ABSTRACT: Is a transnational Party possible? We know that there is a dramatically urgent need for transnational entities to emerge which are capable of dealing with the great problems of our time. We know that national parties and institutions are impotent in the face of the great tragedies which threaten us. We know that the Radical Party - the party which stands for non-violence and tolerance - can open up a new political frontier. This is why we have decided to re-establish ourselves as a transnational party. But we also realise that we do not know how to overcome the culture of apathy which is spreading everywhere. So is this madness? If it is, it is a reasonable folly to oppose the foolish wisdom of the lords of war and hunger, the shortsightedness of the lords of power and politics, with determination and urgency. We have taken on the task of attempting this reasonable folly. We need others, many other reasonable fools who are ready to join us in this great challenge.

("Single issue" booklet for the XXXV Congress of The Radical Party - Budapest 22-26 april 1989)

Is a transnational party feasible? After thirty years of being primarily an exclusively Italian party, the Radical Party has set itself the hard task of becoming transnational. So doing, it is confirming that this is a dramatic and urgent need. It is therefore an objective which may prove impossible to achieve, but which it is only right to attempt.

The Radical Party is a small party whose merit of exercising a strong influence on Italian politics through its battles and bringing about major civil reforms in a country until a few years ago known for its great conservatism of an obviously clerical stamp, is recognised by everybody - even its opponents. Besides its victories over divorce, abortion and conscientious objection, won by using the weapons of non-violence, democracy and popular referendums, the Radical Party is known for undertaking great international political initiatives in Italy and in Europe: the fight for human rights, the fight against extermination by hunger, against poverty and under-development in third world countries, and anti-nuclear and environmental campaigns. Although it has been operating in Italy, the Radical Party has never called itself Italian, and has never requested Italian citizenship as a membership requirement. This is why it has always had a number of non-Italian militants among its ranks. In 1978 it even electe

d a French citizen, Jean Fabre, as its Secretary, who was one of the protagonists in the campaign against hunger in the world and who is now an employee of an important United Nations Agency. But for the most part, it relied on Europeans who were already working in Italy, or who were collaborating with Radical electoral representation in the European Parliament. Now on the other hand, the Radical Party has decided on a real "re-launching", on the basis of an association spread across national frontiers.

In order to do this, it has actually invented a new word, practically unknown even inside the political language of various countries: "transnational". This term is used to indicate a party and a policy capable of crossing national frontiers, institutions and parties. The term is used in contrast to the word "international" in current use which signifies the relationship between national States and as regards political organisations (the international sections of the parties) to describe the relationship between national parties which remain separate from each other, each jealous of its own national autonomy and sovereignty.

All this is now inadequate, and risks very negative repercussions for humanity. The major issues of our times have by now become global problems, which cut across national boundaries and cannot therefore be solved or controlled by the instruments of national States with their own laws, budgets, and powers. Humanity has been especially preoccupied, since the end of the Second World War, by the danger of a new world war which, because of powerful nuclear bombs, could prove catastrophic for the entire planet. But the risk of catastrophic events has spread widely, far beyond the hypothesis of a generalised world conflict. This is why people have come to realise that while we have successfully avoided the use of atomic weapons , we have not succeeded in neutralising the risk of nuclear catastrophes from nuclear power stations. Moreover, the damage caused by technology and industrial processes, whose total, comprehensive impact on the ecosystem has yet to be calculated, took no time to proliferate.

Whether we consider the hole in the ozone layer or the greenhouse effect, the planet's deforestation or the desertification of vaster and vaster areas of territory, the pollution of the oceans or the atmosphere, the question of human rights denied to a large section of humanity, or the right to live denied to tens of millions who die every year from starvation and disease and to the hundreds of millions of others who suffer hunger and wretchedness, the situation caused by tumultuous agglomerations of sprawling cities in Asia, Africa or Latin-America, or the increasing emigration to Europe or North America of millions of people hounded from their countries of origin by lack of food or work; the geographically limited wars maintained by the export of very sophisticated weapons from industrialised countries, or in the richest and most developed countries, the spreading of drugs and crime. It is obvious that justice, politics and the present institutions are currently impotent to deal with these phenomena; the w

hole world - paralysed - stands on the sidelines watching.

On the one hand, awareness of these problems, of their nature, of their very rapid development and the danger they represent is increasing. On the other hand it is a fact that knowledge in an era which has seen more scientific progress in less than a century than has been achieved in the whole history of mankind the knowledge exists and so do the means required to solve these problems and to control them in the interests of humanity. Thus it is a problem of political purpose, but not only political purpose. Because even if it were to appear, it would clash with the slowness of international procedures, with the fragmentation of national powers, with the multiplicity of spokesmen, with the obstacle of individual interests better hidden and at work because of these very difficulties.

Politics, taken as the capacity to deal efficiently and creatively with the major problems of our epoch, are therefore negated. It is necessary to regain the right to politics, today when "polis" has come to mean the whole world. If there is no way of putting "the right to live" into practice, it is the same "life of rights" which is put into question and threatened. It is imperative to affirm a new "transnational and supra-national" right, which does not annihilate nations but surpasses and overcomes them. And the challenge for which the Radical Party opted - a challenge apparently impossible and out of proportion to its strength, the challenge of mustering a political force that might reunite and co-ordinate citizens of different countries who intend to fight together to achieve common goals and to transform their own projects into transnational laws and justice.

In fact, cultural and social movements exist, throughout Europe and America - for example, the ecological movement - which denounce the degeneration of the present economic and industrial system because of their effects on the environment. But a political entity and a project able to offer and to achieve transnational political objectives capable of remedying the evils perpetrated, does not exist. The political forces which are the expression of these movements, are lacking in real alternative political theory and procedures, they adhere to existing political models, they operate and burn themselves out within national and international limits.

The Radical Party has instead decided to relaunch itself as a transnational Party, to create a political organisation in common with all those who want to fight together wherever necessary, democrats or supporters of non-violence, to affirm human rights. It aims to resolve the great ecological problems of our time, to combat extermination by hunger and undervelopment in the Third World, and to oppose drugs and crime by cutting away at their source the enormous profits that drug prohibition vouchsafes the criminal organisations, to encourage and accelerate political (and not only economic) unity of Europe, to streamline and strengthen international law and institutions. This Party has no intention of competing with national parties. Members can join therefore who are Communist, Liberal, Christian or Socialist, who share the need and urgency for these proposals and objectives, and who, with us, can see the insufficiency of their own respective international organisations. Ecologists too can join, who

are not content merely to agitate and denounce issues, but who are prepared to organise actions and projects to see their aspirations realised in political and not historical times: i.e. in the present generation. Passive non-violence and the conscientious objectors who do not confuse the struggle for peace with neutrality and indifference to the problems of freedom and democracy. All these will discover a lay, not an ideological party, which members join on the basis of its initiatives and objectives for political combat.