ABSTRACT: The secretary of the Radical Party, Giovanni Negri (1), opens the pre-congress debate by pointing out the questions that will need to be discussed and decided at the congress in Bologna: the transnational party should not have a national electoral characteristic; the Radical Party must constitute itself into a transparty organization for the achievement of a democratic reform of the political system.

(Radical News N. 283 of 7 December 1987)

The apt decision, to postpone the Congress for the refoundation of the party, has enabled each radical to dispose of the necessary elements of knowledge, analysis and judgement in order to face a debate and a choice which will be, with all evidence, as delicate as they are decisive for the history of the Radical Party.

Therefore, I consider it dutiful to intervene now - a few weeks before the meeting in Bologna - in a pre-congress debate which has to this moment been necessarily generic: the sum of so many wisdoms and of as many abstractions and silences still doesn't make up a true comparison between different political projects, and could, on the contrary, be replaced by a mere dialectic or even ideological exercise.

Below are a series of points which I consider indisputable:

1) This is a party which disposes, today, of a political network of relations and contacts in ten countries of Western and Eastern Europe. Though very small and, for the time being, insufficiently organized, this network represents a credible basis for the launching of the transnational project and for the final classification of the political subject radical party in this new dimension. Moreover, while this network is still insufficient, the idea-force of an effectively transnational party and "place of political action" raise an attention and a debate - also in the aftermath of the heritage of the radical struggles in Italy - that highlight its great potential.

2) This is a party which has engaged and won the challenge of its own survival, which it explicitly placed in the hands of the population. This is significant not so much and not only because the Radical Party has been "sentenced to life", and because it is formed by "ten thousand members", but because it proves that the radical party is capable of gathering an extraordinary mosaic of extremely varying intelligences, energies and experiences. The campaign for the achievement of "ten thousand members", in other words, proves far more than that: the radical party is a party of the true civil society (with its good and bad aspects, with its tragedies; but it is such in reality, not in the deformation of those who distort the word "civil society" for their own use). A party of citizens which, as such, cannot unfortunately be assimilated to any other party; it lives of everything except of power, and on confirming its existence it invested the extraordinary heritage of resources of the "ten thousand members" - st

ill widely unexplored - in the twofold objective which we considered a priority for anyone wishing to reform this society and its time rather than a conservative, a revolutionist or a lip-service reformist: the conception of a transnational party (the necessary premise to give birth to transnational institutions and a transnational law) and the democratic reform of the Italian party system.

3) This is a party which is changing Italy. It changed it on 14 June, because without it there would have been no 14 June. It changed it on 8 November, because without its referendums there would have been no 8 November. Ideas created and accomplished by the radicals no later than twenty months ago now have far-reaching effects on the positive law of our country, and produce political guidelines with which everyone must, willing or not, come to terms with. The referendum on the justice system, in particular, is not only decisive for the question of the civil responsibilities of the judges or of the "ill-functioning justice system", but because it poses the even more relevant and general question of the rules and of the law to a political and institutional system which is experiencing a crisis.

A party which is changing Italy, a party that lives and grows, a party that can already credibly assume a transnational identity, nature and history. A rosy picture, therefore? Not at all. On the contrary: everything is extremely difficult. If these three points are true, the following two will appear equally indisputable.

1) In order to successfully engage in the "transnational challenge", the radical party needs to make a dramatic choice which must be a radical choice. The question is certainly not that of creating an electoral circle or church, good for 1 or 2% in this or that country (including Italy) at the European or national elections. Succeeding in the intent of the transnational party simply means building the political counterpart of those great powers (economic, energetic, military, media) that are already transnational, and are transnational in such a powerful a way as to create ever more transnational markets and clients, with such large profits as to influence political classes, bureaucracies, institutions and states that are deliberately kept purely national.

I don't wish to be misunderstood. I don't mean to say that there is a "big brother" or the Sim (imperialist multinationals system) of the strategic resolutions. I simply mean to state that there already is an economic Europe, and that it will exist more and more, that the great merchants and markets of the economy and of the energy, of the weapons and of starvation already exist. We too are its clients or its victims, our very life no longer depends on national choices except in a very marginal way. But the more the transnational market expands, the less transnational powers, elections, institutions and law are encouraged, capable of reconducting major choices to politics. I simply mean to say that if the contemporary alternative - as many authoritative (and far but radical) observers point out - is between new slavery and new democracy, the democracy of year 2000 and of the "global village" will certainly not be based on national parties and institutions. A different political dimension needs to be created.

And who can embark on such a pioneering adventure of this kind? Who can build not the transnational party, but the political counterpart in terms of prestige and action, the European "Fabian society", capable - through major civil and opinion campaigns - of imposing a turnabout on the leading classes? Will the gigantic and useless party Internationals achieve it, be they Christian democratic, socialist, communist or liberal? Will a 'green' culture which is already experiencing an international crisis achieve this, with a neutralist pacifism which is the result of the missiles, a defeated antinuclearism which is the product of the recycling of the grass roots failures from the war to now?

I believe not. And I believe (not out of presumption, but because we are condemned to it by our history and conscience) that this new frontier can be opened only by the party that is already "the salt of Europe". And who, if not the party of all refusniks and of the great achievements in the field of civil rights, of the Manifesto of Nobel laureates, and of a porno star, of the referendums and of nuclear energy (which has been eliminated only where this party has operated), of the ministers of the Third World and of the conscientious objectors without a homeland, can today form a transnational party and convince others of the need "here and now" of the foundation of the United States of Europe, in order for the Europe of law and rights to be born as a political subject capable of affirming a culture, a law and a humanism in itself and outside it, in the absence of which there can be no true civilization project? Thus, the campaign for the values and hopes of the radicals in its transnational dimension cannot

precede or follow the one for the European institutions, the consultive referendums to give constitutional powers to the European Parliament, the direct elections of the European prime minister: they all come together. The price of such a transnational challenge is very high, for the party that intends to assume it. The Radical Party, which refounds itself in a transnational dimension, at least as a trend cannot have any electoral characteristic in any national State; its only aim is a transnational political action, it must select its yearly campaigns with care, and according to these it must collect adhesions everywhere and equip itself with its means of reflexion and communication.

These, I believe, are the campaigns, the inflexible organization, the consequences, the transnational political objectives of the Radical Party, which refounds itself in this sense, adapting to it both its statute and its organs and symbol (adopting, for example, the symbol of Gandhi). A choice which I consider as little abstract as it is dramatically concrete in its difficulty and ambition.

2) Also in order to be up to the challenge of the democratic reform of the Italian political system, the radical party is called to make courageous choices. The superficiality and the simple activist value of any Italian campaign (whether parliamentary or not, for justice or for the environment, on the health system or on pensions) which is not based on a reformative analysis and project, is by now evident. If we are not aware (or refuse to be aware) of the fact that it is necessary to operate a political reform of the parties instead of electoral and institutional petty counter-reforms that enhance the power of the parties and thus aggravate the diseases and causes of the crisis which is denounced by all, we could suffer a historical defeat. We have pointed it out to the communists, to the socialists, to the greens: in our opinion, neither exasperated day-by-day tactics nor the void of political project filled with useless environmentalist "small competences" are sufficient to solve this problem. But it is

no use denying that the thread of the lay unity around the project for the democratic reform of a huge, decaying system appears (for the moment, at least) to be broken by the anticipated elections advocated by the secretary of the DC (2) , De Mita (3), and precisely in opposition to this hope, to its politics, its referendums. Silent in the face of the attack against the institution of the referendum we witnessed after 8 November, protagonists together with the PSI of the proposal for a counter-reform setting a minimum of 5% for parties represented in Parliament, struggling against a government which is the very image of inconsistency, laics and socialists do not seem to seek those common dialogues and projects which are the only ones that could make them into the protagonists of the turnabout, of the passage from a Lebanon-like party power to political democracy.

The identity and image of the radical party and its leader, which nonetheless have the entire merit of having devised this policy, is denied and attacked. A party of citizens, not a party of power, irreducible champions of democracy, that cannot be bought except in terms of values and ideas (which they are accustomed to giving), the radicals are so anomalous and unwelcome, so "Lutheran in a land of counter-reform", so truly a party of government and change, in a country which is eternally and formally "governed" by people whose only political merit is controlling membership cards and bribes, as to spark those reactions of rejection, removal and abrogation in the media and in the power which had quite aptly forced us to photograph the Italian situation with the resolution of Florence on the cessation of the party. However, it would be a serious mistake to react to these with identical instincts and reactions, with reactions of the same political and cultural race, resorting to sectarianism, false pride, defen

ce of petty belongings. This is why I think that the "Italian radicals" should by now constitute the (non-party) association, league and movement for the democratic reform of the political system. Of the entire political system: from the institutions of direct democracy to the English uninominal system (i.e. the reform of the parties) for Parliament, from the reform of the local boards, that are reduced today to provincial, municipal and regional branches of party power, of its occupation of and of its power. A task which is no doubt difficult, but which in my opinion fully corresponds both to the profound reasons of our being radicals and to the expectations of all those, in our country, who do not mean to accept the system of party power and the mechanisms with which it is forced to resort to in order to defend its indefinable equilibriums. A task which, like that of the transnational party, has a precise goal, the need to organize itself, to choose campaigns, receive endorsements and use the instruments i

t considers more adequate and will autonomously define. Even such choice seems to me as very little abstract and very concrete in its aim. In the August interview that opened the pre-congress debate, on the subject of the huge commitment for the radicals both for the transnational party and for the democratic reform, I said that "to me the priority is all this; otherwise, it is worth very little. If there are insufficient energies, this means we need to seek other ones; on the other hand, they were already inadequate for the party when it had a few thousand members, all the more so now with respect to the direction taken by the ten thousand-strong party. We will not solve our difficulties by cutting politics...We can devise new organs, diversified functions, various uses and investments for the financial resources that reflect this political project; paradoxically, we could even think of a double party. However, the political project is one only, and either we win it or we lose it. This is my opinion, at lea

st, but then the aim of pre-congress debates and congress is precisely that of comparing opinions".

I must say that my opinion hasn't changed a bit. If anything, I believe even more firmly (in the light of these past weeks, between a referendum campaign in Italy and assemblies of members from Barcelona to Istanbul) in the necessity of two effective centres of political initiatives, two organizational forms, two leading classes producing more energies and responsibilities, entirely independent.

Therefore a radical party as a political subject refounded transnationally, and in Italy a truly "transparty" free association for a democratic reform open to the most varied experiences, which nonetheless mean to focus on a common objective. Two instruments, both without electoral aims, to undertake a difficult and perhaps long task, and which nonetheless seems to me as the only adequate one with respect to the radical reasons and hopes. According to these beliefs, we will submit the political and statutory lines both to the federal Council and to the Congress for the refoundation of the radical party.

Translator's notes

(1) NEGRI GIOVANNI. (Turin 1957). Secretary of the Radical Party from 1985 to 1987; in 1986, with the slogan "either you choose it or you dissolve it", he promoted the campaign for the achievement of 10.000 new members. Several times deputy since 1983, and member of the European Parliament. Among the most active supporters of the campaign on world hunger and promoter of initiatives for the freedom of Tibet. Among the founders of the ARCOD (Radical Association for the Democratic Constituent Assembly) and of the "Lista referendaria", electoral ticket at the elections of 1992.

(2) 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.

(3) 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.