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

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)

"Radical-Fascism"

The polemics between the Radicals and the other parties of the left on some occasions take on the tones and form of a real frontal clash. Although this element may play an important role, it is not only the result of established political groups closing ranks against an emerging force which is the logical consequence of the competitive nature of a politically democratic regime. In particular, furthermore, the accusation of "Radical-Fascism" which in the comments of the Communist press have marked the referendum campaign of June 11, have a deeper motivation than the growing pretension of "collusion" between the PR and the MSI [neo-Fascist party, ed.] (obstructionism in Parliament on the Reale law) (1): an openly exploiting polemic as is evident, that consciously ignores the elementary fact that the extreme wings of the opposition to the majority in Parliament cannot help but express itself in votes of this kind without there necessarily being a convergence in their political motivations.

The accusation is rather the result of an interpretation that constantly recurs whenever Marxist-inspired political culture analyses and tries to judge movements like the Radicals. There are at least three elements that converge to create the judgement of "Radical-Fascism": the definition of the Radicals as a lower-middle class movement; diffidence towards political intellectuals lacking in "organic" bonds (in the Gramscian sense) with the popular masses; and, finally, the complete misunderstanding of the nature of Radical anti-Fascism.

As we have already mentioned the Marxists' judgement of Radicalism as a "lower-middle class movement". Furthermore it is known that in the Marxist conceptual world the lower-middle class is a social class that in certain historic situations can ally itself with and accept the hegemony of the working class within the framework of a Socialist project to transform society.

More often, however, this class moves in an opposite political direction and is the social element most disposed to right-wing authoritarian ventures.

And so if one defines the Radicals as a political expression of this class or a part of it, the thing is done, the conclusion unexceptionable: when Radicalism grows in society it is because the lower-middle class, rather than allying itself with the working class and joining its parties, takes the direction of reactionary and anti-democratic solutions.

The second element that explains this judgement is the mistrust of those in politics who do not have and refuse to create "socially established" parties - that is to say, organisations stable ties to particular sectors of civil society. It is the deep-rooted Marxist mistrust of intellectuals and those in politics outside of "organisms", who act independently in political battles without claiming to "represent" permanently the interests of this or that segment of the social structure.

Asor Rosa's arguments are illuminating in this respect, expressing in a cultivated way, compared to the crude invective of "L'Unità" (2) on "Radical-Fascism", the instinctive Communist diffidence to everything which, like the Radicals, contradicts through its very existence the concept of politics as a "representation of class interests", and relegating to the sphere of political pathology those phenomena which cannot be entirely interpreted in these terms of reference.

Asor Rosa writes: "But it is typical of Radicalism to balance on the edge between "the left and the right": at bottom, it is not just an idle quip when Pannella says he also wants to find debating partners beyond the traditional border-line of anti-Fascism and Fascism. The battle against the system, as a rigid party system that leads the masses and that can enter into collusion for Mafia-style power to the detriment of individuals and minorities, inevitably has two faces (...). I would say that Radicalism does not have in itself and cannot have its own definitive and stable place in politics. It finds it along the way in its relations with other political forces and in the attitude these forces take to its spirit and the issues it espouses. Otherwise Radicalism is an erratic mass that moves from field to field following the weighty impulses that originate within itself and in its unpredictable march tramples down fences of all kinds". (Asor Rosa, see Part Two.)

The fragility of these theses seems evident. It is certainly true that the Radical movement has not and does not want to have any stable, organised, and thus "organic" ties with precise segments of civil society, because this is foreign to its culture and its political designs. But this does not make of it an "erratic mass" by any means, without a stable situation (and thus available, among other things, for reactionary adventures). In fact, this thesis loses meaning outside of a simplistic vision of politics as a "superstructure", as an epiphenomenon of the class struggle, now in crisis. One cannot evaluate on the scale of the "social interests" represented whether or not politics is this or largely finds its primary explanation within itself, in its independent manifestations and its laws, the placing of a political force to the right or to the left, in defense of freedoms, or in the contrary direction of authoritarian solutions. Nor can faith be put in the well-known examples of the Catholic movement

in Italy and the conservative parties in Europe under whose banners significant sectors of the working class can be found on the organisational or electoral level. Furthermore, as experience teaches us, the opposite line of reasoning is also valid: to organise the working class does not necessarily mean "to be on the left" - that is to say, it does not mean one is not the carrier of authoritarian germs or projects.

The scale of evaluation must always refer to the character of the project and the political culture of the party or movement in question; and it must evaluate the degree of consistency between the battles they have from time to time conducted and that project and culture. Only a lack of knowledge and understanding of the essential traits of the Radicals' political culture can enable one to say that they are not a movement with a stable position on the left.

The other element that plays a role of a certain importance in the accusation of Radical-Fascism, which is the difference between the anti-Fascism of the Radicals and the generic kind of the left, is directly connected to political motivations and components - the theme of anti-Fascism as it was oriented in recent years in Italy - rather than being a reflection of cultural categories and of a style of thought in a broad Marxist sense.

It is a fact that beginning in the mid Sixties "anti-Fascist unity" was the road by which experiments were made by the Communists to try to bring down the barriers that separated the PCI [Communist Party, ed.] from other parties. An "enemy" was called up which by that time was without any real political weight - the Fascism of the MSI [Italian Social Movement, ed.] - as a rallying point for a common front which would include the DC [Christian Democratic Party, ed.]: this was the origin, for example, of the "anti-Fascist committees" which in reality were early forms of the future "broad understandings".

In this way the MSI, an extremist anti-democratic group, which inevitably exists in any democratic system without frightening and, most of all, blocking the dialectic and the conflict between progressives and conservatives, became the dangerous adversary capable of bringing down the system unless blocked by "democratic solidarity". The anti-Fascism of the traditional left, from being a just call to battle against traditional Fascism, thus became nothing other than a political tool for a rapprochement with the DC in the name of the battle against the "common enemy".

Radical anti-Fascism was and is at the antipodes of this kind of thing: more than once the Radicals, amidst general incomprehension, have enunciated the terms of their alternative conception. It was not only a question of a coherent affirmation of the principles of Radical democracy, according to which in a genuine democracy all opinions, including anti-democratic ones, if expressed in a legal way must have the right to free expression (see their opposition to recurring proposals for disbanding the MSI). But the basic element in Radical anti-Fascism lay above all in an articulated political judgement on the nature of the Christian Democratic regime, as well as, more generally, on the news forms - existing or potential - of authoritarianism in the new industrial society.

Following on this is the judgement concerning the marked features of continuation between the Fascist state and the one inherited and reshaped by the DC which leads to two connected consequences: the idea according to which anti-Fascism today must of necessity consist in the struggle for the total application of the Constitution and abolishing all the many surviving juridical and structural relics of the past regime; and the idea according to which this kind of anti-Fascism must frontally oppose the Christian Democratic Party which is the true guarantor of the conservation of those illiberal and authoritarian traits. That is why we are far from the anti-Fascism of the traditional left which has invented for itself a convenient fetish, the new Fascist peril, to justify an alliance with DC which - according to the Radicals - must be fought and replaced in the government in order to eliminate the illiberal and authoritarian features of the state and its apparatus which would thus also neutralise those cent

res that have nourished the various strategies of tension.

More generally there is a vision of industrial society that denies the possibility that authoritarianism can take on the guise of traditional Fascism or of analogous regimes. The new forms of authoritarianism which Italian democracy can stumble over - the Radicals maintain - appear bound, if at all, to much more general projects, to the risks of the militarisation of the Western economies, and finally to phenomena with respect to which the traditional type of FAscist movements alla Almirante (3) turn out to be entirely marginal.

"Radicals and Socialists in the History of Italy"

We have seen that the thesis of "Radical-Fascism" is often based - when it overcomes the limits of the most contingent polemics - on a historical-interpretative scheme that has had a certain success. It is based on the idea that throughout Italian history, or at least ever since the beginning of the century, the Radicals have been bourgeois intellectuals isolated from the masses and thus oscillating between right and left and tendentially adventuristic when freed from the hegemony of the working class party. But such a scheme truly explains very little about the Radical phenomenon in the history of Italy. And in particular it leaves entirely unresolved the very problem in view of which, one might say, it was worked out: that is to say, the historically determined relationship between Radical democracy and the Socialist movement.

In reality this question is entirely the same as that other one which is central for an evaluation of the place due to Radicalism in Italian history: that of the disproportion in the persistence, the prominence and the influence of RAdical political-cultural line in our country, and that of its meagre ability, at least since the beginning of World War I, to give rise to a correspondingly efficient and substantial organised political movement. And one need only think, to limit oneself to the post-Fascist era, to the fate of Partito d'Azione [Action Party, ed.], the Movimento di Unità Popolare [Popular Unity Movement, ed.], the Radical Party of "Il Mondo" (4) - while the present Radical Party represents the first attempt, however slight it may still be, that by a long-term effort has been able to escape from this recurring "destiny".

If we ask the reasons for this phenomenon, one thing immediately leaps to sight: That to a large degree the repeated failures depended on the fact that the sectors of public opinion to whom Radical groups appealed, and who could have been expected to give their support, remained tied to other parties through habit and tradition - primarily the Communists and Socialists -

without for that reason ceasing to demonstrate a sensibility and tendency of the Radical type. The point is that the "Radical line", which had never disappeared from Italian society, had for decades found its politico-organisational point of reference in the parties that appealed to the working class and the Marxist socialist tradition. And this is a phenomenon whose roots spread far in a historical situation that makes the development of Radicalism and Socialism in Italy intertwine so intimately as to be substantially inseparable, almost like aspects and developments of a single historical-social reality.

If one wanted to go to the origins of this symbiosis, ,one would have to return to the first decades preceding the unification of Italy when ion the extreme left of the Italian political situation a composite galaxy of advanced democratic groups had been created within which there circulated, mixing and combining in the most varied ways, the themes of republican revolutionary intransigence, of evolutionary and reformatory RAdicalism and of the most diverse schools of Socialism. However the prevailing element was unquestionably the republican-Radical one, under whose banner the politico-union movement of the Italian proletariat was taking its first steps.

When the Socialist Party was founded in 1892 it meant a break, a distinct stepping away of the Socialists from this composite world, from the variously Socialist forms of Radicalism. But if that separation indubitably was a decisive and irrevocable turning point, in many ways the rupture would reveal itself to be less deep than at first it might appear.

It is true that in the Socialist Party there had been a confluence of groups such as workers' movements that had carried decisive weight and for whom their counterposition to bourgeois Radicalism was one of the basic raisons d'etre. But alongside of them and, in fact, one might well say qualitatively and quantitatively higher, there were men, associations and factions of Radical republican extraction and formation. That was true of a good part of the leaders of the new party (and perhaps of its grass roots as well), as can easily be verified by an analysing the traits of its local leadership or by thinking of the biographies of many of the major figures in the PSI between the end of the century and the beginning of the age of Giolitti (5) who had been formed politically in Radical democratic circles: Turati, Bissolati, Treves (6) and many others of the future reformers, or Ferri and Arturo Labriola on the intransigent-revolutionary side...

The ferocious polemics of Turati and of all the PSI in its first years against the "cowardly bourgeois democracy" originated in - and often fully conscious of exploiting - the need to give the new party breath, independence, pride and self- awareness, cancelling the "original sin" of Radicalism by affirming its precisely contrary function to that of Radicalism.But this certainly was not enough to eliminate the fact that the most authoritative of PSI leaders carried with them a mentality, attitudes, and reflexes solidly based on a typical Radical political culture. This then it was later to verify easily on the evidence of their political performance within the PSI and - for those who later left it - outside the PSI.

Together with this aspect there is another which one must take into account. The Socialist Party soon discovered that it was practically impossible to maintain that separation between Socialist politics and the more generically democratic class and politics under whose aegis it had been constituted.

One firm point generally accepted by the Socialists, as is well known, was the idea that it was the historical task and in the interests of the bourgeoisie - and principally of its more advanced sectors - to realise on the one hand the industrialisation, or the modernisation of society by substituting an industrial civilisation for the military or feudal one; and on the other hand the full implementation of political democracy and the constitutional state was its necessary expression on the political level.

According to this scheme, then, the burden of the fight in this direction, to sweep away and overcome the "feudal residues" of society and the institutions - economic backwardness, militarism, clericalism, the state's strangle-hold of illiberalism and authoritarianism - was to be accomplished by Radical democracy, the party of the modern and progressive bourgeoisie. Meanwhile the task of the proletarian party, the Socialist one, was something quite different: it was to plan and set off the proletarian struggle against the bourgeoisie in order - once the bourgeoisie's capitalist revolution had borne its economic and political fruits - to expropriate the bourgeoisie itself and establish socialism.

However, with the fin de siecle reactions and the dangers of authoritarian and conservative involution on the part of the Crispi, Rudini and Pelloux governments, the PSI, as one knows, took up the fight "for liberties" as its principle task. Thus it took on precisely the role which, according to the ideal plan, was intended for the Radicals. And how many times, in fact, did Turati - tormented by the problem of realising a division of tasks among the Socialists and bourgeois democrats - explicitly lament that the circumstances and the Italian Radicals' lack of political nerve obliged the Socialists themselves to become the Radical party in Italy! Nor did this state of things change when the fin de siecle tensions stopped. So even during the age of Giolitti the activities of the Socialist Party took a "Radical" direction, although in a different way and also perhaps outside the limits of the convergent policies with the other "popular parties" - the Radicals and the Republicans. This was true for many asp

ects of PSI activities, though not, of course, for all of them, and if true for its reformist wing can also be claimed, if in a different sense, for the leftist wings of Ferri and Labriola.

That this happened, even apart from the intentions of the individual protagonists, was something quite natural. With industrialisation only just getting underway, with a still relatively slight working class, with a society still carrying the burden of so much ancient backwardness; with an asphyxial and transformist liberalism, with an elitist state in many ways still far from being fully democratic, with a state-society relationship so amply founded on patronage, parasitism and protectionism, with a still weighty dynastic-militaristic element to carry, with such a massive influence of the church on society; with all of this the attention and energies of the left could not help but amply concern themselves with the "Radicals'"

issues of the democratisation of the state and the laicization of society, even if perhaps still seen in terms of class struggle.

This is not meant, obviously, to underestimate the revolutionary nature of the industrial and agricultural proletariat's appearance on the political scene by way of the Socialist Party with all of its specific traits that cannot be reduced to the categories of traditional Radicalism. Nor does it mean being blind to the differences between Turati and Cavallotti. It means recognising that the Italian reality stimulated and required in some way the emergence a Radical type of line into a position of prominence; and that the PSI leaders should fully take on the task of meeting this need conjoining it with the various factors typical of a Socialist class policy. In so doing they would be responding to a deep vocation, since they were culturally and politically homogeneous with the Radical and Republican leaders, having emerged from the same progressive intellectual class.

Even more, one could perhaps say that the most vital "Radical" energies emerging in Italian society from the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th Century were contained and manifested, more than in the Radical groups proper,

in the new and vigorous forces of socialism, capable of attracting them because charged at the time with humanitarian and international fascination, hopes, and breath than were the old democracies. So much so as to make the PSI at the time the happiest expression not only of Italian Socialism but of Italian Radicalism too.

In this way one can better understand the reasons why as long as Cavallotti was alive the Radical Party undoubtedly had substantial hegemony over the entire far left, and that after his death in 1898 this leading role passed to the PSI, particularly with regard to the great battles for freedom and political and civil reforms. For which reason it also should be mentioned that the role played by the Radical Party under the Sacchis and the Marcoras up until 1914 was not at all as irrelevant as one might imagine from the very little attention given to it by historians.

Certainly the situation changed later. The importance of the RAdicals' concerns gradually attenuated within the PSI. Above all it was the First World War which, trampling on the values of liberal society and breaking and crushing the humanitarian and international ideals of Socialism, also trampled down Italian Radicalism in all of its components. In reality several of them were upset and humiliated by a subaltern participation in an interventionist-bellicose block, others by the impotence of their opposition. And it is not without significance that after the war the old illustrious Radical Party disappeared and various decades had to pass before another force took up the name again.

It is of no interest here to follow these developments however, nor the affairs of the forces that, in the crises following the war and later in the anti-Fascist struggle, continued to fight political battles of a Radical type, since in this place it is not our purpose to trace the history of Italian Radicalism. Here we only want to shed light on how there arose in Italy that intertwining of Radicalism and Socialism which makes the history of the one inseparable from the other.

This, in effect, is the point: it makes no sense to speak of the "Radical line" in Italian history aside from that part of it which expressed itself politically in the workers' and the Socialist movement. Could one truly, for example, ever judge the Radicalism of a Salvemini without noticing that he was never more completely and organically "Radical" than when he was an authoritative militant of the PSI? Or could one discuss the influence of Radical-type orientations in Italian history if one neglected the thought and work of Filippo Turati? And not to mention the PSI of these last thirty years which has received and often called to positions of leadership men coming little by little from the Action Party, the popular unity movement and the Radical Party during the Fifties.

From this standpoint really very little remains of the attempt to depict Radicalism as being structurally and historically in contrast with the workers' and Socialist movement, oscillating between left and right and, in certain circumstances even prepared to participate in reactionary ventures - in short, of the thesis that furnishes the "theoretical weapons" for polemics against the "Radical-Fascism"

of today's PR. At most what remains to support this are the cases of men who have passed from progressive Radicalism to reactionary positions. These are cases which certainly merit being pondered on, but they are neither more numerous or significant than those of the various Mussolinis, Bombaccis and Doriots, all Socialists and Communists who were certainly

outside the Radical line and became protagonists of Fascist reaction.

"The New Issues of Old Battles"

In the light of recent analyses one also better understands some of the traits of the present Radical Party which place it in a context of strict continuity - even in its diversity and novelty - with the centuries-old history of Italian Radicalism. And, almost paradoxically, precisely among those that distinguish it from its immediate predecessor, the Radical Party of Pannunzio, Cattani and Piccardi.

In fact,the "new" Radical Party began its work in the early Sixties with the refusal to accept a separation between Radicalism and Socialism. Its Socialist option, thought out and explicit, also signified that it had become aware that the terrain and the energies for rigorously libertarian and Radical battles in Italy lie within and not outside or alongside of the Socialist camp and their heritage of ideals and traditions. It was a matter of self-discovery, of one's own reasons and place in the battle analogous to many previous such discoveries in the history of Radicalism: Turati and others who had founded the Socialist party with him; Gobetti, who had seen the Communist and Socialist proletariat as the protagonists of the hoped-for liberal revolution; Rosselli, Giustizia e libertà, the liberal-Socialists and a large part of the Action Party that had tried to promote the new Radicalism, not outside the limits of Socialism, but through a refounding of Socialism (and much later, once that hope had vanish

ed, they continued their fight within the PSI and sometimes within the PCI).

Such a central issue were these analyses and these choices for the "new" Radicals that they drew many of the most original and specific aspects of their new Radical political orientation precisely from a rethinking and reproposing of the traditional and historical Socialist values - to a great extent in conflict with those forms of the Socialist tradition that presumed to act like its only legitimate priests.

In choosing Socialism, in fact, the PR discovered the completely current validity of several issues which had been essential for Italian Socialism in its golden age and which then, little by little, were set aside and even consigned to oblivion as being uncongenial to Leninism-Stalinism as well as to Social Democracy: anti-militarism and anti-nationalism, the primacy of international, democratic and class solidarity over appeals to national unity, anti-clericalism, anti-Jacobin independence and federalism. In an Italy dominated by a clerical and corporatist road to capitalism, with a Jacobin, national-popular left, in a world always more occupied with militarism, with militarist regimes spreading throughout the Third World and elsewhere, with the massive burden of the military-industrial complex in the West, with the authoritarian and nationalist "militarisation" of the Socialism in Communist countries - in the face of all these the Radicals took up the "not old but ancient" reasonings and battles of So

cialism which were all the more vital. They proposed them to the entire left - which thought the problems had been overcome simply because they had closed their eyes to them - and

asked that they be made the foundation of renewal and unity among all the democratic and Socialist forces for an alternative.

Precisely this particular approach of a Radical group to Socialism, furthermore, confirmed - once again - how mixed together are Radicalism and Socialism in Italian history. The issues "rediscovered" by the Radicals were indubitably essential for pre-Fascist Socialism - to the degree that if they had had, like so many others, the desire to call for a return to the sacred texts, they could even have attacked the largest leftist groups for their unorthodox positions. And, undoubtedly, it was a re-evaluation of the validity - of the greater validity - of aspects of pre-Leninist Socialism which anticipated by fifteen years many authoritative reconsiderations and self-criticisms. But at the same time it was - and to a large degree unconsciously, one should state - the reprise of those very issues, and primarily those, which at the time original Socialism had received in large part from the tradition and the influence of democratic and Radical liberalism: which was precisely the case of anti-militarism, anti

-clericalism and anti-Jacobinism. (Not for nothing when, in the Italy of Umberto I and Giolitti, the PSI was considering an alliance with Radical forces, it bet on just these issues for finding a meeting ground).

In this perspective it was not in the least a contradiction, as some did and do complain, when the Radicals decided to form a party of their own instead of joining one of the existing Socialist or Communist ones. Because it was not their intent, in fact, - as it might have been of the preceding PR - to reconstitute a great traditional Radical force alongside the Socialist movement. The Radicals wanted to form, on the contrary, a centre of political initiative capable of launching, from within the body of the left in toto, battles, issues and methods of fighting - whether old, new or revamped did not matter - which they judged to be indispensable for a victorious democratic and Socialist struggle. Instead, the PCI, PSI, PSIUP [Proletarian Unity Party, ed.], PSDI [Social Democrats, ed.] and PRI [Republican Party, ed.] refused feeling it foreign to their politico-cultural orientations, their strategies, habits, alliances and consolidated interests.

To this end one could not avoid the need of operating through an autonomous political group, free of subordination and inferiority complexes, and ready for the hardest battles - which began immediately - with the lines they considered negative and losing. but a group that was ready, as the PR always said if was, to dissolve itself in a truly renewed left or to contribute to the reconstruction of a great democratic, Socialist and Radical force capable of being the protagonist and the guiding spirit of the alternative.

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

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

1) Reale law - A public order provision opposed by the PR because of its limitations on personal liberty in the name of fighting terrorism.

2) L'Unità - The official Italian Communist Party newspaper.

3) Giorgio Almirante - Secretary of the MSI.

4) Il Mondo - A well-known weekly review which also had PR connections giving space to the party's activities and news.

5) Giolitti - Giovanni Giolitti (1842-1928), a Liberal Party leader.

6) Turati, Bissolati, Treves - Filippo Turati (1857-1932) a founder of the Socialist Party; Leonida Bissolati (1857-1920), a founder of the Socialist Party; Claudio Treves (1869-1933) A Socialist leader who went into French exile under Fascism.