ABSTRACT: We need to form a new political movement and a new democratic party that can become an assertive force. We need to ensure that identical legislative propositions are presented and supported in all of our parliaments, cities, parties and international organisations, at the same time, in the same form and with same contents. These propositions should be supported by mass, non-violent demonstrations. Information exchange amongst us all needs to be organised, in real time. Most of all we must act quickly: join together in the transnational, transdivisional movement that the Radical Party represents.

(The Party New, n.1, June 1991)

Every day hundreds of parliaments and governments, all over the world, make thousands of laws and provisions with the intention, or perhaps under the illusion, that they will resolve problems which are common to all countries and have very particular solutions.

There are about sixty thousand parliamentarians, who have been elected, more or less according to democratic principles, from a variety of different national parties (which have tens of millions of party workers). These parties battle with each other, often fiercely and in the belief that our lives, countries, planet, ideals and future generations depend on the outcome of their political struggles. The number of populations who suffer the effects of this is increasing. Generally it involves being told that your closest neighbours, with whom you have lived, perhaps in a confused relationship, for decades, are now your mortal enemies and your survival, rights and freedom depend on defeating this enemy.

National states, which are getting smaller and "purer" as times goes on, are increasingly the area and context within which people fight, legislate, unite and seperate. They have become the object of the power struggle.

The European Community itself is going through its largest crisis in twenty years, caused by exactly such sentiments. It denies its parliament the right of control and legislative power, it is divided on all historical issues, from the question of German unity to the Gulf war and it has taken the effective federal and executive powers from the Commission executive and given them to the inter-government body representing the individual states. In the name of the federal state, which is planned in theory, but denied in reality, it rebutts the newly democratic states and their peoples who would like to become part of it. Then there is the shameful behaviour shown to Yugoslavia in the last ten years, which has been pressurised at all costs to remain "independent" and "non-aligned" and thus condemned to follow the course of disintegration, absolute dependence and underdevelopment. The United Nations has been abandoned rather than reformed to take the opportunity presented by the fall and progressive democratisati

on of the Soviet empire.

Contacts have been re-established with the Chinese communist regime who are responsible for the suffering and degradation of more than a billion people which is a result of the criminal political strategy practiced there. This is the same strategy as that which has been used for decades in the USSR, its satellites and in many Third World countries.

There is now the risk that eastern and central European countries are going to be "helped", and destroyed, in the same way as the Third World. This is done by aid and "subsidies" to state budgets which only produce poverty, new authoritianism, illusions of efficiency, chaos and injustice.

Russia is an example, where bogus projects and improbable reforms are financed, but real reform is always delayed; that of the state structure, conversion of military spending and the arms industry into civil projects, foundation of democratic autonomy, the dismantling of the impotent, but all-powerful bureaucracy. Such delay is fatal, because the people become disappointed, exasperated and desperate, social tensions rise and the more extreme opportunists are the ones to benefit rather than the rational and responsible democratic leaders who are needed.

The law of the jungle is ready to take over, a jungle where tens of millions of people will be left to suffer under cruel dictatorships.

In Kuwait, 400 oil wells continue burning and the effects are beginning to be felt in the Far East. Saddam is still in power in Iraq. Assad has become emperor of Lebanon as well. Tragedy and disappointment once again await the Kurdish people. In Iran the clerical regime continues its destruction of a civilisation that had existed for thousands of years, not to mention the subjugation of a people who had just begun to start a process of reform and benefit from modern welfare. In India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sahel, the situations are different, but equally tragic. The same is true in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Panama, thanks to a ridiculous and extreme prohibition drugs policy that exists inthe world...

This is certainly an apocalyptic view of the world. However, inside the apocalypse, there are also forces at work that can offer us a future of freedom, rights, justice and peace. They need to be identified and organised so that these forces can recognise each other and so that the division that exists between science and power, between conscience and politics and between knowing and doing, can be structurally overcome, otherwise only defeat will remain.

Never before has the "myth" of democracy and peace belonged to the people. Never before have the problems of society been so globally shared and identified. Never before has culture and the history of political thought had the capacity to elaborate the solutions to be chosen, This is true whether we are talking about political democracy, human rights or ecology.

A new political movement is needed, a new democratic party to be formed which can assert itself. If the old ideas of nationalism and party politics can be superceded, the circle can be broken otherwise there will only be suicide, of nations, parties, people and organisations. We need to be equipped for the great battle ahead, that should be fought creatively in the duplicity of the institutional systems and the democratic non-violent method, where one is the expression of the other.

We need to act at the same time, in the same way, with the same means, and with the same mass non-violent demonstrations, so that laws are proposed and supported in our parliaments, in our cities and in our "parties" or international movements.

Information must be exchanged in real time.

Most of all, we must not waste time, we must unite immediately. Each one of us is precious, necessary and may be decisive. In history and life it does sometimes happen.

We must join the transnational and transdivisional movement that is the Radical Party. Against all odds we will make it work, with our few senators, deputies, political exponents and a few thousand militant party workers.