ABSTRACT: Even if there are signals, today, pointing to a new attention toward the Radical Party's political theory, so much that even the Communist Party advocates the reasons of non-violence, there still remains the risk of a defeat of the non-violent hypothesis. After a detailed account of the past of Radical non-violence, the author explains its peculiarity with the fact that it sets the conscience-State relationship as a relationship of constant confrontation. But is the Radical Party of today capable of confronting itself? And who is its interlocutor today? Either the Radical Party reinvents this praxis and its values, finding its new institutional interlocutor in the Europe institutions, or there will be a regression of the party toward something else, with its consequent defeat.

(Papers of the convention "The Radicals and non-violence: a method, a hope", Rome 29-30 April 1988)

Mine will be a very pessimistic relation, and I would be irresponsible if it weren't; pessimistic on the possibility that the Radical Party can still be the party of non-violence - not of the non-violent testimony - as it has been for many decades, the party of non-violence and civil rights. And yet, as we are here, trying to understand the meaning and the up-to-datedness of radical non-violence, odd signs come to us from the outside; and probably more than odd, I would like to say interesting. In these very hours, at the University of Rome, Prof. Norberto Bobbio (1) is conducting a convention dedicated to the memory and the commemoration of Salvemini (2), of the Rosselli brothers (3) and of Ernesto Rossi (4). I hope that Radio Radicale has recorded the convention: we will thus have a certified documentation - so to say - that not only Bobbio, but also others, be they scholars, political analysts or politicians, have asserted and finally assert in a clear manner, that the only modern way to conduct and to co

nceive politics, modern politics, is precisely the one traced by Ernesto Rossi, by the Rosselli brothers, and by Salvemini, with their uncompromising opposition to fascism, to its values and its logic.

We are confronted, therefore, with an interesting reprise of attention toward those that are the traditional and well known sources of the radical political culture, perhaps not in its typical non-violent aspect, but certainly with all the heritage of non-violence that comes from the fact that these presences, these individualities, represented a way of conducting politics which was deeply alternative compared with the politics of their time; exactly like the Radical Party has intended to do so for twenty years: to be alternative in the politics of its time, which is still the politics of our time, of today.

In these very hours, therefore, Norberto Bobbio asserts and repeats that the path of the political revolution of our time is the one traced by Salvemini, by the Rosselli brothers, by Ernesto Rossi, in their quest for a modern liberalism. We must thank Norberto Bobbio and all those who took part in the convention, because theirs is an evident testimony of the validity of commitments which for years saw the Radical Party defending, alone, the primacy of Salveminini's, of the Rosselli brothers', of Ernesto Rossi's way of conducting politics, at a moment in which all the political thought, theory and culture followed Marxist patterns, whereas little was known or investigated about these politicians, about these authors and their political culture beyond the obvious current hagiography. I think it can be said that in the historiographical culture of these last 40 years - even on the part of the best historians, and I'm mentioning Garin for all - all has been investigated in the examination of the sources of the h

istory of our country; and yet there is not one serious essay on Ernesto Rossi.

But in any case we are witnessing a return to Damascus of thinkers, historians, politicians, on themes that are traditional for the Radical Party. And another signal comes from the current issue of "Rinascita" (5), where we find an intervention by Nicola Badaloni, which is a renewed assertion of the reasons of non-violence: unexpectedly, Badaloni provides a detailed praise, on the Communist magazine, of non-violence as a possible praxis of a left-wing policy. He then relates two elements to it, which are not typical of the manner with which the Radical Party conceives and conducts non-violence. The first one: non-violence - Badaloni says - is a battle instrument to be reconducted rather to situations that are distant from us, and certainly more difficult; non-violence is useful and necessary to fight against the most explicit forms of racism and colonialism which are present throughout the world.

Once again, non-violence is something that concerns colonialism, for the main part. The well known image of Gandhi returns, as a man coming from the East, and of non-violence as a political praxis destined to remain in the East.

The other non-radical thing that Badaloni highlights is also interesting: the theme of non-violence is put in relation to a debate which is presently being conducted on Italian newspapers. On "La Stampa" of the 23rd of last month, for example, there was an article, once again by Bobbio, on the relations between lay Ethic and religious Ethic, between lay morale and religious morale. Badaloni also associates non-violence to the values typical of the lay-rational morale. In the end he traces the guide-lines, the values, of a modern and Voltairean morale (of lay tolerance, should we say), that triumphs in the form of morale of non-violence, and replaces - at least so it is hoped - the religious morale of the past. In conclusion, according to Badaloni, there is an affinity, or rather an identification between lay, (ethical) and modern morale, and the morale of non-violent tolerance: he binds the two aspects together; I believe that this connection is excessive, and far from the traditional position of the radical

party.

These are, however, signals pointing to a new attention; distorted or measured as they may be, they in any case converge toward the area we are interested in. They are signals of a reprise of attention toward the long political and cultural tradition of the radical party.

This should be of confort to us, and make us hope that it is possible to speak of non-violence today in a successful manner. As I said, I on the contrary believe that the Radical Party's major problem is the imminent risk of the defeat of the non-violent hypothesis, of the imminent defeat of the radical party itself as a party of non-violence. This is why I warned beforehand that mine would have been a pessimistic introduction, in spite of these incourageing articles.

Let us see, therefore, what the radical party's non-violence has been. It is a necessary investigation, even if I would like to keep it within restricted and concise limits, in order to avoid our Convention from becoming a historical commemoration or, even worse, a hagiographic commemoration, the sacred story of the radical party of non-violence. We will simply try to trace what non-violence has been and meant to be: at any rate according to my personal interpretation, which is probably not the interpretation of the party as a whole.

I will start by saying that I never believed in the well-known interpretation (which someone introduced in the party), that is, that there have been two radical parties, or two ways of conceiving the radical party; one of liberal-democratic culture or cult, the other of non-violent origin and profession. These two conceptions would have supposedly made up the two souls of the party, not perfectly coinciding but of equal weight and value, in a perhaps fortunate coexistence. I never believed in this dicotomy or separation, because I have never believed that there was, or could have been, a liberal-democratic party which was not also, and coexstensively, the non-violent radical party in its absolute peculiarity. I belonged to the militant wing of the party, the one that conducted marches and fasts, the one of the non-violent praxis, in short. I never joined the so-called "theoretical wing", and yet the latter was supported by eminent intellectuals, wise, cultivated and moderate university teachers. I am more th

an ever convinced, because evidence supported my position, that that theoretical wing, which claimed to be the liberal-democratic wing of the party, in fact never produced anything, at least for the party itself. To scratch about in the courtyard, without ever taking off: this was one of the expressions, one of the many ways in which the party presented itself. But beware: even if it did not produce anything theoretically solid, it is not because it was unworthy as such, made of uncapable, bad, unmotivated or stupid people: but for a reason which I believe has its roots, from a historical and theoretical point of view, in political theory. We will talk about this later; for the moment, I will repeat with extreme awareness that in these decades, in the squares and in the schools of our country, there has been only the non-violent radical party. This was the radical party.

Why? For an extremely simple reason. I think that our time, the political and historical time that we are living in, is marked by the predominion of politics on the other activities which are carried out in society, on other behaviours, on the whole of the phenomena of social structures. All the States are pure politics, ot tend toward pure politics. In the old, eighteenth century State, the "liberal" State, politics was restricted to a limited range of sectors of intervention; there were many other forms of activity and many other values, which were not part of the constitutive sphere of the State, were separated from it, and often had nothing to do with it. The State was one of the structures, one of the powers operating, and was present in or over the social sphere in order to organize it. In the eighteenth century, the English economists discovered the "civil society", which was one thing, while the State was another thing. Civil society and State marched separately: the State had nothing to do with the

civil society, and the latter developed on its own; for example, the sphere of economy was under its competence; economy belonged to the civil society, the State had nothing to do with it.

After the First World War, all this had changed, and nowadays, as we all know, the State pervades the civil society; not only in Italy or in the Soviet Union, but also in the countries with a formal democracy. The State is part of the civil society everywhere, or rather, penetrates it and pervades it completely, or tends to do so. When we think of the United States of America, we refer to it as the classic country of liberalness (and therefore liberalism). To think this is absolutely inadequate to represent reality; the U.S. economy from 1929 on is an economy which is stimulated and supported by the State, if not altogether controlled by it: it is basically a "war economy". The so-called Welfare State, the U.S. social state, started to work and to distribute wealth when the U.S. economy started to produce cannons and missiles and to make the so-called "military-industrial complex" work at a full rate. Until that moment, in spite of the fact that Rooselvelt had made many plans and programmes, the "new deal",

the new society, did not work; it started to work, that is, to distruibute the wealth it is famous for, when the mechanism of military production became fully operative; basically, when the will of the State intervened over economy, and made it active with its orders, aimed and addressed toward goals that were not simply or primarily economic. This is an ascertained fact. Generally, and the more so when we speak of other States, not only of the Anglo -Saxon and U.S. free area, the State is everything. Even positive religions, the major Churches, can in fact have the function of warning or hindering, but little more can it do confronted with the State. In a Catholic State it is not easy to talk about abortion, because the Church prevents liberalization: but with respect to global ethic, of the State and in the State, or with respect to the themes of economy (consumerism or not? austerity or waste?), granted that the latter belongs to the sphere of ethic, the Church remains external and uninfluent. Churches do

not represent alternatives to the State. The State, as I said, is all; tendentially, at any rate.

In this condition of "State-All", the classic liberal category, according to which the State is neutral, is not valid, does not exist. The theory according to which the ideal condition is reached when the State is "liberal", that is, neutral, was valid when the State was a section of society as a whole; but when society identifies with the State and the State penetrates the core of society, then the idea of the neutral State, of the neutral law, has no meaning. In this tranformation of the State-society relation relies the historical reason of the defeat of liberal parties (of "moderate" liberals, not of the liberal Rights, for which the State also is all). The liberal parties are experiencing a crisis, not because they are stupid or because they do not proclaim a market economy (generally speaking, liberals today advocate a free market, and nothing else), but because they have a conception of the State which is no longer valid, and therefore cannot interpret any element of novelty, modernization and liberal

ism as regards the culture of the State.

This is why I have never believed in the possibility of a liberal-democratic wing inside the radical party, capable of giving a positive indication, a valid political idea; neither in the party nor outside of it can this type of culture - traditional liberalism - represent an innovative, creative, aggregating factor on values of freedom. It is for this reason that I have always supported that only the non-violent radical hypothesis could allow a liberal approach, a truly liberal approach toward the acknowledgment of the State, its construction, its renewal. And in what sense could this have occurred? Precisely in the sense indicated by the party's non-violent battles. When it conducted its major battles for divorce and conscientious objection - conscientious objection, the most significant and important from a theoretical point of view, from the point of view of the liberal theory - what was the radical party saying? Confronted with the totalizing State of today (not "totalitarian"; the totalitarian State i

s a form of the totalizing State), which imposes on society values, ethic in its globality - according to which one serves the State only making a military service, for example, and for which conscience and any other activity depends completely on the values of the State - the radical party opposed conscientious objection: I object, that is, I free my conscience, preliminarily, from the control of the totalizing state, and I challenge it as a dialectic subject in order to create, through dialogue, a new law, a new law of the State, closer to the principles of my conscience. This was the theoretical, strong sense of radical non-violence, which went beyond the protestant and Quaker model of traditional non-violence, the one that asserts: "I do not want to carry weapons, let me clean toilets and I will obey, as long as I am not forced to carry weapons". Obviously, in the multiform radical battle there was this too; but there was a lot more as well. So much that, as soon as the law on conscientious objection had

been conquered, the party abandoned this commitment, because it no longer had any interest in it, in its peculiar aspect. What the party was interested in, was finding new fronts for conscientious objection to the modern State; for the creation of modern liberalism, of modern liberties, of contemporary liberties.

For the radicals, the important thing was not so much the question whether the state was to be served wearing a uniform; the question was understanding how it was possible - if it is possible - to organize a political activity that can represent an alternative to the totalizing structure of the State, and organize this alternative political initiative and apply it to the forms of western politics, as an element of modern presence and liberal activity, capable of producing more freedom of conscience, not only of the single individual in his intimacy, but of the vast mmajorities; freedom of conscience as a moment of confrontation with each totalizing claim, that claim which is a hidden danger also in States with formal democracy.

For this reason, the radicals have asserted that non-violence is a necessary "plus" to formal democracy; formal democracy is not enough without this new theoretical element, which poses the problem of the relation between state and conscience as a relation of constant confrontation, that has the aim of creating new laws. Because radical non-violence is capable of creating laws, and in this relies its being Western: in the fact that it does not resort to the mystical conscience of the single individual. Acting in a lay manner, the radicals have never thought that the conscience is the intimacy of the individual, who tends to it in his privacy (the private individual is the idiot, according to the Greeks...), while remaining isolated and far from the events of the world. The conscience is the moment of historical confrontation, historically determined, in which the detainees of different values confront each other, and each person tries to suggest that which he believes truly close to the freedoms of his time.

This, I believe, was the meaning of the radical battles. All the radical party, therefore, was non-violent; this was its nature, nor could any other nature have been conceived other than that of forming consciences in a political sense, exhibiting them... and on this, starting a hard confrontation and a dialogue, through the press, information, and deformation (also useful, because deformation became the instrument for confrontation); and thanks to this dialogue, to this awakening of the public opinion to the battle, the radical victories were achieved, the victory of the liberal conscience advanced, in a major lay confrontation of the public opinion, through the public opinion. Radical liberalism was this: it grew and lived during the battle, not when the law had been conquered. The contents of the latter were important each time - extremely important - but were neither exclusive nor determinating. In fact, looking back, we realize that as soon as a battle resulted victorious, the party abandoned it, abando

ned the contents of the battle itself: women, freedom of abortion, conscientious objection, divorce. Why? Because those contents, once the occasion for a confrontation, for an ideal, dialogical clash in society had been exhausted, at times became even corporative, negative interests: it was necessary to immediately go beyond, if we wanted to assert non-violence once more as the antagonist value to totalizing values.

It is on this that it would be interesting to know, today - as I mentioned at the beginning - if the party is presently in the conditions of conducting a dialogue and a confrontation: with itself too. The risk is, on the contrary, that the historical value and meaning of the radical party is no longer present, at least not with the same intensity, in the core of the party.

A number of non-violent "contents" and "themes" are in fact circulating; but what is lacking, I believe, is the awareness of the fact that the radical party is - beyond single contents - either the party of the liberal alternative, or it is not.

The question therefore to focus on and to solve is: which is the counterpart, today, of the radical party? Where is the strong institution with which the radical party confronts itself in order to propose the new historical values of liberating and liberal non-violence? This is the point on which I feel the radical party is deeply lacking, and I am extremely concerned about this. On this subject I feel the need for a debate, a confrontation, through a resumption of action; because either the radical party returns to its non-violent and liberal centrality, at the same time confirming it in its centrality, or there is the risk of going toward the destruction of out entire heritage. The problem of the three thousand members and of the billions to be collected this year is here, not elsewhere. This is our true political challenge. But is this hypothesis there, as a politically verifiable hypothesis, or isn't it?

Let us see which can be our possible interlocutors for a "liberatory" confrontation, which still has its centre in non-violence. We know that, in this moment, a debate is open in the party on the theme of transnationality. It is not by chance. There are persons among us who assert that the conditions of democracy in this country are not appliable in depth, and that it is therefore necessary to give the party a new direction, basing it on the transnational project as the only project that allows for a resumption of a democratic-liberal kind of political activity; whereas others reply: "No, this is not true, there are still viable spaces in this country of freedom, for freedom. The trasnational changement is neither necessary or useful". How can we blame these companions? This is a democratic country: how can we honestly deny it?

But, allow me, the problem of the radical party is different with respect to the acceptance of a formal "democracy"; the question to which the radical party meant to reply as a priority is another one.

The question is: how is it possible, through what roads is it possible to be and act as liberals of our time? Where are, or which are the liberal values to assert and for which to fight? Here too, the answers are twofold. There are persons who assert that this is a country in which there is a strong, open and diffused political confrontation, in which that balance of powers or of forces is achieved, which creates, for its mere existence, "liberalism". According to these interlocutors, freedom relies in the possibility itself of a political clash; until there is no political clash, or is not repressed with illegality, democracy is achieved: and therefore freedom. I think that this argumentation is not completely adequate or sufficient. Political analysts identify the sectors in which a conflict is achieved, in which cleavages were present in society and in the State; and while they identify and indicate them, they believe they have found the constitutive elements of democracy and freedom.

It is a reasoning that does not fully convince me, and not only because I am an old time follower of Croce (6). I give a preminent, absolute value to the emergence of those which I call ethical-political values, the values of freedom, liberatory values for the single individual, the citizen. Liberalism is this, or it does not exist. And I have seen this model be applied for years in the daily praxis of the radical party, as a liberatory praxis of the relations between citizen and State, in their dialogue and political confrontation; therefore the leaflet, the stenciled bulletin, the activist self-financed initiative involved the citizens not from the point of view of interests or power, but from the point of view of the promotion of freedom, of rights for all.

I am not against Craxi: but I do not think that the opposition of Craxi and his party to the dialogue between Communist Party and Christian Democrat Party is a praxis adequate to make those values of freedom of which we are talking, grow and develop. Craxi's initiative is important because it breaks an ancient monopoly, breaks the agreement between the parties which is the core of the exessive power of parties, proposes - if not the alternative - at least an alternation: but it is not adequate to suggest or to impose a liberal policy, a policy based on liberal values. It cannot do so. However important the socialist irruption in the core of the political clash between Christian Democrat Party and Communist Party may be, it does not insert new values, liberal values, in the political circuit, the way they must be conceived if we do not want to be only political analysts, only structuralists, only sociologists, only economists.

The problem of our country, of the freedoms, of the liberalism of our country, relies in this, I believe. And I hope that what I meant to say when I stated that the problem of non-violence is the problem of finding the possibility of a battle of freedom, liberal in its values more than in the goals to be achieved, capable of giving the country a new, freer and more liberal law, new laws for the individual and for all. Liberal laws and law: this is always the goal of a non-violent inititative; therefore I believe that the best battle of the radical party, in terms of liberation and freedom, was that on the referedum for abortion. At the time, the radicals said: "It is unacceptable for the State, in its totalizing ethic, to impose choices which in this case are choices relative to the conscience". I don't know if, from a a contingent and instrumental point of view, the law resulting from the referendum was good or bad, useful or noxious; but at a close investigation, only the principle according to which the S

tate should have had no interference in the matter, being it a matter of conscience, was liberal; in that uncompromising choice of the radical party was the added value of freedom, of true tolerance and of construction of tolerance. At the time it was defeated, but I believe that that was the climax, from a dialectical point of view, of the radical intiative.

To return to the basic question, let us ask ourselves which is the institution with which to open a confrontation of freedom, in moder, updated terms, valid to promise growth of civil liberties for "all" and for "each individual". Here we have, once again, the transnational choice, at a moment in which the configuration of the contemporary society creates new networks of values, of structures, of competences, of absences between national State and the European "area", for which, if we want to probe the roots of the possibility (or feasibility) of a plusvalue of freedom in our time, allowing the individual - or rather, the citizen, individual is not the term I am politically and ethically interested in - to express the best of historically adequate liberal values, the adequate space is Europe, and Europe only. This is, therefore, the importance, the absolute need for the radical choice, which is now looking for an effective political space. But it is here that my pessimism becomes stronger and disquieting; I

fear that the radical party, which should be a party of avant-garde (intellectual avant-garde, precisely because it is a minority) will end up by being the last to accomplish the transformation at a European level: because we can be sure that, in one years time, the trasnantional choice, in one form or the other, will be known also to the other parties, which will overcome us.

Let us come to the conclusions. There is the risk, I repeat it, that non-violence remain, in the radical party, a sort of small kitchen garden, tended by good and nice people, but with party no longer being capable of corresponding to the needs of modern non-violence, of being the instrument, the necessary structure - in its methods and goals - for politics; necessary as the wings are necessary to birds, or paws to animals. Either the radical party is a subject adequate to exert non-violent battle against the effective institutions of its time, or it does not exist; and at the same time it is not even non-violence; because, leaving out paradoxes, it is necessary to stress the conviction that the only non-violence adequate to this time is the radical non-violence, that is, the non-violence that invests the institutions of its time with its power of dialogue. There is no possible "Satyagraha", if the basic ethical principles of our time are not invested. The radical party, then, is an adequate force to this le

vel of battle, or it not the radical party, and non-violence once again becomes a behaviour connected to the cheap commandments that say: "offer the other cheek": a behaviour which is not at the level of the political, Western meaning of the term "non-violence". I don't know whether the reference to the party of the "three thousand in Europe" is important. But the principle is the same: either there is the radical force, with instruments, perspectives, initiatives, or there is defeat.

I acknowledge the fact that Pannella - I acknowledge it with extreme attention, but also with extreme detachement, in the sense that I see it as a detached moment of my life, and of the party - has the essential merit of having been the theorist of modern, rigorous and "realist" liberalism. Theorist, I said. Bobbio is also a major theorist of culture and politics, but Bobbio has not understood that it is not books that are the fundamental instrument through which it is possible to exert liberalism, or politics; the resumption of the radical policy will be able to start only taking into account the liberation of the needs for freedom of the vast majorities of the civil society.

The term "need" is important. We have been close, extremely close, years ago, to the Red Brigades and all the violent faction advocating the revolt against the State - in the most rigorous distinction of the means, and in the absolute refusal of armed violence - when they claimed the connection of the policies of the State and of its reforms to an analysis of the major theme of needs. It was a distanced dialogue, of a great value, when someone, within our party, stated that "our violent brothers are mistaken, because they are violent"; there was an immediate wave of false morality, also within the party. But the assertion was motivated and precise, especially from the point of view of political theory. At one condition (and here an essential correction was performed in the radical party, in terms of political theory): at the condition that the needs on which to exert politics are not economic needs; it is not economy, economism, the reduction to economic throty of all, - including the needs - that is the eng

ine of history. Economy is a reflection of politics, in that it becomes history, and the true needs are those that reach the level of ethic, that is, assume an ethical value. Needs become an object of politics when they become ethical-political needs, needs for freedom.

This is the fundamental discovery of the radical party. The party has acquired it and experienced it for long years, and on it has based its non-violent praxis and theory, peculiar and modern. Either the party is capable, today, of reinventing this praxis and its values, finding a new ethical-political, institutional interlocutor, that is, the European institutions, or there will be a regression of the party toward something else, and it will be defeated.

This would not be a tragedy, defeat is one of the risks in politics, as in life; a defeat is no more tragical than a score of other things. As long as defeat is not used as a pretext to achieve something else.

We must be extremely rigorous on this possibility, and say, if necessary, "no, I don't agree": Because everything can be accepted, except corruption of the ideal and of the values of the history of something. Personally, for example, I am not willing to accept it: but this is a personal matter.

I believe that this is the debate that the companions of the "Satyagraha" group are offering the possibility of conducting. But because I am a non-violent person, I am saying that there are a thousand other ways to intervene - as far as I am concerned - all acceptable: we will see if in the end we will succeed in finding valid conclusions, in one sense or the other, for the radical party and for the non-violent battle in Italy and in Europe.

Translator's notes:

(1) Norberto Bobbio (1909-): Italian philosopher and jurist.

(2) Gaetano Salvemini (1873-1957): Italian historian and politician.

(3) Carlo Rosselli (1899-1937): Italian politician; Sabatino Rosselli (1900-1937): Italian historian and politician.

(4) Ernesto Rossi (1897-1967): Italian journalist and politician.

(5) Rinascita: political and cultural weekly magazine established in 1944.

(6) Croce (1866-1952): Italian philosopher, historian and critic.