("Single issue" booklet for the XXXV Congress of The Radical Party - Budapest 22-26 april 1989)

ABSTRACT: The writer, Leonardo Sciascia, stood as a candidate in 1979 in the lists of the Radical Party(*): there was a scandal in the Italian Communist Party and in the sphere of the progressist intellectuals to do with Sciascia's betrayal, since in the past he had been a Communist candidate. For the Italian Communist Party, the Radicals were, from time to time, fascist, qualunquist or terrorist. The old Stalinist vice of turning his adversaries into the devil, particularly if they were comrades, has not yet been abandoned by the PCI. After the Radical electoral success in 1979, this was the Communist transformism: change of order comrades, the Radicals were no longer fascists. The Italian Communist theoretical review, Rinascita, dedicated sixteen pages to the Radical Party, denying all its previous accusations. This continuous fabrication of the truth is one of the things that worries me most about the Communists, Sciascia affirmed in his discussion with the painter Renato Guttuso which we publish here. Le

t us repropose some fragments of the thought and commitment of Sciascia within and without the Italian Parliament. The words of Sciascia, Radical Deputy, are always scant, to the point and unpopular: Affirmations of freedom and rights need to be made, recalled and discussed, whatever the risk, whatever the moment.

SCIASCIA: Before the elections, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) considered the Radicals to be a "qualunquista" (man-in-the-street) movement. They were Fascists, they were a lot of other bad things. Today we have sixteen pages of "Rinascita" dedicated to Radicalism, containing very serious articles, very carefully thought out I would say, even excessively learned. This is one of those worrying things I see happening within the Italian Communist Party. This constant fabrication of truth is one of the things that worries me most about the Communists.

GUTTUSO: Before the elections, the PCI was the Radical's main target. Naturally the situation was different, there was a political struggle for defence, for counterattack. Then when the success of the Radical Party became evident, the PCI, a serious party that pays attention to reality, was not able to ignore it.

SCIASCIA: That's the point. Apart from distortion of the truth Pannella is not Fascist and has not won Fascist votes apart from this; the other, even more worrying thing is that perhaps this focus of attention on the Radicals is due to the fact that the PCI noticed a shift in the workers' votes, or noticed a shift "even" in the workers votes.

GUTTUSO: You are talking about the working class: the Radicals have never paid any attention to the working class. They have been more interested in extremist, autonomous movements, and not in the working class.

SCIASCIA: That isn't the nature of the Radical Party. To my mind, its nature is essentially the defence of civil rights.

GUTTUSO: The Radical Party certainly starts with that programme, but I think that the best definition was that of Vittorini and Pasolini himself, who saw in the Radical Party, a force of help and support for the PCI and not antagonism.

SCIASCIA: Returning to the past: I have noticed a few things which really amounted to a ruthless attack on the Radicals by the Communists. And since the PCI is a bit too reliant on power relationships, now that the Radical Party has become something to be reckoned with, it has become worth their attention. The Radical Party couldn't give a fig for such things, and it lands wherever it falls.

GUTTUSO: Moralising is not always beautiful.

SCIASCIA: Radicalism can be of more use to morality and art, than to politics. But in Italy we have come to the point when politics are so far from morality that the Radical Party ought to do something about it.

GUTTUSO: Marx used to say that "radical" means someone who goes back to the roots of things, but the root is a complex phenomenon. Things have to be changed, not just denounced and that's it. The lists of signatures are not enough, it is cadres which are needed.

SCIASCIA: There are already parties, and they are even too strong and out of control. So why another party of the classical kind?

GUTTUSO: But there are in fact cadres in the Radical Party.

SCIASCIA: Agreed: a minimum amount of organisation is necessary. But before the elections I used to say: "Let's hope that the Radicals won't get more than 3% because if they become numerous it could be dangerous. And as to what you were saying about antagonism, I have never felt antagonistic towards the PCI. Disagreement, yes. A disagreement I have felt since I was a candidate for the Communists, and which has been greatly emphasised since the historic compromise.

GUTTUSO: I agree with you. There has never been real proper antagonism. But instead laying into us so hard, the Radical Party could have incited a more concrete adherence to the Left.

SCIASCIA: In '74 the referendum on divorce was stimulating, but the PCI did not realise this, because once the victory had been won, they were not able to give it its worth. They accepted it with gritted teeth.

GUTTUSO: As if we hadn't fought for divorce too!

SCIASCIA: Yes we did. And once divorce had been won, the prize was the elections of '76 when the Communists triumphed. But the PCI has not been able to exploit its success.

GUTTUSO: The basic element has always been the way in which the policy of collaboration between the PCI and the Christian Democrats, has been implemented, the majority agreement, because mistakes have been made. The central committee was very sincere, even if it was a bit too philosophical.

SCIASCIA: We must take note of life, of reality. For example, terrorism: I understand how the PCI would feel if it had to fight to death for civil rights. I fear that the Red Brigades would interpret it as a sign that the Communists were on their side. But between this and not talking at all about civil rights, not saying that they have not been respected, there is a subtle difference. Radicals are talking about these rights because first you stop people then you look for the proof. And for the Radicals this won't do.

GUTTUSO: This is the policy of guaranteeing rights. Certainly, every citizen should be able to feel his rights are guaranteed. Certainly the proof is not such that it ends by turning against its very accusers. But let us not conceal the fact that these people, Negri and Co. have had a great influence on public opinion, and I would discuss this and not the proof, of whose existence we cannot be sure. It is certain that they have shaken people up, rather than adding fuel to the fire.

SCIASCIA: If this were the case, Marx would have spent his life in prison.

GUTTUSO: Marx was against terrorism. And how was it too that the Radicals didn't call on civil rights in the case of Ventura or Giannettini? Why is guaranteeism born at one moment and not at another? Is it absolute guaranteeism or can it also stem from political sympathies?

SCIASCIA: You're right, and I also blame myself for not having paid attention to the trials against the Fascists; but we should take the things we feel about Fascism into account; they are hard to uproot and make us slow to understand.

GUTTUSO: I believe things are simpler. When the Radical Party first became aware of the defence of all civil rights, from those of homosexuals to those of terrorists or people presumed to be terrorists, they met with approval, they developed this action further...I really did not want to accept this meeting, this debate, not because I don't like talking to you, we are always talking. But because it seems we have become a species of forced speakers. We have always had discussions in private, and now we are talking in public...anyway it's still better than "dear Indro" and "dear Marco".

SCIASCIA: First you were talking about identikit, the identikit of the Radicals. What are their strong points? I would say chiefly civil rights, thence the Constitution, thence Parliament and its functions. It is not true that the Radicals are sabotaging Parliament and putting it in a state where it can't function. They want it to function for their concerns. And if today they are resorting to obstructionism, they are doing so precisely for the sake of those decrees for which they have deprived it of power.

GUTTUSO: Recently we had two big victories in Parliament. The Christian Democrats were beaten twice both on the issue of who should control the billions granted to the banks in the Mezzogiorno (the South of Italy), and for the monstrous liquidations and pensions which are granted to privileged bureaucrats. We practically had the chance to crack the Dc, a section of which voted for the Communist proposals. In brief, our amendments were accepted, this too is one way of making Parliament function, and without paralysing it. A sentence of Pasolini's "It is quite clear that what counts today is obedience to future, better laws. And, as a result, the will to rebuild the truth, the new great historical duty of the PCI". But it is also your duty, and the duty of the Radicals and of every man."

SCIASCIA: Pasolini did not see the PCI in the developments which happened from '76 on. But, however, it is certain that the PCI is not antagonistic towards the Radicals, that is the Radicals don't want it to be so.

GUTTUSO: Today things have changed for the Radicals too. They don't any longer need to fight a relentless battle, and I think that they ought to consider a large party, formed mostly of workers and farmers, organised with any amount of defects, with bureaucratic aspects if you like, even if these are improving. A big nucleus which needs to be worked on, as an incentive. I think the Radicals should be able to do this.

SCIASCIA: So we see eye to eye. But allow me to make the difference between yesterday and today, between politics with the Communists and politics with the Radicals. There is a huge difference. One example: at the town council in Palermo, when I was elected Communist councillor at the end of the year eight thousand resolutions arrived, all those which had accumulated in the past months. And in two or three sessions they were approved with raised hands. Now, out of those eight thousand resolutions there were at least ten which ought not to have been passed even by the PCI. The Radicals would have asked to approve them one by one, they would have died on the spot rather than not examine them first.

GUTTUSO: You are a bit of a neophyte. If I was in your shoes, I would also be an enthusiast, because your party is fresh and new, non-bureaucratised, I can understand this easily. Your personal enthusiasm, and the thought that the eight thousand resolutions would not have been passed, are right, but the Italian Parliament and the municipal councils are not like the convention of the French Revolution. They are heavy organisms on which thousands of things have an effect. And at a certain point you must finish with a situation, you have to finish with it anyway, or you couldn't go ahead.

SCIASCIA: The Radicals want to talk about everything, even at the risk of blocking the mechanism, even if this is negative. But listen to one thing, you know what it is which separates me more, or rather the most, from the PCI? It is Stalinism which still exists, and the historical compromise which is still here.

GUTTUSO: The reduced form of Stalinism existing within the PCI doesn't separate me from you. What separates me from you is the fact that I believe in the historic compromise not as a form of alliance between the top powers, but as a profound understanding between Italian political needs and the needs of the great mass of workers. But Pannella also comes between us to a certain extent.

SCIASCIA: Why? Don't you like him?

GUTTUSO: I'll tell you that I am generally suspicious of men with blue eyes...

SCIASCIA: Do you know what unites me most to the PCI? The simple people who belong to it. Only that, because intellectually, the PCI does not interest me any more. I believe that all the intellectual force of this great party must have gone into thinking up the historical compromise, which is fatally wrong because it has no opposition. Catholics do not exist, they are only an unfortunate invention. Salvemini used to say that he never saw a Catholic in his life, and I can say the same.

GUTTUSO: You must have met some Catholics, in Racalmuto, perhaps...As for the fact that the PCI doesn't interest you any more, that's your business. However, it is true that the cultural level of the Party, not because of its intellectuals, has not developed in a parallel way to its politics.

SCIASCIA: After all, what do you like about us Radicals?

GUTTUSO: What I like about the Radicals is a certain freshness...but it seems to me that Communists and Radicals could find more points in common with the Guttuso than with the Sciascia species. Perhaps because I am an old militant who joined the PCI in 1940, while you joined the Radical Party just a short while ago.

SCIASCIA: But I'm an old militant too. They have scraped up a 1953 declaration of mine in which I said I voted Communist but was in fact Radical. ("L'Espresso", August 5, 1979)

No to indifference, no to laziness

"As to what the Radical Party in its non-violence, wants and is trying to do, I believe the verb "to break" could be used with all is moral and metaphorical impact. To break with compromises, half-measures, games on all sides, the Mafia, intrigues, silences, and conspiracies; to break this kind of pact between stupidity and violence which is being demonstrated in the Italian way of things. To break with the equality between power, science and death which seems to have come to stay in the world; to break all the eggs in the basket, to use a language and an image of every day life, before preparing the lethal omelette! and so on...As the title of Jean Daniel's recent book says, this is the era of breaking or only the hour. We must not let it slip on our own indifference, our own laziness." ("Notizie Radicale", May 1979)

Politics and Ethics

Speaking of politics, Borges said in an interview 15 years ago that he paid as little attention as possible to them, except during the period of the dictatorship. But he added what was not politics, was ethics. "On the contrary, I have always been concerned in politics, and always in the ethical sense. Somebody will say that this is my confusion or my mistake: to want to exchange politics for ethics. But it would be a really happy confusion and a really happy mistake if the Italians, especially at this particular moment, fell for it. On the spur of the moment, I have decided to witness this confusion and this mistake, in this most explicit and direct way by taking part in politics; and with the party, which, at this moment, better than any other, and perhaps uniquely, makes this possible.

("Tuttolibri", May 1979)

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(*) In 1979 18 members and 2 senators were elected from the Radical lists to the Italian Parliament, and three representatives to the European Parliament.

Adelaide Aglietta, ex-secretary of the Radical Party in 1978; Aldo Aiello, journalist, ex-senator of the Italian Socialist Party, currently in charge of the UNDP office in New York (United Nations Programme for Development); Pio Baldelli, university professor; Marco Boato, leader of the Student Movement of 1968 and spokesman for "Lotta Continua"; Emma Bonino, spokeswoman for the legalisation of abortion in Italy (CISA); Roberto Ciccomessere, conscientious objector, ex-secretary of the Radical Party in 1971: Marcello Crivellini, university professor; Franco De Cataldo, criminal lawyer, ex-spokesman for the Republican Party; Adèle Faccio, spokeswoman for the movement for the legalisation of abortion in Italy (CISA); Marisa Galli, religious, pedagogue; Maria Antonietta Macciocchi, journalist, writer, ex-member of parliament for the Italian Communist Party; Gianluigi Melega, journalist, ex-director of "L'Europa"; Mauro Mellini, lawyer; Marco Pannella, founder of the Radical Party in 1956; Domenico Pinto, ex-d

eputy of the movement "Lotta Continua"; Franco Roccella, journalist; Leonardo Sciascia, writer; Gianfranco Spadaccia, journalist, ex-secretary of the Radical Party in 1974/75; Sergio Stanzani, engineer, industrial director; Massimo Teodori, university professor, scholar in political science and contemporary history; Sandro Tessari, university lecturer, ex-deputy of the Italian Communist Party; The following have taken over due to resignations: Giuseppe Calderisi, in charge of the Committee for the Promotion of Referendums;

Franco Corleone; regional official; Giuseppe Rippa, publisher.