "is quite clear: the anti-institutional

attempt to force precisely the fastener which zips up the

political forces (the parties) as a structural component of the

institutional system, and the unorganised social masses, the

civil society in turmoil, to assume the representation of the

latter, "against" the forces of power "provided anyway" (Alberto

Asor Rosa, "E mutato qualcosa in senso commune?" in "L'Unita",

June 30, 1978).

The communist intellectual never uses the term "qualunquista" but alludes to it in the concepts he expresses. Gerardo Chiaromonte questions the term, referring it to particularisms: "it seems to me that it is legitimate to use that word (qualunquismo). For various reasons. First and foremost, for the similarity of some of today's arguments "against political parties" with those of the "Uomo Qualunque" ... (Gerardo Chiaromonte, "I nuovi particolarismi", in "Rinascita", July 21 1978). And Fabio Mussi, Vice Director of "Rinascita", is explicit in establishing the link between qualunquismo and radicalism quoting a string of references in support of his theory. From the start he affirms that "the Radicals have attempted (by the referendum on the Party's public funding), an operation as old as the hills; to reach out a hand to the "common sense" opposes the conscience's immediate data to data that are better developed and organised ...", and then, after recalling the basis on which in the South, to base the c

hallenge of the represented and the governed, he writes: "in Southern Italy even democratic middle-class thought both radical and moderate, was and is full of anti-party" feeling against "those in Rome" , who so often have also shown the ambiguity of mass autonomist movements". Finally, as regards court cases after 1975, he maintains: "In the radicalism of the urban strata, protests, expectancies and hopes that had to be measured with the harshness of the country's crisis converged from both the middle- and working-classes." (Fabio Mussi, "La questione del Sud e delle grandi città", in "Rinascita", June 23, 1978). With a converging point of view, Giuliano Amato credits the radicals with the intention of overcoming rebelliousness or condescending to being overcome by it, even if its prudence and its intellectual rigour do not cause them to speak explicitly of qualunquismo: "Besides this matrix, revolution which has carried the Radicals on the crest of the wave also had another, deeply different, but sometimes

only imperceptibly separate from the first. It was the ancient diffidence as regards the state, the spontaneous spirit, the anti-institutional rage which always simmers beneath the ashes of an Italy which has never been entirely consolidated. In the scorching climate of the last few years, the Radicals have found themselves having to act as a fuse, and their original intentions came out completely twisted" (Amato, see second part).

In the face of this widespread opinion of which we have mentioned only a few examples which establish some type of connection between the new "qualunquismo" and new radicalism, we are seeking to analyse on what basis the arguments rest. We are not taking as a reference the phenomenon of the "Uomo Qualunque" which is linked to a definite historic period in which it offered

a specific political response to specific political and social

conditions. Of course, analogies galore can be found or invented,

but they would in any case be artificial or mechanical. Let us

examine instead the category "qualunquismo", and see what is

typical of it in the way it has been used in Italy in these

thirty years of the absence of a political force which are

explicitly remembered by means of Giuglielmo Giannini's small

press which thrived between 1945 and 1947.

Qualunquismo as a general category relies on several elements which can be classified as follows: "First" the counter-position to politics "in toto" inasmuch as it is really the question of a "superstructural "activity" as regards the day to day quality of life and the problems of the common people. In his original version, the challenge in political activity is translated by qualunquismo even in the hypothesis that good administration would be enough to govern collective life. "Secondly", politics are useless and damaging and therefore there is a need to combat its artefacts - politicians. Politicians, regardless of their party, are all the same because they are all concerned with their own affairs, and must therefore be considered as policy makers motivated by nothing other than their own interests or the interests of their own group. In this sense, right and left are equivalent, because between the two parties no substantial difference can be seen. "Third", the challenge in politics and in the possib

ility of change through politics, leads to retirement into privacy, and privileges the aspects of life of the individual and his own family, rather than than that of the group as a whole. This philosophy based on "thinking of one's own

affairs" can encounter periods of aggregation and collective

mobilisation in particular periods against specific targets

identified as the core of politics.

If these are the characteristics of qualunquismo, let us see

which of them are present today, and why, and to what extent

radicalism is included. The fact that several times recently

masses of electors have not followed the orientation of parties

has been defined "qualunquista", an anti-party protest. This has

been said in particular when with the two referendums of June 11,

an enormous portion of the electorate (15% equal to six million

for the "Real" law, and 37% approximately equal to fifteen

million for public financing), made no response to the even

pressing invitations to vote against the abrogations. The latest

verification of this trend was considered the affirmation of the

local and regional lists in the regions of the limits of the

administration of June 1978. Therefore it is necessary to ask

oneself to what encouragement an electorate would respond which

turns, for a specific case or a choice determined by permanent

links - whether it is of an ideological, organisational, or

client-oriented nature - to one's own party, to which one belongs

or for which one usually votes. Is it a regressive and

"qualunquista" phenomenon, or is it a phenomenon indicating

evolution and laicization of a portion of the electorate?

The freezing of the Italian situation is also due to the fact that for over twenty years (from 1953 to 1972) behaviour at

elections has been rigid, shifts in voting have tended to be

marginal, and party reality notably independent from specific

programmes, options and orientations. Today, all these

indications (which had already appeared electorally as well as

socially, with the referendum of 1974) and indicate that the

process of secularisation or laicization of several dozens of

millions of citizens, has made a notable leap ahead. And it is

clear therefore that such an electoral position, based on

individual judgements which move from time to time and which are

encouraged by forms of electoral consultation of a different type

than the usual elections - the referendums - enter into contrast

with the concept of the established party which gradually

constitutes its own social roots through the expansion of

organisational limits.

But next to one component, of a political bent and which is

present without fail, caused by eternally negotiable immobilism

within the political framework and the verbalism which covers

inertia in making efficient provisions and reforms, there is something else. It is the will to reappropriate politics, on the part of the individual-citizen, subtracting a total delegation from the parties, and valid once and for all. It is not a question of lack of trust in the parties in the abstract and in general, but in the concrete manifestation of a direct wish to intervene in specific problems of this specific moment when the entire dialectics of the party have been levelled out. "The origin of the phenomenon" comments Pizzorno, "lies in thirty years of disappointments, of promises not kept, of impotence, of arrogance, of cheating in politics. At the origin of intellectual refusal , especially of the young, is the fall of ideological and programmatic distinctions and the consequent difficulty of socialising the new generations in any kind of political creed."

(Alessandro Pizzorno, "E intanto il mondo cambia da solo", in "L'Espresso", July 30, 1978).

In short, it is a warning to those parties which are susceptible to development and increase, whose future outcome will depend on the politics and behaviour of the parties. Concerning this, it has already been observed previously, that the concept of the masses with regard to which the proposal of "organised democracy has been modelled that sees the party as the only - or almost - instrument for political organisation and mediation, no longer responds to the real nature of contemporary society. If then symptoms of revolt exist, they are directed against the behaviour of parties that pretend to occupy all the social space and to monopolise political intervention, and not against parties as they are generally understood.

Again, what is the meaning of the collective mood of condemnation of the political class, another element typical of the qualunquista revolt? First and foremost it should be remembered that the rumour of politicians being concerned with their own interests has always been circulating, even if in our day it is seen in a different light. Our opinion is that it is not the banal assertion that an entire political class is corrupt - although this criticism is relevant in some ways - but rather the assimilation of all the horizons and towards all directions of a political class perceived as separate from the country. The new events of 1976 to today, which are at the origin of such behaviour, stem from two issues: having theoretically achieved and exalted a block which claims to be homogeneous of parties which describe themselves as "Democratic", identifying democracy with everything that they unanimously and concurrently represent and do, and having arrived without any ideal tension, any diversity or differe

nce between the different, any opposition in terms of values and policy. It is not public opinion to make a single layer of parties like the Christian Democrats (Dc) and the Italian Communist Party (Pci), the Italian Social Democratic Party (Psdi) the Italian Socialist Party (Psi) and the Italian Republican Party (Pri), but the parties themselves that constantly wish to accredit homogeneity to their way of being and acting, putting a line of demarcation between them and the rest of the political expressions, between the "legitimate" and the "illegitimate".

What has happened, even in the left, is the perception of the diversity of one's own field as the field for an alternative

hope, for an alternative future. The leftist spontaneous trend to

alienation from politics and its condemnation, until a short

while ago were controlled by the the sacred and religious charge

with which its own forces were surrounded, that which

represented the hopes of tomorrow and the accumulation of

yesterdays conflicts. Enthusiasm for one's own party was such

that anti-party feeling came to be overturned on the others, on

the opposite field, while a recognisable general dialectics

subsisted. The collapse of the of sacred value and the correlated

ideological tensions were the work of those leaderships, first

socialist and then communists, which concentrated on making the

new value of "being together" accepted with their political

opponents and classes of yesterday, with those on which - and

rightly - were directed the whole charge of condemnation that

derived from daily observation of scandals, embezzlement,

corruption of public life. When Communist spokesmen endeavoured

argue that it was an error to speak indiscriminately of the

"party system" because the Pci is different and cannot be lumped

into this category, they clashed with the politics they had been

following during the last few years that were totally intent on

accrediting the homogeneity of the Pci to other parties and the

need for the "formation of an organisational block of democratic

forces".

However, in the moment when majority and opposition are not

identified, and behind the false ideological opposition, appears

a non-diversification of political programmes as well as an

assimilation of behaviours, it occurs that the critical thrust is

transferred from the opposition to the party in power, to the

opposition to the system of parties which are perceived as

substantially similar. Ernesto Galli della Loggia is right when

he observes : "Qualunquismo" takes note of the characteristics of

the system facing it, and knocks it down: if the system no longer

includes any ideological-political clash, it will be against

the ideologies and against the "politics"; if in the system the

political class which de facto governs renewing itself by co-

option, then it will be against the political class and for its

radical disappearance; if the system is felt to be something

extraneous to the population, qualunquismo will declare its own

extraneousness to the system" (Galli della Loggia, see second

part).

Finally, can a "retreat into privacy" be described as a trend in our times, and a generalised "thinking of one's own affairs" which represents the ulterior alignment of qualunquismo

understood as a regressive phenomenon? We believe that it may be

more appropriate to sustain that in Italy a collective trend is

developing g that finds even outside the parties its points of for

aggregation and expression. The sphere of politics is not

exhausted in the parties and numerous social processes seeking a

collective political identity and the expression of such an

identity cannot be absorbed by party mediation. What has become

decadent following a succession of failures of the historic left,

and then of the new left, in offering openings and prospects, is

if anything the feeling of utility and the possibility of

transformations inspired by the ideological totality, and thus

referring to an organic concept of social totality. A negative

sign is attributed not only to the corporative phenomena but

to other types of particularisms - like those to which

Chiaromonte refers, and that is for example, ecology and the

renaissance of sentiments of regional and local autonomy - which

do not constitute absolutely regressions in the particular but an

awareness of the importance of new conflicts which are not

intended to be subordinate to the so-called general political

reasons.

This is how, in the argument on qualunquismo, and in particular in the references to its relations to radicalism, different things are mixed. It is virtually that it is wanted to use that noted Soviet method of the "almalgamation" in putting together, to condemn dissidents, real criminal phenomena and political dissent. Qualunquismo is defined at the same time as the particularistic corporative system, and the withdrawal of the

total delegation to parties, mistrust in the possibility that

something will happen through politics and at the same time, the

manifestations of the search for social identity, condemnation of

the policy of agreed stalemate conducted by all the parties of

the so-called "constitutional range" without remarkable

differences, and a presumed pseudo-historical condemnation of the

parties. It is necessary to come out of the invective, used

especially in confrontations with the radicals, to start from an

analytical distinction of the various factors that lead to neo-

qualunquismo.

Certainly radicalism was and is one of the motors that have tried to politically activate the moods of the country giving the word to the "people". And it was so because its analyses postulate as central elements of the country's crises, the degenerative and immobilist functions of the institutions, the nationalisation of the parties, the lack of dialectics and confrontation. In this sense, for greater ease, the term coined by someone, as "qualunquismo of the left" referring precisely to a phenomenon to which "of the left" - in so far as it refers to regaining degrees of freedom and democracy connected with the representational system - the Radicals have tried to give a form, force and political opening. Voicing, once again in the tracks of the Italian democratic tradition, to what the Communist Paggi calls "the old and candid Salveminian diffidence to the parties

(Leonardo Paggi, "Un qualunquismo di sinistra"? edited by

Rinascita, August 4, 1978), the Radicals are perhaps able to show

that today it is neither so old nor so candid, because we are in

the presence of a widespread thrust whose outcome could be

positive, or that one could dangerously abandon to oneself. It is

true that if one lets the lack of expectations, and the mistrust

caused by the Great Emptiness of recent years decay for a long

time, the collective moods we have been speaking of could be prey

to a great moderate or reactionary tide. The feeling could spread

that if nothing happens, and if no political force is able to do

anything, then one might as well stay on the banks of

tranquillity existing at the moment, and safeguard an order with

which one is familiar, rather than commit oneself to battles

which prove to have no way out. The promotion of referendums

including the one against the current forms of the public funding

of political parties, has therefore represented also a policy

tending to offer institutional and constitutional means able to

rekindle faith in the democratic mechanisms, that trust reduced

notably by scarce yield (as regards the production of democratic

innovations) of the parties. And the same objective has moved

that "hyper-institutional" practice of the radical

parliamentarians (as Corvisieri calls it; see part two) which has

stretched the function of parliament in order to enliven it with

a true dialectic not drowned in continuous negotiations, as much

as a limited minority can.

"The <> and <> Radicals"

A further criticism with the Radicals are frequently reproached is "irresponsibility"; that, in pursuing with their individual objectives with extremist and integralist fanaticism, they might not pay attention to the objectively destabilizing effects of such behaviour, and even might end by becoming allies, spokesmen and promoters of escapist trends. Giuliano Amato writes for example: "Born to counteract the integralist tendencies of power, on one side they provoked them, on the other they used

parliament, the natural seat of political mediation, to give

weight to their point of view, with a no less accentuated

integralism and inexorably coherent with the anti-institutional

moods which had penetrated their own ground". So much that in

consciously exasperating at every occasion, the clash with the

other political forces - Amato continues - "they often passed

from attacking "the wrong solutions or non-solutions to various

problems of the people, provided by the public powers", to

attacking "power as such" by their action "inextricably confusing

the responsibility of democratic participation and the

irresponsibility of destructive rebellion." (Amato, cf. part

two).

Accusations of the same type as those serious accusations which, in the electoral campaign for the referendums, mobilised the Communists to promote an "evasive and anti-institutional" use of referendums, in an objective, and why not? subjective conspiracy with the Fascists. Natta, the President of the Communist parliamentary group in the Camera, wrote at the beginning of '78 "(...) a confused and risky act of massive contestation of the functions and capacity of Parliament and the parties to resolve problems, even if they are long-standing and acute: an attempt, moreover declared, to make an obstacle, provoking occasions for opposition and clash, to the difficult search for unity among the democratic forces in an extremely critical moment of national life." (Alessandro Natta, "Per evitare i referendum che dividono, le riforme che uniscono",in "Rinascita", January 13, 1978).

Without a doubt, one of the essential characters of the Radicals' political action contributed to this, and above all in recent years: the non- seeking, indeed, the refusal of mediation and compromises, in other words the deliberate will to proceed with intransigence to extremely difficult combats. Beyond the

individual battles in Parliament and outside it, the option

itself of giving priority to the referendum as a means - which

forbids mediation and imposes a clash - is a full witness of it.

It is obviously understood how an attitude of this kind would

excite the most enormous reactions in the opponents, or of

whoever, on the left, would be moving in the opposite direction;

it is also understood that many observers could have considered

it an expression of an "integralism" from time to time, pro

divorce, abortion, and so forth. In effect, the Radical battles

were often conducted by refusing to assimilate instances

different from their own which were advanced by others; from time

to time they could even have baited among several Radicals

processes of relative closure to considerations of complexity of

the political framework; and undoubtedly they have gathered and

mobilised consensus of the sectors of public opinion sensitive

"with unilateral " to the individual themes of conflict and

brought them to consider them essential and to have priority over

any other consideration.

However, this does not mean in fact that it is licit to

characterise the Radicals as those who do not put the problem of

the effects of general order that their actions can produce in

opposition to the other political force which would instead,

appear "responsible" , capable of subordinating, and even

sacrificing, individual battles or affirmations of principle to

the superior needs of an overall democratic plan. True opposition

is something else: and in that between two different general

plans.

Certainly, in the view of the great general objective pursued or suffered by the parties in the so-called constitutional range, that of realising the ample single convergence of all the Italian political forces. The Radicals may appear really irresponsible, unaware, destabilizing But if we want to understand the view point in which "they" move, it is not

possible to ignore that they pursue their "own" general design

which goes in a diametrically opposed direction. The Radicals can

in fact be blamed for many things; one could even find within

their general lines gaps and contradictions; it could be said

that their analysis of Italian society is mistaken or deviant; but

it will not be possible to deny that they have "their own scale

of values" which can be translated into a long range overall

political project which gives rise to a scale of priorities with

which to identify the spheres in which they decide to be

involved.

Here it sufficient to give you a brief outline. But how can we avoid observing that all Radical analysis hinges on the judgement according to which the very lack of open and rigorous attack between political forces is one of the first reasons for the Italian crisis? Repeating, - it would seem the only ones in Italy, over and above so many declamations- one of the motives bearing the great European liberal thinking, the Radicals affirm the positivness in itself of the presence in the political life of identified conflicts, lived and conducted with clarity; and all the more in a situation like the Italian, where permanent mediation and in everything, is the golden rule of the political system, pursued, practised and theorised by all the "official" parties: a situation, therefore in which to provoke such conflicts means already anyway enlivening public life, bringing it a contribution of authentic morality, defending and increasing the credibility of the democratic institutions.

In this regard, if many suggest the compromise as the central value in their own thought and in their own actions, they feel with indignation and fury as an offence to common sense, to the rules of the game, to democracy, to the Great Progressive

Project, the intransigent behaviour of the Radicals, precisely

through this way of operating they give substance with coherence

to their own scale of values. If ever the polemic against these

attitudes of the Radicals seem curious precisely on the part of

Amato, one of the politicians who with greater insistence

denounces the disasters of the "associated democracy", already

when its objection precisely implied deference to the unwritten

rules of the association; a symptom of how far Craxi's new

course must run, of which Amato is the lucid and illustrious

interpreter, to pass from foolish aspirations to concrete

political action.

In actual fact, with their "impromptu discoveries", with their obsessive insistence on "out of date", "secondary and annoying themes, always judged by opponents or recalcitrant allies as those over "whom certainly the country <> does not feel the need to divide itself" -, the Radicals have not respected actualities and priorities, but from time to time have fought to impose other actualities and priorities, following a different scale of values. LIttle by little, this was how it was for divorce, and abortion; and for all the battles which the Radicals forced on a left who just did not want to know about them, that left which then, after having won them with fear or astonishment, considered great, fundamental democratic victories, drawing from them renewed political force and vigour. It is to be noted that the Radicals have achieved victories which have ended by acquiring a far broader significance than that gained by the

individual reforms they won. Sometimes their battles on the

fringe, and way off-course according to other people's standards,

were instead to the point and essential to their project;

sometimes they were of use to it, and conceived taking fully into

account their general implications; and sometimes this project

was suited to the country's reality, and they had the effect of

not only upsetting the political agenda in specific moments but

also of deeply modifying t the image of Italian society and its

requirements on which the scale of priorities assumed by the

associated parties is based. Not without reason it can be

maintained, indeed, that it is due to the conflicts imposed by

the Radicals that all the political forces have ended by

recognising the decisive importance of the subject of civil

rights, with which, henceforth everyone, of course each in his

own way, has to reckon. Thus too, the discovery of people's

detachment from the associated parties, the widespread

questioning of it by everybody at the moment and the requirements

of reform deriving from it that cannot be postponed, are first

and foremost results of the referendum on party funding, which

was "useless, provocative, dangerous, and had no bearing

whatsoever on the popular conscience".

It should also be said that precisely this "otherness" - in the

contents, in the values, in the ways of behaving, - of the

Radicals, with regard to all the other political forces

constitutes the prime factor of the force and efficiency itself

of the Radical Party, which, a political force participating in

the political society is also outside it and opposed to it. It

acts as the opposition aiming to give substance to an alternative

to the current order of values and power and therefore does not

respect the so-called responsible rules of the game (if

"responsibility" is the homage to the dominant political

practices and to the reasons of the political picture become a

fetish.

Hence its unpredictability. This is why the parties integrated in

these rules of the game that make them equal, do not succeed in

controlling their movements; these lead to the incisiveness and

the successes of its opposition. On the other hand, in the

presence of a system of power in which the parties tend to pursue

the interests of the respective organisations rather than make

themselves vehicles ideally and ideologically oriented to

channelling the political demand, which for so many reasons is

unsatisfied with it, feels this diversity, this Radical

"otherness": and it gives faith and credit to the different

party. In many cases, if nothing else, it gives faith and

credence to the party of the opposition which behaves as such,

and which, with the forces that it tried to ensure this

essential physiological function of a democracy; because against

sophisms and the practices of so many who for the last thirty

years have mimed the actions of the opposition, what Ciafoloni

writes is deeply true and felt as such by the majority of public

opinion: "If all those as well as those who do not aspire to

becoming governing forces which have no institutional powers, ask

themselves all the time, whether by any chance telling the truth

does not undermine the government or whether accusing thieves

does not flood the prisons or whether defending behaviour which

is fully legitimate but only partially shared does not spoil the

image, nothing will ever be changed(...) (Ciafaloni, see part

two).

"The Radicals 'between the left and the right'"

The last and not the least of the accusations of the Radicals, is

the one - sometimes roughly, and explicitly formulated, at others

advanced with allusions - of which it is not clear whether these

belong to the left or the right; or whether their policy

oscillates from one pole to the other of the political ranks.

If there is reason for such accusations, it must be found in the

use of obsolete concepts through which their belonging to one

side or the other is classified, and categories suited to their

times and other situations compared to those to which they are

applied. Thus, for example, when in the 60s the Radicals started

the argument against the degeneration of a State body such as the

ENI, there was a great uproar at the scandal, and the entire left

isolated the irresponsible authors of an attack on a "sacred

monster" - because it was public - of the left. So when the

Radicals maintain that the firm opposition to nuclear bases, the

reason for the refusal of "the nuclear State", and not only that

of safeguarding the environment, they refer yet again to another

leftist fetish, development, whatever its nature and its cost for

humanity. Thus when there is a battle over the current form of

party financing against their reduction to a prolongation of the

State, and in the name of forms of support for the political

activity available to any group of citizens without necessarily

reinforcing the power of the apparatus, we will entrench

ourselves behind the public function of the parties, exchanging

this for their nationalisation.

In fact, such approximative evaluations originate too in the way

that the left-right relationship is assessed. The question of the

rest is not for today, even if the radical changes of our time

repropose it forcibly and in many different guises. There have

always been at least two main streams in the left and in the way

of conceiving belonging to one's field. The first was

referred above all to political and institutional issues (and even

before national independence) and the second focused on the

economic programme and thus on the classes. For the forces of the

first stream, the idea of left is linked first and foremost to to

the "expansion of freedom", while for the second it is the degree

of the development of the "productive forces" and well-being that

constitutes the obligatory indication. In schematic terms,

historically, this is the conflict between Marxist culture and

progressist-economicist culture on one side, and the liberal

social-libertarian culture on the other.

In Italy, at least until after the War, it was the hegemony of

the Marxist and sometimes economicist culture which was the first

to alienate the forces claiming freedom as a pre-eminent motive,

and then, to ignore and isolate the Radicals, managing more than

once to contest that they belonged to the left. Several new facts

have nevertheless caused the monopolistic concept of the left to

enter a crisis, and therefore are impugning also those criteria

on the basis of which the prevalent political evaluations are

expressed: the mass movements that, from real conflicts have

reintroduced on the left values which it had banished (anti-

authoritarianism, liberation rather than emancipation,

libertarianism, autonomy and identity); and the crisis of the

conceptual apparatus used by the left in this century inadequate

to understand daily reality. Only two examples - the attitude to

parties and to the role of the State - illustrate this clearly.

The polemic against the parties of the masses, which came

precisely from the moderate and liberal right, because it saw its

own forms of political organisation - the party of the

establishment - threatened (then reformed in Italy always seen in

a moderate light by Giuseppe Maranini), acquired today a sign of

the left to the extent in which the party power has become a

reality de facto with the expansion of the parties and the

involvement with the State which we have already pointed out.

So to define that collective attitude which reacts against the

"dictatorship of parties" in the name not already of the defence

of restricted and individual interests but of the reappropriation

of a part of the political delegation by its management in more

direct forms is an operation which transforms from an conceptual

apparatus which yesterday was appropriated, judgements which

today are based in a context which has been completely

overturned. To promote referendums to let the people speak

outside party mediation and combat direct public financing which

stiffens the dialectic between parties and in the parties then

acquired, in Italy in the 70s, the meaning of expansion of the

concrete democratic freedom, and thus of a policy of the left.

But the central knot against which is measured the evaluation of

whether a policy is right or left, is the role of the State. A

large part of the theoretic heritage of the left in this century

has considered the expansion of the State and its functions as a

positive fact. Whether, obviously, the Marxist-Leninist culture or

reformative social-democratic culture, besides the same democratic

progressive trends that from the 30s have made a Keynesian

interventionism in economics, have seen in the development of the

public sector, linked somehow to the State, the way to reach

greater degrees of what some have called democracy and social

justice, and other socialism. The poly-interventionist State has

thus become a reality not only of the so-called realized

socialism (with the well-known aspects of a totalitarian

Leviathan) but also of the states of well-being achieved by

social democracies, of central and north Europe, besides Italy

itself in which bureaucratic degeneration which has assumed the

gigantic stature of a clientelistic welfare State.

From so many aspects, therefore, that of yesterday was, or was

deemed to be, of the left, a positive function of the State -

today it symbolises an ulterior structure which limits freedom

and through the involvement between political and economic power,

the same concrete possibilities to carry on a correct democratic

game. Today, to want a further expansion of the State and its

functions - economic, social, cultural, civil - means to embrace

a technocratic and authoritarian view, independently from whether

management is in the hands of parties of the left or the right.

If, for example, in the 50s, in Italy, with the nationalisations

the economic power could be efficiently hit for the expansion of

democracy, today to defend the enormous public and state-owned

economic machinery, certainly means impeding democratic and

reforms for freedom.

The left crisis in Italy, as in the rest of Europe, is therefore

not only the result of defeats suffered in France and in Italy,

and in Germany itself if realized politics and ideal heritage are

compared, but also crises of terms of reference, that is of

doctrine and theory. If the Italian socialists of the Italian

Socialist Party (Psi) rediscover historic heritages which have

been abandoned, at least by their ruling classes, and if the

communists of the Pci question themselves thoroughly, even if

they cannot do so openly and as lay people, on their own reliable

data, it means that they are radically changed by all the same

terms which define their belonging to right and left; and that

when raw polemics occur such as that against the Radicals, an

effort is made to blame others for problems which are labouring

with the same forces themselves.

It is significant and important that even a Communist like Asor

Rosa should be aware of this, with what he recently affirmed on

the subject of the meaning of the term "left" in Europe, even if

it does not represent the whole of the Pci, but probably it is

only the positive warning symptom of a work which shakes Italian

Communists too, at least in the more sensitive sectors. "How is

it possible not to admit honestly" declares the authoritative

intellectual, although among the ritualistic embroidery, that we

are facing a vertical crisis of the kind that Claudio Napoleoni

calls the maximum systems and the need for an overall

requalification of all the traditions of the left before the

problem of "power" in Europe (...) I shall not be the one to deny

the importance that the instruments of the respective traditions

(socialist and communist) can still provide for us: but I shall

start asking myself if in the long term we shall not need a

deeper cultural revolution to express the needs that the "third

solution" suggested by Berlinguer puts necessarily into play".

(Alberto Asor Rosa, "Tra Berlinguer e Craxi..." in "La

Repubblica", August 24, 1978).

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

* Qualunquisti, qualunquismo: A much-used term in Italian

political parlance referring to an attitude of mistrust towards

parties and the party system in general.