ABSTRACT: Intervening in the debate on the subject of the radical party's transformation into a transnational political subject, Sebastiano Maffettone maintains that the crisis of representation of the national parliaments - interests are increasingly of an international and global nature - brings about the need for a transnational type of political reform. The need to refer to the tradition of the liberalism in the sense of commitment more than neutrality.

(Radical News N. 302 of 31 December 1987)

Bertrand Russell, a person who is (or could be) close to many of us, told an episode of his life in his beautiful autobiography.

Taken by the police during a nonviolent demonstration against war, he was thrown into a police van and driven away. While the van made its way through the crowd, one of his assistants ran after it, shouting at the phlegmatic policeman "stop, this man is a genius of mathematics". No reply. "Stop, this man is a great philosopher". No reply. "Stop, this man is the nineteenth Lord Russell". At that, the policeman stopped the van and made him get off. It is a nice episode because it's told by the author himself.

I mentioned it not just because it's funny, not just as a modest advice for your Christmas reading, but more practically because Bertrand Russell strikes me as one of those people who took liberalism seriously. Democratic and social liberalism, as I think liberalism should be, and as I believe the radical party has often interpreted liberalism, drawing inspiration for its action from this form of democratic and social liberalism.

From this standpoint, it seems obvious to me that there is no wide gap between the theoretic problems, which we address starting from a political theory of this kind, and the concrete action which a group, a party or a movement can carry out in a direction which is similar if not identical.

Thus, I would like to start by outlining two major problems, or rather, two series of problems, which - in my opinion - are particularly up-to-date in the doctrine of contemporary liberalism, and which - as I said - at least as a thematic pattern coincide with the radical party's concrete action in Italy and in fact, also with the example which Russell's life had provided of a democratic and progressivist liberal. The first theoretic distinction is between an idea of liberalism in the sense of neutrality and an idea of liberalism in the sense of commitment in the context of what I call public ethic.

Owing to various circumstances, in Italy, in our tradition, the first version of liberalism has always or almost always fundamentally prevailed; whereas - according to me - it is the second version which is the most truthful (and above all the most interesting for politics) interpretation of the history of liberal thought.

In the first version - that of liberalism in the sense of neutrality - theoretic liberalism, based on tolerance, is a sort of traffic light which regulates the flow of idiosyncratic alternatives of value.

People, in other words, express values and inclinations which are strictly individually idiosyncratic. In other words, hardly anything that can be mutually shared: liberalism is useful because - being tolerant - it makes it possible for us to avoid using violence to assert our ideas and values. The second version, instead, tries to organize a decent version of public ethic on a conception of rights and uses, meant as the regulatory basis according to which we can ultimately organize our ideas, our feelings, our values and political theses. I consider this distinction fundamental. Fundamental also in the sense that it is appropriate to take a stance, both theoretically and practically, in favour of the second version of liberalism (obviously I'm giving this opinion as my own theoretic choice and as a recommendation for anyone wanting to take this choice seriously).

As I was saying, this distinction is related in many ways to another one, which also concerns the life of the Radical Party to some extent, and possibly concerns it even more closely. It is the distinction between two types of liberalism, the first - which I will call grass roots liberalism - and the second one which I will call institutional liberalism.

For the same reasons which it would be complicated to investigate, in Italy the second form of liberalism has always - or almost - prevailed on the first one. In the Italian tradition, the institutional, statist version of liberalism, the one of Hegel and possibly also of Kelsen, has always prevailed over the "grass roots" version of liberalism.

In my opinion this is radically wrong, because if there is a thematic unity in liberalism, it is the idea that civil society is worth more than the State; the idea according to which everything people think, believe and do is better than that which is imposed on them.

Liberalism, whatever our interpretation, is ultimately a doctrine based on the idea of citizen versus State, or at least of the limits of the State's action vis-à-vis citizens. Therefore the notion I called (with a dubious expression, from a strictly theoretic standpoint) "grass roots" is the true interpretation of liberalism.

We should be glad when in a country the institutions accept what people want.

I realize these two distinctions are abstract if not totally utopian. On the other hand, if during a stage of the dialogue inside a party (or a movement, or a group of people) one asks for a philosophical intervention on this type of problems, it means that sometimes abstraction can be used in terms of ideal and real choice which we must nonetheless make.

The text we have been given raises many a problem. That little contribution which a scholar of general politics and political philosophy - such as I am - can give, obviously concerns more the aspect which we call normative, ideological, abstract of political theory, more than the positive aspect, i.e. the one in which the political institutions are investigated as they are, and malfunctions are noticed with respect to a model inherent to the proper functioning of those institutions. Therefore the things I will say concern a rather abstract and normative horizon.

The text which this debate originates from contains an important division into two areas of intervention and interest.

The first regards an up-to-date problem which is prevailing in Italian politics. That which I call the problem of an "institutional reform", and which can more generally be called of the "reorganization of the rules of the game". The second part of the paper concerns the transnational or international party (I don't believe the word is decisive in this case, even if words are probably important for those who devote their time to them). The first idea to propose (which in fact has been anticipated by Strik Lievers just now) is that the two problems are by no means two separate things. Not only are they two faces of the same coin, but they are possibly the same face of the same coin. In what sense?

In the sense that - as theorists know, but as anyone who walks in the street knows, who perceives the moods of Italian politics, which are often so persuasive - it is quite obvious that there is a huge representation crisis. Not so much for the (hackneyed) fact that the legal country badly expresses the real country, because it is obvious that in a complex country it is extremely difficult to separate the two levels. But, rather, for a substantial fact (from this point of view I think Strik Lievers anticipated the terms of the problem). The substantial fact is that the interests represented in parliament are increasingly of a local or particular nature; whereas the interests of a great industrial nation, such as Italy - we have to face it - are increasingly of an international or global nature. In that case, the problem of the institutional reform is first of all an attempt to solve this crisis of representation. But if the crisis of representation is - such as I suggested to interpret it - a crisis which co

ncerns the relation between a complex of delegates and institutions which, for the very way in which they are elected, proposed and presented, tends to safeguard and protect local interests; and if, on the other hand, the need for an institutional output, for that which ensues from the labour of the major institutions, should be something internationally more significant, because all the major problems we need to address in a country such as ours are of an international nature (I think there are no doubts about this), then the problem of the reform of the rules of the game corresponds, or at least overlaps for an important part, with that of the international party.

These are not two problems, but one problem with several facets, it is obvious. If I had to analyse the two facets (I will try to see why they are related), I would say that the first thing to look for (if it is true - as I think it is - that the democratic and social liberalism which I perceive as the prevalent doctrine in contemporary political thought could be a sort of theoretic basis on which to address our political options) is to orient the reorganization of the rules of the game, or the institutional reform, not according to purely technical reasons.

In other words, I am fairly convinced, possibly also as a result of a professional distortion (but I think there is more to it) that it is important to devise an institutional mechanism enabling us to obtain slightly better results in terms of effect than the ones we are obtaining now, but that at the same time it is important to try to understand the fundamental problem beneath the fact that the institutions don't work.

And this means, according to me, reorganizing (so to say) the efforts to change the rules of the game.

Clearly, it is easy to say something of this kind: I imagine it is rather true and persuasive, but the difficulty is saying in what sense and why.

In other words, it is necessary to give a coherent articulation to the proposals relative to public ethic, which would determine the general and abstract features if not the details of the desired institutional change.

Something of the kind is not only difficult but also complicated. I will simply mention some of these aims, very briefly. One fundamental aim is that of equality. Equality not only in terms of rights and opportunities, but also (so to say) in terms of rights to the resources, where equality of resources is different from equality of results. But while it fair to say that those who commit themselves most obtain more, it is less fair to say that even those who start off from a position of family and economic privilege can obtain more; those who are most helped by fate and by that social lottery which the market results depend on. This in my opinion is the horizon from which the democratic and social progressivist liberalism should operate from, but this horizon cannot be conceived in a single spot, but rather as a sort of frontier. And that frontier is the frontier of rights, in a moral sense and in the sphere of public ethic.

I would like to recall the recent publication of the papers of a convention of November '86, which a research group I belong to - Politeia - held in Milan last year. The congress was called "A public ethic for the open society", and so was the book. The general theoretic attempt it advanced, even though through various disciplinary and thematic directions and horizons, is precisely that of organizing a structure of new rights forming the basis, so to say, of public ethic; where speaking of new rights - in a moral, not a juridical sense - means establishing what subjects have rights, and why they have these rights and not others.

We could say that the areas in which the debate on the new rights is more natural is that of the environment, bio-ethic and justice.

But since the problem isn't finding new rights in the sense of absolutely new rights, in the mass of our moral instruments, but that of considering the ensemble of public policies as a deposit capable of attributing or denying rights, in a moral sense, what we need to do is a sort of re-examination from the standpoint of public ethic of that which the State does in terms of policies. As far as the second point is concerned, regarding the transnational (or international) party, I already said it is not entirely disconnected from the first. And this for the obvious reason that all major public issues we discuss are connected at the level of the various countries.

The economic issues: it is out of question that a modern industrial country with a developed finance and an important manufacturing industry, such as Italy, doesn't have purely local problems but, obviously, international problems.

The political issues: the changes of cultural, political horizons between East and West and North and South; or the problem of peace. Russel, Einstein, Schweitzer: some of the greatest men of our century devoted significant parts of their lives and interests to peace.

This should make us reflect that not only peace is important, but even the problems of this kind, the political, economic problems are not local - or national - but international.

From this point of view, even the transnational party's "destination Europe", which the radical party bases itself on, is rather tight. Tight because obviously it is a problem which doesn't concern Europe only. But, even if it tight from this point of view there are two things to say. The first, rather obvious but important, is that the new agreements between the Soviet Union and the U.S. inevitably lead to reflecting on the fate of a Europe neglected on the one hand, inevitably because it is considered negligible, and on the other hand no longer protected; in the sense that the strategic difference in terms of conventional weapons, between the group which refers to the Soviet Union and the one of Western Europe is huge, to the advantage of the former on the latter. Therefore, without the U.S. atomic umbrella, Europe should seriously worry about organizing a military policy for itself, and whether one is a pacifist or not. Obviously, being pacifist doesn't mean simply giving up the military policy.

The other point for which the "addressee Europe" can be defended it clearly even more banal; it is the fact that we need to start somewhere. And since European institutions exist, which Italy is part of, it is reasonable to think that that is the first horizon in which the transnational party can have effectiveness and meaning.

But - again this is my personal opinion - the fundamental objective is another one, and refers precisely to that democratic and social liberalism I was talking of. It is a utopian and ambitious objective, which cannot be achieved immediately, but which surely calls for a long mediation. It is therefore appropriate that precisely this type of congress, of reflection on politics tackle the problem first.

The problem is that of "international anarchy". The term wants to mean that the relations among the States are different from the ones between the citizens of a State. The latter are regulated by the law. The former are not; the States live in a sort of anarchy. They are in a state which a political theorist would call "pre-Hobbes". The question is, is it possible to seek a basis of international community enabling us to go beyond this anarchy? I said before that an aim of this sort is extremely ambitious, probably unattainable in the short run, and terribly theoretic. However, I am not convinced that it is only theoretic: it is also and first of all theoretic, but it also has a practical side.

This side consists in convincing oneself - starting with ourselves - and in operating according to this belief, that the relations between States can sooner or later be replaced by relations between citizens, in the sense that they do not necessarily have to negotiate among themselves, diplomatically, states like huge organized moloches, abstract super-individuals who do not represent the real interests of none, or represent them only very partially.

If it is true - and it is - that there is a crisis of representation in Italy (not just in Italy, everywhere), it is even more evident that what the States do is not exactly what we would want them to do. And this makes us think that in order to have a fair and comprehensible international society, based on people, the greatest effort we can make is that of enhancing the relations between citizens.

In this sense I believe the recent agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union is important, because it enables the citizens of the two countries to know each other better, and there is no better guaranty of peace than this.

In a famous book of his of many years ago, called "The mathematics of war", Richardson proved a direct proportion between the number of armaments and the possibility of war (which is rather obvious), but also an inverse proportion between the number of contacts between the citizens and the possibility of war, which - basically - means that the more the citizens establish what their real interests are, the less there are possibilities of war. I'm saying this basing myself not only on the evidence (rather questionable) of am empirical work on the relations between war and contacts between citizens; but also and especially because this seems to me the most evident consequence at an international level of that famous grass roots liberalism which the Italian tradition has little or inadequately referred to.

With the important exception - if anything at a political level - of the Radical Party.