ABSTRACT: The Radical Party's political conception does not profess a correspondence between anthropological and political guidelines. The scope of politics and the various tasks to assign the State and the parties should be rigorously limited. Ideological power is the heir of theological power; with the excuse of freeing from the clerical power, a system of churches-parties, of worldly organizations with claims of absolute monopoly on the followers has emerged, according to the principle "cuius regio eius religio". The Radical Party means to be a new, revolutionary organized political hypothesis. That which unites the Radicals is a predetermined objective, which can be shared, each time, by guidelines which are commonly considered as institutionally contrasting and which may, on the contrary, find a common point in that which is punctually and politically useful as well as socially convenient in the organization of the structures of the city, for the respect of the individual, of freedom, of responsibility.

(IL MESSAGGERO DI S. ANTONIO, 6 December 1984)

(Mr Pannella is President of the Radical Party. He answered our questions with a long letter; following are significant extracts of it.)

Is it possible to speak about a radical anthropology? In other words, is there a definite conception of man in that area which people call "the radicals"? Marco Pannella answers first with a fundamental distinction for the radical conception: "Personally speaking, I believe every culture which believes it should or can make "anthropological and political guidelines" correspond, and even more - obviously - "party-like organizations", is incompatible with a true culture based on dialogue, peace, democracy and tolerance. Rendering unto Caesar that which isn't Caesar's, giving a "cultural" or "anthropological" "competence" to the State and to the political life, means dangerously mistaking the absoluteness of the morality and hope of each with the historical relativity of opportuneness or social convenience". In other words, the scope of politics, in the sense of the various tasks to assign the State and the parties, should be rigorously limited.

Conversely, according to Pannella, an opposite process is coming to completion in these years. For almost two milleniums, the "theological power" has claimed to govern people's conscience. "For 150 years, we have been witnessing the transfer of "theological power" to "ideological power" - a fundamentally atheist and equally totalitarian substitute of the first. Thus, we have parties that claim to operate and live in the name of an ideological and cultural system which produces its own clergy, its own bureaucrats, its own dignitaries and its own rites [...]. It is the same totalizing enterprise which, with far greater coherence and justification, had poured itself onto the world on the basis of the theological power of the Constantinian Church, of the Church-State, of the Church as the indirect but sole source of power and legitimacy of power. Thus, the alleged or hoped-for "liberation" from the clerical, ecclesiastic, monarchic power has given rise to a system of churches-parties, of totalizing parties, of w

orldly organizations with claims of quasi-absolute missions and representation, monopoly and power on its followers; "cuius regio, eius religio" is the implicit rule in the conception of the "party": anthropologically and culturally speaking, it has always been so that he who enters a party enters the institution the dignitaries of which rule in the name of "religion" and of the system of...liberalism, socialism, communism, radicalism, sandinism, political or social "Catholicism"...."

In history there has been, continues Pannella, an important Christian and lay attempt to make tolerance into the active basis of dialogue and of the laws, by circumscribing the scope of politics; but this revolution was shattered by the totalitarianisms of this century: fascism, communism, Nazism, party power.

Ultimately, the various liberation attempts which followed one other throughout the years, despite the good will and the partial progresses, transformed themselves into new oppressive systems. But is there a way out of this vicious circle liberation-oppression?

"This" - Pannella answers -"is the specific reason for which I am a radical, for which I belong to the Radical Party: in other words, I belong to that new, revolutionary organized "political" hypothesis that wants to break this vicious circle, the "deterministic" relation between anthropological orientation, culture, religion and philosophy on the one hand, and "politics" on the other. That which unites us is a (pre)determined objective, renewable for "a" year, which cultural, anthropological, philosophical guidelines, and hypothetically or systematically contrasting and possibly even nonexistent social, economic, ideological interests cannot foresee and enucleate in itself; it is an objective which unites people in truth or in error with respect to the relative dominant "systems" from a precise, limited, important and necessary point of view represented by an organization of the structures which should be increasingly respectful of the individual, that is, of freedom and responsibility, modified, not in i

ts whole, by decree or edict, but in qualifying and determining points for the life of each and all".

(What does the radical peculiarity consist of, then?)

"This party of our more than anything else evokes medieval "orders", the centre of which was the "rule" more than the "anthropology" or the "culture" or substantive correspondences of ideological or theological contents. Apparently removed, from the isolation of their monasteries, from social and political conflicts and conflicts relative to civil power, such orders often became the laboratories and the developers of sciences, of social and political passions, of art and of technological or theological revolutions...". And the party's current organization, with its less than 3.000 militants in the whole of Europe which nonetheless collect a much vaster area of opinion at elections, in a certain sense reflects the image of the "order".

"I believe already now, after we contributed, a few thousand people globally in a space of twenty years, more than any other "party in its subjectivity and us in ours", in marking the life of our country and of various generations, whatever the future which awaits us and which could even be a future of destruction and of defeat, the doubt should arise that this anti-ideological and microscopic form of party is the anticipation of possible new and revolutionizing social and cultural truths, politically constructed, whereas the cultural system, the anthropology of the other parties - dominant and triumphant - is but the last dross of a defunct past. That we are not - as Vittorini (1) put it twenty years ago - the only Copernicans in a Ptolemaic world. I hope a doubt, only a doubt, in this sense, will cross the reader".

Translator's notes

(1) Elio Vittorini (1908-1966): Italian writer. Collaborated at "Solaria", and introduced American fiction in Italy with the anthology "Americana" (1942). His works of fiction include "Il garofano rosso" (1933-34), "Uomini e no" (1945), "Il Sempione strizza l'occhia al Frejus" (1947).