ABSTRACT: A few days before he was assassinated, Pier Paolo Pasolini, one of the great Italian and European poets of this century, wrote a speech which was to be given at the Radical Party congress in 1975. We present an excerpt.

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

Dear Radical friends, you, who are as patient as saints with everyone, and I hope with me too. The concept of there being differences does not exist only in class consciousness and in marxist revolutionary theory, it also exists in the capitalist citadel. Here it is enjoyed (or better, suffered, and often, suffered horribly) in a concrete and factual form. That which is, and that which exists within it, the other, are two cultural reference points. There is a relationship of conflict between the two points and often, as I said, this is horrible. To transform the relationship between the two points into a dialectic one has been the stated intention of marxism, a dialectic relationship between the culture of the those with power and the culture of those in a subordinate position. This dialectic relationship would not be possible if the culture of the dominated class disappeared, was eliminated, or abrogated, as you would say. It is necessary, therefore, to fight to preserve all forms of alternative and "sub" c

ulture that exist. This is what you have been doing all these years, especially more recently. You have been successful in your search for the alternative and sub cultures, everywhere, from the centre of cities to the most faraway, unfrequented, and dead, places. You gain no human respect, assume no false dignity and you do not succumb to blackmail. You have been afraid of neither prostitutes nor publicans, nor, and this says it all, of facists.

Civil rights, in substance, are the rights of others. To talk of being different is to consider a concept without limits. In your meekness and your intransigence, you have refused to distinguish You have compromised to accept everything different that you meet. But one observation has to be made. There is one concept of being different that concerns the majority and another that regards the minority. The problem concerning the destruction of the culture of the dominated class, as the elimination of a dialectic difference which is viewed as a threat, is a problem that concerns the majority. The problem of divorce is a problem that concerns the majority. The problem of abortion is a problem that concerns the majority. The workers and farmers, the husbands and wives , the mothers and fathers constitute the majority. Where you have defended the right to differ, such as the right to divorce and abortion, you have achieved great successes. However this, as you well know, constitutes a great danger (...)

What do I mean by this? Extremists have adopted civil rights and this has meant that these rights are now present not only in the conscience, but also in the dynamic of the Italian ruling class which claims to be progressive. I am not talking about people who sympathise with you... I am not talking about the different people who you have reached in those faraway places - an achievement you should rightly be proud of. I am talking about the socialist and communist intellectuals and the intellectuals from the catholic left and intellectuals in general (...) In a rightly euphoric moment for the left we intellectuals face a potentially great and difficult danger. A new "trahison des clercs": a new acceptance, a new membership, a new giving in to le fait accomplit, a new regime even if at present it only exists as a new culture and new quality of life (...) Consumerism could mean that the new social relationships, expressed in a new way of production, will create a context for hedonistic ideology of false toleran

ce and a false realisation of civil rights. The mass of intellectuals have borrowed the struggle for civil rights from you, within their extremist marxist pragmatics, and have inserted this struggle into their own progressive code or leftish conformism, which is nothing more than a power game (...)

They have already given it an invisible power and an invisible membership putting an invisible card in their pockets. Faced with this, you should do nothing (in my opinion), but continue simply to be yourselves: this means being continuously unrecognisable.

Forget your great successes: continue undaunted, obstinate, eternally contrary, to demand, to want, to identify yourself with the different, to shock and to curse.