ABSTRACT: During the 21st Radical Party Congress of 1979 (March 29, 30, 31 and April 1 and 2, - Rome) Marco Pannella (1) brought up one of the subjects which had long been the object of controversies between the radical party and the Italian Left, and in particular the Communist Party: Via Rasella, the historical significance of this episode of the Resistance and its connections, namely with contemporary terrorism. Barely a year before that, the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro (2) had caused an earthquake in the parties of the Left. The Communist Party had joined the front of the »hardliners , while the Radical Party (and to a certain extent the Socialist Party, albeit with different tones and nuances) chose instead a line of »dialogue that could allow to explore any possible way to spare the statesman's life. The radical party refused, at any rate, to pay homage to a State which hypocritically proclaimed its inviolable prerogatives precisely at a time in which the signs of its incapacity and of its mora

l, political and historical crisis were most evident. In this framework of discussion it was only legitimate to recall the episode of Via Rasella, which occurred at the very beginning of the recent history of the communist history and of the partisan and antifascist resistance. In March 1944, in Via Rasella, in the heart of the Nazi-occupied Rome, a handful of partisans blew up a charge of explosive, killing a column of South Tirol-born SS officers. As we know, the attack triggered a German retaliation, whereby 335 political and ordinary prisoners detained in Regina Coeli were shot and then thrown into deserted pozzolana quarries along the Via Ardeatina. Wasn't that episode an act of terrorism? Doesn't it inevitably constitute a »model for the terrorism and violence that are again ravaging the country forty years later?

Pannella was unmistakably blunt. If terrorism is to be denounced and struck back at, then it is also necessary to denounce the entire history of the »leftist violence as co-responsible for this terrorism. If Curcio (3) is guilty, then the attack of Via Rasella also constitutes a condemnable form of homicidal violence.

»If the youths of the Azione Cattolica are barbarians and murderers - Pannella warned - »Curcio, who is depicted as a sort of modern Saint Gabriel or Saint Michael crushing the devil with his foot and becoming a champion of the struggle against the capitalist dragon (...) then Carla Capponi (4), a gold medal of the Resistance for having placed the bomb in Via Rasella, and Antonello (5) and Amendola (6) and all the others should also remember that bomb. If we have a relation of "intimacy" with the fascist history, we (...) have the same relation with the worst torturers, with my comrades Togliatti (7) and Curdo...".

The Communist Party reacted bitterly to this polemic. On the following day the communist daily newspaper "L'Unità" titled the account of the meeting "Pannella's line: the PCI is the enemy, Curcio is a brother". The radical strategy was also labeled globally "anticommunist". Preceded by this account, on that same morning (1 April) Pannella went to the congress of the Communist Party. The communist congresspeople's anger and indignation broke out, fueled also by aggressive speeches by Amendola and Lama (8). "Pannella's fascist speech is disgraceful. The gold medals of Via Rasella are here among us", cried Amendola. According to Lama, "the party of the partisan brigades headed by Matteotti, Sandro Pertini (9) and Riccardo Lombardi (10) cannot mingle with the party of Pannella". The audience booed the radical leader, who was wearing a blue loden coat at the congress. The following day the press described him with terms such as "vampire" and "Nosferatu".

This book contains the transcriptions of two speeches by Marco Pannella, and the opinions of people who intervened in the debate on Via Rasella, on violence and terrorism.

(»A USELESS SLAUGHTER ? - From Via Rasella to the Fosse Ardeatine - edited by Angiolo Bandinelli and Valter Vecellio - Tullio Pironti, 1982, Naples)

Organizing an alternative against the national unity; the »Mein Kampf of a nonviolent

by Marco Pannella

Dear comrades, things have taken place in such a way lately that this is the first time since the Verona congress in 1973 (a congress which today's radicals might consider to be the prehistory of our party, even though it dealt with subjects that are extremely up-to-date) that I am speaking as a simply member. My intention is delivering a speech in absolute freedom, no longer as president of the radical group at the Chamber of Deputies nor - as has been the case for two or three years - almost acting as a "bait", as in the congresses of Milan and Florence, to attract people with actual public rallies. Today I can speak with my regained freedom, simply as a member of the party.

First of all, allow me a remark - not a paradox: I think anyone who is juridically independent is in fact very often more dependent than those who understand that independence is not a condition of birth, to be protected against the corruption of growth and dialogue, but rather a hypothesis, both in the life of the individuals and in the life of society, which can only be conquered and organized. Otherwise, a certain degree of independence is clearly possible, but only a temporary one which "consumes" the independence and the autonomy one has when one begins to operate with the illusion of being the only free individual, since organizing oneself would be the price any libertarian should pay in order to defend himself. Organizing oneself is, instead, the only way to "create" independence and freedom. Nothing can be achieved without determination and without something that materializes, also visibly and juridically, the person's "social" condition, which is indispensable for a man to be a man - and I hope Pop

e Wojtyla and Cardinal Benelli will not feel offended ("applause").

I therefore once again feel very free, thanks to the fact that I am once again organized, without juridical limits of opportunity. In this respect I would like to suggest all of you to ponder the fact that generally speaking, even the worst "affiliation" is better than no affiliation at all. This is not to say, "join the radical party!"; I am telling you, "organize yourselves! Let's get organized!"; let us have the courage to realize that in a regime of democracy individualism is sterile ("applause"). Only in societies run by absolute monarchies, where there are courts and courtesans (which we will find in the modern versions, especially at the top level of the economic power, where we find the clerics of the establishment and the chests of the bureaucrats), only there perhaps can individualistic forms of "independence" still exist. Because that is where "small groups" can emerge, but never any alternative to the regime and the system. The leaderships of the bureaucratized and clericalized parties, as those

of the economic establishment, are certainly not fora of democracy: they can only allow freedom as courtesans to other courtesans. The latter should not, among other things, be accused of infamy: Voltaire was also partly a courtesan, and yet he was Voltaire. If, however, today you could join the radical party, you would be doing something important for each of us, but especially - and you will excuse my presumption - something important to safeguard the quality of your solitude, as well as to better safeguard the right to have all the conversations you want ("applause").

This having said, after twenty years I would like to say (not to repeat, because those who have always carried out a political action made of class struggle can very well refuse to bother others with constant classist and class proclamations, as it is fashionable to do for frustrated researchers of an individual labourite dimension) that the radical party is not just the party that proved in the '20s that Gramsci's (11) collective intellectual could perfectly live outside the imagination of the libraries and courts of the political and economic establishment. The radical party has also constituted the party which - in total, complete isolation - has reaffirmed that everything which constitutes us as living beings (beauty, our body, sex) is determined by the condition and the class consciousness which each of us traces in his history ("applause").

This is a reminder for all those who are accustomed to trying to teach us (something we never do), to the former members of the CEI (The Italian Bishops' Conference) whose militancy there was as glorious as it then became squalid and subordinated in the Italian frontist underground, who think today that they can accuse us of Catholic welfarism. This is also a reminder for other comrades who have the guts to say that we radicals are trapped in an ultra-Leninist conception of the party when - at a moment in which they thought Leninism was the winning formula and before hosting in their newspapers the desperate letters which were once addressed at us - they called us drug addicts, faggots, homosexuals, pro-abortionists, freaks, misfits with whom the Leninist parties were never to mingle (with this dust of men, with this shit of class, with this excrement of history). This is also for certain feminists who think they can teach Emma (12), Adele (13) and even the last of the radical men what "correct" abortion is

(after a "correct" analysis). Where were they when these campaigns lead us (as it is fair and normal) to be jailed, but also to devise the first operative structures of sanitary and human reform in our country, in the apartments, in the houses where the CISA (14) operated, with the risk of confusing itself with those who speculated on abortion and killed many women.

I am saying this because they should stop trying to attack us for demons that belong instead to their personal history, and which they should try to exorcise in other ways.

We have even been accused, I think, by the comrades who write on "Lotta Continua" (15) as well as by those who write on "Il Manifesto" (16) (the latter more elegantly because it is the only "upper class" newspaper of the "Left") ("applause")...I am warning you that your smiles and laughter will be considered tomorrow as plebeian demonstrations in front of the "clown" Marco, who talks because these people show collective reactions or orgasm each time they hear a "correct", updated analysis on China, on Chile, on Vietnam, on the latest news from the world, and generally the exact opposite of what they had foreseen in their last "correct" analysis"!

An electoralist congress?

We are accused, among other things, of holding an electoralist congress because we deal with electoral issues. I would like to underline, however, that this is the 21st congress of the radical party. The 21st! The twentieth took place five months ago in Bari, and was (wrongly) accused of being the expression of the radicals' monomania for referendums. Today instead we are electoralists. I am the usual clown and you - even though they do not say so clearly - are not proletarians, but plebeians, a small, frustrated middle class, ready to gather to attend our pageants which are normally provided - so it seems - by the radical congresses.

For those people our thought and our history mean nothing. The internal length - which, I repeat, is important because it is the real shape of all things - as the external one effectively exist among the radicals, dear comrades from Lotta Continua. We are and have always been humble. But we do not mistake Franciscan humbleness with that sad virtue which is modesty. On the contrary: we have always been "immodest" in our objectives, in our hopes, in our passions, in our way of prefiguring the conflicts which we could have invited you to, you - comarades from the revolutionary leaderships! - who often fail to realize that finally, in 1975, the comrades from Il Manifesto, Lotta Continua, Democrazia Proletaria and the rank-and-file were doing something at the radical tables (which are the radical sections) in the streets other than martial marches or ideological manipulation, and that you censured their presence because it was not part of the tactics established by the leaders of your newspapers or parties. And y

et, this allowed for important feats and perhaps even forms of unity as a result of the "immodesty" of the radical imagination and discipline.

If we get together so often, comrades from the "revolutionary" leadership, it is because we are accustomed to operating without the filter of your delegates. We are open to the winds, the storms and suffocating sciroccos of inestimable presences. We are used to deciding together, collectively, in communion, because our decisions must meet not only the priorities we tried to impose on the political confrontation, but also the priorities which the political struggle has managed to impose on us.

It is therefore serious, necessary and democratic to discuss elections during election-time. Likewise, it is democratic to discuss during election-time the budget of the period between one election and the other. It is democratic not to do any electoralism. But this is something we must remind you of. The electoralists are those who change the speech held the previous day, even by a comma, before the announcement of possible elections with the purpose of introducing themselves into the electoral moment ("applause"). You, not us, are doing this! An electoralist does not call a meeting to seek the suitable technical angle to defend even the last comma of his untouched speech during election-time. I do not wish to buy myself a clean conscience, but I love to tell people like Marco Boato and others who have spoken here to be very cautious in accusing us of forms of Leninism or electoralism. We have better things to do than argue with you or criticize your behaviour; we need to fight on the democratic class front

of the alternative and of the defense of life. Comrades from Democrazia Proletaria, comrades from the PDUP, comrades from the "area" ("applause"): those who are engaging in these days in a tiresome electoralist quest (understandable, as long as we realize how little responsibility is involved in the behaviours held until yesterday) to redefine the language, repropose unitarian angles of hope to replace separatism, despair and bitterness, should know that we are here to say that once again we want all those who will vote for the radicals on June 10 to be filled with optimism on the following day or a year later; that the reasons for which he voted radical, modest as they may be, will have been respected and will not produce people like Corvisieri, divisions and all the rest that tastes like bitterness and defeat ("applause"). Comrade Rodotà (17) quite rightly underlined yesterday that our so-called technical-electoral proposition is a political proposition proper. But while ideological and political proclama

tions are a hemorrhage against political morality (which means following up words with facts) we commit ourselves to respecting the motivations, hopes and expectations of each person, to offer in its bareness (which is also beautiful) the technical instrument, the linchpin of the hope for a better day (3 or 11 June, regardless). Ours is therefore a technical proposal, not a technocrat's proposal; it is a technical suggestion: we have the responsibility to suggest the tools to these workers of the missed revolution. The workers' place in history lies also in the fact that there is an evolution from the imprecise confrontation of the populace, of the unemployed, with the moments of exploitation, to the precise moment in which the worker becomes accustomed to a daily contact with precise processes and tools, with specific places and facts. This is how strikes become a possible instrument of the revolutionary struggle, replacing the riots or the attacks on the policeman, the tax collector or the drafter.

This is our centrality

Therefore, ours is a wholly political proposal. But it is also a proposal which must correspond, without any triumphalism and with a strong sense of responsibility, to the awareness of our centrality, which is by now evident. We had always hoped to be short-lived, to disband ourselves not in the sad "cupio dissolvi" of drugs or terrorism, but to disband ourselves as soon as possible to create vaster forms of organized unity of the socialist and libertarian left. We were radicals, but our intention was converging as soon as possible as radicals into the organization of the socialist protagonism. We had and we still have the duty, therefore, to realize our central position between the PDUP and DP, and realize the opportunities for dialogue and responsibility, the basis of which is the centrality of the radical initiative. The opportunity for the comrades of Lotta Continua to bring their newspaper to its original status, in terms of quality and quanti

ty, during the season of the referendums, a couple of years ago, redeeming it from the current qualitative and quantitative disaster, calls for the centrality of the dialogue which we radicals want to force all these comrades to start without inhibitions or forms of triumphalism.

In South Tirol a decaying alternative left, made Catholic, self-pitying and full of deceptions, alienation and pain; with Alex Langer, who was on the verge of leaving not only Rome but perhaps even Italy; with the other comrades who were enemies for themselves and for others, because they didn't realize (small churches and sects often seek refuge in hatred and tears) that they were being defeated by the enemy, and constantly sought, instead, the responsibilities of their neighbours. We went deliberately to South Tirol to reconstruct our party at the electoral level and to contribute to saving the human heritage represented by the comrades who, in the years between 1965 and 1970, had represented in that region not us, but what we represented elsewhere.

The radical centrality is such that it cannot tolerate the mistake of defending the radicals' presumed affiliation - suddenly discovered also by the "Paper of the Workers" - to the "area" and to the "movement". Not is it possible to accept this thing about unity with the following device: there supposedly is a social operation (DP) and a progressivist democratic-bourgeois opposition of the honest bourgeois, supposedly represented by us. In difficult moments - they now say - it is necessary to unite, to change everything, to unite social left, class left, social phenomena and democratic-bourgeois-constitutional left, which is nonetheless part of the "class heritage". This is what they say. But, alas, it is not true. If I were convinced that comrade Gorla or comrade Capanna (to mention the best ones in their activities in the institutions) represent the social left, the class-conscious left, I would side with them, because I do not believe Toqueville, Bertrando Spaventa and all the major bourgeois thinkers of

the historical Right, of the democratic state, can be supported by anything other than by the class-conscious left, as Gobetti said. In that case, tell me why the intolerant communist bureaucracy (intolerant especially against the communists and socialists) has been paying a salary and neutralizing Antonio Lettieri and Elio Giovannini? As if they could talk, alone, in social terms, of class, and better than we can! Isn't it absurd? If anything, they represent the appendix, the most dignified expression of the subordinated condition of the bureaucracy of the unions, which aims to have this cover at the top rather than at the base.

This parody of unity, therefore, leaves us unmoved. Either we achieve it also individually, in our daily existence, or we will have a class-conscious left incapable of presenting itself as the prefigurement of the new order of the State. A left without this capacity is, however, doomed to fail, as always; likewise, the bourgeois and liberal left that imagined it could achieve the alternative of the democratic state, of a law equal for all, of equality of the points of departure, of the respect of the rights of conscience, without making Gobetti's (18) class choice, is destined to failure. It would be defeated once again, or would have to transform itself into "left-wing independents" to have, in exchange for the defeat, the moments of legitimation of existing daily in places where the socialist and communist trial and mass of legitimation of who is not communist or socialist are celebrated, to cover up the all-bourgeois bureaucrats that have traditionally dominated the democratic class movement. Thus, the It

alian unionism has been purged of what was, ultimately, a characteristic of the British labour party, that of the Trade Unions, thanks to which unions and parties together can provide a democratic class alternative!

Only if parties and unions are united also from an organizational point of view, albeit with specific forms of independence, can they propose a democratic and classist organization of the working forces versus the democratic and classist (but interclassist in its cover) of the world of the capitalist production which operates through lobbyist and bureaucratic structures.

Avoid repeating the slaughter of '72

Vittorio Foa, Lelio Basso (19), Tonino Lettieri (when he wrote about ideology, not circular letters as he does today) all acknowledged the necessarily class-conscious quality of the bourgeois ideals of the French revolution. We cannot, therefore, accept this parody: insulting each other, then meeting each other, mutually gratifying each other as class-conscious left, paying homage to those who "must" be bourgeois democrats: "Pleased to meet you, honoured to cooperate with you for a while!" ("applause"). I believe here - not elsewhere - is where the class-conscious left is. It is precisely for this reason that our technical suggestion becomes a political suggestion. We are saying that, whether they are wrong or whether we are wrong, we hope we will give birth to people like Corvisieri or Emma Bonino. No vote should be sacrificed to the slaughter of 1972, for which they are preparing anew. As far as I am concerned, I repeat that if Mimmo Pinto (20), Marco Boato and the others, without warnings, without organi

zation, despite Marco's defects, accept, we could guarantee them to be ready to give a helping hand to the comrades of Lotta Continua, if this could avoid their despair and save an enormous potential of clean forces. We would like to give to them as we gave Alex Langer in Bolzano or Sandro Boato in Trento, the opportunity to tell us "thank you and goodbye" on 11 June. We have been elected with you, but now, since we are once again armed with something, we will start organizing the movement, the party, the area; whatever they want!" It is a heritage that should not be wasted. I perceive anyone's change from hope to despair, from optimism to resignation or cynicism as an irreparable loss for the radical party and for socialism ("applause").

Our and your centrality, comrades, as we are gathered like this morning, is a centrality that does not concern the slightly racist fact of the twenty or twenty-five year-olds (though we reached 35 year-olds in the period between 1968 and 1977). There has always been, also in the choice of the tools of struggle, a fierce racism, albeit instinctive and unaware, in the so-called revolutionaries of 1968-1977. Their choice isolated the elderly, if anything because it required a certain fitness to run in the streets or resist ten hours in the assemblies.

This prevented all those who have been sentenced by the capitalist system to be purged from the productive process for the sole fact of being the holders of that ancient achievement of the working class which is called retirement, to quit their status of civil death. Today this achievement has become a curse, a fear, because it has been reabsorbed by the scarce class consciousness, by the scant awareness that one cannot be class conscious without considering with love the body, sex, everything; even age is class-conscious, and that is the front where we must defend ourselves and win, also for the opponents, in the name of the hope of a class which needs to be legitimated - not by ideologies - to the point of constituting a point of reference.

History proves that it is far from true that the majority has always been the expression of the best values. Only those who know it can trust the majority and renounce any form of populism or demagogy.

This type of leading class, which conceives socialism simply as the occupation of the class of socialism, will continue to bring personalities such as Palmiro Togliatti to the forefront, and keep other ones in the shade, personalities such as Jean Jaurès or Turati (21) and other social-democrats who were, at least in their humanity, socialists, and who would never, for no reason, for no reason of party, for no fear, have turned into torturers and murderers of the comrades they had shared their entire existence with ("appluase").

Old age, when life is dreadful...

Ours, therefore, is a centrality with respect to old age, just as it is central with respect to Italian proletarian and subproletarian women, to each woman, including middle class women, who have been kept their whole life through in a proletarian and subproletarian condition. It is a centrality with respect to those women whose only freedom was faith, the opportunity to believe; when everything else comes apart, when life is dreadful, when there is no other solution but committing suicide or killing or giving up or hoping in life after death. But the day the grandmother, the seventy year-old who has been exploited all her life, who has always voted for "democrazia", i.e. Democrazia Cristiana, realizes all this, that woman will have won her historical battle against those who have made havoc of religiousness, of women and of class ("applause").

Ours is the union of open hands, those hands that only occasionally hold a pen, when they sign for the referendums in the street. They are poor hands, even when they are overly polished; they are the hands of the people who come sign after having been taught that this will allow them to be truly women, or to win their battle for love (in other words - as they perceive it - for marriage); or the hands of mothers who take a break once a week. They are workers' hands, not the ones depicted in manifestos that are dangerously all alike, stylistically, in fascist or socialist realism ("applause"). Or they are solid and tough hands, or fishermen's hands, deformed by arthritis and who also vote for the Christian Democrats very often. Or they are hands worn by washing powders, even now that there are washing-machines. Even touching today's super washing powders makes them worn like in the past, when women washed their laundry for hours with "lye".

The radical centrality is also this intuition that our opponents had before us, with the consequent, fierce attempt to silence us, to disfigure us or prevent people from knowing us for what we truly are. I increasingly believe that, whatever our external aspect, from that of Mario Appignani to that of Jean Fabre, people would recognize us if they came to know us, and recognize themselves through us.

The problem of honest information as the prerequisite for democracy is a fundamental problem. Clearly we are "bourgeois" in terms of ideals. But we are also and especially socialists, and what's more, "romantic" socialists. In other words, we are the only "scientists" of the beginning of the century, the holders of historical certainties, not of absolute truth. For us it is impossible for democracy not to be based on the possibility for everyone to judge, from Almirante (22) to Pannella ("applause"). If the country had known, as it had the right to (and as Almirante in particular had the right to), through a public and free debate, what Almirante and the MSI were in 1964, in 1965 and in 1966, it would have been impossible for them to make the apology which Almirante, the MSI and the paleofascists made at the time of the Codice Rocco (23), of the fascist laws, of corporativism.

And this would have made it impossible for the traditional left to carry out the current policy of defending the fascist laws and the Codice Rocco, the Codice Reale, the courts martial, the aberrant laws on state abortion sponsored by Giovanni and Enrico Berlinguer (24) and by Cardinal Benelli. With Almirante on TV, the country would have been allowed to better realize what fascism was, and what antifascism was. Apart from the fact that the fierce "antifascism" used against Almirante was not applied to Michelini. The fact is that Almirante is an accomplished artist, he can talk better than they can, and therefore they were afraid of him.

Yes, there was a dignity in fascism

But who was it who accused Almirante? Possibly those who needed to cover the fact that in Bologna, a Court of Appeal during a five-minute trial, acquitted Almirante from the charge of having been a member of a firing squad, after so much demagogy on other sentences, for five or six years. This happened a month ago, but you know nothing about it. According to previous sentences of the judiciary, Almirante had been charged with being a member of a firing squad. But that Court of Appeal of Bologna acquitted Almirante in five minutes' time. And we know no one in Bologna can be in radical dissent with its mayor. Obviously the Court of Appeal is influenced by that strict organization of the city, of the region, of the social classes. If that Court of Appeal had been wrong, all the press would have written about that sentences. Instead no one knew anything about it.

But the question is, who is it that really "consumed" Almirante? Who has managed to make a caricature out of him, which is what he really is? He is no fascist wreck. Fascism is something with a much greater and more terrible dignity. Giorgio Almirante has nothing to do with it. The executors, the killers, the masterminds, are not today's fascism. We have been saying it over and over: fascism today is Oronzo Reale (25) in lieu of Alfredo Rocco, Pedini in lieu of Giovanni Gentile (26). Almirante a fascist? No, Moro is a fascist. Ugo La Malfa (27) - a personality of the left whom I love dearly - is a fascist, as I said ten years ago. If anything, Ugo La Malfa, Giuseppe Saragat (28), without realizing it have the historical dignity of having imposed and proposed, in these twenty years, a process of crucifixion of our Republic, of our consciences, of the children that will come, of the laws of Giovanni Gentile and Alfredo Rocco, which have mostly been rendered infamous also from a technical point of view, out of

political realism.

There are clowns and third-rate actors also in the Right. We must not think that clowns are left-wing simply because Dario Fo (29) tells us so. When that clown, the one who presented himself and was presented as the heir of Benito Mussolini (30), went and played the papal Zouave during the referendum on divorce, and half of his electorate (which had elected him two years before, in 1972) turned its back on him to come vote with us; now that that clown has gone so far as to ask the women of the MSI to engage in "national feminism" ("applause"), this proves once again our centrality. Because ours is a class centrality, firstly for those who voted for the communists, but also for those who voted for the Christian Democrats and for those who, leading the comrades from Lotta Continua and Adriano Sofri (31) into a serious mistake, elected Ciccio Franco head of the popular revolt in Reggio Calabria; and for those who voted people who inevitably exploited them and threw them into despair, like Lauro (32), whom they

voted because they loved him.

The Movement accuses of being "ultraleninists"!

This is our centrality, whether we like it or not. But we must accept it, comrades! We must not be concerned about being accused of "ultraleninism". I realize it is tiresome to have to come to terms every day with these charges and suspicions, which come from the "area" and which range from "bourgeois" to "exhibitionists". It's no use: everyone bears his cross, and this is ours, comrades! Personally speaking, I am a "previous offender" because ten years ago I accepted to be editor of Lotta Continua when no one else wanted to do it. I have no passport, in spite of the fact that I am a Member of Parliament. I refused to have a passport without the certainty that the other 60 comrades who were sentenced together with me eight years ago as Lotta Continua had also been given back their passports. You will hardly see me in Warsaw or elsewhere, except in the E.C. countries. This is because I have been branded a member of Lotta Continua, one of the organizers of the massacre of Trento or of similar attacks. Without

counting the thirty million we lent to Lotta Continua the other day. Sometimes I feel like one of those spoilt kids who think they are entitled to everything, but who have a love-hate relationship with their parents and blame mummy and daddy for having given them too much. On the one hand they ask, on the other they are ashamed of having received too much.

The centrality must be consistent with our alternative, class-conscious democratic statutory plan. Do you consider it normal that despite the fact that 43% of Italians voted "yes", we are accused of robbing the non-radical militants who collected the signatures for the referendum with us?

If we did not say, even today (in spite of the fact that they are covering us with mud and saying that that was a radical-fascist coalition) that we defend everyone, all those "yes" votes (without analysing which are the "good" ones and which the bad ones, the favourite sport of those who cannot even save the 23% of Italians who voted against the Reale Law), what should they say about the 60% that voted for divorce in 1974? Even then the PDUP (erstwhile Manifesto) was partly against the referendums. But we must represent and recognize things as they are. We must acknowledge that those victories were obtained thanks to people who, while not left-wingers, voted with us all the same so that others would be encouraged to join the battle to uphold civil and class rights.

In the message to our congress, written on the day in which he was killed, there is a beautiful page by Pasolini (33) that says, beware the recovery of your civil rights which the communist and Marxist intellectuals will operate, because in that case they would be worthless. Civil rights for those who are comrades, i.e. for us? Fine. But what about the "others?" I know only one "other": the fascist, because antifascism is the essence of the radical militancy, at all levels. I believe people like Ernesto Rossi (34) and Terracini struggled precisely because they wanted no more Rossis, Terracinis or kids jailed for reading, ten years ago, Nietzsche, and Cacciari or Evola today. Perhaps they had bought "Mein Kampf" but they could not read it without being jailed or criminalized. They were not allowed to live out their emotions, their compensation with what chance had offered them.

We are all fascists, seven times a day

Therefore, our "antagonist" is the fascist; or rather, "I believe each of us is a fascist seven times a day. In other words, I think each of us behaves like a fascist". You, dear comrades of "L'Unità, are today's fascists, today's fascists in terms of behaviour! ("applause"). Which is the "fascism" we fear? The fascism of Pino Rauti? Which is the "fascist" force in Italy? Gianni Agnelli (35), the great capitalist? Or Baffi, or Infelisi? We radicals think not. But then we say no one is dying today of "fascism". We know fascism is a serious thing. Fascism means war. Fascism means imperialism. Fascism means male chauvinism. But fascism also means an establishment which prevents the press from covering certain events by self-censorship (as during the fascist regime) or certains news coming from the U.S. on nuclear power plants. I did not see the notes of the great journalists nor those of Di Bella, or of Afeltra. But I know that had they acted as journalists, they would have devoted an entire page not to the thr

ee hours of Berlinguer already covered by TV (radio and television combined broadcast all three hours to 50 million Italians), but to this event, which the state-owned TV barely mentioned. Today we must die for Enel (36) instead of for Libya and Albania! ("applause"). Non-radical comrades who are here with us today: tell them we are not insulting the comrades! Even when they accused us of being worms in the coalition of the left, we always said we considered no one a worm. There were simply the "others". And the others were not the other antifascists, but the fascists. We have always refused to insult even the MSI. In order not to insult them and also in order not to ridicule fascism. Not out of anger, but out of lack of love as comrades, we feel today that "fascism" means you too. Fascism means the fascist laws, the fascist national and international economic framework. If consociative participation is the parameter of present-day democracy, we already have the prominent jurist, the prominent politician, th

e prominent unionist (in this major participated democracy, and I'm not referring to Ingrao (37)) of this democracy: Alfredo Rocco, Rossoni, Bottai.

They need to make no effort, so much so that when Giovanni Berlinguer becomes a legislator on the problem of abortion, he bases his "compromise" on the cultural recovery of a notion which can be found in the Italian history only in the positions of Nicola Pende, of Gedda and of Father Agostino Gemelli (the idea of a cheap materialism which frightens the true materialist and any humanism: all the more does it frighten the libertarian, communist and Marxian one) siding with a minority of the Church (with Saint Basil vs. Saint Augustine) in saying that when a biochemical process is triggered, the man, the entire human being and his dignity are already there. And that therefore the law has been conceived to defend that human being, not the woman who is the victim of the fascist laws that are still in force ("applause"). Confronted with such cultural, scientific and intellectual nonsense, there is no difference with the reasons for which the communist and antifascist Togliatti became the torturer of the memory an

d of the humanity of Trotzky, Bucharin and of all his communist comrades from 1936 to 1940, thus becoming an ally of the murderers for reasons of state, and for the sake of party and of communism.

Comrade Berlinguer should be aware of these things. I never think other people are worse than myself. This legend about Mussolini becoming a fascist simply because the Embassy of France paid him on the eve of the war...sure, perhaps he took some money! But he did not live as the son of a blacksmith and of a school teacher, exiled, poor, imprisoned in many countries of Europe; he was not acclaimed as the charismatic leader of the great Italian socialist unitarian party, whence he was appointed editor of "L'Avanti!" (albeit with the opposition of the reformists) simply because he had received some money from the embassy of France, without finding a real continuity of this past also in 1935, when he said Italy was the great proletarian that called for the the support of the poor and of the peoples for the "mission of civilization" in favour of the blacks who were being "exploited" by the British colonialism versus the imperialist and capitalist international demo-plutocracy. No, all this cannot be explained wit

h that money. Other inner ambiguities, other difficulties must make us wary. And precisely as radicals, we realize that even the worst of laws is much better than the law of the jungle, the law of violence (even the barbarian laws of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is better), precisely because from that moment on, we become possible subjects, and not just objects of other laws. Because that way the establishment will be forced to recognize that there is a rule which it too must respect.

Giving back the socialist protagonism to 80% of the communists, of the socialists, of the radicals

If we bear this in mind, then we realize perfectly well that the radical centrality must aim today at recovering the growth of the socialist protagonism for 80% of the Italian communists, 80% of the Italian socialists and 80% of the Italian radicals. This is the challenge that faces us.

Let us go together, comrade Landolfi, to see Berlinguer's speech yesterday. The anti-radical blackout you mentioned yesterday was inevitable: it would have been impossible to let the radicals talk, for two reasons. First of all, because speaking about them while confirming the Stalinist cheapness of congress thesis no. sixty (or any other number: it is the thesis in which we are accused of radical-fascism, and which has not been amended) was a bit difficult, ultimately. It would have taken a lot of guts to do it in front of all the television stations. Imagine the laughs of 80% of the comrades of the PCI who voted with us last year against the indication of their party, if they had heard Enrico Berlinguer proffer what is about to become an official decision of the party, and which brands us as infested and dangerous radical-fascists.

The other reasons is that, notwithstanding Berlinguer's three-hour speech, he did not mention the 11th of June or the whole of last year. Why? That is the logic of Barbato, of TV: if we need to abrogate the radicals, then we will soon need to abrogate at least a year of Italian history, comrade Berlinguer! And you cannot say what happened on June 11, what happened in Trieste and Bolzano, you can't talk about our sympathy with the railway workers, with those who struggled in the hospitals. You couldn't do that without mentioning the shameful episode of Ugo Spagnoli on TV, telling people, in pure propaganda style that voting to repeal the Reale Law meant releasing Curcio, Vallanzasca and Concutelli. Did you say these things to deceive the fascists? No! You said them to deceive the communists, the socialists and the democrats!

At a certain point, comrade Berlinguer said, "I cannot talk here and now about how we reached the decision, in November or December, to believe that we would have been forced to stage this congress pageant.

I can believe that, comrade Berlinguer. You were forced to do it because your comrade Celso Ghini had carried out a survey, in early November, that revealed that the communist party would have lost 14% of votes in the working places. Imagine in other places! ("applause"). And you did it because there had been those facts (the referenda, Trento, Trieste and Bolzano, the union workers, the railway workers), and a period of labour negotiations

in the public sector was likely to follow.

But what sort of a leader (if he can refrain from referring certain things at the congress) is someone who needs to repeal the analysis and the existence of many years of political struggle? A person who does not mention what happened in the nuclear power plant in the U.S., who says we need to struggle to achieve a socialist society but who says nothing about the French communists' choice and on the nuclear society! At least the French communists still (formally) oppose NATO. But how could Enrico Berlinguer preach against plutonium while he explained only that under the Nato umbrella we could better struggle to achieve socialism in our country! ("Applause").

A dreadful logic, the centralism of the PCI

Not only is last year never mentioned, but use is being made of fascism on television, of the mobs, of the launderers of the money of Sindona (38) and of the others who finance themselves with the laws on editorial activities, which we had the honour of blocking. And the journalists who censor the radicals today because they consider them excessive will come crying tomorrrow about how they will be treated in a few years' time, if they continue to be communists or socialists in their papers; and they will tell us we were right. But today they are overwhelmed by realism. What difference does one person more or one less make?

Repealing the past is easy. The problem is that we will also have to avoid mentioning the real future. We have been told (I can't remember whether by "L'Unità", "Il Quotidiano" or "La Sinistra") that this congress lacks any reference to the real data of the "class" (work, bread, etc). I would like to point out that the Chambers of Commerce and you yourselves should be concerned about this structure of social and salary life. Today it is difficult in any case to express oneself, to try to communicate despite our vulgar, coarse, clownish "gags" (failing which, however, Democrazia Proletaria would not even have obtained a share in 1976). Today you are killing each other for the elections, while we kill each other with Selva, with the DC, with the communists, to obtain a bit more truth for you too, to save ourselves but especially to save you. For you, on the other hand, attacking the radicals with nonchalance is still one of your favourite sport these days ("applause"). I was saying that the problem is this, fo

r Bettino Craxi (39) as for Enrico Berlinguer: how can you protest against plutonium and the nuclear society while you are in favour of NATO, possibly even with the communists of yesterday who are against NATO but in favour of nuclear energy? How can you talk about socialism without taking into account that this is the time in which we must choose tomorrow's technologies, which are to contain the destiny of self-management or supercapitalism?

Class struggle also means "soft" technology

Self-management is not a "flatus vocis": it is neither a hope nor a dream. It is a "technical" fact, like that electoral agreement which is implicit in one technology and is excluded instead in another. Class struggle also means, therefore, trying to impose one technology in lieu of another, choosing the "soft", alternative technology. But this is no reasons to say, as you did in Genova, that the radicals, the Amici della Terra (who carry out these struggles) are class "enemies". I, for example, can be in favour or against solar energy, since it is possible, in six or seven years' time, to conceive and construct a satellite capable of storing solar energy in such quantity as to burn fifteen square kilometres of earth at its passage.

This is also the problem of the small artisan, the one who lives in Trastevere or Testaccio, who joined the socialist or the republican parties. That was the time in which working was a pleasure, when there was a creative relationship with a certain social framework which was ultimately absorbed by the extreme Right, by corporativism vs. collectivism. It is only with alternative energy that we can recover the pleasure and the sphere of artisan work, pouring energy into the networks of the Enel, which should act as an energy bank, instead of a monopoly of uncontrolled energy expenditure.

It is on these material, coherent things that the confrontation will have to take place, that the choice will need to be taken for the life of all of us, for the life of the parties, for the life of the communist party, for the life of Parliament.

We radicals are particularly matter-of-fact and serious about economics. We are the party of economics. We save economics instead of spending it continuously. We concern ourselves with the fundamental facts: interclassism, ENI (40), real estate, welfare, law no. 167, the energy sector. At the communist congress they will discuss the meetings between Catholics and communists, but not of these issues, of the reform of the codes, for example. The communist party, comrade Berlinguer, has accepted, in September, that the Italian Parliament postpone once again the implementation of that Code of penal procedure which had been ready for a year and which comrade Ingrao, violating the rules, did not allow me to effectively submit to the Chamber (though we presented it in any case). This is because the passage of that code of penal procedure is incompatible with the common choice made by Pecchioli (41) and Cossiga (42), to entrust the hope for order in Italy to a further reactionary system - four more decrees - which i

s, in turn, incompatible with the code of criminal procedure already drafted by one of their commissions.

All this is never mentioned, therefore. But what do they talk about then? It seems life is very simple, and that ultimately we are also guilty of an irresponsible isolation. They acknowledge us to be people who struggle. Run-down, clownish perhaps, but people who struggle, certainly not people who govern. I believe instead that the radical party is and has been throughout these years a party of government (as we have been forced to say in Parliament). A party that governs situations, a party that governs the feelings for which this society is plunging into chaos, a party that governs with its responsibility and tends to govern also with other people, not over other people...Berlinguer was not ashamed of talking about "religious peace" to be guarantied in Italy! When Benito Mussolini tried to explain stuff like this at the primary schools in 1932-34, he mentioned it with greater shame, so ludicrous it was ("applause").

In other words, we would never want to organize this type of meeting between communists, socialists and Catholics!

Comrades, I have a suggestion on the subject. After the many proposals to the unity of those who believe in something else but power and money, I claim I am one of you by the fact that as of January, the havoc of Catholic religiousness (as of our civil life), which consisted in waving embryos and zygotes in front of everyone's eyes, and screaming and tearing one's hair out, is over!

It was enough to evoke the child who is really being murdered to receive a message on the part of someone who is damaged by the fact that the media have not yet realized the deep innovative intelligence which pours on us daily as that of a journalist or a political analyst.

Gianni Baget Bozzo (43) (a priest) is one of the most eminent Thomists in Italy. He is a man who says clearly that he can understand and practice the Italian political life because the referents and references which he has obtained as a theologians for his culture he uses to better interpret the reality of the ideologies and of the sociology of our country. On this week's "Radical Subjects", Gianni Baget Bozzo does more than simply explain ourselves to ourselves, as only he and Angelo Panebianco (44) are capable of doing. He goes beyond this, and addresses an appeal to the radicals for this battle to defend life, of which he provides all the theological arguments, because the one you will find in "Radical Subjects" is a theological article.

This is precisely what I was asking for four months ago! Faced to those who told us - and it was true - that theology had found in its history the excommunication "latae sententiae" for anyone who practiced abortion, i.e. the excommunication "in re", I addressed an appeal to the Catholic theologians, asking them to find in their theology the "latae sententiae" also against the murderers (and thieves of 400,000 billion spent on weapons) of some half a billion men and women in ten years ("applause").

In his article on "Radical Arguments", Baget Bozzo suggests that the radical movement for life and peace and Benelli's movement for life meet and exchange views. It may be scandalous, but, comrades, remember Pasolini: "be unrecognizable at all times! You feared neither the republican nor the pharisee nor the fascist, and that's is saying a lot!"

I ask the Catholics to find an agreement on values...

I am not endorsing this appeal out of respect towards the person who launched it. I will simply pass it on to Cardinal Benelli, to the Movement for life, to the Italian clericals and Catholics, adhering, for my part, to Baget Bozzo's proposal to meet and start this work which is surely, as Salvatore Sechi said, also an anti-imperialist, socialist, antimilitarist, democratic class battle which unites us all ("applause").

Comrade Berlinguer, it is on values that the socialist or communist Catholic man of faith can unite! On the campaigns for life, not on the Reale laws, not on NATO diplomacy! Comrade Berlinguer, this is the left! ("prolonged and hearty applause").

Some of you - not everyone - can legitimately doubt, since we have been together in these days - that my joy of being able to await the joy of living is undiminished and complete. Never as in these moments, comrades of Lotta Continua, have I felt so enriched also by the history of the many subproletarians and drug addicts, whose sacrifice we have not managed to prevent - and we knew it. But at least we tried to some extent to live with them, day and night in the common places and streets.

I repeat my political, biased, socialist, communist, Christian proposal: the project of the right to refuse to accept the extermination of dozens of millions of people as inevitable. If a world is so degraded as to want to consider the murder of dozens of millions of people as normal, it is not that I do not want to live in this world, but this is a world that will kill me, because there are so many ways to leave when one is tired of living.

I repeat here that I link my existence to that of at least hundreds of thousands of people. Mine and theirs, because this class-discriminating and racist price must be paid so that others will mobilize to save one of them, perhaps more. I will relentlessly defend my right and their right to live! I will do so, comrades of "Il Quotidiano", "Manifesto" and "Lotta Continua", "L'Unità", reminding you that being comrades means, first and foremost, a way of living, not a way of filling your newspaper with articles on the elections and on Pannella's proposal, after you expelled this battle from your existence as women and men of the left for nine months! ("applause"). I propose to the committee, to comrade Terracini, to Emma, to all of you, to march on Easter day (it is far away but it will come), not with our head covered with ashes, but with our entire lives and our reasons, and to march from Porta Pia, after a lay, militant watch (departing from the Fosse Ardeatine or elsewhere).

I will open a parenthesis: alright, comrades of the PCI, let us enact mass delation, irresponsible and stupid as you are today, to combat the Red Brigades. But in that case, prepare another load of insults for those who talk to you and for the others. If we do not refuse their barbaric laws of war, then you must - since you are so ferocious against Curcio and the terrorists, against their despair and their mistakes - come to terms with the 44 SS officers from South Tirol who were assassinated in Via Rasella simply because they were wearing another uniform, and for whom the comrades of Giustizia e Libertà (45) and the Jews died at the Fosse Ardeatine! We cannot analyse history cannot come without these inner dilemmas, and without saying that no just cause can wash away the guilt of being barbarians and murderers.

If the young people of the Azione Cattolica are barbarians and murderers, then Curcio, who is depicted as a sort of modern Saint Gabriel or Saint Michael as he crushes the demon with his foot and becomes the champion of the struggle against capitalism, and they too kill, murder and sacrifice themselves, then Carla Capponi, "our" Carla, Gold Medal of the Resistance, should be remembered with Antonella, Amendola and the others for placing that bomb in Via Rasella.

If we have a relation of intimacy with the fascist history, then we have the same relation with the worst torturers, with my comrades Togliatti and Curcio ("applause").

Having said this, I propose that all our organizations take to the streets on Easter Day. Elections may not be held. Let's discover the beauty and significance of the tables on the sidewalks to collect signatures. We cannot consider ourselves radicals without this instrument. We are not innovative and we are not renewing ourselves without this different way of serving others and ourselves.

On Easter day, for that 2% and those hundreds of thousands of people which I am part of, we should depart from Porta Pia - to be won back from illegal cardinals and illegal mayors - with our rose and our olive branches, after inviting to this unity the socialist and communist Catholics, the communist party, the communist sections, the deputies and mayor Argan; we will depart from Porta Pia to reach Saint Peter's Square with our banners one hour before the Easter "urbi et orbi" blessing, and will laically entreat Pope John Paul II to say on that occasion, in front of all televisions of the world, not that the Church grieves death as it has always done, but that it sides with those who want to do something this year to rescue at least a few hundred millions of people from death. This is what we shall ask, and this is what we should be asking for in the streets too. Comrades, you will not find this in tomorrow's papers. Obviously! ("applause"). If today Gianfranco had gone personally to see Selva, the editors w

ould have been very pleased! They could have concentrated their attention on Selva rather than on this address. There is nothing to distract them. Mario [Appignani, ed.] behaved properly and gave them no opportunities...

...I propose a constitutional covenant to the DC (and the PCI)

Personally speaking, I ask the comrades not to do something, but to recognize a fact; and I am announcing this, my friends journalists, from this tribune.

I propose a constitutional covenant to the Christian Democratic Party. I mean it seriously. We will go to the elections with the offer of a constitutional covenant. I can see the comrades are laughing, and they are right, because deep down they know we have always been doing it. Simply, the press never realized it.

As a pre-Easter olive branch, we offset the abuse of the communists with this proposal of a constitutional covenant to the DC and the PCI together. They both share interclassism, so we have to do it!

Our suggestions is that, no matter who wins the elections, the government (left-wing or right-wing) will have to promulgate laws of constitutional application, and will be free to fulfil that task, and the opposition must not bother it.

We are here. The Constitution conquered by the Catholic, communist and socialist partisans...etcetera, the great popular unity..etcetera etcetera, which should not be wasted in dire moments, under the threat of terrorism...etcetera etcetera ("applause"). Obviously, comrades! Giulio Andreotti (46), Fanfani (47) and the others should know that there is a new askari in the making, aside from the traditional ones of Italian politics and of the Italian left! It is the radical askari! We promise not to bother them, if they obtain the government, and say no to Ingrao's and Berlinguer's policy of participatory consociation except if they violated the Constitution! But in that case (you will agree with me, comrade Berlinguer) as we said in 1953 and in 1969, not only will we practise obstructionism at the Chamber, but we will also take to the streets!

Do you really believe the honest people who have always voted as Christians would side with the DC rather than with us on the subject of the reform?

Can you imagine what would have happened in these years if we had managed to pass our thesis according to which, in accordance with the Constitution, the committee of inquiry would be authorized only to protect the ministers in force and not former ministers from the judiciary?

From this congress we address the formal, humble and sincere proposal formulated by Baget Bozzo. But who will want to accept it? Fanfani? Today's Fanfanis are not yesterday's! After the 13th of May, Fanfani is no longer Fanfani Fanfani, but a halved Fanfani ("laughter"). The Fanfani who used to make arrogant and difficult moves seems to have understood. And in certain moments the President of the Senate seems more eager to protect civil rights than the President of the Chamber.

I must say comrade Berlinguer speaks little with people, he is too self-absorbed, he writes his own speeches. But how can he say that all he blames the DC of is its arrogance? I ask you, comrades: how can he say such things with that tone, when the party told the hospital workers and all the comrades in the sections to shut up because they were ignorant and were disturbing the mastermind? After their arrogance, after the arrogance of their newspaper, for which Umberto Terracini exists only when some bourgeois paper asks him for a statement, and "L'Unità" ignores him completely?

Arrogance unites you, and in arrogance we will defeat you, comrade Berlinguer! You will be defeated by your common arrogance ("applause")!

Socialism calls for a drastic change in productive relations

This proposal of a new unity is important. We can carry on, comrades, communists and socialists, only if we analyse our problems of life and death, which are common to you too. We are a part of politics. Fortunately for the left, there will be no more attacks if I say that my concern is that our party risks losing. Not because it wants to, but because on that front the battle is terrible. The battle which suits it is a battle which must be constant, a battle on drugs, on sexuality, on death, on suicide, on abortion, on the blind (we must rediscover the word "blind", because saying visually impaired is just another way of getting rid of the problem), on the crippled (not the handicapped). We have been given semantic concessions so far. We should worry about this, but there should be many more of us, as members of the radical party but also as members of Parliament and of the Senate, because we might perhaps win the battle against NATO, but the risk is that of losing if we are thirty or forty on precisely thes

e issues, which might appear to be secondary ones, such as the "Braille" language into which culture and non-culture is translated, the sad catechism as it is today. There must be many of us to achieve these feats!

This is our socialism. Productive relations must be overturned and changed. There is no socialism but this. Today we must achieve alternative technologies, not proclaim the class with a "k".

In his excellent report, Jean quite rightly reminded us that the socialist qualitative improvement of the Bolshevist revolution is when in the equation soviet + electricity = revolution and socialist society, Lenin first accepts, out of political and party "realism" to put the soviet in brackets, to make it an "objective". Thus, the imperative is electrification at all costs and Stalin obeys, because if the imperative is industrialization and electrification as the first and only objective and means, then Stalin's revenue program needed to make millions and millions of peasants of the Volga-Don die of hunger, and then to slaughter and exterminate anyone who rebelled against other people's death by starvation. This is the problem! But how can we express it? We cannot, because we will never be allowed to get into touch with Enrico Berlinguer or with Bettino Craxi on these issues, when the entire imperialism of the world, the whole industrial-military complex, the entire Italian capitalism wants the regime to p

revent it from discussing precisely this with Enrico Berlinguer? If there were a televised debate on this, then the mask would have to fall, because today socialism is precisely soviet + electrification; it is alternative technologies. This is what self-management and different productive relations mean. All this means upsetting the military technology; not necessarily the military, but the existing military technology, which needs precisely this kind or work.

If we are to confront ourselves on these issues, I believe it becomes increasingly important that your strength lie in the awareness of the fact that class violence and the violence of war constitute the privileged field in which they want to drag us. That is nonviolence! If he were here and he could listen to me, I would tell Curcio and these desperate bothers who have chosen to become murderers for the things they love and for which they think they are fighting for us too, whether it wouldn't be better to risk living, as I have been doing, as Paolo Carotta and all those who sit at this table have been doing, with a hunger strike capable at least of proving that violence is elsewhere, is in the interlocutor, that dying like Mara and all the comrades who live like you do, brother Curcio, in prison with hundreds of others.

It is also on these issues that we are launching a challenge. We take responsibility, comrade Curcio and comrades of Autonomia and of via dei Volsci, in saying that ours is not a different indication of struggle and centrality. Not yours; we cannot avoid engaging in the battle of the "two percent" and not remind the nouveaux philosophes or the "old betrayers" or bourgeois renegades that reading the Manifesto of 1848 is educational and incredibly enlightening. There is....the proletariat, the lumpenproletariat; there are those who exploit, those who die, those who lack even the right to live, and those who have the duty to risk dying of overweight to foster the same mechanisms of development and profit which cause the death of dozens of millions of people...

The Radical Party can only live in the social, moral and cultural realities...

Comrades, I would no doubt have lots more to tell you. But I believe it is a privilege even just to consider to have the right to say them all; and perhaps it would be exaggerated to hope that I can even just touch upon them; but there are some which I cannot help mentioning.

For example, that which I consider to be a new radical campaign, which has been forced on me by the party congress which - with much inaccuracy, in my opinion - have mentioned it: the so-called problem of the regionalization of the Radical Party.

This problem does not exist.

The radical party, dear comrades, is achieving no regionalization for the simple fact of meeting in Teramo in five or six people instead of having these five or six comrades come to Rome all the time. At any rate, I think that if these five or six comrades keep on being nomads, and being in constant touch with the growth of ideas and work in Rome, they will be better armed when they return to Teramo to conduct some kind of political action in accordance with the other comrades.

Five or six people do not constitute a party of diversity. Nor does it constitute the the radical antagonist; even less so the radical protagonist! It is a terrible life, a mistake. This may lead us to become sweet sectarians, since I hardly believe we could ever be bitter Jacobins as a model. One can be sweet but also sectarian in reality, constitute into a sect and then live in a sectarian way also within the group.

Regionalization means political struggle to extol the experiences we live in and we come from in their diversity but also in their reality.

The alliance with the regionalists who are already radicals and socialists is an alliance with ourselves; it is the alliance of a sect which is divided by different opportunisms, because those people are like us, perhaps more realistic or opportunist, and guide the movimento Friuli or the list for Trieste, or some other formation. This is a useless effort, the problem lies elsewhere.

Regionalization means doing what we did with the clerical and Catholic women and with the other women, in the struggle for abortion or against abortion. In their diversity they did not understand, but they became united by facts. Regionalization is when a party lives in the conscience of the Region, not when it is continually forced onto the conscience of the "national leaders" of the Radical Party, as a condition of conflict versus centralism and centrality.

The radical party exists whenever, as in Rome with the battle against Petrucci and the Immobiliare, we settled into our specificity and into the actual social, moral and cultural realities of this city.

Nor can it be achieved through an erudite interpretation of the place's specific popular traditions. This is another way to get lost and then be annexed, as erudite people, to the existing class national scheme. The routes to national integration are endless; among other things, its activity, the modules and models of action. The problem is that we must assume the responsibility of a daily confrontation with the local lists and realities while these are still ambiguous and contradictory, i.e. alive; clearly not with PP.TT; when there is 30-40% of a city, as in Trieste, where votes are cast for just causes to a list which is formed by 50% and perhaps 80% by antifascists and a certain type of person, my attempt must be to save that list in its contradiction and unity, while the regime's game is eating it up little by little, carving it up among the parties of the great coalition. They stand there like ravens ready to deprive it of its specific characteristic as popular struggle.

This is a serious theme. The most realistic and politicized comrades thought it was very easy - and they discussed at length on this issue - for the list of Trieste to be part, as such, of the radical list. To me it was an objective, and not a certainty, and therefore I contended that the problem was bringing the right-wing into the list, the Catholic person of the list for Trieste, i.e. the person who prevents the votes which were, until last year, Christian democratic, MSI, liberal or some other list to return to the DC, the MSI, the liberals or another party. That man who last year solved his problems of conscience, who was for his entire life a Christian Democrat, a social democrat, a liberal or some other thing, and then leaves it to defend the Carso and is sentenced for a year to practice an alliance with the radicals: that is the man of the correct popular unity.

"Diversity" means contradicting the system

Since the problem is not that of seeing whether those who share the struggle for abortion with us are also antimilitarists, as advocated by certain feminists who love practising feminism and then indulging their isolation. On divorce, we managed to aggregate people from the MSI and of all kinds onto a major democratic class struggle. The fact that they then left is another matter. But it is we who have deprived Almirante and Fanfani of votes, not the contrary. We did not allow them to take away votes as the parties of the left did in these years, changing their standards ("applause").

No one can accuse us of having even for a moment forgotten or made others forget our difference. We said that anyone who joined our party represented a contradiction. Not our contradiction, but theirs. We must respect this reality, and we must avoid being sectarians. We must extol the diversity which generally chooses the correct part for us. What I am interested in, comrades, is - as I said before - bringing the right-wing of the local lists into the list, for example in Trieste. Not "just" that; it would be great if it still existed, but it no longer exists, the Destra Sardista. It no longer exists because it has been gobbled up. It is entirely and wholly "right-wing" because then one has transformed oneself and joined the electoral formation of the PCI, of the PRI, of the PSDI and so on, one is dead as an autonomous and left-wing force. One is "right-wing" and no longer has anything to do with Lussu and with a certain type of Sardinian independence.

The real problem, comrades, is that alliances are broken within the right to create the list of Trieste. The person who quits the DC, with the local Church, with the liberals or with the socialdemocrats, must surely believe also in something else apart from power or men of power.

I believe it is those believers in good faith who bear the explosive contradictions of the bourgeoisie. Those who continue to believe, in good faith, that we want to force women to abort their babies and become murderers, without realizing that we are the only ones that can disarm Ceasar in his infamous State abortion, and lift up the banner of freedom and responsibility in administering and controlling one's body in motherhood and fatherhood, could be and are already in part women and men with whom we can establish a long and fecund cooperation, whereas this cooperation is impossible with the "politicians", with the "ideologues", with the democratic "realists", because these have by now relinquished any interclassist and class policy.

The Radical Party as an "all-purpose" party of autonomies

It will be an exacting task, but I think that on the occasion of these elections we should act as standard-bearers, as we have been in Bolzano and Trento, for the comrades of Lotta Continua, so that they may come to Rome not as askari or as clients. With the forms of autonomy, with the purpose of saving them. Without this urge, without forcing them, without aggregating them and having them elected in Parliament, they will be destroyed and reabsorbed with the old game of the bourgeoisie or of a certain bourgeoisie that brought about people like Lauro and Giannini (48), because it knew that through these protests, without any cultural or national solidity, it would then have been easy to assimilate them progressively with the interclassism of the Catholic Left and of the right of the communist party and of the interclassist and corporate union.

Comrades, am I being too radical on these issues? No. It is true, on the other hand, that there is no major party which is not also potentially big that is not a container. There is no major party in history which could be exempted from the accusation made by the the petty "revolutionary" intellectuals, of being interclassist.

The communist party today lacks any grandeur, not because there are small aristocrats or aristocratic families and of the upper bourgeoisie that are almost invariably represented in its leadership, as it should be. Not because it has a social situation that matches the Italian civil society. This is not the problem. What makes up the class or interclassist character of a movement are the battles it carries out, the interests it defends, the alliances it practices, the objectives it pursues and achieves. I think that if we fail to understand this, then we will understand very little of the major socialist and democratic potentiality.

Not a fragment of its objectives should be given up. But once accepted, anyone who accepts it must be our ally in pursuing an alternative democratic class policy, full of hopes to win, as we are acknowledged to have won, in daily life, year by year, all the struggle we have carried out. What I propose to this congress is consistent with the excellent address delivered by comrade Jean Fabre, as with everything I said. You too have listened to him, and I was honestly moved by the congress' reaction. It would have been easy to smile or think of something else. But all those present listened to the national secretary without being disturbed by his accent, interested and deeply involved by his words and suggestions ("applause").

Comrades, I have been told about congresses that are not congresses, and about national secretaries who are not such, about Pannella's fading charisma, and of other things. Dear comrades, I really do not think we are progressing thanks to anything but the intuition of the libertarian statute.

Comrades of the "area", comrades: we have always been a party! So many times - you have forgotten - we said we considered that our statute was beyond doubt the highest segment of political theory of praxis and of organization currently existing in Europe ("applause"). We believed it. This is why you misunderstood us, and we resisted when you accused us of opening the party up to the populace. We simply wanted to avoid closing ourselves also to the populace, because the populace that organizes itself becomes proletariat. We did not close ourselves and the populace did not come in.

They accused us of opening up the party to the fascists. They accused us of being double agents. True that there are mental disorders owing to which an individual prefers to peep through the key and see what might be seen openly. And it is true, therefore, that one tends to interpret the reality of the radical party through the voyeurism of the keyhole of one's own experience. But what can we do? The only problem is that that statute was and is inappropriate for a "small party". It was - and it is - the proposal of the theory of praxis, of the organization to the Italian and European socialist protagonist.

Therefore, comrades who accuse us of triumphalism and Leninism, would you really want us to give up not clarity, but the increasingly successful task of keeping this growth for us and you, among the despair of the collapse of the partito d'azione, of the party of popular unity, of the PSIUP, of Il Manifesto and all the rest, whereas we have here a demonstration of potential and power...? We say instead on this occasion that it is once again up to you to join the radical party as we await you us to offer to us too the opportunity to join other parties as well. Perhaps, comrades, you might want to offer us the opportunity to be manipulated by you, to join your party ("applause")!

Therefore, a "major" party, and an inter-classist one. Here we are, with the traditional terms of French socialism, of the great reformative socialism (it too defeated by the scientific socialism as well as by its own limitations and its overly ambition to achieve a revolution in the world, in society, in the new men and women in eighty or a hundred years - an impossible feat) to affirm a few, simple things: a lay 'yes' to dialogue, to confrontation, to the unity in the values with everyone to uphold life, peace, a peace policy with all ("applause"). And I express the wish and hope that those who are different from us, the clericals, the representatives of authoritative churches, the fascists, the republicans, the socialdemocrats, the Jacobins, will come up to us to propose their superiority in our contradictions, to affirm a value of life! But no, comrade Berlinguer, comrade who will write tomorrow on "L'Unità": we say no to an organic class cooperation ("applause"). This old thing constitutes the Proudhoni

an, Marxist, Marxian, Craxian socialism...so that old theories are presented as new, and every day there is a quest to find a new label for an old, obsolete and presocialist policy, the policy chosen by Togliatti and revived in the decline of his policy and of ours, when it has been called "historical compromise". Even now there is the right decency: in three hours he mentioned it only once.

Dear Terracini, being right is a terrible sin!

Terracini will pay dearly for his mistakes. He will be increasingly censured, because being right for certain parties is a terrible sin. As when Gramsci was in prison and he did not agree with Togliatti, the communist was Terracini, the socialist was Terracini. He was a Gramsci, not the organized exile to Moscow or Prague. And Gramsci and Terracini have both been defeated and set aside.

These comrades, comrades workers, were right. With their votes they are sending us a message. Women and men, radicals who were asking to become such, as I hope to become more and more myself. The comrades workers, not the last ones who have come to manage the PCI in Turin, have taught us something. There there is the last descendant of a liberal family, the family of Mario Ferrara, whom I loved dearly, but who was no doubt a representative of the upper bourgeoisie. He is making his delations to "La Repubblica". Giuliano Ferrara, represents the PCI in Turin. The classist proletarian, having to choose between the man or order, Giuliano Ferrara, and us...; not the latecomers, not the young comrades workers - we miss you, Pasolini, but perhaps you died just in time! - but the old comrades, women and men, of Turin, have chosen us, were right when on 11th June last year, to defend the truth of their and our existences, voted "yes", voted for the radicals, saying 'no' to the lies of the party and of the union, whic

h, with ideological terrorism, wanted to force them to vote for the fascist laws. Those women and men were right! These reasons, dear comrades, are tremendously important in the humbleness of our mechanisms and thoughts. Let's tell the comrades of the socialist party: fear not! Rather, fear yourselves! We will carry on as you wish! Antonio Landolfi, the old patient comrade Antonio, whom for years they have charged with representing them here, where there are no men or power but comrades, and who rarely send a representation of the socialist party to other congresses; if you told the truth -and I have no doubts as to your truthfulness - but if your forecast is correct, then we confirm our proposal for a substantial agreement in many regions of Italy, at the Senate too, with the socialist comrades ("applause"). The "socialist" president of the RAI has the tragic responsibility of having created the most fascist and terrorist of all Italian newscasts: the "socialist" TG2. Even though you have this tremendous re

sponsibility of representing with your men the most serious and dangerous moment for the Italian democracy...

Curcio can kill a thousand democrats. Concutelli can kill a thousand democrats. Vallanzasca can kill a thousand, ten thousand or one hundred thousand people. But Grasso and Barbato and those like them kill democracy every day, and leave Italy prey to the terrorists...

If there we only three places available in the prisons of our democratic Italy, we should release the criminals - Curcio and his comrades - because the most dangerous terrorists for democracy and our society, the real fascists are, first and foremost, those I mentioned above, and whom Pasolini incidentally mentioned quite often ("like Barbato...") in his last months of anger, indignation, grief, and impossibility to identify with these whom he considered murderers...

Landolfi, for months you refused to receive us. What good is our real, age-old friendship with Bettino? What good are our twenty-five years of belief that ultimately we share the same goals, if we then have to foster this mutual trust (I always tell the people I love that love is not so much a feeling, but an activity; if it is just a feeling it is consummation, not creation) with daily separation, and poor Bettino is constantly thwarted, frustrated and annihilated by the merry-go-rounds of meetings with everyone except the radicals?

Antonio Landolfi, I want to finish my speech assuring you of this: if we face the elections with this solitude and with this difficulty, if we do not burn the ballot papers and all go, as far as I am concerned during (but especially after) the electoral campaign, our prime commitment will be starting a process for the constitution of the great Italian party of the socialist alternative ("applause") addressed to all those who look forward to this: Christians, Catholics and communists. A major party of the alternative to society which has already been chosen by Willy Brandt and even by Olof Palme.

Beware not to choose, after being subordinated to the communist party and the Christian democratic party, that subordination to socialdemocracy which Europe has chosen to commit suicide, becoming the administrator of NATO policy, of plutonium policy and of the 'no" to the "two percent" at all levels! This is our commitment.

Comrades! Has this speech been electoralistic? It has been electoral and it has always been an Easter speech, considering that the religious emblems reduced to their truth are alien to the history of each of us and to the history of humanity. Therefore, we suggest that the national radio and broadcasting service air classical music not just on holy Friday, but throughout the week of Passion, to underscore the passion of those 100,000 people, women and men, who will die on Friday and on Saturday before Easter and will not resuscitate on Sunday morning ("applause").

We will ask the national radio and broadcasting service to dedicate a week to life, to peace, to disarmament. Together, as nomads and pilgrims, but with our inner doubts, we will be able to say that from Porta Pia to St. Peter's Square, once again a message of love and civilization has been given ("long applause").

("Address of 31 March, QR no. 5-6")

Note: The author has not revised this transcription

Translator's notes

(1) PANNELLA MARCO. Pannella Giacinto, known as Marco. (Teramo 1930). Currently President of the Radical Party's Federal Council, which he is one of the founders of. At twenty national university representative of the Liberal Party, at twenty-two President of the UGI, the union of lay university students, at twenty-three President of the UNURI, national union of Italian university students. At twenty-four he advocates, in the context of the students' movement and of the Liberal party, the foundation of the new radical party, which arises in 1954 following the confluence of prestigious intellectuals and minor democratic political groups. He is active in the party, except for a period (1960-1963) in which he is correspondent for "Il Giorno" in Paris, where he established contacts with the Algerian resistance. Back in Italy, he commits himself to the reconstruction of the radical Party, dissolved by its leadership following the advent of the centre-left. Under his indisputable leadership, the party succeeds in

promoting (and winning) relevant civil rights battles, working for the introduction of divorce, conscientious objection, important reforms of family law, etc, in Italy. He struggles for the abrogation of the Concordat between Church and State. Arrested in Sofia in 1968 as he is demonstrating in defence of Czechoslovakia, which has been invaded by Stalin. He opens the party to the newly-born homosexual organizations (FUORI), promotes the formation of the first environmentalist groups. The new radical party organizes difficult campaigns, proposing several referendums (about twenty throughout the years) for the moralization of the country and of politics, against public funds to the parties, against nuclear plants, etc., but in particular for a deep renewal of the administration of justice. Because of these battles, all carried out with strictly nonviolent methods according to the Gandhian model - but Pannella's Gandhi is neither a mystic nor an ideologue; rather, an intransigent and yet flexible politician - h

e has been through trials which he has for the most part won. As of 1976, year in which he first runs for Parliament, he is always elected at the Chamber of Deputies, twice at the Senate, twice at the European Parliament. Several times candidates and local councillor in Rome, Naples, Trieste, Catania, where he carried out exemplary and demonstrative campaigns and initiatives. Whenever necessary, he has resorted to the weapon of the hunger strike, not only in Italy but also in Europe, in particular during the major campaign against world hunger, for which he mobilized one hundred Nobel laureates and preeminent personalities in the fields of science and culture in order to obtain a radical change in the management of the funds allotted to developing countries. On 30 September 1981 he obtains at the European parliament the passage of a resolution in this sense, and after it several other similar laws in the Italian and Belgian Parliament. In January 1987 he runs for President of the European Parliament, obtaini

ng 61 votes. Currently, as the radical party has pledged to no longer compete with its own lists in national elections, he is striving for the creation of a "transnational" cross-party, in view of a federal development of the United States of Europe and with the objective of promoting civil rights throughout the world.

(2) MORO ALDO. (Maglie 1916 - Rome 1978). Italian politician. Secretary of the Christian Democratic Party (1959-65), mastermind of the Centre-Left policy. Several times minister as of 1956, Prime Minister (1963-68, 1974-76) president of the Christian Democratic Party as of 1956, he favoured the participation of the Communist Party (PCI) in the government, outlining the hypothesis of a so-called "third stage" (after those of "centrism" and "centre-left") of the political system. He was kidnapped by the Red Brigades on 16 March 1978 in Rome and found dead on 9 May of the same year.

(3) CURCIO RENATO. (1941). Charismatic founder and leader of the Red Brigades. Sentenced to life imprisonment.

(4) CAPPONI CARLA. Communist exponent of the Resistance, took active part in the attempt of Via Rasella, where several German soldiers died, causing a German retaliation in which 300 hundred Italians died, shot at the Fosse Ardeatine.

(5) TROMBADORI ANTONELLO. Roman communist exponent, member of Parliament, essayist and writer.

(6) AMENDOLA GIORGIO. (Rome 1907 - 1980). One of the founders of the PCI (Italian Communist Party), long considered the heir of Togliatti. Architect of the agreement with the "sound productive forces", he was head of the party's reformist, pragmatist wing. Member of Parliament for many years. Author of a series of remarkable autobiographical works.

(7) TOGLIATTI PALMIRO. (Genua 1893 - Yalta 1964). In Turin he cooperated with A. Gramsci, among the founders of the Italian Communist Party, which he was secretary of from 1927 until his death. Exiled in Russia, he was member of the secretariat of the Comintern, and played an important role in Spain during the civil war. Back in Italy in 1944, he launched a "national" policy based on the fact of voting the Lateran pacts, clashing with the lay forces of the country. Member of government from 1944 to 1947, also as minister. After the elections of 1948, he monopolized the opposition's role, but he also favoured a "dialogue" with the Christian Democracy and the Catholic world, without ever breaking with the Vatican. His project of an "Italian way to socialism" did not achieve its fundamental objective, and on the contrary lead to a stalemate in the political system, preventing the Left from acquiring any "alternation" in power from the Christian Democratic Party.

(8) LAMA LUCIANO. (Gambettola, Forlì 1921). Communist, secretary of the CGIL as of 1970, then member of parliament and deputy president of the Chamber. Exponent of the right-wing current (the so-called "miglioristi").

(9) PERTINI SANDRO. (Stella 1896 - Rome 1990). Italian politician. Socialist, was imprisoned and exiled during the fascist regime.. From 1943 to 1945 he participated in the Resistance. Secretary of the Socialist Party, deputy, president of the Chamber (1968-1976), President of the Republic (1978-1985).

(10) LOMBARDI RICCARDO. (Regalbuto 1901 - 1984). Italian politician. Among the founders of the Partito d'Azione, later joined the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), which he became president of in 1980.

(11) GRAMSCI ANTONIO. (Ales, Cagliari 1891 - Rome 1937). Italian thinker and politician, socialist at first, editor of "Ordine Nuovo" and promoter of the experiments on "factory councils", in 1921 he was among the founders of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which he was appointed secretary general of in 1924. Deputy, he was sentenced by the fascist regime to 20 years of prison, where he died. His "Quaderni dal carcere" represent an original contribution to the theoretic development of Marxism in a Western sense. He also founded "L'Unità", organ of the communist party.

(12) BONINO EMMA. (Bra 1948). President of the Radical Party, former member of the European Parliament, as of 1976 member of the Italian Parliament. Among the promoters of the CISA (Information Centre on Sterilization and Abortion) and active militant in the campaign against clandestine abortion. She was tried and acquitted in Florence. Participated in the conduction, on a national and international scale, of the campaign on World Hunger. Among the founding members of "Food and Disarmament International", promoted the circulation of the Manifesto of Nobel Laureates.

(13) FACCIO ADELE. (Pontebba 1920). Spearhead of pro-abortion campaigns. For the assertion of this right she was imprisoned but acquitted. President of the Radical Party in 1975-'76, radical deputy in 1976, 1979, 1983. Animal rights activist and environmentalist, promoter of the "Verdi Arcobaleno" ticket, on which she ran at the elections for the European Parliament in 1989.

(14) CISA. Information Centre on Sterilization and Abortion, established by Adele Faccio and Emma Bonino in 1974, promoter of clandestine abortions first and then of openly illegal ones. As a federate subject of the Radical Party, it played an essential role in the campaign for the legalization of abortion. Its leaders were subjected to sensations trials.

(15) LOTTA CONTINUA. One of the most important and widespread political movements of the extreme left, established in 1969 in Turin. In 1971 it created the homonymous newspaper, which became immediately popular. It detached the extraparliamentary Left from the laborite prejudicial, penetrating the youth and students' milieu, the conscripts, the prisons, etc. Its chief leader was the journalist and writer Adriano Sofri.

(16) IL MANIFESTO. Monthly magazine (and political movement) established in 1969 by exponents of the communist party (A. Natoli, R.Rossanda, L.Pinto, L.Magri, etc.) who were later expelled. In 1971, the magazine became a daily newspaper and supported communist formations not represented in Parliament.

(17) RODOTA' STEFANO. (Cosenza 1933). Jurist and politician. Carried out his education during the Italian student associationism of the '50s, among the founders of the radical party, was elected in Parliament in 1979 with the support of the Communist Party, becoming president of the Independent Left. Hence, appointed president of the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS), re-elected member of Parliament in 1992. Essayist, writes for "La Repubblica".

(18) GOBETTI PIERO. (Turin 1901 - Paris 1926). Very young, he published a famous publication, "La Rivoluzione liberale" , starting a revision of liberalism with the aim of making it accessible to the labour world. In 1926, persecuted by the fascist regime, he migrated to France where he died. He is also the founder of the magazine "Il Baretti" and published the first collection of verse by Montale.

(19) BASSO LELIO. (Varazze 1903 - Rome 1978). Antifascist, secretary of the Italian Socialist Party (1948-49), in 1964 he supported the schism which lead to the creation of the PSIUP (Italian Socialist Party for the Union of all Workers), which he was President of. Deputy, essayist and political analyst.

(20) PINTO MIMMO. (Portici, Naples 1948). Militant of Lotta Continua and leader of the movement of the unemployed in Naples, elected in parliament in 1979 on the radical party ticket.

(21) TURATI FILIPPO. (Canzo 1857 - Paris 1932). One of the founders of the Italian Socialist Party (1892). Prestigious and unquestioned figure, reformist and gradualist. Member of Parliament. Antifascist, confined and then exile in France in 1926.

(22) ALMIRANTE GIORGIO. (Salsomaggiore 1914 - Rome 1988). Secretary of the MSI, Movimento Sociale Italiano (right-wing party which considers itself the heir of fascism) from 1969 to 1987.

(23) ROCCO ALFREDO. (Naples 1875 - Rome 1935). Jurist and politician.

At first a radical, then joined the nationalists who then merged with the fascist party. Minister of Justice from 1925 to 1932, author of the penal code and of the codes of criminal procedure, issued between 1930 and 1931. Despite the strong fascist inspiration, the two codes have remained intact for many years even after the fall of fascism, and have only very recently been replaced by more modern Codes. A figure of extraordinary importance in the institutional history of contemporary Italy.

(24) BERLINGUER ENRICO. (Sassari 1922 - Padua 1984). Italian politician. Deputy since 1968, secretary general of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) from 1979 to his death, after the crisis and the assassination of Allende he became an advocate of the "historical compromise", which produced, between 1976 and 1979, the so-called "majority of no no-confidence", the greatest achievement of Togliatti's strategy for an organic agreement with the Christian Democratic Party. Architect of the project of creating the so-called "Eurocommunism", an attempt to project in the West a reformism which would not entirely deny the communist experience.

(25) REALE ORONZO. (Lecce 1902 - Rome 1988). One of the founders of the Partito d'Azione (1942), secretary of the republican party (1949-1964), deputy, minister of justice. The "Reale bill" is an emergency bill which attributed special powers to the police forces, introduced by Reale to defeat terrorism (1975). In the referendum of 1988 promoted by the Radical Party to abrogate the "Reale bill", 76% of voters declared themselves in favour of maintaining the law.

(26) GENTILE GIOVANNI. (Castelvetrano 1875 - Florence 1944). Italian philosopher. Together with Benedetto Croce he developed the theory of Hegelian neo-idealism, contributing to the Italian philosophical revival. He joined the fascist party and provided the regime with ideological bases. Detained important roles until the mid thirties. The mastermind of the reform of the schooling system. Was killed by the partisans during the Resistance.

(27) LA MALFA UGO. (Palermo 1903 - Rome 1979). Italian politician. Among the founders of the Partito d'Azione (1942), he then joined the Republican Party (1948), transforming it in an attempt to make it into a modern liberal party connected to the productive forces. He was secretary of it between 1965 and 1975, and then President. Former minister and deputy Prime Minister (1974-76). One of the fathers of the liberalization of trade after the war.

(28) SARAGAT GIUSEPPE. (Turin 1898 - Rome 1988). Socialist, exiled in Austria during fascism. Minister during the first Bonomi cabinet of 1944, president of the Constituent Assembly in 1946. In 1947 headed the schism of the right wing of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), founding the PSLI (Socialist Party of Italian Workers), then PSDI (Italian Social Democratic Party). Vice Prime Minister and President of the Republic from 1964 to 1971.

(29) FO DARIO. (1926). Playwright and satirical actor, progressivist.

(30) MUSSOLINI BENITO. (Predappio 1883 - Giulino di Mezzegra 1945). Socialist at first, editor of "L'Avanti!" (1912-14). An interventionist, he was expelled from the Socialist Party and established the weekly "Il Popolo d'Italia" and, after the war, the Fasci di Combattimento. After 1925 he suppressed political and constitutional liberties. In 1939 he allied with Nazi Germany, and caused an unprepared Italy to intervene in the war. On 24-25 July 1943 he was condemned by the Grand Council of fascism, and the king Vittorio Emanuele had him arrested. Released by the Germans, he created the Repubblica Sociale Italiana. Arrested by the partisans, he was executed by the latter.

(31) SOFRI ADRIANO. (1942). Leader of the Italian extraparliamentary movement "Lotta Continua". Journalist and writer. Tried and convicted to twenty years of prison as the presumed author of the assassination of police commissioner Calabresi. Lucid author of memoirs.

(32) LAURO ACHILLE. (Pina di Sorrento 1887 - Naples 1982). Founder of the Lauro shipping lines, mayor of Naples (1951-54; 1956; 1958). Monarchist, known for the lobbyist systems with which he administered the city.

(33) PASOLINI PIERPAOLO. (Bologna 1922 - Rome 1975). Italian writer and director. Novels ("Ragazzi di vita", 1955; "Una vita violenta", 1959), verse ("Le ceneri di Gramsci", 1957, etc.), plays, cinema ("Accattone", 1961, "Il Vangelo secondo Matteo", 1964, etc.), but especially powerful polemist and moralist, he denounced the evils of the "bourgeoisie" and severely criticized the Italian Left for its shortcomings. Sympathizer of the Radical Party, on the subject of which he wrote some beautiful pages, the day after his death he was supposed to go to Florence to take part in a congress of the party.

(34) ROSSI ERNESTO. (Caserta 1897 - Rome 1967). Italian journalist and politician. Leader of "Giustizia e Libertà", in 1930 he was arrested by the fascist regime and remained in prison or exiled until the end of the war. Author, together with Spinelli, of the "Manifesto di Ventotene", and leader of the European Federalist Movement and of the battle for a united Europe. Among the founders of the Radical Party. Essayist and journalist, from "Il Mondo" he promoted vehement campaigns against clerical interference in the political life, against economic trusts, industrial and agrarian protectionism, private and public concentrations of power, etc. His articles were collected in famous books ("I padroni del vapore", etc). After the dissolution of the Radical Party in 1962, and the consequent split from the editor of "Il Mondo", M.Pannunzio, he founded "L'Astrolabio", whence he continued his polemics. In his last years he joined the "new" radical party, with which in 1967 he launched the "Anticlerical Year".

(35) AGNELLI. Family of Italian automobile manufacturers. Giovanni (1866 - 1945) was the founder of the FIAT automobile company. His grand-son Giovanni, known as Gianni (1921), is currently president of FIAT, while his brother Umberto (1934) is the vice president. Between 1974 and 1976, Gianni was president of the Confindustria, the Italian manufacturers' association, while Umberto was senator from 1976 to 1979. Gianni Agnelli was appointed senator for life in 1991 by the President of the republic, Francesco Cossiga.

(36) ENEL. National Electricity Board.

(37) INGRAO PIETRO. (Lenola 1915). For many years chief exponent of the Italian Communist Party. After militating in the fascist university organizations, leader of the party's "Left", open to the so-called "dialogue with the Catholics" and to a grass roots conception of politics, perceived as struggle of the "masses" against capitalist exploitation on a world scale. President of the Chamber of Deputies from 1976 to 1979, at the time of the "compromesso storico" and of "national unity".

(38) SINDONA MICHELE. (Patti 1920 - Voghera 1986). Italian financier. Between 1969 and 1974 he created a financial empire. Implicated in obscure operations and compromised with sectors of the political circle, he had a first crisis, following which he fled to the United States. Implicated in a new crack, he was arrested and convicted. He died in mysterious circumstances in prison.

(39) CRAXI BETTINO. (Milan 1934). Italian politician. Socialist, deputy since 1968. Appointed secretary of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) in 1976, he operated important changes in the party's phisiognomy, turning it into the core of a wide project of institutional and other reforms and of unity of the socialist forces.

(40) ENI. National Hydrocarbon Corporation. Public holding established in 1953 to coordinate the Italian energy industry. With its subsidiary companies AGIP, SNAM, SAIPEM, ANIC, in 1980 it became the third greatest European industrial group. Its presidents Enrico Mattei and Eugenio Cefis were involved in Italian politics, occasionally with roles that went beyond their functions.

(41) PECCHIOLI UGO. (Turin 1925). Senator, exponent of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), Minister of the Interior in the shadow Cabinet. For a long period in charge of the issues relative to domestic politics, pointed out by the radicals as the responsible for many obscure affairs connected to the years of terrorism.

(42) COSSIGA FRANCESCO. (Sassari 1928). President of the Italian Republic from 1985 to 1992. Deputy since 1958, under secretary (1966) and Minister (1974). Minister of the Interior (1976-78) when Aldo Moro was kidnapped, he resigned when the dead body of the statesman was discovered. Prime Minister (1979-80). As President of the republic, during the second part of his term he actively promoted changes in the Italian Constitution, participating in fierce controversies with the majority of political exponents, and overcoming the limits laid down by the Constitution. For such reasons he was denounced by Marco Pannella in August 1991 for attempt on the Constitution.

(43) BAGET BOZZO GIANNI. (Savona 1925). Priest, political analyst and writer. Editorialist for "La Repubblica", author of several successful works. Member of the European Parliament, Italian Socialist Party.

(44) PANEBIANCO ANGELO. (1948). Structuralist political analyst, studied with Professor Sartori in the United States. Professor of Political Science at the University of Bologna. Co-author of "I nuovo radicali". Editorialist for "Il Corriere della Sera". Former member of the Radical Party.

(45) GIUSTIZIA E LIBERTA'. Liberal-socialist antifascist movement, established in 1929 in Paris by exiled Italians (Carlo and Nello Rosselli, Alberto Cianca, Emilio Lussu, Gaetano Salvemini, etc). In 1942 it gave birth to the Partito d'Azione which called its partisan brigades "Giustizia e Libertà". It had a major influence in the development of the ideas of an advanced, lay, Anglo-Saxon democracy.

(46) ANDREOTTI GIULIO. (Rome 1919). Exponent of the Christian Democratic Party. Secretary of A. De Gasperi, very young, as under-secretary of the Presidency of the Council, he began an uninterrupted career as minister: Interior (1954), Finance (1955-58), Treasury (1958-59), Defence (1959-66), Industry (1966-68), Budget (1974-76). Prime Minister from 1972 to 1973, then from 1976 to 1979 and from 1990 to date.

(47) FANFANI AMINTORE. (Arezzo 1908). Italian politician, professor of economic history, eminent personality of the Christian Democrat Party which he was secretary of from 1954 to 1959 and from 1973 to 1975. He gave a strong corporative impulse to the party with the use of public industry as a key element of economic development. Prime Minister (1958-'59; 1960-'62; 1982-'83), foreign minister on several occasions, president of the Senate from 1958 to 1973 and from 1976 to 1982.

(48) GIANNINI GUGLIELMO. (Pozzuoli 1891 - Rome 1960). Italian playwright and journalist. In 1944 he founded the weekly "L'uomo qualunque" and immediately after "Il Fronte dell'uomo qualunque", a political movement which opposed the system of parties which ensued from the Resistance. After the parliamentary success of 1946, the movement declined rapidly.