ABSTRACT: In 1987, the first edition of Carlo Rosselli's (2) work "Socialismo Liberale" (3) was re-printed, edited by a group of French-speaking radicals operating in France, Belgium and with the radical parliamentary group in Strasbourg. Rosselli had published this work in French in Paris, immediately after escaping from the island of Lipari where he had been exiled. The initiative was a demonstration of these militants' interest for a political work which is practically unknown outside of Italy, and which was instead often mentioned during the Radical Party's debates.

In his preface, Angiolo Bandinelli kept in mind first of all the needs of the non-Italian readers. After giving an account of the adventurous conditions in which the work was written, of the escape from Lipari and of the publication in Paris, the preface analyses the guidelines both of the reform of the Marxist socialism attempted by Rosselli and the creation of the militant group "Giustizia e Libertà" (4) as an attempt to overcome the antifascist parties of the exile. Lastly, Bandinelli recalls the international orientation of Rosselli's antifascist struggle, and stresses the pioneering characteristic with respect to the attempt made by Pannella and his comrades to establish a new "transnational" party, meeting the requirements of freedom of our time.

(Carlo Rosselli, "Socialisme libéral", EDITIONS DU JEU DE PAUME, Brussels, June 1987)

PREFACE TO "SOCIALISME LIBERAL"

In Italy this book is a myth. Together with the booklets of the magazine "Rivoluzione Liberale", by Piero Gobetti (5), it brings into the tradition of antifascism and into the Italian political struggle the sour sweetness of juvenile intransigence, the reckless liking for moral revolt and, above all, the pathos of predestination: short-lived flowers as they were, they nonetheless have a claim, as such, to the eternity of the memory. And in fact, these texts are quoted and mentioned whenever it is necessary, in a debate, to appeal to lofty feelings, to a return of the primary reasons of the civil sense and action.

But they are also outstanding political texts, at least they are if we mean to interpret the Italian history of this century with its peculiar and intricate events, as the slow process of a recently unified country on the way toward the other European nations in terms of values of modernity and democracy. We will therefore synthesize as best as we can the meaning of "Socialismo Liberale", repeating, however, that despite their diversity, much of what we will say applies also to the works of Gobetti.

Carlo Rosselli wrote "Socialismo Liberale" on the island of Lipari, where the young antifascist had been exiled in 1927, following the trial for having organized and carried out the escape in France of the old leader of the Italian socialism, Filippo Turati. In spite of the fact that he immediately made plans to escape the island (a project which he carried out in 1930), Rosselli used the plenty of time he had to synthesize in this work the reflexions, the cues, the plans which he had elaborated during years of civil commitment.

The work was written at a rather fast pace, despite the difficulties represented by the lack of books and documentation, and by the risk that his papers could be discovered and seized during one of the searches which the exiled were periodically subjected to. Normally, the booklet was kept inside an old piano, which Carlo liked to play in the evenings; at moments when his fears became stronger, he hid it into the poultry pen next to the house. In any case, the work was completed, and Carlo took it with him during his escape and published it in France in 1930. The first edition, in French, in a collection which included other texts by Italian antifascists who had escaped to France ("Suite politique italienne": works by Francesco S. Nitti, Vincenzo Nitti, Bruno Buozzi, Silvio Trentin, Alberto Cianca, Francesco Luigi Ferrari, Salvemini (6) himself until 1931), was published by the Librairie Valois, 7 Place du Panthéon, Paris Vème. This edition, now a rarity, is hereafter illustrated in an anastatic reprint.

"More than a work of learning" - wrote Carlo in his preface - "this means to be the frank confession of an intellectual crisis which I know is extremely widespread in the new generation". It was the generation of young people who had seen the war, had suffered its atrocities, but especially who had seen in the trenches the loss of the cherished hopes that the war could lead to the solution of some if not all the major problems, the ethic ones in particular, which otherwise seemed to rot in the dissolution of the old world. In other countries, and with a purely literary characteristic, this was the "lost generation". The young Italian intellectual classes lacked the ease and especially the literary verve of their French and overseas contemporaries.

But perhaps it is not an exaggeration to say that precisely in works such as these, of a typically political nature, the Italian culture reached the European one in a climate and in a field which was disseminated with a common turmoil.

The young Rosselli had been a socialist militant. Socialism had long represented, for a great part of the Italian youth, the chief ideal for the achievement of ideals of justice. But the advent of fascism, which came to power in 1922 with the support of large conservative strata and with the socialists who, divided and split, did not succeed in indicating an alternative parliamentary solution, fully highlighted the deep crisis in which that party had plunged into, with its fractions that refused to reach a common agreement: a jumble of currents and tendencies (including the newly-born communist party), where the socialist party had shattered itself. The crisis, which was above all a crisis of ideals and values, had started to manifest itself at the beginning of the century. In those years, orthodox Marxism, the Marxism of the "Manifesto" and of the "Capital", seemed to be questioned once and for all in its theoretic bases by European thinkers of indisputable value, among whom we can mention the Italian Bened

etto Croce (7), who built his new idealist and historicist philosophy on the ashes of the Marxist and positivist doctrine. However, the theses of the new "reformists" (Bernstein in particular), who nonetheless tried to remove from Marx's Marxism the weight of an increasingly unacceptable and unsustainable determinism, did not appear sufficiently open and daring, and maintained too tight bonds with the heritage received, without succeeding in operating on its own and reaching new solutions. Possibly the other current of reformists, the so-called "revolutionary unionism", with strong elements of voluntarism and a ruthless but often empty activism, raised more passion and more intellectual adhesions, apart from a "energetic affirmation of human freedom in history" (Cf. Aldo Garosci, "Vita di Carlo Rosselli", ed. u., 1946). The weakening of the socialist message increased even further after the war: the socialists had assumed, regarding the war, an attitude of rigid neutrality, marked by the motto "Neither coope

rate nor sabotage", and this refusal to make a clear-cut choice was condemned, in the dramatic post-war crisis, by the fighters who, right or wrong, remembered the promises made during the long years in the trenches and especially the acknowledgement of their right to a sort of moral primacy on the nation. The advent of Mussolini (8) in power definitely destroyed the hopes for a possible renewal. On the other hand, a schism of the old branch had given birth to the communist party in 1921 in Livorno. The gap deepened even further, and the young Rosselli, who had engaged in the political struggle especially after the assassination of the member of parliament Giacomo Matteotti, beaten to death by fascist killers after a memorable parliamentary speech in which he bitterly criticized Mussolini, felt increasingly restless and dissatisfied. He approached Piero Gobetti, the young intellectual on whose magazine "Rivoluzione Liberale" wrote some of the most eminent men of the time, urged by the indefatigable publisher

, who dreamed a regeneration of liberalism to be achieved thanks to the grafting of the liberal tradition and values on the young and strong branch of the rising workers' movement, which was already vigorous in the industrialized Turin, thanks to the FIAT and other entrepreneurs. However, Gobetti's initiative was soon and tragically concluded. The young man, who had posed the "moral issue" of the intransigent refusal of fascism which had revealed itself murderous, was savagely beaten and was forced to flee to France, where he died soon after, in 1926.

In a handful of years, after 1925 (when, with extraordinary laws, he outlawed all parties), Mussolini came to be the absolute master of a country where there was no organized opposition, while the most important exponents of the dissolved parties were either forced to a final silence or, like Gramsci (9), Terracini, Turati (10), Nenni (11) and others, were put into prison or forced to expatriate.

France soon became populated by exiles who mingled with the traditional emigrants for working reasons.

On his arrival in France after the adventurous escape on a boat from the island of Lipari, Carlo Rosselli was now ready to start the renewal of the socialist and antifascist praxis and ideals. Already before he was captured and exiled, together with other brave youths, he had promoted in Italy a clandestine movement of resistance and struggle against fascism, whose motto was "Non Mollare": an appeal to courage and perseverance, patience and confidence even more than to ideas. Now, from Paris, the initiative could be extended, theoretic bases could be laid down, and it could be spread with force among the migrants, impose itself on the remnants of parties which in vain tried, in the hospitable new land, to (re)organize themselves, to make projects and set themselves objectives; but they only managed to give show of an ideal and practical impotence.

Carlo Rosselli, soon accompanied, until their tragic common death, by his brother Nello, an outstanding historian, represented a group whose name already contained a program, "Giustizia e Libertà", and in it he gathered the best elements, engaging in militant antifascist actions and in a serious revision of the socialist cultural, theoretic and organizational heritage. "Giustizia e Libertà" marks, for us Italians, the birth of the first embryo of a modern, lay reformative, non-ideological party, aware of social values but absolutely intransigent on the method, which will need to be "liberal", linked to the enhancement of the institutions, not to their "revolutionary" occupation. "Giustizia e Libertà", with the convergence of other, similarly inspired groups, will give rise, toward the end of World War II, to that Partito d'Azione which will, for a very brief season, gather all the best intellectuals of the country.

In "Socialismo Liberale", Rosselli makes a logical and theoretic passage which no one had ever dared before to face, perhaps only out of conformism and lack of rigour: the logical and theoretic passage from socialism to liberalism. Marxism, Rosselli said, was essentially a theory linked to an economic determinism, whose force was based on a claim of a scientific basis which was not buttressed by facts. This theory has a great power of attraction for masses that were still linked to an unescapable slavery; but it lost value and attraction as soon as the most dehumanizing situations disappeared. In the present conditions of the society and of the working class, the theoretic premises of Marxism and its catastrophic hypotheses have been silently relinquished, also thanks to the work of "revisionist" writers and theorists; the latter, however, have been too cautious, and have not dared to detach themselves once and for all from Marx's premises, getting stuck in a torbid operation, not fit to raise interest and p

assion. It is necessary, on the contrary, to do away with all the obsolete Marxist rubbish, and openly and frankly say that the drive for social justice should be affirmed through the method of freedom. Liberalism, reduced to a prerogative and a banner of the leading classes, closed in the stubborn defence of their privileges, should once again be the banner of the major reforms and of the major liberties: "The word liberalism" - says Carlo - "has been used to smuggle wares of so different nature and kind; it has been so much the monopoly of the bourgeoisie, in the past, that a socialist using it today is frowned upon...".

This condition will need to be overturned; because "socialism means liberalism in action".

We could say: that is all. The bewildered reaction would be: is that all? Yes and no: because while the theoretic structure of the booklet is so simple, apparently, some of the premises are more complicated, and some of the consequences appear new and extremely complex. The premises we must take into account lie in the fact that in Italy in those years the working classes as the petty bourgeoisie, the classes related to socialism as the ones ready to embrace fascism (and, with them, the entire world, party farmers but partly also workers and petits bourgeois influenced by the Church) were all - absolutely all - united by a deep antibourgeois and antiliberal hate. This hate was so strong that the word "liberal" never again, not even after the war (i.e. half a century later) appealed to the country, and remained the prerogative of small groups and a handful of "enlightened" conservatives. The consequences are also, obviously, the result of such premises, and their gravity is little credible outside of Italy, t

hough easy to ascertain: Carlo Rosselli - and with him so many other liberals, radicals, libertarians, etc - is still strenuously kept out of the cultural and civil debate of the country. A major publishing house, famous for its democratic, progressivist, "left-wing" spirit, long refused to publish "Socialismo Liberale", and the same ostracism - "left-wing"! - has struck more or less all the intellectuals like him. A culture which has re-become Marxist in more or less gross forms, with the Gramsci-like adaptation used also in instrumental forms that went beyond his effective merits, has monopolized the system of the media, whereas the reformists and the radical-oriented (i.e. non conservative) based neo-liberals have been relegated among the trash of the sub-culture, depicted as stubborn latecomers of history. The Italian (neo)Marxism has thus been left undisturbed to organize its ambiguous talks, its "historical compromises" with every sort of clericalism, from the directly Vatican one to the openly politic

al one (until today's De Mita (12)), and the work of Berlinguer, whose acme is that fatal "historical compromise" in the aftermath of Togliatti's (13) "betrayal" on the Concordat (included in the republican Constitution thanks to the determining vote of the communist party) has been smuggled as a masterpiece of realism and projectuality.

Needless to say, the same violent antiliberal hate is deeply rooted in all the Catholic circles, with the exception of small minorities. Liberalism is on the one hand identified exclusively with the history of the conservative interests which have long hindered the popular emancipation; on the other hand - in its revolutionary, lay, radical components, rich with the audacity which can come from the memory of the great achievements on the darkness of traditionalism - it is hated as the very symbol of a constantly refused modernism, except in its instrumental forms. The current secretary of the DC (14), De Mita, does nothing to hide his contempt and sarcasm toward the entire lay culture, or the critical democracy, and the efforts that are being made to place again at the centre of the civil and political tradition of the country; in this way he believes he is avenging his farmer and "boorish" forefathers on the parasitical and demanding landowners; but in fact, he is still the champion of the most authenticall

y reactionary culture, that of the clerical populism.

As long as the traditionalist and reactionary image of liberalism resists, everything is fine: the problems arise when someone tries to shake the dust of time from the old ideology, and re-invent the culture and the values of Tocqueville and Constant, of Bentham and Croce, and of their spiritual brothers. Thus, Italy is perhaps the only of the major European countries in which the liberal tradition is rejected and refused, denied and repressed, especially in its institutional strcutures.

This explains why, for others, for those who believe in the noble principles of '89 or in the heritage of Lord Beveridge, in the teachings of Martin Luther King or in the libertarian tradition, the name of Carlo and Nello Rosselli is still a myth and a banner. And not simply as the expression of an experience which should stir reverence and nothing else. Rosselli (from this point of view even more than Gobetti) is modern; modern precisely in the simplicity and clarity of his message. When today's radicals have lifted the banner of civil rights in the name of which they successfully eroded large margins of the catastrophic agreement between clericals and neo-Marxists - introducing in Italy abortion and divorce and conscientious objection, the referendums against the Concordat, against freedom-killing laws, against the public funding of the parties, and so on - they have basically drawn from the reaching of this teacher; both in carefully recalling the values of freedom as the ones that are the essential basis

for any social request, both - and perhaps especially - in the method. Like Carlo and Nello Rosselli with their associationism of "Non Mollare", and of "Giustizia e Libertà", today's radicals have understood that in order to remain together and be a party - meaning political part - it is not necessary, "it should not be necessary" to refer, as in a Church, to a message of safety in which to swear, in community or communion, at the cost of being expelled by bureaucrats or priests: but that the only and exclusive thing that is needed is the acceptance of a series od articles and of an associative Statute meant as a contract of cooperation, and the promotion of initiatives chosen and decided together and for a given time.

For today's Italian radicals - not by chance - the question of the "form-party" arises at the same moment in which the programmatic objectives of renewal are posed, and only according to them: it is not an abstract structure that aims to its own conservation, regardless of the objectives and aims. Lately, the radicals have placed at the centre of their action the reform of the electoral system, that necessary passage in order to renew or rather "refound" the parties, the system of the parties. Because the absurdity which has given rise to the expression "Italian case" - which cannot be explained and understood with the cultural and political logics in force in the major countries of Western democracy - is that the parties currently present in the political scene, represented in Montecitorio (15) and in the baroque Palazzo Madama, in the centre of Rome, are basically the parties created at the beginning of the century, before World War I, or immediately after. The dominant party, the Christian Democratic Part

y, still refers (possibly only formally) to the social teaching of Leon XIII, to the intransigent defence of the unity of the Catholics under a same political flag, to the hate for ideas coming from the European and international culture, first of all the lay-social democratic culture. The parties of the Left re-elaborate the controversies of the schism of Livorno of 1921, incapable of improving themselves and renewing themselves, without having had neither Bad Godesberg not Mitterrand's refoundations or other refoundations. Linked by a diabolical pact to an archaic proportional system which guarantied the permanence of every mummified minority provided it has power (the so-called "lay" parties) and of every sclerotic local interest, the Italian parties administer their petty interests by occupying every smallest space in the institutions and in civil society, without producing neither policies nor a good administration, with a waste of energies and resources that would be inconceivable in any other country.

The return to the ideal forces of the liberal modernity is, in Italy, one of the premises for a great, new initiative of democratic construction. The defeated rebels of the past once again teach, provide indications and directions. Among them, together with Ernesto Rossi (16) and Altiero Spinelli (17), Benedetto Croce and Umberto Calosso, Nicola Chiaromonte and Ignazio Silone (18), there is, in a dominant position, Carlo Rosselli, linked to his brother Nello by the tragic common death in France, in Bagnoles-de-l'Orne on 7 June 1937, killed by the Caguole at the orders of Mussolini. The two brothers' teaching contains a further specificity which makes them precious not only to us Italians. The condition of expatriated exiles gave them a wide, non-nationalist but largely European and global vision of the problems of freedom. Carlo and Nello were among the very first, in Europe, who understood, in the mid '30s, that the victory of Francoism in Spain would have irreparably corroborated all European fascisms, as

well as the Italian fascism. This is why they engaged head on in the struggle against the Francoist Falange: "Today in Spain, tomorrow in Italy", became the motto of their indefatigable militant commitment. Even today, this clear, lucid intuition teaches us a most important thing.

The struggles for freedom, the Rosselli brothers say, do not have nor can have national boundaries. The combined interest of all conservatorisms is, on the contrary, that of separating and dividing dialogue, the communion of commitment among the innovators and the bearers of ideas of freedom. They have for this reason devised or embraced the theory of "non-interference" and of the absolute "sovereignty" on the culture and the national or "national-popular" traditions. But, as in the century of the Enlightenment, it is necessary to promote a confrontation of freedom capable of demolishing national barriers and asserting the right-duty to a full interference of ideas - armed not with rifles but with truth and dialogue - wherever it is necessary. For example, stating that it is necessary today to fight against nationalisms of all kinds in order to operate in a European dimension, or take full responsibility, in a Europe characterized by agricultural surplus, of the starvation that plagues the underdeveloped Thi

rd World, or - lastly - not taking into account the so-called "détente" to assert the right to export active germs of freedom and of rigorous nonviolence in the countries of Eastern Europe, is an urgent and exciting priority, absolutely necessary to save ourselves and to save Europe and the world. On the ruins of the socialist internationalism it is urgent to found the new European and international transnationalism, as a re-born "party of enlightenment" and freedom. Maybe, if necessary, by rediscovering the teaching of the Rosselli brothers and of their itinerant militancy on all frontiers and on all fronts where it is necessary to fight the worthy battle of freedom of our time.

Translator's notes

(1) BANDINELLI ANGIOLO. (Chianciano 1927). Writer. Former member of the Partito d'Azione; secretary of the Radical Party in 1969, 1971 and 1972; he was also treasurer of the party for five years. In 1979 local councillor in Rome, deputy in the ninth legislature. For many years, editor of several radical publications ("La Prova Radicale", "Notizie Radicali", etc), author of essays and articles relative to the history and the theory of the party, many of which are contained in the book "Il radicale impunito". Writes for newspapers and magazines and for Radio Radicale with notes and editorials.

(2) ROSSELLI CARLO. (Rome 1899 - Bagnoles de l'Orne, France 1937). Italian politician. An antifascist, together with Nenni he founded and directed the magazine "Quarto Stato" (1926). Exiled in Lipari (1927), whence he managed to escaped. In France he was among the founders of the movement "Giustizia e Libertà". In Spain he fought with the republicans in 1936. He was assassinated together with his brother historian by members of the cagoule at the order of the Italian secret services. Author of an outstanding work, "Socialismo liberale" (1928).

(3) Liberal Socialism.

(4) 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.

(5) 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.

(6) SALVEMINI GAETANO. (Molfetta 1873 - Sorrento 1957). Italian historian and politician. Socialist since 1893, he founded the weekly "L'Unità", which soon became an important seat of debates. In 1925 in Florence, together with the Rosselli brothers, he founded the clandestine antifascist publication "Non mollare". Subsequently he fled abroad (to the U.S.), where he promoted antifascist information campaigns.

(7) CROCE BENEDETTO. (Pescasseroli 1866 - Naples 1952). Italian philosopher, historian and writer. After a short period in which he was attracted by the ideas of Marx, together with Giovanni Gentile he was responsible for the idealistic and Hegelian revival of the end of the past century. Antifascist, fundamentally a liberal-conservative, after the war he joined the Liberal Party and was part of one of the first governments formed after fascism. During fascism, he had a great influence on important sectors of the youth. As a philosopher, he has a claim to fame for his studies of aesthetics and logics as well as for his reform of Hegelian dialectic. Author of important historical works ("Storia d'Europa nel secolo XIX", "Storia d'Italia dal 1871 and 1915", etc), in which he supports the liberal development of Europe before the war, versus the "crisis" of post-war totalitarianisms.

(8) 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.

(9) 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.

(10) 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.

(11) NENNI PIETRO. (Faenza 1891 - 1980). Italian politician. At first republican, as of 1921 socialist. Editor of the party's newspaper, "L'Avanti!", exiled in France, in 1930 he masterminded the reunification of the socialist movements, and in 1934 the pact of unity of action with the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Secretary of the PSI in 1943 and from 1949 to 1964, deputy Prime Minister (1945), and Foreign Minister (1946-47). He organized the organic agreement with the PCI, and suffered the electoral defeat of 1948. Lenin Prize for Peace, he gradually took an independent position, and in the '60s struggled for a government of centre-left with the DC (Christian Democratic Party); with the centre-left he was deputy Prime Minister (1963-68) and foreign minister (1968-69). Senator for life in 1970.

(12) DE MITA CIRIACO. (Avellino 1928). Politician, Christian Democrat, deputy as of 1963. Minister on several occasions, secretary of the Christian Democratic Party in 1981 and Prime Minister in 1988, he was the protagonist of a vicious controversy with Craxi and the socialists and of attempts to "open" to the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Forced to resign by the conservative Christian Democrats, the so-called "dorotei", he has become President of the DC. Leader of the left-wing current.

(13) 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.

(14) DEMOCRAZIA CRISTIANA (DC). Italian Christian/Catholic party. Founded with this name after World War II, heir of the Popular Party, created after World War I by a Sicilian priest, Don Luigi Sturzo. After the elections of 1948, in the climate of the cold war, it became the party of relative majority, occasionally coming very close to obtaining the absolute majority. Key component of every cabinet, it has been detaining power uninterruptedly for half a century, strongly influencing the development of Italian society in a conservative sense. At the elections of 1992 for the first time it dropped below 30% of votes.

(15) MONTECITORIO. Square in Rome, seat of the Chamber of Deputies. In a wider sense it Indicates the Chamber itself.

(16) 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".

(17) SPINELLI ALTIERO. ( Rome 1907 - 1982). Italian politician. During fascism, from 1929 to 1942, he was imprisoned as leader of the Italian Communist Youth. In 1942 co-author, with Ernesto Rossi, of the "Manifesto of Ventotene", which states that only a federal Europe can remove the return of fratricide wars in the European continent and give it back an international role. At the end of the war he founded, with Rossi, Eugenio Colorni and others, the European federalist Movement. After the crisis of the European Defence Community (1956), he became member of the European Commission, and followed the evolution of the Community structures. In 1979 he was elected member of the European Parliament on the ticket of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), becoming the directive mind in the realization of the draft treaty adopted by that parliament in 1984 and known as the "Spinelli Project".

(18) SILONE IGNAZIO. Pseudonym for Tranquilli Secondo. (Pescina dei Marsi 1900 - Geneva 1978). Writer. Among the founders of the Communist Party, which he left in 1930. Among his works: "Fontamara", "Pane e vino", "L'avventura di un povero cristiano".