ABSTRACT: At a time when the temptation is strongest to reply to terrorism in the most irrational way, the Radical referendum to abolish life imprisonment is the way of counterpoising the culture of Beccaria (1) and Calamandrei (2) to those who are asking for the death sentence. Neppi Modona [a jurist, ed.] is wrong in fearing the referendum on life imprisonment, because this is the only way to bring reason back into the just, necessary and dramatic fight against violence and terrorism which is not only represented by the Red Brigades.

(»La Repubblica of March 4, 1979)

It is in the moments of difficulty and disorder, and not the "orderly" or "normal" ones, in which the principles one believes in or claims to believe in are put to the test - the same principles which were made the foundation of civil coexistence thirty years ago and then never implemented.

It is in the moments when the torpor of reason allows monsters to be born that we must appeal to our rationality: ours, which is that of the Constitution, of the constitutional state, of the habeus corpus, of the respect for life and of individuals, and not the rationality of the Rocco codes (3) which is the same as that of Robespierre, the Napoleonic codes and Soviet law.

We are living through moments in which every principle seems to be overthrown and civilisation to regress to the law of the jungle or that of retaliation. There are those who ask for the death penalty and invoke the sword: and it is not just the man in the street who does so, but even several of the most "elect" moral consciences of this republic. The very human hysterical reaction to the news of Moro's (4) kidnapping would not have been motive enough to inspire these demands and supplications if they did not have their roots in an old culture which is not only right-wing but also left-wing, in the Italian "left" of Crispi and Mussolini.

Thus it is just at these moments that one must counterpoise the culture of Cesare Beccaria, of Achille Battaglia, of Piero Calamandrei, and draw all of the consequences of the principles affirmed by the Constitution.

What we want is a confrontation of cultures, a clear and open confrontation of two juridical cultures, of two differing ideas of state and society that will involve the whole country and not be closed up within an elite of legislators, jurists, men of letters, "great thinkers": the "luminaries" today can come from society and from the growth of the collective conscience, not unfortunately from the temples of science, religion and law which are more and more simply temples of power.

We have against us the clerical and Fascist supporters (in the highest and broadest sense of the two words) of the Rocco code. We have against us the Red Brigades who not by chance proclaim that the most reactionary of judges is the most liberal and the greatest defender of civil liberties. We will also have jurists like Neppi Modona against us.

What is the message, the cultural and political "proposal" that Neppi Modona gives us in his article "Abolish Life Imprisonment?" published in »La Repubblica . It is the message, the proposal of realism and opportunism, of resignation and the sell-out of one's own hopes and ideals. By now we are unused to dialogue and it is probable that these definitions will be mistaken for insults. They are not. In the confrontation of culture and the left (a confrontation which is always denied and blocked), a lay and libertarian person normally encounters two types of interlocutors: there is the Jacobin who - faced with the test of the policies and responsibility of the government - covers the Constitution with a cloth and takes up his sword or insists that the state take it up. This kind of Jacobinism, conscious or half-baked, proclaimed or hidden, winds through all the cultures and sub-cultures of the left, moderate and extreme. It is the historical and theoretical interlocutor of libertarianism, Gobettian (5) li

beralism, liberal Socialism.

Then there are those who will not desist from affirming principles opposed to those of the sword and violence (whether they come from the state or from revolutionaries), but who renounce their application from a "sense of reality" and for opportunism. They renounce trying to put them into effect in order to protect them from being defeated in the name of their possible affirmation in a better future that is always behind the horizon. This too is a historical component of the history and culture of the left. Even when it does not produce, through transformism, the pure and simple acceptance of the adversaries' principles and practices, it is a losing policy. Anyone who does not believe in the practical force and validity too of his own principles and ideals deprives them of all theoretical and historical prospects. He withdraws from the risk of defeat because he is already defeated.

Neppi Modona fears the referendum on life imprisonment and he does not notice that it is just the referendum which is the only way of bringing back reason to the just, necessary and dramatic fight against violence and terrorism which are not only the priority of the Red Brigades. An opponent of the Reale law, he has been an adversary of the referendum and does not see that the half of the Communist and Socialist voters who voted "YES" against the instructions of their parties, have had the merit of making it a common notion that the strength of a state does not coincide with the degree of violence of its codes and with the arbitrary power and license to kill of its police forces. He fears the emotional reaction against demilitarising of the police, and he does not notice the harm already produced by the policy of renunciation and postponement adopted by the left with regard to reforming the police and introducing unionism and demilitarisation to them. He accuses us of supporting reactionary and irration

al impulses and forgets what contribution and what support the McCarthyist campaign of miseducation against the referendum to abolish the Reale law has been given to these impulses not by the DC [Christian Democrats, ed.] and the MSI [neo-Fascist Italian Social Movement, ed.]], but by the PCI [Communist Party, ed.].

He is right about only one thing: in the new referendum proposal of the Radical Party (nuclear power plants, abortion, crimes of opinion, military courts, hunting) the demands for abolishing life imprisonment, of demilitarising the police and the Financial Police have a symbolic and a central role.

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) Beccaria, Cesare - (Milan 1738 - 1794) Essayist, economist, exponent of the Italian Enlightenment. Author of the famous essay »On Crimes and Punishments in which he supports the abolition of the death penalty and of torture.

2) Calamandrei, Piero - (Florence 1889 - 1956) Italian jurist, free-lance journalist and statesman. Drafter of codes even during the Fascist period (as a "technical" consultant), later exponent of the anti-Fascist viewpoint of a progressive tendency. Founder of the review »Il Ponte . Constitutionalist.

3) Rocco codes - refers to Rocco, Alfredo (Naples 1875 - Rome 1935) Jurist and statesman, he began as a Radical, passed over to the Nationalists who ended by converging with the Fascist Party. Minister of Justice from 1925 to 1932, he authored the Penal Code and the Penal Procedure Code promulgated between 1930 and 1931. These two codes, notwithstanding their markedly Fascist character, remained in force for many years after the fall of Fascism and only quite recently have been replaced by more modern codes. He was a figure of exceptional importance in the institutional history of modern Italy.

4) Moro, Aldo - (Maglie 1916 - Rome 1978) Italian statesman. Christian Democratic Party Secretary (1959-1965), author of the centre-left policy. Held many posts as minister since 1956. Prime Minister (1963-68, 1974-76), president of the Christian Democrats since 1976. Foresaw the nearing of the Italian Communist Party to the government by formulating the idea of a so-called "third phase" (after "centrism" and the "centre-left") in the political system. Kidnapped by the Red Brigades on March 16, 1978, he was found dead on May 9 of the same year.

5) Gobetti, Piero - (Turin 1901 - Paris 1926) As a very young man he already published a famous review »La rivoluzione liberale [The Liberal Revolution] which was the start of a revision of liberalism making it comprehensible to the workers. In 1926, persecuted by Fascism, he fled to Paris where, however, he died. He also founded the review »Il Baretti and published the first collection of Eugenio Montale's poems.