ABSTRACT: In replying to Dom Franzoni, abbot of the Basilica of St. Paul's, who had criticised the weakness of his analysis of the causes of under-development as presented in the campaign "against extermination from hunger", Marco Pannella affirms the international, anti-imperialist and democratic class nature of the initiative under way, and gives punctilious answers to all aspects of the question.

("La Repubblica", March 15, 1979)

If I have understood him rightly, Dom Franzoni's criticisms of my initiative to save millions of children from death by starvation would be the following:

a) I "detach" the problem of the children from that of the adults, and that of "hunger" from that of "development";

b) I align myself with the aid mentality of the national and international organisations, the U.N. and the Catholic ones;

c) I have not published a preliminary public analysis of the capitalist and class matrix of the extermination in progress;

d) I join the farcical venture of saving a child only to have him die as an adult;

e) I operate at the centre of a kind of "anyone-can-play" heap of consenses; there are even "Marxists" among them! Everyone agrees, in short, except Dom Franzoni, from whom I am happy to hear today that he was, on the other hand, in agreement with the Radical's referendum against the Reale law (1) and is also on the anti-nuclear power one.

I reply:

1) We are asking that funds be immediately earmarked amounting to 2% of the Italian GNP, 1% against "starvation" and 1% for "development". The government's and the majority's budget calls for 0.9% if the Senate doesn't remedy this. As Radicals we suggest that this be obtained, for example, by exempting 80% of the citizens from the draft, beginning with the summer quota and for at least two years (while choosing by lot the 20% who will have to do military service) and by other items which we will make known later.

We ask that the sums for development be destined for structures, superstructures and infrastructures within the framework of the most serious and scientific U.N. international programmes. We ask that those for hunger be used for emergency undertakings to be identified and worked out in the commitment to an immediate reduction of the deaths already predicted by the U.N. for 1979 (at least 17 million children under the age of four, and at least the same number of people in other age groups).

No one, I believe, imagines that one can save a child from dying of starvation while allowing the adult by his side to die. We ask, furthermore, that the Italian government, strengthened by these moral, juridical and political achievements, commit itself to a hard and decisive international initiative that will spark off an immediate war against wars and against death. Therefore we are not the ones doing the "detaching"; rather it is such as Vera Squarcialupi in the name of women and Giovanni Franzoni in the name of adults who, with aristocratic and tragic indifference, proclaim the inevitability of the massacre: this year 17 million children of the more than thirty million people from now until December. To be exact, in the time we have been discussing the matter the number of people who can be saved has diminished by about 6 million. They are already dead. The problem is resolving itself at the rate of 90,000 dead each day, half of whom are children. I do not go along with this "detachment", this d

etachment of humanity and conscience.

2) Ever since the press conference with which I announced my hunger strike, I have not ceased repeating textually that: "The tens of millions of dead are also a "product" of aid structures and the non-political U.N. methods and the myriad organisations that live and prosper in this sector". As a Radical, I assume that I have no lessons to learn from anyone - because of the specific struggles we have long conducted alone in this field - on local, or clerical, or confessional kinds of "aid". Anyone who asks for it can have the documentation, from the books of Ernesto Rossi to the results, sometimes clamorous, of the campaign over ONMI (2) to the positions on IPAB (3). But I would like, if possible, in this case at least, not to abound in gratuitous tale-telling or lamentations. I prefer to remember that eternal wailing is insufficient to reform structures and institutions.

3) Franzoni and Bobbio permitting, Salvatore Sechi had already underlined with evident justification, the intransigently international, Socialist, anti-imperialist, pacifist and class character of the action in progress. It is evident. To make an exegesis, an apology, a catechism of sacred texts and realities, lay or confessional, "before" fighting, meant making doctoral disquisitions in the temple "instead" of fighting. In this matter the zeal of the neophyte cannot be mine.

4) To save a child while risking to let him die at an older age is a tragic farce if the risk comes true. But not to save him only because one cannot be sure of saving him forever is a crime. In any case one does not become a woman or an adult if one is killed at four years of age.

5) Is everyone in agreement with the goals of my hunger strike? If that is true, why do I continue with it? Exhibitionism? Playing the victim? Vote getting? I fear it is Franzoni rather who is in harmony with the immense majority of the ruling class. For this reason it seems to me an urgent matter to demolish a dangerous legend that is forming around my previous "denigrated" hunger strikes and is exalting this one.

Concerning conscientious objection and Parliament's respect for its own legality in arriving at the vote on divorce, abortion, family law, the vote for eighteen-year-olds, constitutional reform and the impartiality of RAI-TV news, saving the Spanish conscientious objectors, the defense of the liberty of Czechoslovakia by the tanks of the countries of "achieved Socialism", the civil rights of policemen and prison guards, the conviction or the liberation of Valpreda who has been in prison for years, the anti-constitutional behaviour of President Leone (just to cite from memory some of the goals of my previous hunger strikes) - on all of these in principle everyone agreed when it came to empty talk. But with regard to concrete means and goals, urgency and deadlines, they were in reality very few. It was in January that I began to fight in this direction. Those who are dying and who will be exterminated, are they aware of this, Dom Franzoni? Can they hope that my hunger strike will be of any use to them?

President Pertini from the first day of his term enjoined and continues to enjoin: "Empty the arsenals and fill the granaries!" Is one permitted to wonder, Franzoni, what this man, a disarmed prophet of those whom he addresses, would be able to achieve if we gave him the right to speak in every international seat in the name of what we Italians, before all others, have done and witnessed?

The behaviour of the terrorist Brigades, of the state television, with their ostracising and cynical waiting - is this not the proof that they fear and do not hope that the country can know and judge, choose and commit itself to this proposal for a war against wars and against death?

They have seen things correctly. Since they know that I have decided to tie my fate to that of these hundreds of thousands of people (not only children) or to the millions who are already inscribed on the death rolls, and that either I will be saved together with them or not be saved at all, they prefer, to the degree it is in their power, to make sure that they are in fact exterminated.

They know perfectly well that a series of about ten (maybe even less) television debates in the evening, concentrated in the time left before the probable election campaign, would be enough to make the country rise up to this campaign for life and hope and to make a plebiscite about it. But they have no orders other than those, mocked as always, of the law and of their own lost consciences. And the princes who govern us, if one excepts an interesting telegram from Enrico Berlinguer [the Communist Party leader at the time, ed.] have no time to concern themselves with this story.

And yet I have hope and confidence. The figures who have voluntarily decided to constitute a Promotion Committee for Life, Peace and Disarmament are such as to instill it in me, if that were necessary.

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) Reale law - A public security measure severely limiting traditional civil liberties on the excuse of fighting terrorism.

2) ONMI - Opera Nazionale Maternità Infanzia, a Catholic run organisation for aid to mothers and children.

3) Istituzione Pubbliche di Assistenza e Beneficenza.