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)

Observations On The Radical-Socialist Objection

By Ruggero Orfei

("Mensile", no.10, February 1978)

There are words which in a short time can gain or lose their meanings, considered obvious up to a certain date. This is the case of the "historic compromise" (1) which ceased to be "compromising" because it was called historical. It was the case of the "parallel convergences" (2) which, even if justifiable in some non-Euclidean geometry, led to giving a different and current meaning to the word parallels which by definition never converge because it they did they would meet.

Under Fascism, especially in the schools, certain teachers who were unable to maintain discipline reached the point of calling the reprobates "bolsheviks", thus immediately evoking impressions of massacres and terrorism. Other times, other verbal hegemonies.

These observations do not reveal anything which is not already well known through daily experience and general culture. Nevertheless they need to be recalled, because words constitute formulas and contents that end by replacing true knowledge. Concepts, in short, degenerate into banal common sense by way of opportune operations generally effected by the mass media, which today are no longer loud-speakers, fashionable preachers or newspapers, but much more penetrating electronic devices.

For this reason one feels the need to put into evidence certain factors that qualify the concept of "Radical" which becomes even more complex whenever it is extended to "Radical-Socialist".

The question would not be relevant if the name pertained only to a party which, however small, still has a right to citizenship in the political world. But in reality the names in question pertain to an attitude, a culture, a society. The various versions of the name in use today include those accredited by Baget-Bozzo, by Rodano, and by the self-declared Radicals themselves.

A fundamental paradox emerges: whereas on various sides one indicates by now the hegemony of Radicalism (without trying to understand which one), the term "Radical" or "Radical-Socialist" is used by some as a charge or even a defamatory accusation. There is no lack of very delightful cases where figures and groups avidly throw this accusation into each others' faces reciprocally. Thus Baget-Bozzo accuses the Christian Democrats [DC] of having instituted an original form of Radical society. Father Sorge stands up against the deformations of Radical culture, then Franco Rodano arrives who finds an "objective" superimposition of the Jesuit father's position with that of the Radical-Socialists.

Such extensive use of a key word poses several questions,l because it seems that one is confronting a manifestation of that pseudo-science called politics which is strongly based not so much on what is obvious, but on what is believed to be obvious and made to seem obvious. Questions arise in the moment in which the word substitutes for the argument and thus all need of explanations disappears - after which it would not be difficult for those to make a most vile reprisal who do not accept this procedure, but who accept that part of the criticism of Radical society according to which everything in it loses its meaning - or gains excessive meaning as a result of publicity and consumerism. There is a school of advertising which is based on the principle that "the word is sufficient", and a laxative pill explicitly insists on this axiom for the propagation of its precious product - a kind of Pavlovian reflex seen from the other side.

Even though no one seems to have the intention of referring to the Radicals' past in order to clarify their ideas (perhaps that would be too easy), one cannot see how one can introduce so subtle a concept without considering the historical facts that have in some way constituted it.

In a certain sense this should be self-understood, because to make reference to a Sacchi or a Credaro, and even perhaps a Cavallotti, may create as much unease as it would in France to refer to a Combes, a Ferry and others. Proceeding in this direction it would even become inevitable to establish some relationship to Bismarck and his "Kulturkampf". It is to be hoped, however, that it is not equally uncomfortable to refer to those French Radicals and Socialists who in the last decade of the last century had to fight hard for Dreyfus on whose head the weight and force of reactionaries of every stripe was unloaded.

Thus, in Italy, it ought not to be considered sinful to recall not only the declared Radicals, but also those who can be considered such on the basis of the inclusiveness of the term in current parlance, and who yet had deserved some recognition from their country as one can read on the monuments and plaques that exist so widely in every corner of the country in celebration of their participation in the national Risorgimento.

To come at once to one of the crucial points of the question that has been so frivolously raised, one might observe that by opening this "front" against Radicalism, a certain Communist and Catholic culture does not notice the risk - as the saying goes - of throwing the baby out with the bath water. At least one ought to recognise some merit in a tendency which on the political level has tried to react, without going outside the theoretical boundaries, to a suffocating conception of the Hegelian idea of the state. Radicalism did indeed have an anti-clerical component which was a kind of social "raison d'etre", but one cannot assume this as an exclusive trait. And on the other hand one cannot even point to an extreme anti-Hegelianism since there was none in an explicit and conscious manner. Antonio Labriola furthermore was a Radical and posed for the first time perhaps the real question of the difference between bourgeois democracy and proletarian revolution. Is it really possible, even for our not very b

rilliant political history up to 1914, to neglect the Radical role in the formulation of social legislation alone? Probably an operation of this type is impossible, and if one must distinguish among the present declarations of the Radicals the problem of distinguishing is no longer pertinent, at least not in these reductive conditions, when one begins to speak of Radicalism as a clear and distinct idea. In reality one is facing such an indistinct idea that it can be invoked to cover various attitudes and experiences, as we said at the beginning.

Thus, if it is rather clear that one cannot erase Radicalism from the history of our country without also wiping out an expression of its society, the reference to a political category, assumed as a cultural and even ethical category is not equally certain.

In practice, if Rodano can tell Father Sorge that he is like the Radical-Socialists, and if Baget-Bozzo can say that the DC established Radical society (precisely the one that is anti-Christian at its roots), we can ask ourselves at least two questions. The first concerns the conceptual boundaries; the other regards the lack of distinctions and of the ensuing inadvisability of certain political movements with respect to certain results.

The thing appears still more serious if one keeps in mind the existing balance of political power, because in any case it is clear that Radical society has no voice in the institutions and parties. This is as much as to say that if Radical society has leadership in terms of widespread opinions among the public, it does not transmit its demands onto a state and political level unless indirectly. That is to say by sending Radical demands through non-Radical parties, or else by giving a broad mandate to referendum-type initiatives which are not to be understood less in their specific quantitative dimensions and rather more as the tips of great icebergs. Thus if the DC and the PCI are deliberately opposed to Radical society, they should de facto have to submit daily to a will that goes in that direction, because no consensus could be reached without such submission.

The interpretations of Rodano and Baget-Bozzo seem to coincide up to a certain point, but this must then necessarily come to a stop. The former, in fact, cannot accept the fact that all society is led by Radicalism to the point of speaking of "Radical society". The latter, in turn, maintains that Radical society exists and has grown to the point of creating a crisis for the DC as well as the PCI. On the contrary, just because of the fact that Radical society has extended to the PCI too, difficulties arise for the PSI which cannot find an identity of its own. Once again for Baget-Bozzo the situation is of a kind that the Catholic church itself must become resigned to no longer having a secular arm in the form of a state which it guarantees as well as being instituted by way of a "Christian" political force. The effects of this situation have already gone so far that today being one of the faithful has become an aspect of deformation rather than conformation.

Even if we haven't entirely reached this point, one must admit that we are very close and this should not displease the believers. And with regard to the our discourse here, the deformity of the Christian ought to be analysed on its own, because in order to maintain itself historically and on a daily basis, it cannot help but take on some of the characteristics of Radical society, which is to say the absolute values of the sphere of individuality which in certain cases is the only way to trigger things off when one lives physically outside the ambit of a religious community.

But the thing that seems to trouble both Rodano and Baget-Bozzo is the relationship with the PCI, and here their positions diverge perhaps irremediably, because if the latter were right it would no longer be possible to propose the historic compromise. Rodano is very firm on this point and must continue to warn the DC laymen to defend it against regressions to "fundamentalism", while these laymen for Baget-Bozzo signify nothing but the abandoning of an ideal matrix and the giving in to a morality which he does not hesitate to call pagan.

Thus for Baget--Bozzo , the relationship with the PCI is a serious possibility, but for Italian society as a whole it is a direction that could, thanks to its political power, re-integrate what Radicalism had put asunder. In that sense Baget-Bozzo too proposes a historic compromise which could, however, only happen among the PCI (and the PCI alone) and those who they manage to represent. It is no accident if Baget-Bozzo has rejected our interpretation of Berlinguer's (3) letter to Bettazzi, taking over the role of interlocutor himself. At least legally, in its functioning. Even if these are elements that must still be confirmed, there is a difference, and not a small one, on a political question which however does not prejudice a serious negative judgement on Radicalism as something which gathers together everything negative in centuries of history. A kind of historical cesspit.

As the discussion continues, it is inevitable for us to keep our minds directed on what we have right before our eyes: our national kind of Radicalism in recent years. It would be senseless to avoid the question. This however does not require any particular interpretive acrobatics. Still, Radicalism today has several different twists that should be considered.

One of these is the presence of a leader like Marco Pannella with the capacity, it would seem, to arouse as much enthusiastic agreement as he does sharp and disdainful rejection. This is his strength. But is Pannella, politically speaking, an adequate expression of what Radicalism is? Probably not. He is a personage and often takes on the glitter of true "stardom" which make cultural and political aspects take a back seat to exhibitions of personal "virtuosity" for which the public is rapidly reaching the saturation point. Still, it may not be difficult to detach Pannella from Radicalism; in his own party there has been open contention with regard to him, some times based on heavy accusations which in any case are scarcely pertinent to the future of the country. This detachment from Pannella reveals that he is, or was, a kind of antenna for receiving public demand for more connections between civil and political society, quite aside from its political fortunes. It also reveals that the discussion of R

adical society, as expounded by experts and taken up by the press, goes far beyond the presence of certain figures.

If one tries to grasp some characteristics of Radicalism today, as represented by Pannella, one finds that the anti-clerical element is indubitably the basis of its reason for being. One can add, however, that with Pannella there has been a return to an explicit opposition to Catholicism as such, or at least to certain basic reasons for being Catholic. But this dominating feature is not exclusive to the person under discussion: it also applies to others. If one reads the article of Prof. Nicola Matteucci in "Mondoperaio" [a workers' review, ed.] (no. 12, December 1977, p.91), one discerns a hostility that goes far beyond political evaluations. Matteucci is not a Radical in the sense of belonging to the party, but a liberal-republican, steeped in the ideas of Croce (4), who maintains that one must mistrust Catholics as people wherever they are active because they are "incurably Catholic" and thus fundamentalist and various other evil things. The predominating hostility to being Catholic, and probably to

being religious, does not restrict the characterisation of Radicalism but probably broadens it, because it is inflected in various ways in all political parties (including the DC), which differ only in the working out of the tactics. It solicits the maximum of privacy in the profession of faith, or rendering it entirely irrelevant as a social (not sociological) factor, which is to say the importance of religion in making political choices. Or else it tries to make politics free of all questions of principle, hoping in an absolute laicization which, besides being unacceptable, is impossible because even those who want to be, or appear to be, entirely without principles, cannot do without some basic criteria of ethical behaviour, even when it is given the name of pragmatism. In politics pragmatism means mistrust of history, in the capacity of man to assume any paternalistic and superior role, it means Jacobin practices without any presuppositions of enlightenment, and so on. It is, in short, in any case a vis

ion of what history is "in principle".

Precisely in the article where Franco Rodano argues with Father Sorge one can find illuminating features: on the one hand the Jesuit father is reproved for wanting a PCI without principles, and on the other hand a DC without any ideology is invoked (that is, without principle, even if the term ideology is negative).

In fact there are Radical contents discernible in the DC, disturbing for a set-up based on principles, which has never taken into account the social teachings of the church to which it has often declared its adherence, only to fall into a kind of

Keynesian political practice retouched for the sake of social policies and, in the liberalism of the right-wing, for institutional policies.

But since the word radical is constantly more associated with the word socialist in the current coinage of the term "Radical-Socialism", it would be worth while looking closer at this combined term. Within the limits of this discussion, one can observe that the association of the words is founded, all in all, on rather coincidental reasons, inasmuch as Socialism, as Baget-Bozzo observes, is not to be reconciled with an extreme individualism. But the crucial point for which there can be no marriage of Radicalism and Socialism - not for long, at least - lies in the fact - all historical and cultural, but also with a concrete basis - that there is an original historical divergence. This is that Radicalism has far-left bourgeois origins; Socialism is an expression of proletarian politics. Carrying the analysis further, one may observe that the entire politico-cultural expression of Socialism goes back to traditions where Marxism had and still has great weight, whereas it is foreign to the Radical tradition.

That is true even though it would not be difficult to demonstrate a young Marx who was more a Radical than a Socialist in many aspects. One thing which allows us to identify a kind of Radicalism spreading through various political parties is the element that is called "superstructure", which is an exaggeratedly lay idea which goes beyond the simple desire for a state independent of the church. This is to say that there is an entire political movement which is not only isolating the church as institution from all influence on the life of the state, but which is also isolating the church as community - that is, the role of believers in confessing their faith - from public life. The Catholics who manage to have a secure right of citizenship are those who give more weight to a political role - understood implicitly and only rarely explicitly - as an essential element of their religious affirmation. By this I do not intend to put into question the political role of faith, but only its inflections in terms of pow

er.

This is the reason why it has been possible for a "Catholic question" to arise in terms of a mere fact of political position.

In this sense basic Radicalism involves the various political forces. The PSI represents a particular case because, in the slightly cynical "free zone" of this party one has been able to note a capacity for listening to the Radical message, to the point of making the Radical Party seem like a sub-division of the Socialist Party itself. It would, however, be a contingent fact and connected to the difficulty of handling an "awkward" third party between the two giants (DC and PCI) whose bi-polarity impels the evolution of the political situation. A connection with the Radicals would mean to believe that the most penurious of the Socialists were to pay for ties whose political power is almost non-existent. And it is non-existent precisely because there is no compensation for the cost of such a connection, because it lacks exclusiveness, inasmuch as the elements of Radicalism are to be found everywhere.

One chance for the PSI could be to re-examine such a question thoroughly, seeking a characterisation in political terms that would clarify principles, that rejected the theoretical imposing of the "Catholic question" as a fact that regards political positioning (but which is so dear to the Communists) and that would make the effort of trying to understand the intrinsic values of a profession of faith without trying to find impossible ideological and conciliatory concoctions. This involves the assumption by the PSI of a different role with respect to the other parties: that is to accept being an executive element for the political demands that may come from civil society and not a complicated apparatus (typical of the strongly ideological parties) for sending a directive and an orientation from the top levels down to the lower ones.

In any case the "anti-clerical question", even while having an immediately practical and prominent role, is not the one that best characterises the "participation in life" of Radical culture. This role is assumed by so-called libertarian individualism which could be summed up in the Goliard (5) motto "it is prohibited to prohibit" better than in more complicated arguments hard to decipher.

It may be of some use to observe that in a society where people agree among themselves to constitute a corporation with the power of veto or of pressure on collective decisions, or where D'Annunzio-like (6) initiatives are spreading of throwing bombs at the slightest provocation, and sometimes very bloody ones - in this context to assert that much is a little like making jokes at a funeral.

And so we have reached the point where Radicalism is situated in an area amply motivated by reasons which will be stated, but which to a great degree is self-motivated, that is, the motivations which have brought about its emergence.

It is a matter of the rejection of a collective discipline, freely chosen, which leads very close to prospects of anarchy, which tends to turn inside out, like the sleeve of a coat, a series of social values and assumes as its only term of reference the individual's judgement of what is good for himself, almost as if he were a subject without relations imposed by an existential situation into which we are born and in which we grow without being able to make a choice at every level. If nothing else, one cannot choose to be born in one way rather than another. Furthermore it is a Radical dogma that every living being does not even have a right to life, at least to judge by certain motivations that are at "the root" of the so-called right to abortion.

All of this does not obviate the fact that the Radical demand is strongly motivated by the de facto situation of the long travail or crisis in the liberal-democratic set-up of contemporary society through which we are living. There is, in fact, there is a contradiction between the acclaimed assertions of liberty written in the constitutions and sometimes in the laws, and a use of power which remains authoritarian and without moral authority; between the personal initiative sanctioned by a philosophy in which everyone says they believe and the impulse to make everything totally bureaucratic from birth to death. This is transferred to a limitation of the right to freedom and, more prosaically, in the practices of the welfare state which cannot be other than what it is since this is the only way of surviving under existing conditions.

In practice, Radicalism, as the reaction to an organicism originating with Hegel (but which is also a presupposition of the French revolution and its ideal of a nation that already presented elements of the contradiction mentioned) is amply motivated because the question of individual civil rights is a historical question. It is so historical that it has become the matter of international debate, of agreements such as the Helsinki charter, of internal political debate: it goes from judicial procedures to life in the penitentiaries. But in this context the relation of cause and effect is truly anything but simple because historical experience shows that the movements of action and reaction feed each other reciprocally and tend to go to extremes because of the demands they make on each other.

Probably the payment fell due on a debt contracted in the first half of our century when it was believed that the state as a "disinterested party" could bring about the well-being of men. The state as an institution parallel to but above society turned out to be the great bargain of our century. But from this came Fascism, Nazism, Stalinism (of which it is still not clear whether it is a compatible form of Communism or a variant of the first two) and the affirmation of strong personalities such as Roosevelt, Pacelli, Churchill, not to mention other lesser ones, who set themselves with the function of "providential" guidance above the spheres they were supposed to serve.

If this point is well founded, one can see how the discussion of Radicalism is of ancient date and turned more to the past than the future. One can also understand how a certain culture directed by men who were formed in the Thirties still have a narrow view of things, above all tied to an underestimation of the question of individual rights. So it seems entirely logical that an attentive observer such as Franco Rodano, who is capable of penetrating the hidden corners of the life of ideas, can find a motivation shared by Father Sorge and the Radical-Socialists in the "value of the individual" of the latter and the "Christian conscience" evoked by the former. For Rodano it is a matter of rejecting politics and not, more correctly, of a more or less happy attempt to reform politics. On the other hand, the PCI itself, when it has to agree to an initiative of the Radicals, or when they find it hard or impossible to oppose the demands of the Radicals, must limit itself to a personal attack on one or another

of its leaders, which generally makes the job quite easy.

Naturally a discourse that wants to debunk a commonplace is not easy. First of all, it is not clear how to handle it diplomatically. This occurs, above all, because a society such as ours, which has the governors it deserves, the administrators it deserves, the corporations that it daily invokes, lives with a permanent and almost incurable guilt complex.

This easily leads to accepting the incrimination of one of the sides, identifying it with a formula full of insulting meanings, so that one can continue to do what has always done whether or not there is an organised group involved. It cannot be denied that on many occasions the Radicals, divided into groups, have been the path-beaters for the big parties, who perhaps have not always been happy to follow certain paths.

But the problem remains of making a value judgement for the totality of the phenomena of this kind. To do so one must escape from a certain kind of generalisation and go into details of the way things are. A typical case is the abortion one. This contains in itself all the elements on which "Radical society" is based. In this the desire is expressed to see "the prohibition of prohibiting". Then one goes down a whole list of variations of the issue. And so one can codify within a law, such as the one in question, poverty as grounds for legally authorising abortion. In this way one supports the present social set-up with the blessing of the Socialist forces of the PCI [Communist Party], the PSI [Socialist Party] and various elements of the PDUP [Proletarian Unity Party].

As if this were not enough, there are efforts to insist on the penal and legalistic character of the problem in a way to make the state seem in any case the defender of rights and duties as well as the dispenser of titles of the morally lawful. The thing has gone so far that even the project of certain Catholics "in favour of life" has concluded with the provision for judicial pardon for those guilty of the crime of abortion - which "norm" is not outside Radical culture. On the one hand an individual right would be surreptitiously defended, while on the other hand they would like to demonstrate that the state identifies the evil and pardons it. How one can then maintain that the pardon of the state does not coincide with an absolution in the sense of Catholic morality as well is a mystery to be explained. But what it is important to point out here is the typical consideration of a constitutional state that an ill-made society is called upon to ratify in various and contorted forms. Provided that the law

s are understood as better or worse replies (in a regime such as ours) to demands coming from the grass roots, even when they are not welcome.

The case in question is certainly not one of the most exhilarating. But in its extreme and "Radical" nature, it indicates better than others the situation in which we find ourselves. There is a "dispersion" of the value of the individual that seeks coagulation under the name of separated individuality. This happens while in the "structure" there is an accentuation of the mechanisation of behaviour. There is a growing process of conformity that is by itself nullifying all the good intentions concerning pluralism and which is broadening the sphere of what Pasolini (7) in a happy phrase called "putting seals of approval" on behaviour which makes individual personalities indistinguishable from each other. Conformity grows in this way at the same rate as Radical society. This, however, is not to be imputed, as such, to the few well-known Radicals, otherwise the problem would not even exist.

But it is evident that every type of reaction to this kind of evolution of the human condition, consigns those who take it on to the margins. It is a matter of a distorted choice. In this, those Christians who do not accept the logic of taking sides to affirm their own values are perhaps in the most difficulty. This is the reason why many suffer a lapse or a relapse into Stalinism, because there is an atavistic search for security in the world which one does not want to give up. And yet only an effort at recomposition - not of aggregations but of converging orientations - could allow us to seek a road that is not a flight from Stalinism or D'Annunzio-ism (6).

The task, if assumed, would not be easy. The first thing to do is, however, begin the discussion without prejudices and formulas of classification. In this country of Ferravilla, this seems to be the most difficult thing to accomplish and, from some aspects, the most painful. But perhaps just for this reason it is worth while not abandoning oneself to the fatalism that puts the game into the hands of the strongest. ---------------------------------------------------------------

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) Historic compromise - The policy of the Communist Party to collaborate with the Christian Democrats.

2) Parallel convergences - A famous piece of political jargon which expressed an agreement among different parties to agree on particular programmes without thereby compromising their individual ideological positions.

3) Enrico Berlinguer (1922-1984), PCI party secretary from 1972 until his death.

4) Croce - Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) Neapolitan philosopher, historian and critic. Croce was a Senator (1910), Minister of Education (1920-21) and Minister without portfolio (1943-44).

5) Goliard - Medieval students who abandoned their religious vocation and led a disorderly existence. Famous for their drinking and songs of a satirical and erotic nature.

6) D'Annunzio - Gabriele D'Annunzio (1863-1938), writer and leading exponent of Italian decadence. Also became involved in political-military adventures.

7) Pasolini - Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975), writer, poet, film-maker.