INTERVIEW OF MILOVAN ERKIC WITH MARCO PANNELLA

POLITICKI SVET (Belgrade) - November 15, 1988

OSAM (Belgrade) - November 18, 1988

ABSTRACT: Milovan Erkic interviews Marco Pannella about the theoretical premises of the trans-national party, on the prospects for its growth in the Socialist countries, on the non-violent method, on the role of its leader, on the difficulties of affirming battles for individual liberty in countries with a conservative moral code, on peace and security in Europe, on the integration of Yugoslavia in the European Community.

(RADIKALNE NOVOSTI edited by MARINO BUSDACHIN and SANDRO OTTONI with the collaboration of MASSIMO LENSI, FULVIO ROGANTIN, PAOLA SAIN JAN VANEK, ANDREA TAMBURI - TRIESTE, January 1, 1989)

1) The trans-national character of the Radical Party is relatively recent. Is this a long-term choice or a short-term programme as have been other PR programmes?

"This is a party that lives from year to year. In fact, in its yearly congresses it constitutes and re-constitutes itself on the basis of decisions adopted by a two-thirds majority of the congress's voting delegates. Thus even the trans-national choice is theoretically precarious as is the party itself. But since the party's adherents, its members, belong to it just because of this choice (trans-national and trans-party), I believe that the party will grow and be reinforced in this direction or else it is more likely to be disbanded entirely. There is no doubt in my mind, in fact, that today the most important problems of mankind and of all peoples and individuals are no longer national ones but "demand" that solutions are worked out, defended and affirmed by political organisations and state institutions that at their very core have guaranteed the active and responsible participation of the various ideals, cultures, strategies, experience and necessities that are proper to all national and state histor

ies, to all "markets", and that they have a sovereignty corresponding to the problems they have to resolve. And to do this we have two fundamental convictions: the absolutely non-violent, political method that is the current incarnation of the civilisation of lay tolerance and political democracy, and that this imposes on the individual and collective conscience, as it did for Gandhi, a kind of continuous revolution. And it imposes on the Radical Party its "public service" character, open to and run by free individuals who remain such, as a kind of bus service where whoever pays for his ticket - the membership card - has the right, if he wants to, to travel to the end of the line of the ticket he has bought. The right, I repeat, and not the obligation. The party exacts no discipline, its decisions are not binding except on its yearly "leaders" and not its members.

As you see, it is truly a strange sort of party, almost an impossible kind. But up to now, when it has functioned with the respect - sometimes ferocious - of its own rules, pursuing only its goals and not an ounce of power, it has seen a few thousand, even at times only hundreds of people count for more than millions did organised into traditional parties of power or ideologies. In short, it is a party that competes with no others and above all not nationalistic. Its objectives are totally different. To make a wisecrack I could call it a kind of WWF of human rights rather than animal or environmental ones. I challenge any court in any country in the world to express a different judgement, juridically, with respect to its own laws, and to find any incompatibility even with institutions or legislation that only allow for a "single party" in the country's government and life. In the same way it is impossible or unjust to consider it, anywhere whatsoever, a "foreign party" since it is an international and

trans-national one.

Another of its characteristics, implicit but clear, is that it is in no way authorised to "represent" its members, their humanity, their ideas, their general interests: a democratic party is for us a tool, an instrument, not a church, an ethnic group, an army. Our "executives" as such can only do the necessary work for realising the annual objectives, but they never "represent" us. Naturally they to are individuals, citizens, activists, and have the full personal right to make other choices and have other interests than those taken into consideration by the party.

Therefore, if this instrument, this tool, for whatever reason should no longer be useful, or adequate, or break, or lose solidity, it can calmly be put aside and others perhaps invented to replace it. This is what we risk today because there are only slightly more than five thousand of us in the world, and we need (according to our calculations) at least three times as much human energy and money coming from the membership dues and subscriptions of our militants."

2) Yours is for the time the only trans-national party. Do you think in the future there will be others that function or will exist outside the confines of their own country, particularly taking into account the Europe of '92?

"To tell the truth it is not merely the only trans-national party, but is unique in all other ways. For example, it is the only one which that does not consider it to be a contradiction in itself to belong to another party but, on the contrary, presupposes this to some degree. In fact, it seems to us that a democrat can and must be a <> "as well", and not only a <>. It seems to me obvious however that quite soon other "trans-national" parties will have to be organised for the same reasons that at the end of the last century, and the first decades of this one, the workers' movement postulated the "internationalist" and international character of the Socialist political organisations. In particular, it seems obvious to me that very soon the within the European Community, the United States of Europe, the parties will have to reorganise and become truly European, not only "national". The European Parliament has on the other hand formally decided to request that the next elections (1989) w

ill permit the presentation of candidates of the 12 member nations in each "national" college. It is unlikely that this will happen, but the Italian Parliament will probably vote unilaterally - as a result of our initiative - in coming weeks to permit the candidacy in Italy of all citizens from European Community countries. With regard to the Europe of 1992 we are not optimists unless the full and free movement of people, capital and goods is also achieved as well as the establishment of a true Federal State capable of governing and imposing its own laws on this new single market. However, the process that has been started may perhaps suffer delays in this or that sector but it cannot miss strong acceleration on the cultural, political and sociological levels."

3) Even in Yugoslavia the number of PR party members is growing. Do you have a programme that could be accepted by the mass of Yugoslav citizens?

"Me? If I did I would not be a Radical. In my opinion the Radical Party cannot have a Yugoslavian or Italian or African programme: it can have goals and projects that are also valid in Yugoslavia.

"And our Yugoslavian comrades, in the party and as a party, contribute to deciding on and promoting goals and projects which are also Italian, European, not only Yugoslavian. These regard rights - human, civil, social, political ones. These regard environmental protection, ecology, against the hothouse effect, against the pollution of water (beginning with the water of the Adriatic), against acid rain, against the pollution in the cities, destructive industrialism, against the drug plague, against AIDS, against the diseases of nationalism and authoritarianism, against violence in social and political life, against wasteful war, military and weapons investments... None of this can be fought in a single country or state. So there is as you can see an embarrassment of riches with regard to choices seeing that we could never, with the nature of our party, fight them all, and all together, as the Radical Party..."

4) Do you believe in the possibility of acting in the Socialist states without the members of your party being exposed to repressive measures by the local authorities who probably do not take much into consideration the non-violent methods of your party?

"Listen here, let's talk straight. In Italy, a Western country, a constitutional state and a political democracy - at least in theory - almost all of us have been in prison, have been put on trial by the hundreds in certain periods (and generally acquitted). A non-violent person, a Gandhian, also uses the technique of self-accusation, of civil disobedience, of refusing to collaborate with unjust ordinances in a systematic way - or should be capable of doing so. So it seems to me that in the countries of "practising Socialism" there will probably be no lack of difficulties. It has already happened in recent months that governments such as the Czechoslovakian one have accused the Radical Party at being the source of the great popular demonstration of August 21 and showed our leaflets and banners from a blitz demonstration held in Prague of August 19... In Warsaw it was the same story; the Minister of Information accused the party of... Cicciolina (1) and the depraved Radicals as being enemies of the regim

e and responsible for demonstrations and actions against Jaruzelski. They do us too much honour!

"But with regard to Yugoslavia, personally for at least eight years now I have been preaching everywhere that there is much more room for democracy than people abroad - and perhaps in Yugoslavia itself - think, and that the ruling class is very serious. I hope they don't want to prove me wrong. Certainly today there are great difficulties that depend on overcoming the historical motivations of the choices made in the Forties and the beginning of the Fifties - difficulties helped along in good or bad faith by the West and democratic Europe where they continued like parrots to repeat that national independence and

"traditional" non-alignment were excellent choices for you while they made the opposite choices."

5) On the basis of your experiences up to now, in the Socialist countries do they consider you a competing political force or rather "a class enemy"?

"Up to now in the countries of applied Socialism we cannot say that we have been able to act as a party. Our members - qualitatively and often emblematically important - have been and are too few. For the rest, it is evident that the old ruling classes, still tainted with Stalinism, can only have stupid opinions about us. But it will be interesting to see what will be the reactions now in the age of Gorbachov if it continues and gathers strength. There could be some surprises, unfortunately not only positive ones, which I would for the moment hesitate to exclude."

6) One of the founding principles of the Radical Party is non-violence. Doesn't it seem an anachronistic method to you in today's world? Or rather, doesn't it seem to you that in the context of European culture a Gandhian kind of non-violence may seem to be of a Catholic stamp? And I ask this in the full knowledge that you were the main adversaries of the Concordat.

"What people often forget is that Gandhian non-violence in essence and in its historical manifestations derives from the western, Anglo-Saxon tradition and not the orient (otherwise it would be contemplative in nature). Gandhi was also a lawyer who took his degree in England, as did Pandit Nehru and many others. In his social and political action, Gandhi was much closer to the Fabian society in political inspiration and "the non-violence of the crossed arms" (as the strike, this democratic workers' revolution, was called) than he was to Buddhist non-violence.

Political non-violence today is the most advanced and complete form of "lay tolerance" on which to found the civilisation of a society and a state, if it is transformed into the laws and conduct of the ruling class as well as that of the historical opposition. For a few centuries after the bourgeois revolution, terrible contradictions injured the civilisation of tolerance and democracy. In the name of the goddess reason killings and massacres were perpetrated, in the name of nations and revolutions wars waged and blood shed, and it was even thought that tolerance and violence could and should co-exist whenever the violence was practised by the state or was "revolutionary". Unfortunately the Catholic Church during the centuries was also the victim, and at times, the perpetrator of the most atrocious massacres and violence. In the Stalinist trials the matrix of the "Inquisition" is easily discerned.

Non-violence puts the individual at the centre of social life, and dialogue, like Socrates, not only like Gandhi. The presupposition of non-violence is that only people and not demons exist, and that the worst among them, if struck with the force of non-violence, which is always aggressive unlike the apparent meekness of pacifism, can answer with the best that they have in them...

True political non-violence, for example, has nothing in common with certain coercions by hunger strikes such as those of the Irish soldiers of the IRA. If one doesn't want the non-violence of the hunger strike to become a from of violence, one must use its extreme forms, such as precisely the hunger strike for example, only to demand trustfully of the power-holders that they enact what they have promised and what the law itself demands of them..."

7) You are the "first man" of the Radical Party no matter what office you may happen to hold at any particular moment. In realising the party's programmes, yours is the name that always comes up. Without Pannella there is nothing. In the countries of applied Socialism the party is always made to the measure of the leader. So where is the difference, and is there perhaps a common danger of submission to the charisma of the party chief?

"Charisma was identified by Weber as a characteristic of sociological and political reality. And Weber felt charisma to be a positive attribute. After the experiences of this century we have understood the absolute need to try keeping the most marked separation possible between charisma and power. It may be that this or that First Radical Party Secretary is susceptible to the influence, even involuntarily, of this or that historical party leader, which today would be mine. But what seems to us to be fundamental is that all the power the statute confers on him should be in the hands of the one holding this office and that - for good or ill - within the very strict limits that the particular structure of our party admits, he can both theoretically and practically affirm convictions and decisions that may be the opposite of those of the so-called <> without power.

Thus in more than twenty years I have accepted to pay the price of being Secretary for two successive years like various other Radicals. In totalitarian countries, but also in the countries of the Western party-power system like Italy, in general the so-called charismatic party <> is very careful not to add to his prestige the power of the party secretary too and to do it by often placing himself above and beyond any internal, democratic or libertarian party norm. And anyone can observe how little disposed they are in general to give up their office before passing on to a better world. Anyone who has participated in Italian party and political life, too, knows very well that any Radical Party member (even if a member for a single day) who insults <> becomes a headline hero for many Italian dailies and remains such for a long time. In general he is given much more space than all the Radicals, deputies, secretaries, etc...., who often manage to bring off social and political victories of

extraordinary value."

8) Many Radical Party battles have been of an ethical or moral nature, so to speak: from abortion to divorce, to conscientious objection, to the liberalisation of light drugs, to the support of homosexuals or trans-sexuals. Are you aware that in the Socialist countries there still prevails a highly conservative moral code and that this could be a decisive factor in the attitudes aroused in the masses and even the intellectuals towards the Radical Party?

"In very closed societies that are suffocated or apparently embalmed, the danger is just the opposite: that at a certain point the baby gets thrown out with the bath water... Already in authoritarian and repressive societies under the ashes of conformity there burn behaviour patterns more transgressive than in freer and thus more inoculated and responsible societies. Only no one knows anything about them. The mass media do not mention them, as they do not mention poverty, torture, injustice. And when one is officially liberated one risks confusing liberty and responsibility with jungle behaviour... As far as we are concerned, contrary to how it may look to many, I think that we have represented a rigorously puritan force: we have not allowed scourges such as that of clandestine abortion to remain hidden or that the scientific reality of a rich and complex sexuality continued to be ignored and to provoke social dangers and disasters. Sexual repression contains within it violence of atomic proportions. We

have always maintained that what lives in the light of day can always be made positive, but what is confined to clandestine darkness and night ends up as a danger to itself and others. Therefore non-violence which is necessarily dialogical, official, and open constitutes a drama that impedes the development of tragedy. However, tolerance and lay civilisation must consider to be a plague any state and laws which claim to lay down ethical and moral values. Positive law must only guarantee that no individual and collective morality develops to the detriment of others and uses violence on them."

9) What do you think to be the main dangers to peace in Europe and for the survival of man in the grave ecological situation? What is your party doing and thinking of doing in this sphere?

"The main threat to peace in Europe today lies in the non-democratic, intolerant, and thus violent nature of many European regimes, in the deterioration of the democratic quality of society and the Western nations. It is civil peace which is at stake with a political and economic order dominated by the power of the multinational industrial-military complex, the agriculture-food one, and others. The lack of trans-national and international democratic institutional powers make them, naturally even prior to their choice, the de facto major powers in the world. The historical failure, even economically and productively as well as politically, of applied Communism results in these complexes being in some way already potentially "sovereign" over Communism. Than there is the risk of civil wars and terrorism that national states by now can only provoke rather than cure".

10) The Radical Party even has seats in the European Parliament. What influence do you have there? Is it true that it is much greater than your effective numerical presence?

"A trans-party Radical entity is in fact already present in the European Parliament inasmuch as the ideals and goals we pursue are also shared by many other European deputies independently of the groups they belong to. Thus it has happened always more frequently that we have obtained absolute majorities of the members of parliament (and not only the relative majority of those voting) of about 300 adherents on proposals for the direct election by the E.P. and the twelve national parliaments joined into <> of the presidents of the European Commission and the European Council and on the already mentioned proposal allowing a passive electorate, that is to say, the possibility of being a candidate of all the citizens of these states in the next European elections. It was our initiative that obliged the EEC to break for years all co-operation with Syria and to condemn in practice the Turkish military regime. I want to indicate that even if there are only three of us Radical Party deputies ele

cted on the Italian list of candidates for European deputies, there are today others too, Socialists, Liberals, and independents."

11) They say that a true Radical politician dedicates a good part of his life to the party. How much time do you personally give to the Radical cause?

"It is not really a question of <>. In the other parties too, as in offices and businesses there are people who work very much. It is the <> in my opinion that distinguishes the realm and the activities of Radical non-violent activists. When your political battle is also fought with hunger (and sometimes thirst) strikes, with civil disobedience that leads to trials and prison, even if you are generally found not guilty; when you are working to obtain laws that block active scourges and massacres such as extermination from hunger in parts of the world, and when the liberation of thousands of convicts depends on your action or you are trying to block the approval of laws that destroy freedom and stimulate crime - in all these cases you are really at war, on the front line, fighting as a partisan. There is no difference between night and day, every minute counts and you have to keep awake.

I have often said that the violent and the non-violent are fraternal enemies, but brothers nevertheless: both of them give of their substance for their ideas... the violent prefer to give... the substance of their enemies while waiting for their turn in a logical process of death and destruction. The non-violent function in a dramatic context of and for life, each person's life, not merely the life of "all". An Italian general, Ambrogio Viviani, ex commander of the Folgore parachute troops as well as of Italian counter-espionage, declared that being a soldier and knowing no other trade, he is today a Radical militant because he discovered that Radicals are full-time soldiers and very efficient in reaching their goals.

But there is an aspect that should not be ignored: the great power of love and "personal" involvement of each of us in the happy if difficult moments makes this experience a very rich and full "private" one, not only a "public" one..."

12) One of the objectives of your trans-national commitment is directed towards integrating Yugoslavia in a united Europe. What is the reason for such a commitment? Do you really think the premises exist for the inclusion of our country in the Europe of '92: the political will in Europe and the political and economic possibilities in Yugoslavia?

"I have written and given many interviews on this question, even in Yugoslavia for at least eight years. I do not want to repeat myself now, but the reasons are all in the answers I have already made. On this perhaps Milovan Brkic can give you more information.

(See the attached interview in Vjesnik and the dossier)

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) Cicciolina - Stage name of Hungarian-born strip-tease artist Ilona Staller who was elected as a Radical deputy after her "scandalous" candidacy was enormously exploited by the Italian press.